A Good Year for the Roses: A Novel

by Gil McNeil

  “How do we get it out Uncle Dennis?”

  “Stop running about, for starters, we want to calm it down, or we’ll never get it out. Ben, go and get some rope from the barn, there’s a good lad.”

  Alfie is hopping up and down.

  “Are you going to lasso it Uncle Dennis, like cowboys do?”

  Dennis smiles.

  “Might be a better idea, but I thought we’d try to rig up a halter first and try to lead her out and back into the field. She’ll have a lamb in there and she’ll go back in no bother once we get her pointed in the right direction. Stupid animals sheep, one of the stupidest creatures you’re ever likely to meet. Always seem to be looking for a way to die; if they’re not stuck somewhere, they’re in the wrong field or out on the road. Like pheasants. They’re another lot who haven’t got much sense to them.”

  Actually in terms of not having much sense I think finding yourself in charge of three boys, assorted pensioners, dogs, chickens, pigs, and a parrot, alongside a B&B and two hundred people coming for tea and a poke round your garden might rank quite highly too.

  I’m going to have to start a whole new list.

  “And then shall we go on rabbit patrol Uncle Dennis?”

  “Might as well I suppose, now we’ve all got our outside things on.”

  Double bugger.

  After a busy few weeks I’m sitting in the linen cupboard on Friday afternoon with a cup of tea and a biscuit, trying to head off a full-blown panic attack. Mr. and Mrs. Collins are due to book in at lunchtime, and I can’t help feeling B&B guests in the house on top of hordes of nutter rose people descending on us in the garden this weekend might just be the final straw. We’ve been fairly busy with B&B guests—I think “slow but steady” would be the official verdict—and we’ve also all been fighting off the cold Alfie brought home from school, which meant a few days which descended into a blur of hot lemon and tissues, so that didn’t exactly help. I’m continuing my Mrs. Danvers anti-fire patrol, but thankfully Bertie is leaving the fireguard firmly in place now, although he did make Dan a hot lemon drink which turned out to contain copious amounts of sugar and a tiny shot of whiskey, so I had to have a firm word about that. Although to be fair, Dan did stop whining about his cold and sleep for ten hours straight, so all in all it could have been worse.

  But the weather is finally getting warmer now June has arrived, and we’re drying all the washing outdoors now, on the rotary washing lines at the side of the kitchen garden wall, which, as Ivy rightly says, is a long way to walk with baskets of wet washing. But there’s nowhere else to put them, not without ruining the views, and now we’re opening the garden for public perusal, and getting a medal from the Rose Society for Helena’s roses, it’s probably not the ideal time to stick a load of washing lines closer to the house. Dennis has put up a new bigger rotary line, so we’ve got three of them now, looking like a mini wind-turbine collection when they’re not festooned with clothes and sheets. Living by the sea does mean mornings often start with a sea mist, but it’s usually gone by lunchtime, and even the big double sheets dry in a couple of hours when the sun is out. And everything smells so fresh, with a vague hint of salt. I’m definitely turning into someone who cares about the right weather for drying washing.

  I’ve also taken to wearing aprons like Ivy, although unlike her navy-blue cotton tabards, I’m wearing floral pinafores which I found on one of the hippy stalls at the boot fair. They’re great over jeans and T-shirts, and even Lola pronounced them more Vintage Retro than Mrs. Mop. Not that Ivy is a Mrs. Mop of course, even if she has started taking her new bucket on wheels home with her after she caught Ben trying to use it to wheel vegetable peelings out to the chickens.

  Celia and Dennis have been potting up cuttings and muttering about plant labels and signs to stop people wandering around the house for what seems like weeks now. We’ve had Celia’s friend Bobby, the county organiser, to stay for the night, who turned out to be Lady Roberta Wootton, which sent Ivy into somewhat of a spin and meant the best china came out of the cupboard. They spent hours outside in the garden with Dennis wittering on about signage and proper plant labels, and deciding that the meadow and the path down to the cove must be included in the Open Garden because apparently Helena has done such a wonderful job of planting wildflowers and a top-notch collection of rambling roses and sea thrift in amongst the grasses and ancient hedgerows, and everyone will want to see those too. So that’s meant more mowing of paths and extra signs to point people in the right direction.

  Ivy has relented and agreed that people can use the downstairs cloakroom, but she’s organising a timetable so that Florrie and May are on duty to make sure nobody goes through the hall door and starts helping themselves to all our ornaments—although God knows why anybody would want to. We’ve rented trestle tables from the village hall, and she’s holding firm about not wasting our good china on a load of old gardeners who if Dennis is anything to go by, will hand back cups covered in dirty fingerprints with their handles chipped. So she’s arranged to borrow the cups and saucers and cake plates from the village hall as well, and I have to go and collect them tomorrow morning because the Women’s Institute are using them today. And the weather forecast is for showers on Sunday, so we’ve got to tidy up the stables and have bunting and extra tablecloths ready to turn the end barn into a tearoom if required. Dear God.

  “There you are, I’ve been calling you.”

  “Sorry Ivy. I was just about to make up the room for Mr. and Mrs. Collins.”

  “Your mum’s arrived, and Mr. Stebbings needs a word. I said you’d nip up to see him in a bit, and when you go shopping, could you add more baking paper to your list? If we’re going to sugar more rose petals for the cakes, we need a couple more rolls of paper. Oh, and your mum and I are making a few batches of strawberry jam. The early strawberries are ready, so I’ll need some more sugar. And we need some more of those paper doilies—we want the cake plates to look nice don’t we?”

  “Definitely. Is that last load of washing done yet?”

  “Yes, just finished.”

  “Okay, I’ll hang that out before I leave.”

  Bloody hell.

  “Cup of tea before you go?”

  “Yes please.”

  The traffic isn’t too bad on my drive to the supermarket. Surfers have started appearing now, but still mostly at weekends, in beaten-up old cars and vans with boards strapped to the roof, along with a smattering of tourists, so the roads are pretty bad from Friday to Monday. Dan’s getting into the local dialect and calling them “grockles,” and he’s particularly scathing about their fondness for getting into the sea when they don’t know the tide times and then needing to be rescued. I haven’t reminded him that he’s technically half grockle himself, as I’m trying to encourage lifeguard thing—although I did take the precaution of checking before he joined, and you don’t officially get to pull sodden tourists out of the waves until you’ve passed all loads of swimming and safety tests. The surf can get really big sometimes and I’m not quite ready to see my firstborn charging in at full pelt with only bright-red shorts and a small plastic float to keep him the right side of needing CPR. I can still remember how long it took me to teach him to swim in the first place. I spent hours at the Baby Dolphin classes at the local pool, slowly letting the air out of his armbands when he wasn’t looking, with him grabbing the straps of my swimsuit whenever he felt panicky so I ended up practically topless, much to the amusement of other mums with more aquatic offspring.

  By the time I’m back from shopping and I’ve collected the boys, Mr. and Mrs. Collins arrive. They seem nice, if a little quiet and formal. Ivy says they’ve stayed here a couple of times and the wife is fussy, but so far she’s been fine and seemed impressed with all the changes. They’re here to see their son and his wife, who they don’t like, and their new grandson, who’s only three weeks old, so Mrs. Collins has been knitting. After a bit of encouragement she showed me photos of the baby on the new mobi
le phone Mr. Collins has bought especially to receive baby updates. And then she unpacked the collection of pale-blue cardigans and a beautiful shawl she’s knitted, so hopefully that will improve things with the daughter-in-law, because I can’t see how any new mum could resist such beautiful hand-knitted treasures. Pete’s mum sent premium bonds when Dan was born and nothing at all for Ben or Alfie, so I hope she knows how lucky she is.

  The boys are particularly boisterous at supper, but thankfully Mr. and Mrs. Collins are out. It does make the house feel different when we have B&B guests staying. There’s a sense we’re on parade, and there needs to be less shouting upstairs to hurry the boys up in the morning, which is probably a good thing, but definitely adds to my stress levels when Dan can’t find his homework and is about to miss his school bus. And the boys still haven’t entirely grasped the idea that just because the B&B guests are getting a cooked breakfast doesn’t mean they can start putting in their orders for bacon and mushrooms. Celia is different of course, which is a good thing since she sold her house last week, to one of the builders, who’s fallen love with it while he’s been working on the flood damage. Celia knows his wife, who’s a passionate gardener, so that pretty much clinched it. So the plan is she’ll stay with us while the sale goes through and then she’ll start looking for a cottage, but we don’t really think of her as a guest now. There was an initial tussle with Ivy, who wanted her to sit in the guest sitting room and wait to be served like a proper B&B guest, but Bertie brokered a peace deal in the end, and now Celia gets to make her own porridge every morning, and eats with us in the kitchen. But she leaves the saucepan and wooden spoon to soak, ready for Ivy, who has her own routine for washing up the breakfast things which doesn’t include Celia splashing hot soapy water and getting in her way.

  By the time I’ve done supper and supervised homework and bath time, I’m knackered. I’m so much more tired at the end of the day now, and I wake up earlier too, especially if we’ve got B&B guests needing their breakfasts. So I really can’t do late nights anymore. I’m lucky if I make it to ten o’clock most evenings.

  “Half an hour of telly and then it’s bedtime Alfie.”

  “It’s not fair that Ben and Dan can stay up later than me Mum, it’s really not.”

  “Or you can go to bed now, if you’re going to be silly because you’re too tired.”

  “I’m not being silly.”

  “That’s good love. Half an hour it is then, and then I’ll read you a story.”

  Ben winks at me.

  “I might go up in half an hour too Mum. I’m really tired, I might read for a bit.”

  “Okay love.”

  “Have you put the chickens to bed yet?”

  “Damn, no, I’ve forgotten again.”

  I give Dan what I hope is a persuasive look.

  “What?”

  “Please.”

  He sighs.

  “Alright, but only if we can have bacon rolls for breakfast.”

  “Deal.”

  I’m making a cup of tea when Vicky calls.

  “How’s it going? I was at the gatehouse earlier and its really coming on isn’t it. It’s going to be lovely.”

  “Yes, Mr. Stebbings said, and yes, thanks to all your help I think it’s going to look pretty good.”

  “Did he give you the auction brochure?”

  “Yes, the chest of drawers looks great, and the oak bed.”

  “I thought you’d like it. Auctions are a great way to get great stuff cheap, if you can avoid all the rubbish. Put the date in your diary and we’ll go together.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve never been to an auction before. I’d be terrified I’d end up bidding for the wrong thing.”

  “This place is okay. Some of them can be tricky, especially when all the dealers gather outside and knock out stuff to each other so you don’t get a look in. All set for the garden thing on Sunday?”

  “I think so. Are you sure you and Bea are okay to help? It’s very kind of you, but it will be quite a long day.”

  “Sure. Daisy’s got a sleepover—we’ll have to collect her by sixish—but we’re free all day apart from that, and I’ve done the leaflets for the B-and-B and the gatehouse. They look great, same pictures we put on the website. Oh, and we’ve got another booking for the last week of August.”

  “That’s great Vicky, thanks.”

  So far she’s rented the gatehouse for the last two weeks of July, most of August now, and a week in September, at seven hundred fifty pounds a week which is brilliant, and far more than I thought we’d get.

  “I talked to my friend Ella about the yurt thing, and they can earn you good money, but they’re so snobby now you need plumbing and everything. And they like “experiences” as added extras, stuff like collecting eggs and helping feed animals. And some of them can be a total nightmare according to Ella; they try to dump their kids on you and then disappear for hours on end. So I think you’ll be better off focusing on the stables as your next project. Once you get the gatehouse up and running you’ll be itching to get the stables sorted out, you’ll see.”

  “I hope so. It’s a bit different renting by the week. The B-and-B guests are usually two nights at most, and most of them have been nice—apart from those sisters, and Ivy did warn me the youngest one was a bit of a nightmare.”

  “Was she the one who moaned that her tea was too hot?”

  “Yup, and the weather wasn’t right, and she wanted different pillows. Ivy was great though. She just took the pillows off the bed, went and stood in the linen cupboard and put new pillowcases on them, and then put them back on the bed. Daft woman said the next morning they were much better.”

  “Typical, honestly you should hear what some of them ask when they ring up about rentals. I just say we’re fully booked.”

  “I do that too—Ivy’s been training me. It’s coming in very handy, particularly lately. A few of the teachers from my old school have been calling wanting free minibreaks, particularly the ones who hardly spoke to me when I worked there but now sound like they’re my best friends before they steer the conversation round to the good news that they will be driving right past us and wondered if they could pop in to say hello and maybe stay a night or two?”

  “Bloody cheek. I’ve got a cousin like that. I can’t stand her and she’s never liked me, but as soon as she got wind of the cottage-rentals business, she was on the phone chatting away, clearly hoping for a freebie.”

  “I haven’t had to fend off any family, so far, thank God. Pete’s brother is coming down in a few weeks’ time, but he’s insisting on paying, even though I won’t actually let him once they’re here, and anyway we like him, so it doesn’t count.”

  “Brace yourself though, because Diana, who comes to our book group—the one who rents out the barn on their farm—well, she had a woman she used to work with in London turn up with her husband and three kids, completely out of the blue, and when she said they were booked up she said that was fine, they’d brought their tents.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “I know. Diana’s husband had to get rid of them in the end—they were driving her demented, using her kitchen and the bathroom, and sitting watching telly.”

  “Is this meant to be scaring me, because if it is, it’s definitely worked.”

  She laughs.

  “Sorry. Don’t worry, you’ve got Ivy. She’d never let anyone get away with that kind of stunt.”

  “True.”

  “And you’ve got a secret weapon.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes. Betty. Actually, you could probably rent her out by the hour. Could be a whole new business. I might mention it to Diana. You could train her to bite uninvited guests; she could be a guard parrot.”

  “She’d love that.”

  Actually, she probably would.

  We’re all up bright and early on Sunday morning, ready for the Open Garden Day. The forecast is now predicting sun, which is encouraging. The
boys have spent ages helping Dennis clean up the stables, moving the bales of straw and assorted bags of animal feed, and boxes full of assorted tat, out of the barn and into the middle stable. It’s a far better storage area all round as the roof has fewer holes in it, so at least we won’t have to move everything back out again. They’ve had a lovely time using the hosepipe to sluice down the years of grime and dust. But apart from getting soaked this also revealed a lovely old herringbone brick floor, which was an unexpected bonus. We’ve put the trestle table for the cake stall inside by the back wall and the one for the plant stall too, so even if it does rain, people can still have a cup of tea. Mr. Stebbings has rigged up temporary plastic sheeting over the holes in the roof, which looks less tragic than I thought since he’s used thick transparent plastic sheets so they look like random skylights.

  We’ve put a few trestle tables in the courtyard, with tablecloths made from red gingham Mum found at the market. We’ve even made bunting, using up all the leftover bits of curtain material along with the gingham. We’ll put the little pots of rose geraniums on the tables later. Dennis has been growing them in the greenhouse, so they’re in full flower; and the leaves have such a perfect sweet rose scent that I can’t help touching them every time I see them.

  By half past ten the house is so busy I retreat into the garden to help Celia and Dennis with the labels. Mum and Ivy have got a cake-and-scone production line going; they’ve been at it for days, with Florrie and May helping. So if nobody turns up, we’ll have enough cakes to last us for months. Mum’s been helping in the garden too—I’d forgotten how much she loves gardening—so I think she’s been enjoying herself. At least I hope so, because she’s been working really hard.