And I still didn’t know how I’d been roped in to don that damned bunny suit!
But I couldn’t lie there in bed any longer, because it was now getting light and I wanted to make an early start on the top of the rose garden … though first, somehow, I found my feet taking me to the little folly, instead.
It was very pleasant, sitting on the steps with the early sunshine reaching in to run a Midas finger around the top of the marble urn. A blackbird was singing sweetly and a robin sat companionably on a nearby branch, watching me with bright, dark eyes that reminded me of Elf. I mentally gave it a turquoise wig, then grinned: I didn’t think that one would make the cut for a Christmas card.
When I finally got up, my bottom somewhat chilled and numb from the marble step, and went to fetch my tools, I met Ned in the courtyard, firmly closing the office door behind him on a loudly ringing phone.
‘There you are!’ he said, as if I’d been having a long lie-in and it was now midday. ‘James and Gert are already here.’
‘They’re in early,’ I said and then added, pointedly, ‘And so am I!’
But it went over his head, because he continued, ‘James is in the Potting Shed, working on the new plant stand, and Gert said something about neglecting her vegetables and wanting to pot up more seedlings for the shop.’
‘I can see you have your staff under firm control,’ I said, and he gave me a blank look, before suddenly grinning.
‘I’ve got something I want you to do before you get back to the roses,’ he said. ‘And when Charlie gets here I need him to help me put in the rest of the signboards.’
‘I think you’ll probably need a Private sign in front of the office, too,’ I said. ‘People are bound to try and look in.’
‘Maybe I should have a row of pots along the front to keep them at a distance.’
‘I suspect you’ve ordered enough scented geraniums to fill a hundred pots and several stone troughs, once James has potted them up and grown them on.’
‘That’ll take time, though. I need a quicker fix.’
‘More of those stands with ropes hung between them, then?’ I suggested.
‘Good idea – we’ve got plenty of them. In fact, we could rope off the whole corner, from the end of my office to the other side of the Potting Shed door, because none of that is open to the public. We can add the potted plants to pretty it up later.’
The job Ned wanted me to do first was to put in more of the water-loving plants around the waterfall and in the bed on the far side of the stream above it.
When I’d run out of things to plant, Gertie, who was passing, roped me in to help her with the small central herb garden. She’d brought out some she’d been growing on and my task was to put them in the beds as directed: three kinds of thyme and several of mint, though we’d have to keep an eye on that, to make sure it didn’t try to take over the whole garden.
It certainly seemed to be all hands on deck that morning, for when I finally made my escape, even Steve had arrived, presumably having opened up the monastic ruins and the convenient conveniences, and was doing a little desultory hoeing and weeding along the borders, where the first fresh weeds of the year were sticking their green fingers through the loam. Mind you, in the opinion of most gardeners, many of the things we were actually nurturing here were weeds – but then, as they say, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.
I said as much later to Ned in the rose garden, when he came to see how I was doing.
‘Elf told me last year that the best nettles for brewing her beer came from either side of the wall at the end of Gert’s vegetable patch, so I told her I’d leave them there for her to pick. I should have some around the place anyway, even though I don’t want them in the actual garden, because they do have some medicinal qualities.’
‘I’ve heard of nettle tea,’ I said, ‘though I’m not sure what it does for you.’
‘I’m starting to think I should have kept that rhubarb in the vegetable garden too, because whatever Gert is feeding it on, it’s getting ginormous.’
It was easy to guess what was making it grow so much, because Gert had several ripe and fruity-smelling compost heaps at various stages, which she lavished with loving care.
‘I could put in some different kinds of lavender,’ Ned mused. ‘That has lots of uses too, including protecting against the plague.’
‘Do you get a lot of that in Jericho’s End?’
‘No, and the Black Death missed us out entirely,’ he said. ‘I’d better go back and see how Charlie’s doing. We finished with the signboards and I left him in the barn, unpacking the pieces of the gazebo. We’re not putting it up yet; I just needed to be sure it was all there.’
That sounded like more hours of harmless fun later on.
I returned to my endless rose pruning, trying to finish off the small top part of the garden.
The paths were nicely cleared, the roses neatly pruned of dead wood and leggy, unwanted suckers. I just needed to do a little more, then clean the beds so they could be fed and mulched.
There was a honeysuckle hidden behind the rose in the top corner, perhaps seeded from the one in the lavender garden, the stems twined around the railings: survival of the twistiest.
It was twisting round some of the nearest roses, too, but once I’d pruned those enough to get at it, I soon had it cut back to size. The flowers would be pretty, and the bees would like them, though they’d be permanently drunk on lavender and roses once everything started to bloom.
Charlie came to fetch me for a late lunch and we all ate sociably together in the Potting Shed, Ned and Charlie perching on one of the workbenches and me on an upturned wooden crate. Gertie had brought enough food for ten people as usual, but it seemed that Charlie had the sort of appetite that could hoover up any amount of sandwiches and rib-sticking lardy cake.
She said to him approvingly that he was a proper lad.
After the last of the treacly tea was drunk, plans were made for what was left of the afternoon.
Steve went off to clean up the Village Hut after the onslaught of that morning’s mother and toddler session and Gert and Charlie intended digging in the last of the plant consignment. James was waiting for the undercoat to dry on the metal parts of the old garden barrow and said he was going round with the latest batch of refurbished metal plant tags and replacing the temporary plastic ones with them.
‘Busy, busy, busy,’ Ned said. ‘And I’m off to Great Mumming to pick out half a dozen tree-sized pots at Terrapotter. It’s a fascinating place, Marnie, and I’d suggest you came with me, but Lex – my friend who owns it – isn’t there today and anyway, a good look round would take too long.’
‘I’d need to be back in time to check the River Walk, anyway,’ I said regretfully. ‘I’d love to see it when there’s more time, though.’
‘Lex learned how to make those really huge terracotta pots abroad, after he left college, mostly in Greece,’ Ned said. ‘A friend helps him. It’s a two-man job for the whoppers.’
‘I should think it is,’ I said.
‘You’d like Lex. He’s just married a portrait painter called Meg Harkness. Myfy says she’s brilliant, but I haven’t met her yet. I haven’t been socializing that much outside the valley since I came back.’
‘Will they have what you want in stock, or make them specially?’ asked Charlie, interested.
‘I rang Lex the other day and he said he had some that I might like in the storeroom – they make straight reproductions of early pots, and also ones that are in traditional shapes, but with a very untraditional twist. I quite fancy the idea of those in the Grace Garden – old and new combined in one pot.’
I wished more than ever that I could go and see Terrapotter, but duty called. I got off my box, my bottom probably neatly patterned by the slats. ‘I’ll get back to my roses. At this rate, we should be able to let the visitors loose in there in another couple of days.’
As I pruned, snipped and raked, I found myself
singing an old song that Aunt Em often warbled as she worked in the World Garden at the Château du Monde, her own particular pet project. I think it was called ‘An English Country Garden’ and was all about the various kinds of flowers you’d once have found there. I couldn’t remember all the words – I’d google it later …
‘Hollyhocks and something else, something else and—’
I was still singing when Ned returned, though by then I had stopped work and was regarding my handiwork complacently: the rose beds in front of the walls were entirely pruned, the soil raked over, a tilted edging tile straightened and a hole dug, ready for a replacement rose. All it needed now (other than the mulch) were the original name tags putting back, and I expected the Name Tag Fairy would be along as soon as he’d finished them.
‘Ah, my little songbird is still here,’ said Ned, breaking into my reverie.
‘Are you back already?’ I demanded, surprised.
‘It’s gone four,’ he pointed out. ‘This all looks great. Are you still keeping that list of roses we need to source where they’ve given up the ghost?’
‘Of course I am. I’ve got about half a dozen. There might be more later, but I want to give some of the ropy-looking ones a chance to bounce back. Roses are amazingly resilient sometimes.’
Then suddenly, what he’d said about the time struck me and I said, ‘I must go and check the River Walk!’
‘Leave the bags full of prunings and I’ll take those down to the compost heap in the morning,’ he said, and we walked back together to the Potting Shed to clean and put away the tools I’d been using.
Gertie and James were just leaving for home, though Charlie had dashed off earlier. But then, as Gertie said, he was only of use in a garden if there was someone there to tell him what to do.
‘He doesn’t know a dandelion from a dahlia, but he’s cheerful and willing.’
‘He seemed to like the Poison Corner,’ I said. ‘He calls it the Triangle of Death.’
‘He’s still such a boy,’ she said indulgently.
I thought Ned might vanish into his office, but instead he ignored the eternally ringing phone and said he’d walk up the river with me.
‘I need the exercise.’
‘Gardeners get exercise all day,’ I pointed out.
‘You know what I mean – a good walk is different.’
I did know and after collecting the stick and bag, we set off together. It was much later than usual and the last of the visitors had long since vanished. Dark shadows lay across the path like splashes of ink and, for once, I felt glad of the company.
23
Celestial
‘You didn’t mind my coming with you, did you?’ Ned asked after a few minutes of silent walking.
‘No, not at all, though I have been up to the falls at dawn when I did want to be alone. Anyway, I’d have told you straight out if I didn’t want you to come.’
‘So you would,’ he agreed. ‘Were you communing with the angels, or fairies, or whatever hangs out up here?’
His voice didn’t sound teasing, but quite serious and then he added reminiscently, ‘Dawn’s a good time of day to do that – I often did when I was staying here with my uncle and aunt in the school holidays. Theo made me promise not to go near the edge, where the rock is slippery, but Aunt Wen just said that if something with wings tried to lure me through a door into the rock face, I should decline politely. I was pretty sure she was joking.’
‘Did you ever see or hear anything … unusual, or hard to explain?’
He looked at me sideways, through those amber-brown lion’s eyes. ‘I sometimes thought I heard voices and faraway laughter. And once I was certain I’d caught sight of something … winged.’ He shrugged. ‘When I looked properly, there was nothing there.’
‘Yes, that’s how I’ve felt too, and the impression of a presence and wings is very strong. It’s nothing to do with birds, because they all seem to go still and silent when it happens. But you can’t pin anything down; it could easily be imagination and the effect of light through the leaves and spray, couldn’t it?’
‘Quite possibly, but some places do have an aura about them, almost as if they were portals to another world, and this is one of them.’
‘But if there are winged creatures,’ I said, ‘are they angels or fairies? I think Elf and Myfy are more of the angel persuasion.’
‘Actually, they think fairies and angels are one and the same thing,’ he said. ‘Not the cutesy Cottingley type of fairy, but taller, feathery winged and looking like the angels flying about in the top of the stained-glass window in St Gabriel’s church.’
‘I really must see that when I have enough time. I should start making a list of all the things I want to do, if I ever have a day to myself. Perhaps the angels in the window impressed themselves on the imagination of that little girl in the old story, so that her imagination conjured up one here by the falls?’
‘Or maybe she fell asleep and dreamed it all, but we’ll never know. And the Victorians preferred their fairy folk dancing about, weaving flowers into crowns, or whatever harmless nonsense they could think of.’
‘Some of the Victorian fairy books, especially the ones with the Rackham illustrations, were pretty scary, though,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Myfy’s paintings in the café-gallery are a bit unsettling too, now I’ve had a closer look.’
‘It’s amazing how much you think you can see in her paintings that really isn’t there at all,’ he said. ‘Much like the effect up here, by the falls.’
We’d lingered there a lot longer than I’d realized and when we set off back, it was hard to see any litter under the dark bushes, but I collected what I could.
Inside the gate to the lavender garden, Caspar was sitting by the sleeping beehives, waiting for us.
‘Why aren’t you in the kitchen, pestering Myfy or Elf for your dinner?’ I asked him, and he made one of his enigmatic noises and ran off ahead of us up the crazy-paving path, his bushy tail up in the air.
‘It must feel odd having a tail,’ I mused, watching him. ‘I mean, having to remember what to do with four legs must be hard enough, but then you have to think about what to do with your tail, too.’
‘It must be odd to be Marnie Ellwood, even before she puts on her bunny tail,’ he observed, taking the bag from me. ‘You go in – you’ve done enough for the day – and I’ll sort this rubbish out. I want to catch up in the office for a bit and then that’s me for the day, too. Then there’s only one more day before opening.’
‘It’ll all come together tomorrow,’ I said encouragingly.
‘I hope so. And since I seem to have been too preoccupied to buy supplies, I’ve now run out of anything interesting to eat, so I’ll have to do a quick dash up to Toller’s now, before they close. If you want me to fetch you anything, I can drop it off on my way back?’
On impulse, I said, ‘I feel in need of good, solid carbs tonight, so I’m going to cook pasta – nothing fancy, just cheese and bottled tomatoes, a bit of garlic … And dessert will be either ice-cream or jelly babies. Why don’t you join me?’
His lip twitched. ‘The jelly babies make it sound almost irresistible.’
‘I expect Caspar will have had his dinner and be back in the flat by the time it’s cooked,’ I said, as if offering a chaperon – and perhaps that was the clincher, because he agreed that pasta sounded just the thing he needed, too.
On Thursday I awoke filled with that feeling of unfounded optimism that often suddenly strikes me.
The previous night Ned and I had been relaxed and companionable over dinner, like the two old friends we were, despite our recent experiences having temporarily warped the picture.
We’d talked mostly about the garden, of course, our mutual obsession, and he showed me pictures on his phone of the pots he’d ordered from Terrapotter. They were huge and the shape reminded me of Ali Baba’s jars, though there were swirls of applied seaweed fronds and barnacle-like decoration that made them look
as if they’d just been dredged up from the Aegean Sea bed.
Four of them would be positioned on the circular path at the points where the diagonal ones met it, while the rest were to provide points of interest in the low beds at the side.
He said Lex Mariner would deliver them next week. ‘I’ll get some more later, when I’ve decided what I need: smaller ones on the path around the sunken herb bed, perhaps.’
‘Good idea, because then you could move the mint into them, stopping it trying to escape from its bed and making room for other herbs,’ I suggested.
‘I think Gertie would like that idea, and I could use pots to hold a few more invasive things I’d like to have in the garden, but don’t want to plant out.’
After we’d eaten Ned admired my collection of old French and English gardening books and also the butter paddles, which I’d arranged in a cross shape on top of one of the shelf units. He knew what they were, too, he’d just never seen any quite that size.
‘And don’t I remember you mentioning them before?’ he asked, brows knitted over his long, blunt nose, so he looked like a very puzzled lion.
‘I might have done,’ I admitted. ‘It’s sort of a running theme in my imagination.’ And I told him about Jean, the irascible old gardener at the last château I’d worked at, with the face like an elderly Gérard Depardieu that had been clapped between two large butter paddles – and how sometimes I’d have quite liked to have done that to him myself.
‘I’ll have to watch my step!’ Ned said, but in a teasing way, not as if he thought I was barking. Though actually, a desire to slap people’s heads between butter paddles might not be entirely a normal one.
I think I’d imagined there had been just a faint trace of hesitation before he’d accepted my invitation to dinner, because we’d put all that behind us now. Just as well, really, because Caspar was a useless chaperon. He was disgruntled because he wanted all my attention – preferably while lying across my lap.
Instead, I sat at the table for ages with Ned, then made coffee, before we looked up on the laptop the words to that ‘English Country Garden’ song that had lodged in my head.
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 24
