The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘But you’re all right now, aren’t you? You’ve been so well, so very much your old self.’

  ‘Was I that different before?’

  ‘You weren’t so much different, George. Just rather introspective, which wasn’t at all like you. Sometimes it was as if only a part of you was present. I knew that you just had to come to terms with whatever was worrying you, or wait until you decided it was time that I should know. But I don’t think there’s any point telling any of this to your father.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. Because this isn’t the real reason you want to leave the army. The real reason you want to leave the army is because the war is over. That is all you have to say. The war is over.’

  Thirteen

  When George finally decided to go and see his father in person in order to explain his decision, loath though she was to be separated from him Amelia declined to accompany him because she thought she would be in the way. For his part George was just as loath to leave Amelia behind all alone in the cottage, but with the Hanleys’ two servants caring for the main house Amelia insisted she would be perfectly safe.

  ‘And I have a million and one things to do in The Priory garden,’ she told him, to settle the argument. ‘Besides having to find an actual gardener.’

  So George went off to Sussex in the little Crossley 25/30 they had bought themselves as necessary transport when Clarence Dennison reclaimed the Hillman, leaving Amelia to get about in the pony and trap which Archie and Mae often used to take themselves around the neighbourhood.

  From the woman in the village post office near The Priory, George’s fount of all knowledge, Amelia collected a short list of names of skilled locals who might be able to help her with the task of creating a garden for her new home, and after extensive interviewing she offered the job to a quiet giant of a man named Jethro Blake. He had been the second gardener on one of the largest local estates, which had just been sold to a forage merchant for whom Jethro had very soon decided he just could not work.

  Amelia’s new gardener came to the job with a wealth of practical knowledge as well as a very real and deep affection for plants. He was a man of few words, but the ones he chose to use were always well considered and his advice – which Amelia was to find invaluable – was always based on first hand experience. As soon as she had spent half an hour in his company and once he himself had laid eyes on the grounds surrounding The Priory they both knew they were well suited.

  ‘I have no hard and fast ideas, Jethro,’ Amelia explained as they made their way round the estate for a second time. ‘I would like to restore wherever possible various areas of the gardens to the way they once were, functionally at least. For instance the carp ponds which are completely overgrown would make a lovely water feature, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Keeping all the formal gardens, as ‘t were, to the front of the house?’ Jethro wondered. ‘It being south facing.’

  ‘Quite so. While restoring the walled vegetable garden on the other side – and the avenue here – which you can still make out between this line of fruit trees—‘ Amelia pushed her way through an almost overgrown gap in a hedge to show Jethro where she meant. ‘This could be two long herbaceous beds with a mown walkway between – leading back through gates onto formal lawns and rose beds perhaps.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Jethro grunted, rubbing his grizzled chin with one big hand as he surveyed the wilderness and tried to imagine what could be done. ‘I’ll need a lad, Mrs Dashwood. There’s a boy in the village – young Robbie Spry. He might do.’

  By the time George returned three days later, Amelia’s gardening staff had already begun the long and arduous but exciting task of creating a beautiful garden to surround the old priory.

  ‘Wine?’ Amelia exclaimed when George produced a bottle from his case. ‘What are we celebrating?’

  ‘My father’s clemency,’ George smiled. ‘And your foresight. What was it you once said your father had always taught you? Never complain and never explain? He was right. Instead of trying to justify my decision by a whole convoluted set of reasons, reasons which would have only made life impossible for the old boy, I simply told him I had arrived at a decision, a decision which I thought completely right for the way my mind was now set, and that was that. We went for a long walk on the Downs where we discussed the matter, and even though my mother knew perfectly well what I was there for, I kept it between my father and myself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And after he slept on it, and we went for another ten-mile constitutional, that was that. If that’s what I wanted, then so be it, he said. A man with my war record could not be said to have arrived at such a decision lightly, and he said – very graciously I thought – that he respected me for having the courage to be true to myself.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She hardly addressed a word to me for the rest of my visit,’ George said with a sigh. ‘But then we rather saw that coming as well, did we not?’

  ‘She’ll come round, George. After all, you are her son.’

  ‘That – alas – is half the trouble.’

  After George had bathed and changed they drank their champagne in the early summer twilight on the terrace outside the cottage. As they sat talking about their plans for The Priory, Amelia suddenly stopped mid-sentence and frowned, putting a hand carefully to her stomach.

  ‘Are you all right, Amelia?’ George asked with concern. ‘Is something the matter?’

  Amelia smiled.

  ‘Nothing that will not be resolved in a few months’ time, George.’

  By the time the baby was due, George and Amelia had been living in The Priory for three months. All the main reconstruction work had been finished on the main house and the building had also been plumbed and wired, leaving just the fitting and decoration to be done.

  Meanwhile outside Jethro and Robbie had painstakingly cleared the entire estate, thinning out the trees and digging out all the scrub and unwanted growth. As the autumn leaves began to fall and the days to shorten, they began work on shaping the grounds into Amelia’s design, cutting and trimming the fine old hedges, repairing the old stone and brick walls, digging the flower beds and relaying flagstone paths, so that, excitingly, now when she looked out of her bedroom window down on to the gardens Amelia could see how everything might look the following year when the lawns were sowed and the beds planted out.

  ‘How I see it is just like the garden at Hidcote,’ she would tell George as together they gazed out across the grounds. ‘Each room with a different identity. More formal near the house so you see order and perspective whichever way you approach. Then when you leave to explore the rest of the gardens you are drawn away from the house by a series of walkways and paths, all of which will lead through gates and archways, stone and iron near the house and then natural entrances and exits cut from hedgerow and trees the further afield you venture. Beyond the herbaceous garden that’s going to a Wild Garden, full of buddleias and other plants which attract butterflies, and all sorts of different long grasses to give movement. Then I’m thinking of building a formal water garden as the next room, on the west side over there – behind those hedges. With a big round lily pond and steps up the hill which leads to the river. From the top of the hill Jethro suggested we build a water course, which I think is a very exciting idea, with a series of gently tiered cascades and ponds with slabs you can walk on . . .’

  ‘Now it’s cleared I can see we have a wonderful stretch of water.’

  ‘Hardly Scotland, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There are some half-decent trout in there, my darling. I shall be more than happy if I can hook some of those.’

  ‘And you can fish for carp in the ponds.’

  ‘What about all this water? I mean with children--’

  ‘Everywhere there is water there will be a gate. You won’t be able to get anywhere near any of the ponds without going through a gate, and every gate is going to have a lock,’ Amelia assured him. ‘T
he formal water garden will be completely surrounded by a high hedge with two entrances, both through gateways, which will be the only way you can get to the water course and the river. Likewise the carp ponds can only be reached through the gate at the end of the herbaceous garden and the old doorway at the back of the Wild Garden. Funnily enough the grounds were originally laid out as if they had children in mind.’

  ‘Or monks who couldn’t swim, probably! I think it’s a marvellous concept. Your garden will become famous.’

  ‘Hardly, George. But it will become beautiful.’

  The weather turned very cold the week the baby was due, causing George to consider bringing his exigency plan into operation.

  Amelia would have none of it.

  ‘No, George. We agreed. I want to have my baby at home.’

  ‘Our baby, Amelia,’ George corrected her. ‘And since it’s our baby I should have a fair share in the say as to where it should be born. And if the weather worsens--’

  ‘It won’t.’

  ‘It could. And because it could I think we should make provisions for you to have the baby in hospital.’

  ‘You can make provisions, George, but I’m still having the baby here.’

  ‘Suppose the midwife can’t get through? And Dr Lydford?’

  ‘Then you’ll have to deliver it, George.’

  ‘Don’t be loopy, Amelia.’

  ‘I’m being perfectly serious, George. I do not want to have our baby in a hospital. I want it born here, at The Priory.’

  ‘Even if it risks your life? And the baby’s?’

  ‘It won’t. And don’t ask me why it won’t, but it won’t. I just know.’

  ‘More magic, I suppose.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning more magic.’ George raised his eyebrows. ‘Isn’t everything here done by magic?’

  ‘Oh, you may sneer, Captain Dashwood,’ Amelia replied airily. ‘You may laugh until you are fit to bust, but you yourself admitted not once but several times that there’s something very special about this place. The weather, for instance. There was that really bad frost everywhere else last Sunday, remember? Yet we had no frost here at all.’

  ‘The old monks knew where to build their priories, obviously. In fact you could say they got their priorities right – what a laboured joke.’

  ‘It only ever rains here at night.’

  ‘Darling, it rains here the same as it rains everywhere.’

  ‘When did it last rain here during the day? It only seems to rain when we are sleeping.’

  ‘I don’t keep a rain diary. How should I know?’

  ‘Then what about the weeds – or rather the lack of them? Jethro says--’

  ‘Jethro, like most of the people round here,’ George interrupted, ‘is more than a little fey.’

  ‘The last thing Jethro is, George, is fey. Jethro thinks we’re fey. And he has said to me not once but on innumerable occasions that he can’t understand why there’s so little weed actually in the ground. Particularly seeing how overgrown it all was.’

  ‘Probably something in the soil. And you can argue till you’re blue round the gills, but I’m sticking by my exigency plan. If the weather looks like being bad – you go to hospital, my girl, and that is that.’

  ‘Fine.’ Amelia sat back in her chair and glared at him. ‘If you make me have this baby in hospital, George, I won’t have it. I shall hold on to it. Like horses.’

  ‘How do you know what horses do?’

  ‘They tell me when I stop and talk to them.’

  But behind all her jokes and banter Amelia was in earnest. She was determined to have their first child in their new home, since she had always believed very strongly that babies should be born in the place where their family lived and where they themselves were to live. She herself had been born at home and had always attributed the happiness of her upbringing and the love she had for her home to this fact. George, who prided himself on being altogether more practical in such matters – hardly surprising in a man of his background – respected Amelia’s wishes but finally was of the opinion that common sense should and must prevail. He therefore duly but quietly made arrangements for Amelia to be admitted to the local hospital should the weather not improve.

  He even consulted Jethro, a known weather forecaster, as to what the prevailing conditions were expected to be for the next ten days.

  ‘Snow, Captain Dashwood,’ he replied. ‘And when it snows in these parts, it snows.’

  ‘And that means we probably wouldn’t even be able to get out of the drive, Amelia,’ George told her later. ‘So let’s be sensible, shall we? And take ourselves to hospital?’

  ‘You go if you like, George. I’m staying here.’

  ‘Amelia--’

  ‘Dr Lydford lives only five minutes away, George. As does Miss Taylor the midwife. Five minutes, George, this side of the village. So if it snows, and we can’t get out of the drive, they can still come up to the door. On foot.’

  Convinced that Amelia would see reason before it was too late, but knowing that the more he pressed her the less likely he was to get a result in his favour, George watched the skies for snow. Just as Jethro had predicted, the wind dropped and so did the thermometer.

  ‘Frost, perhaps. When it’s about to snow it usually gets warmer. Ah--’

  ‘Yes?’ George said quickly. ‘Ah? Ah what? What was the ah for?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Amelia said quietly, a hand on her baby. ‘Just ah.’

  At four o’clock that afternoon the telephone rang. It was Constance, wanting to know what the weather was like in Somerset since Sussex was fast disappearing in a blizzard.

  ‘We’re fine here,’ Amelia assured her. ‘Not a flake.’

  ‘Perhaps George is right, Amelia dear. Maybe you should pop off to hospital. Was that a yes?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact it was another pain.’

  ‘Another? How many have you had, Amelia?’

  ‘They’re coming a lot more regularly now. George? Sorry – Mama – I have to go. George!’

  Amelia dropped the telephone and gasped as yet another contraction all but knocked the breath from her body.

  ‘George!’ she screamed. ‘Call Dr Lydford! And Miss Taylor – quickly! Quickly!’

  Both helpers arrived together in one car, looking more than a little bewildered.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ George groaned as he opened the door to them. ‘I was fully intending to get her to the hospital. . .’

  ‘It isn’t that, my dear fellow,’ Dr Lydford said, taking off his hat and coat. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to make the hospital anyhow. The road’s completely blocked.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ George said, hurrying upstairs with the doctor after the midwife.

  ‘Snow, my dear fellow! A positive avalanche!’

  ‘Snow? But I mean if the roads are blocked—’

  ‘Not your road, old boy. The one from the village neither. The other side of the road – the far side – six inches of the stuff. But it’s missed you altogether. And me so far. Someone must be smiling on you, George old chap.’

  Longbeard never smiled, although he was in fact evidently much amused. He had always enjoyed taking on the elements, always loved the challenge of finding a spell which would confuse nature and make her blow her wind from east to west instead of north to south – or cause a frost to form in June. Or, as he had once done, cause the rain to fall upwards over the Wash. This task was easier than those, however, a simple dazzle which required him only to cast along the ley line that ran so nicely beneath two of the salient points, which he had done really most effectively, so that while the rest of the countryside lay fast beneath snow the ley ran warm as the gulf stream, creating what would once again be known as a natural phenomenon.

  Now the Noble One and Longbeard stood beneath the yew beyond the house watching the yellow-lit window above and listening for the sounds. ‘Next I must suppose you want me also to magick the child int
o existence, sir?’ Longbeard sighed, opening his purse and looking at the starlights within it.

  ‘I would have instructed you had it been my desire,’ the Noble One replied. ‘But it is not. For these things must happen naturally. We must play no part in these events.’

  ‘No we must not sir,’ Longbeard said. ‘As we must not meddle with the elements.’

  ‘They will explain that away, you know that,’ the younger man replied. ‘As mortals have always done. But we must not give them cause to wonder, at least not about matters understood. The child must arrive as all children.’

  Both then looked up at the sound, a strange new cry that sang across the dark gardens. ‘Yet you must name the child, sir,’ Longbeard needled. ‘You say you have decided on his name.’

  ‘Because I was not so blessed, as you are aware. He should be named with the title my son would have borne,’ the Noble One told Longbeard.

  ‘And that might be, sir?’

  The man in the robe smiled as he pointed his index finger at the lit window.

  ‘Peter,’ Amelia said, as they laid her son in her arms. ‘Forget all our other ideas, George, let us call him Peter.’

  Part Two

  1926

  ‘Those who want the fewest things Are nearest to the Gods.’

  Socrates

  Fourteen

  ‘You really were not brought up to write this sort of thing,’ Lady Dashwood said, eyeing George from under the brim of her French felt hat with its broad silk trimming. ‘Of one thing I am absolutely certain and that is that the older I grow the less I understand you.’

  ‘The older I grow, Mother, the less I understand everybody,’ George replied with a smile, looking round at the two families invited to The Priory by his wife to celebrate the success of his first novel. ‘But then I have to say I did not expect you to enjoy my book.’