EG02 - The Lost Gardens

by Anthony Eglin

  At the door they shook hands. ‘Don’t you forget now,’ said Ferguson. ‘I have to see that chapel and the well—very soon.’

  Chapter Eight

  Kingston had been less than forthcoming when he told Ferguson about the chapel being locked up. It was, indeed, locked but it was Kingston who had the key, a very large iron key, which hung on a carved wooden rack in the hall of his cottage.

  It was the day after his meeting with Ferguson and were it not for the fact that the chapel and the monastery were very much on his mind, he might not have noticed, early that morning, that the key was missing. Throughout breakfast he kept wondering about it. He decided that before going up to the house to have his usual meeting with Jamie, he would stop at the chapel first.

  Arriving at the oak door, he was surprised to see it was open. He went inside, careful not to make any sound. Directly across from him, on the other side of the wellhead, his back to Kingston, was a man in a plaid shirt, shining a flashlight on the wall, running his hand over the plaster.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Kingston barked.

  The man spun round. It was Jack Harris.

  ‘Christ! You scared the shit out of me, Lawrence.’

  ‘What are doing here, Jack?’

  Jack passed a tongue nervously over his lips. ‘Just trying to help,’ he mumbled.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well—you know—trying to find out how those coins got in here. Seeing if there’s another way in.You got me curious, that’s all.’

  ‘How did you get in here? It’s supposed to be locked.’

  Jack’s eyes flickered slightly. ‘It was open, I swear.’

  Kingston was about to mention the missing key but decided that it would be tantamount to an accusation. ‘Who else knows about this place?’ he asked.

  ‘You mean other than the crew who were here when we discovered it?’

  ‘Yes, who else?’

  ‘Well—nobody, as far as I know.’

  The two of them walked out of the chapel, Kingston up to the house, Jack to the vegetable garden, where most of the crew was presently working.

  The door to Jamie’s office was open. Kingston peeked in and saw her at the computer. He gave a gentle tap on the door. ‘Ready when you are, boss,’he said.

  Jamie swivelled on her chair. ‘Come in, Lawrence, I’m just about done here.’

  He waited while she typed in a couple more entries of whatever it was she was working on. It looked like a table of some kind.

  ‘Okay, done,’ she said, turning the computer off. ‘Let’s go see how the vegetable garden’s coming along.’

  Outside, the sun had just come out and it had the makings of a beautiful day.

  ‘Just ran into Jack, up at the chapel,’ Kingston said, as they walked across the top lawn.

  ‘Really? What was he doing there? I thought the place was locked up.’

  ‘It was but the key’s missing from the rack in the cottage. Jack swore he knew nothing about it. Said that the door was open.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Kingston went on to tell her about their conversation, that he thought Jack was lying through his teeth.

  ‘I didn’t think it worth mentioning, Lawrence, but over the last couple of weeks or so, it seems like Jack has gone out of his way to be nice to me. When he was first hired, I got the distinct impression that he was trying to avoid me. I recall I told you at the time that he was a bit too macho for my liking. I put it down to resentment, the fact that a woman could have inherited such a large estate—even more so, an American woman.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Well, of late, he’s done a complete flip-flop. He couldn’t be nicer. Often, he’ll stop by the office to chat at the end of the day.’

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that. He’s doing a good job, I must say.’

  ‘At one of those friendly little chats, he asked me if I could loan him some money. I should have told you, I suppose, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.’

  ‘Really? When was this?’

  ‘Three or four days ago. Said he’d got behind on his credit cards and some other debts. For a guy who’s usually so sure of himself, he was very nervous.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I was actually considering it until I asked how much he had in mind. When he told me two thousand pounds, I was shocked. I thought he was talking about fifty or a hundred pounds—that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s serious money. I don’t like the sound of it at all. In any case, he should have come to me first.’

  ‘I think you’d better sit down and talk with him, Lawrence. Find out what’s going on.’

  ‘I will, Jamie. First thing tomorrow.’

  The high brick wall of the vegetable garden came into view ‘There’s something I don’t like about that man,’ she said.

  ‘He may be hard to replace but if that’s what we have to do, we will.’

  When Kingston got back to the cottage at seven o’clock that night, the letter was on the hall table. Post forwarded to him was usually held at the house. But now and then China or Eric would drop off letters—almost always bills. The front door was only locked at night.

  He opened the envelope, noting the Army Personnel Centre address, and read the contents. As he did so, a smile spread across his face. Not only did it contain more information about Major Ryder, but it listed the names of eight men who had served with Ryder during the war—all of whom were believed still living. This was what he had been hoping for.

  Kingston read the letter again. Ryder’s war ended on 14 July 1944 when, as a lieutenant, he was wounded in action in the Dutch town of Kleinelangstraat. After his unit was captured, he was taken to a German field hospital where he was patched up and then shipped off to an Oflag, a POW camp for officers. His condition worsened to a point that, to save his life, he was transferred to a hospital in Paris. After two operations and a lengthy period of rehabilitation, he was released. Awarded a Military Cross for bravery he was promoted to the rank of captain. By this time Paris had fallen to the Allied armies. Records from then on were nonexistent but the letter went on to state that, after the war, Ryder spent some time in Paris before returning to England where he eventually retired from service. Immediately, Kingston thought back to the French dealer, Girard. This tallied with what the man Fox had told Jamie: that Girard and Ryder were in business together after the war in Paris. It would explain why Ryder didn’t return to England right away after his rehabilitation.

  Kingston scanned down the list of the veterans’ names on the second sheet. He would start calling in the morning. He put the letter back in its envelope, turned off the lights and went upstairs to bed. This was information that Jamie was entitled to know about. Besides, it supported his theory about the missing paintings. Before long he would have to tell her what he was up to. She was leaving early the next morning but he would tell her when he felt the time was right. In a matter of minutes, he was asleep.

  A crack of thunder woke him with a start from his dream. For a few seconds, the room was harshly lit by a strobe of lightning. In the dream he had been alone in the dimly lit living room at Wickersham. The room was as he remembered it, save for the pictures. Every surface of every table, the mantelpiece, the grand piano, even the window seats were stacked with framed photographs of varying shapes and sizes. All the head and shoulder sepia tone photos were identical—each of the same man, stern-faced, and with humourless dark eyes that followed Kingston around the room. The man in the photo was wearing an army uniform with major’s pips on each epaulette. Then Kingston heard Jamie’s desperate voice calling his name.

  He sat up in bed sweating, a hand on the bed rail. He could hear his heart beating. He glanced at the chartreuse-lit numerals on the alarm clock: 3:20. Then another crash of thunder, this time farther off. Now the rain was slapping against the open window, the curtain whipping like a flag. He slipped out of bed and went to the window. Reaching to close
it, the rain soaking his forearm, he peered outside. It was too dark to see much at all. All he heard was the sheeting rain and the wind. He was about to return to bed when a far-off flash of lightning illuminated the sky. In seconds it was dark again. But in that brief moment Kingston was certain he saw a shadowy figure retreating into the jungle, opposite. ‘That’s strange,’ he whispered. The person’s head was covered with a hood, like a monk’s cowl.

  Chapter Nine

  Early the following morning Kingston examined the area outside his bedroom window at the edge of the jungle, the place where he thought he’d seen the prowler. At first, he found nothing to indicate that anyone had been there. He looked up at his window, trying to recall his angle of view last night. He started walking slowly along the edge of the jungle, eyes to the ground. A few more steps and he stopped. In front of him the grass was flattened in places. A few feet farther on he saw a muddy scuffmark that could possibly have been made by the back of a heel. This was most certainly the spot where the man had made his exit.

  Arriving at the vegetable garden a few minutes later, he inquired after Jack. It soon became clear after questioning the half-dozen gardeners and labourers at the site that Jack hadn’t shown up yet. Kingston thought nothing more of it, concluding that he was probably sick. He could have his chat with Jack later.

  Jamie was gone for the day. She’d left early for a dental appointment, after which she was having lunch with David Latimer and in the afternoon doing errands in Taunton, so telling her about the mysterious prowler would have to wait until tonight. It was her birthday and he was taking her out to dinner at the White Swan. At first, he had debated whether he should tell her at all. Why give her cause to worry unduly about an incident that may well be unfounded or ultimately explained? But he had decided that telling her was the right thing to do. She would want know about it.

  Kingston closed the door of the workshop behind him, went across the large airy room with its three vertical skylights and sat down at the drawing board. The workshop was one of the first new buildings to be constructed on the garden site. He had designed it to function as the nerve centre, as it were, for the entire garden operation. It served as an office for him; a place to store records, which were becoming more voluminous every day; a design centre with computers appended with all the obligatory peripherals and a large drawing board; a library for garden books and catalogues; and a place where they could hold meetings and the occasional celebration—as they had when the reflection pool was uncovered.

  In front of him on the architect’s drawing table was a large sketchpad with rough designs for what would soon be the rose garden. It was one of his pet projects and so far he had given Jamie no hint of what he was planning. As far as he was concerned, roses would get top billing and he was spending a disproportionate amount of time making sure that both his design and his selection of shrub varieties, climbers and ramblers were impeccable. He wanted it to come as a complete surprise.

  Just when he first became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started as an amusing dalliance had developed over many years to become a passionate love affair. In this respect, he was certainly in good company—that much he knew. He had lectured on the subject so many times that he could still rattle much of it off by rote. The names of writers, poets and artists who have commemorated and eulogized the rose would fill volumes. Starting with Sappho, Horace and Virgil, the rose weaves its literary way through the centuries in the prose of Shakespeare, Herrick, Wordsworth, Yeats and the Brownings. To this day books about roses appear and will continue to appear on bookshop shelves with predictable certainty. In the history of art the rose reigns supreme. Botticelli, Manet, de La Tour, Georgia O’Keefe were all enthralled by the queen of flowers.

  Botanists, plant biologists and historians generally agree that roses were cultivated five thousand years ago. (Fossil evidence in North America suggests that roses flourished at least thirty-two million years ago.) Over the centuries they bloomed in the land of the Pharaohs and were cultivated in Bronze Age Crete; Grecian coins of the fifth century BC depict a rose on one side. Roses just kept growing and growing in the plots and hearts of gardeners all over the globe. By the end of the eighteenth century there were more than a thousand varieties.

  Today’s would-be rose aficionado is faced with a dazzling choice of old and new hybrids. Take your pick: from chaste whites and negligee pinks all the way to peppery and damson reds. Blooms the size of a fingernail or as large as a pie plate. Many voluptuously perfumed, most bristling with thorns. Miniature, ground cover, shrub, landscape, patio, standard, climber, rambler—there’s a shape and size for every space.

  Next the neophyte rose buyer has to decide what species or variety to choose. Navigating the thicket of options is a bewildering exercise, one that requires considerable study and deliberation, professional help or a sharp pin. Four basic groups define the genus: species roses, antique roses, early nineteenth-century hybrids, and modern roses. Within each of the first three groups there are up to as many as two dozen different families of rose, and within those families, more roses. In the last group, modern roses, the division is enormous, resulting in many thousands of varieties.

  Kingston had spent several weeks ruminating over his choice of roses for Wickersham. There was no shortage of space for planting so the starting list was lengthy. Winnowing down the candidates had been both a trial and a pleasure. Adding names and crossing them off conjured memories of garden visits past. He could picture the lovely single Gallica, ‘Complicata,’ threading its joyful way up through the branches of the old apple tree at Graham Stuart Thomas’s rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey and the exuberant Rosa felipes ‘Kiftsgate’ zooming fifty feet into the copper beech at the charming Gloucestershire garden after which it was named.

  The few pictures they had of the original rose garden at Wickersham all showed a typical layout. Orderly beds, some surrounded with low clipped box hedges, filled with nothing but regimented rows of roses. Kingston abhorred this kind of municipal garden look, judging the practice barely one step above the use of multicoloured bedding plants designed to replicate the Union Jack or the city name.

  The new rose garden at Wickersham would be one of the few areas that didn’t mirror its predecessor. Roses would be mixed in with shrubs, perennials and other plants, allowing them to show off their individuality and form, a technique now in common practice as exemplified at the garden at Sissinghurst. He was, however, going to make one small concession, in recognition of Britain’s celebrated rose hybridizer, David Austin, who created an entirely new category of roses known worldwide as English Roses. In any gardener’s dreams, the perfect rose would combine beauty of form, subtlety of colour, irresistible fragrance, resistance to disease and, above all, the ability to flower repeatedly. Such are the roses of David Austin. And Kingston was going to showcase them.

  At noon, he took a break to check on progress in various parts of the gardens. Still, there was no sign of Jack. A couple of phone calls went unanswered. He decided that if Jack didn’t show up in the morning, he would drive over to his house and find out what was going on.

  Seven o’clock on a Wednesday night at the White Swan in Coombe St Mary was just as busy as Saturday—or any other night, for that matter: three-deep at the bar, a surround-sound din of conversation and a minimum twenty-minute wait for the dining room. The quintessential horse brasses type pub, it had, hands down, the best food within fifty miles in any direction.

  It was Jamie’s birthday and the dinner was on Kingston. He’d brought along a small gift: Mirabel Osler’s A Gentle Plea for Chaos, one of his favourite books, musings about the joys and trials of her garden. They’d had a glass of house white in the bar while waiting for the table and, now seated, were on a second, from the bottle of Sancerre that Kingston had just selected for their first course.

  Their conversation was mostly about food and wine, which suite
d Kingston fine. He didn’t often get the chance these days to flex his epicurean muscles. He was quickly finding out, however, that there was more than just Dot’s talent at work in the kitchen at Wickersham; that Jamie probably had a great deal more influence than he’d given her credit for. ‘By no means a foodie,’ as she had put it, she credited her father—more so than her mother—as having the most influence on her when she was growing up. ‘He just loved to cook,’ she said with a wistful smile. ‘He was real easy to buy Christmas gifts for. Of course, growing up surrounded by grapevines and wineries in one of the world’s great wine-growing regions didn’t hurt either.’ Whether it was the wine or not, she seemed comfortable talking about her past.

  Kingston placed his fork and spoon on the white china bowl in front of him and leaned back in his chair. ‘What did you do in California, Jamie? Your job, I mean?’

  For a moment she said nothing, then broke into a smile. ‘I was a winemaker.’

  It was if she already knew what his reaction would be. She waited, the teasing smile still on her lips. ‘You look surprised, Lawrence.’

  ‘Well—I am. A winemaker?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She was clearly enjoying watching Kingston fumbling for the right words. She saved him the trouble. ‘Did you know that in French there’s no word for winemaker? Nor is there in Spanish, Italian or German. The French use the word vigneron, which means wine grower.’

  ‘I’d never thought about that,’said Kingston, rubbing his chin. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Most men think of it as being a male-dominated profession, which it still is in Europe. It used to be that way in California but nowadays more and more young women are graduating from U.C. Davis and Fresno each year, with degrees in enology and viticulture. Same thing happened in the restaurant business. Some of best chefs in the bay area now are women. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse is probably the most famous. As a matter of fact, she was invited to open a restaurant at the Louvre, in Paris. You can just imagine what the Frenchmen would have said about that.’