‘I know, I really didn’t deserve her,’ said Joel. He put his head in his hands. ‘I’ve never forgiven myself for that row, I had no idea she’d told you about it.’
‘Well, you should,’ said Lauren, ‘because Claire did. And I never understood why till recently. Now I know what she saw in you.’
‘What do you mean?’ Joel was stunned. ‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘I rang her to see if she was OK,’ said Lauren, ‘and she was very cross with you. But then she laughed and said you were drunk and being stupid, and she’d gone to bed to punish you, but she knew you’d make it up in the morning.’
Joel’s eyes welled up.
‘And there wasn’t another morning,’ he whispered. ‘She really said that? I never knew.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lauren touched his hand. ‘I know you felt bad about Claire, but it never occurred to me that you were beating yourself up so much. All those women … I thought you didn’t care.’
‘They never made me feel better,’ said Joel. ‘They were a way of numbing the pain, and trying to fill the black emptiness Claire left. And all the time I was with them, I didn’t see what was right under my nose. Namely you.’
He leant over and looked at her deep and hard.
‘Lauren,’ he said, ‘can we start again?’
‘I’d like that,’ she said shyly.
He leant towards her, and gently cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her. All the pain and heartache fell away, and something new and vibrant took its place. And Joel really understood for the first time that though Claire had gone, he didn’t have to stop living, and that she wouldn’t have wanted him to. He held Lauren close to him, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.
They walked back up the hill hand in hand as the sun set, and the children ran towards them, a symbol of their bright and shining future.
Epilogue
The band of elderly men, with their poppies and regimental medals proudly displayed on their breasts, marched through the gates of the Memorial Gardens. It was a sharply bright November day, and they were led by a small band of soldiers in full kit. They marched down the newly gravelled path, up to the Heartsease War Memorial, now proudly returned to its place of honour. The flowerbeds to the right and left had been cultivated in the shape of poppies, and the flowerbed behind the memorial was dotted with tiny wooden crosses, each with a poppy attached; one for every man in Heartsease who had given their lives for their country.
Eileen stood proudly watching as Jamie, newly and safely returned from Afghanistan, laid a wreath at the newly restored war memorial. She wiped away a tear, while Tony squeezed her hand.
Kezzie and Richard, now happily sharing two homes between Heartsease and London, waited till the ceremonies were over, and then came forward with their own small wreath, which Kezzie insisted she wanted to lay in Harry Handford’s honour.
‘I feel I should,’ she explained. ‘For Edward.’
Joel, Lauren and the children had been standing next to them, and they walked forward with the lilies Joel had felt were appropriate. Together they watched silently as the rest of the crowd came by to either lay a wreath or pay their respects, and they all bowed their heads to the haunting sound of the Last Post.
When the band and the marching soldiers had finally gone, the four of them remained behind, contemplating the war memorial, while the children ran around on the grass.
‘Sixty-five men from Heartsease dead in World War One alone,’ marvelled Kezzie. ‘Every house in the village must have been affected. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘And look, Harry’s name, just there quietly in amongst them,’ said Joel. ‘Edward could have designed it so Harry’s name stood out, but he chose not to. He wrote Connie a letter about it, saying he wanted every family in the village to feel they owned the memorial too, that it wasn’t just for Harry.’
‘And now it’s been restored to the village,’ said Richard. ‘All thanks to you guys.’
‘The war memorial’s mainly down to Eileen,’ said Kezzie. ‘Although I will take some credit for the garden.’
‘But it wouldn’t have been worth pursuing if you two hadn’t restored the garden,’ said Lauren. ‘I think if Edward Handford’s up there somewhere, he’d be really proud.’
‘Do you know,’ said Kezzie, ‘I think he would.’
Edward
1919–1955
’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson ‘In Memoriam’
After the funeral, Connie immediately came home to be with Edward, which was some comfort. At first he spent time – too much time – brooding in the garden. He saw Lily constantly there, and it reminded him of what they had had, but it was also too painful, and at times he could almost not bear to leave. In the end Connie took him aside one day, and gently said she was locking the garden up. It gave no more comfort now. Occasionally Edward thought of it, but as the years passed and Connie eventually married, and produced his new grandson, Jack, he thought of it less.
Tilly and her family were rare visitors – Connie was never able to forgive her sister’s betrayal, so Edward saw them alone. But as the years passed, and he grew old, his visits to them grew more infrequent, until eventually they stopped altogether.
One day, when Connie was away and he was dozing by the fire, a knock on the door announced a visitor.
‘I’m Daisy,’ the young woman who stood before him said. ‘Tilly’s daughter. You remember? Your granddaughter. And this is Lilian, your great granddaughter.’
Edward looked down at the angelic beauty by Daisy’s side.
‘She looks so like Tilly at that age,’ he said.
They stayed for the afternoon, and it being a summer’s day, Edward allowed himself to be persuaded to sit in the garden.
‘Can we go to the secret garden?’ said Daisy. ‘I remember cousin Jack hiding in there when I was little.’
‘It’s locked up now,’ said Edward, ‘but I believe there’s still a key hanging in the scullery.’
Daisy fetched the key, and together they walked to the garden. Edward slowly opened the gate. It had been years since he’d been there, and the sun shone on his neglect.
He could have wept to see what had become of his creation, born out of love for Lily and ruined and destroyed in his despair. Connie had promised to look after it for him, but it had clearly been too painful for her.
He sat down heavily on the ornate bench, carved with the letters E and L, which he’d had made on the occasion of their wedding. It was now rusted after years of damp, cold winters, and Edward stared at the garden with deep sadness. All his labours turned to dust.
Lilian came up to him shyly. ‘Look, Grandpa,’ she said, ‘pretty flowers, just for you.’
She held up a bunch of pansies.
‘They’re called heartsease,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
He sat back, holding the flowers and smiling. The garden and all it meant to him had gone, but here was another Lily come along, like a miracle, to ease his aching heart.
Edward
Edward dreams of Lily. She comes to him as he sits on the veranda, looking out at the view they both love so much. She is as young as when he first knew her. His lovely, laughing, joyful Lily, dancing towards him in the sunshine.
‘Edward, it’s time to come home,’ she says. ‘Here, take my hand.’
She leads him down the path, towards the sunken garden, and he walks through the gate into a bright sunlit world.
‘For your heart’s ease,’ she says, and presses a bunch of pansies into his hands.
Edward dreams of Lily, still clutching the pansies his great granddaughter brought him. Edward dreams of Lily, and in his sleep he smiles.
Read on to discover Julia’s inspiration for writing The Summer Season, a glossary of Flower Meanings and Edward Handford’s Knot Garden design.
Writing is always an organic process, and while I usually start with an idea of wha
t I’m going to write about, the story often delves off into different directions. And en route, I find inspiration comes from all sorts of interesting sources.
My initial idea for The Summer Season was to write a story about four people who had been unlucky in love, but I needed something to bring them together. I came up with the idea of them living around a square, which had a garden that had fallen into disrepair, but then my editor (rightly) felt it needed more …
It was then that inspiration struck. The house where my husband grew up had a wonderful garden, at the end of which was a rose arbour. The original owner of the house had created it for his wife as a wedding present. As he lay dying, the rose garden became neglected, but he never knew, as the people looking after him would tell him every day how lovely it was. I always thought that was terribly sad and touching, and it provided the seed for Edward and Lily’s story.
I became interested in knot gardens after a visit to Stratford, and it seemed a natural fit to make Edward create a knot garden for Lily, because not only are they beautiful, they can be invested with so much meaning. And the more I delved into it, the more their story grew, and I realized that I needed to make their story as important as Joel’s, Kezzie’s and Lauren’s.
While I was in the process of writing the book, I was also doing a lot of research into my family history, and discovered that, like Harry, one of my great uncles, Alfred Clark, had died at the battle of the Sambre, a week before the end of World War 1. Not only that, but another brother, Ernest, died of sickness in 1916. I got thinking about this, and also about the twin babies my great grandmother, Jemima Clark, lost at six weeks. Jemima, by all accounts, was a much tougher character than Lily, but thinking about the heartache she must have endured, gave me the basis for Lily’s story, and it only seemed appropriate that she should share Jemima’s surname.
Inspiration comes from more than one direction, and Heartsease, though made up, could be a village on the Surrey/Sussex border close to where I live. The downlands which surround it are certainly familiar to me. I also realized when I got to the end of the book, that Joel’s garden has come out of a deep well of memory. Not only is it reminiscent of a garden I played in as a child – which had high redbrick walls and a wilderness of bushes, perfect for small children to hide in – but the notion of a secret garden is one I find appealing. I reread The Secret Garden, a favourite book from childhood, as research, and discovered to my amusement that a robin which plays a key part in the book, seems to have made its way into Joel’s garden to befriend Kezzie. I was struck by the vividness of the descriptions of spring, and the way the garden comes back to life after the winter, which I have definitely drawn from. It occurred to me that another favourite childhood book, Tom’s Midnight Garden in which a plain back yard by day is magically transformed to the beautiful garden it once was by night, has also been an influence.
There are two real life gardens which have also been inspirational: one is in Germany, owned by family friends, who have created an amazing space full of nooks and crannies: there are stone artefacts, such as a water feature made from an old mill stone, and a signpost to Berlin; there’s a pond complete with lily pads, looking for all the world as if a handsome prince will hop by, and there are beautiful and unusual plants, which stun and delight. It is quite magical. The other garden is on my school run, and is another secret garden. It’s hidden behind the wall of a graveyard we walk through, and my children and I discovered one day, that if we walked up to the huge tree overlooking it, we could peer in, and see a lovingly tended garden, although mysteriously we rarely see anyone in it. That experience definitely fed into Kezzie’s excitement at her first viewing of Joel’s garden.
I thought very carefully about the kind of plants both Edward and Kezzie would grow in the knot garden, and while I may have taken liberties with the real gardening cycle, I hope I can be forgiven. I wanted the plants they chose to be invested with some kind of meaning. One of the joys of writing this book has been the journey of discovery I’ve made about flowers and their secret meanings. None more so than when I discovered that by chance I had given Edward a wisteria bush growing outside his front door. The meaning of wisteria? Welcome. I’m sure he’d have chosen it with care.
Flower Meanings
Agapanthus
Immortality
Blue Hyacinth
Constancy
Crocuses
Cheerfulness, Gladness
Daffodils
Joy, Happiness
Forget Me Not
True Love, Memories
Geranium
True Friend
Gloxinia
Love at First Sight
Heartsease
Loving Thoughts
Hollyhocks
Ambition, Fruitfulness
Impatiens
Maternal Love
Ivy
Wedded Love, Fidelity
Peonies
Healing and a Happy Life
Petunia
Your Presence Soothes Me
Rosemary
Remembrance
Snowdrops
Hope
Sweet Pea
Blissful Pleasure, I Think of You
White Carnations
Good Luck
White Lilies
Purity
Wisteria
Welcome
Acknowledgements
I’d like to say a huge thank you to my outgoing editor, Kate Bradley, who made many helpful suggestions in the early stages of writing this book, not least by suggesting I made Edward and Lily’s story a stronger thread, and also to my incoming editor, Claire Bord, who has made the transition so smooth, and been nothing but helpful and encouraging.
Heartfelt thanks as ever to my fabulous agent, Dot Lumley and to the rest of the Avon team: Charlotte Allen, Sammia Rafique, Helen Bolton, Claire Power and Caroline Ridding.
I’d also like to say thanks to William Dawson for his help on knot gardens, and to Liz Heymoz and Ita Flach for showing me the knot garden he created at Buckden Towers.
My twin sister, Virginia Moffatt is my keenest supporter and critic, and thanks are due to her for giving me such an enthusiastic thumbs up at an early stage.
I’d also like to thank my brother-in-law Nick Williams, for his fantastic detective work in uncovering the story of my family in World War 1, which has been hugely influential in the writing of this story.
There were several people who were enormously helpful with last minute queries, so thanks are due too to: Emma Alston, Sarah Duncan, Penny Jordan and Kate Wilstone who generously and swiftly responded to questions which were making me tear my hair out. And a huge thanks to all the lovely people on Twitter, who said, yes, you can buy freesias in September.
And belatedly, I’d like to say a big thank you to you, the reader, for not only buying this, but supporting me in so many ways with my previous books. If you’d like to know more about what I’m up to you can follow me on Twitter @ JCCWilliams or on my blog http;//maniacmum.blogspot.com
About the Author
Julia Williams has always made up stories in her head, and until recently she thought everyone else did too. She grew up in London, one of eight children, including a twin sister. She was a children’s editor at Scholastic for several years before going freelance after the birth of her second child. It was then she decided to try her hand at writing. The result, her debut novel, Pastures New, was a bestseller and has sold across Europe.
To find out more about Julia go to her website at www. juliawilliamsauthor.com, visit her blog at www.maniacmum. blogspot.com or follow Julia on Twitter @JCCWilliams.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
By the same author:
Pastures New
Strictly Love
Last Christmas
The Bridesmaid Pact
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and
incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
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THE SUMMER SEASON. Copyright © Julia Williams 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Julia Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-84756-088-9
EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-744324-6
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