House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  Lady Goldbaum turned to Greta, ‘Well, what do you think, my dear? Shall we engage Mr Grinstead?’

  Greta swallowed. She did not like to displease her mother-in-law, not when she had shown her such attention and kindness, but she was resolved. ‘No, Adelheid. I’m sorry, but no to Mr Grinstead.’

  Lady Goldbaum set down her teacup. ‘Very well. It’s your garden. Who did you prefer? Mr Perkins? Mr Butler-Jones? They are all splendid choices.’

  Her garden project was starting to feel like a ruse, whereby she was coaxed into creating yet another precisely portioned Goldbaum garden and, in the process, became shaped herself into the ideal Goldbaum wife. Greta did not want to be trimmed like a piece of topiary, shaved and cropped until she fitted the correct mould. She had done her duty and married Albert. She would endeavour to fulfil the role of wife as far as she was able. But she needed a place where she could be free of all constraint. If she was to create a garden, she would make it her own.

  ‘There was no one you liked? They are all eminently qualified.’ In her irritation, Lady Goldbaum’s German accent rose to the surface with a little hiss, like steam.

  Greta leaned forward with a frown. ‘I know they are all excellent gardeners and are all infinitely experienced and knowledgeable. But I need to find someone myself. Someone who wants to create the same sort of garden as I do.’

  ‘And what sort of garden do you wish to create, Greta?’ asked Lady Goldbaum, intrigued.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she replied.

  That night Greta was unable to sleep. Temple Court teemed with people and yet she was lonely. Throughout her childhood she’d frequently spent weeks or even months away from Vienna, on holiday with Otto and the nanny at the house on Lake Geneva, or in Italy or Paris with cousins, and never once had she missed home. Now the homesickness kept her awake like hunger pangs. She longed for her old bedroom, the familiar smell of patisserie and horse in the Vienna streets, the sound of the Danube rushing in the dark; she yearned for a taste of Sachertorte and for mornings spent teasing Johanna Schwartzschild about her boyfriends. Most of all she missed Otto. She wanted to sip coffee and discuss her garden with him. She remembered traipsing through the park at the chateau at Saint-Pierre with him the previous autumn. The men had been off shooting partridge, and Greta had huffed that it was only men who had the pleasure of sport. The following morning Otto had roused her at dawn and snuck her out into the woods, where a beater waited with a shotgun. They spent a joyful hour gamely missing bird after bird. Greta returned to the house breathless, mud-dashed and happy. Later, when rumours of the escapade reached the Baroness’s ears over caviar and blinis, and Otto was summoned, he denied Greta’s presence. They were quite mistaken. He had been alone.

  I am alone now, Greta realised. She had not understood what it really meant before. There was no Otto to pull her back from trouble or unhappiness. She must find her own way to survive and not surrender to self-pity and bitterness. She wondered briefly whether Albert was as miserable as her – but, she thought, anger prickling her like goose-flesh, he had rejected her, punished her for admitting her doubts.

  She turned on the light and slid out of bed and into her sitting room. Piles of gardening books reproached her from the surface of every table. With a sigh, she picked them up one after the other, discarding them. She flicked one open and this time the title caught her eye: William Robinson’s The Wild Garden. She read a sentence at random:

  How these early frosts accentuate the essential difference between one style of gardening and another. The… bedded-out plants are ‘all dead men’, and in a few hours… a pappy mess of corruption. Look now at the slimy putridity of plants which cannot compare in beauty or perfume with Rose, Anemone…

  That was exactly it, decided Greta. The hothouses filled with flowers to be bedded out were really charnel houses. At the first frost the gaudy reds and oranges and purples of the begonias and marigolds and pansies would end in a soggy death. The pleasure of a garden ought to be in waiting for a treasure hoard of golden crocuses or pale narcissi to erupt from the soil and, when they die, it is only to bloom again next year. Why would anyone forgo such cyclical magic in a garden? She read the rest of the book in her nightdress, agreeing wholeheartedly. Inside the front cover of the book she noticed an inscription: ‘To dearest Doris, wishing you all luck in the world at Miss Hathaway’s Gardening and Finishing School for Girls, Buckthorne, Hampshire, 1908.’

  Greta rang the bell.

  A few minutes later Anna appeared, still in her nightdress, eyes red-rimmed and blurred with sleep.

  ‘Yes, madam?’

  Anna had become used to these night-time intrusions. The other servants considered them beyond the pale. The Goldbaums might have dominion over every waking hour, but one’s sleep was surely sovereign. Anna daren’t grumble, but showed her displeasure by speaking in German, contrary to her mistress’s instructions. Greta did not appear to notice, replying unthinkingly in German herself.

  ‘There is a finishing school for young ladies near here specialising in gardening, run by a Miss Hathaway. I’d like you to telephone, Anna, and tell them that I’m coming to visit today.’

  Anna rubbed her eyes and stared at her mistress. She was very tired. She hadn’t climbed into her own bed before midnight any day this whole week, and she needed to be up by six o’clock to press Greta’s clothes, prepare her breakfast tray and arrange her room, which, as she glanced around at the disorder of books and papers and the discarded dressing gown, might take some time.

  ‘It’s half-past four in the morning, madam. I doubt very much that anyone will be answering the telephone.’

  ‘Oh. You’re quite right. Well, you can call in the morning then. Perhaps at half-past eight?’

  ‘Yes, madam. Anything else?’

  Greta shook her head. She stood in the middle of the room, her face almost as pale as her nightgown. She looked very young and almost as tired as Anna herself. Anna found her irritation sinking to pity. She had discovered friends below stairs. Lady Goldbaum had two Swiss maids, with whom she shared a passion for Ludo and proper chocolate, while Mr Albert Goldbaum’s valet was a charming devil, who had promised to take all of them out punting on their Sunday afternoon. Her mistress, on the other hand, was lost. Anyone could see that – all this bloody fretting about plants. And Anna was privy to the worst secret of all, a secret she would never tell: her mistress was still a virgin.

  Miss Winifred Hathaway received Mrs Goldbaum herself. Aware that they needed always to be on the lookout for employment opportunities for their girls, Miss Hathaway and Miss Ursula Ogden were doing their very best to make a good impression on Mrs Goldbaum. They made Greta tea, offered her one of the good biscuits out of the Queen Victoria jubilee tin, kept only for guests (and consequently its contents always slightly soft), and then walked her around the grounds.

  ‘They do look charming in their outfits,’ said Greta.

  The girls, like Miss Hathaway, wore brown breeches tapered at the knee, wide at the thigh, with loose cotton smocks, crowned by straw sunhats. Despite these, they all sported deep tans. Greta thought how refreshing it would be to exchange her own large picture-hat with its vast brim (however becoming) for a simple straw boater, and her own white lace gloves for a pair of thick leather gardening ones. She was intrigued by the two older ladies, who were spinsters in ruddy-cheeked middle age, quite at ease with one another and constantly finishing each other’s sentences.

  ‘I understand that you teach the girls according to the principles of Miss Gertrude Jekyll and Mr William Robinson?’

  ‘Indeed. The girls learn right away that nature is their ally. Their role is to enhance her and to work alongside her. They must complement what is already there – whether it’s an old stone wall with honeysuckle and climbing roses or irises planted beside a pool.’

  ‘They paint with flowers,’ said Ursula. ‘But we insist on perennials. The only annuals we permit are wildflower seeds.’

&nb
sp; ‘The girls come from respectable backgrounds. Some might make good marriages, but some of the others… ’ said Miss Hathaway.

  ‘… not everyone wishes to be a governess. All that time indoors,’ finished Ursula.

  ‘With children,’ added Miss Hathaway, with some distaste.

  ‘Ours is a mission,’ said Miss Hathaway sternly, pushing her spectacles up her nose. ‘We fervently believe in our vision of the garden. We train our girls and then send them out into the world to glorify the gardens of England, large and small, according to our principles.’

  ‘I’m quite certain that I’ve come to the right place,’ said Greta, with a smile. ‘My garden is in definite need of glorification.’

  ‘Ours is a very different style from that of a Goldbaum garden,’ warned Miss Hathaway, addressing Greta with a frown.

  ‘We’re less ‘Parks Department’ here,’ added Ursula.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ Greta replied. ‘The Temple Court garden is exactly like a park. Formal and orderly. Everything about it tells you to act with decency and decorum: low hedges and straight paths, where all one can do is pace to and fro and admire the beds stuffed with stubby marigolds and pansies. But a garden!’ Greta clapped her hands and laughed at the astonished faces of the two women. ‘Now, that ought to be different. A garden is there to help you misbehave. God was expecting far too much. Eve had exactly the right idea, if you ask me. I mean, why have an apple tree in a garden that one can’t eat from. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘So, Mrs Goldbaum, you are looking for a girl to assist Mr Stokes? You wish to try something new?’

  ‘This has nothing in the least to do with Mr Stokes. It is me who needs help. I’m afraid I’m a horticultural novice. But I’m going to create a little garden all the same.’

  ‘A little garden?’

  ‘Yes. In about a hundred acres.’

  ‘A little garden of about a hundred acres?’ For once, amazement confounded Miss Hathaway.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. A hundred to start with. We may have more land, if we require it, later on.’

  Miss Hathaway leaned against a convenient yew hedge. Miss Ogden found her hand.

  ‘What’s there at present, Mrs Goldbaum?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘There’s a cornfield. But I don’t suppose that will help much.’

  ‘No.’

  Miss Hathaway and Miss Ogden, who were, it seemed, struck quite dumb by the scale of the task proposed, stood hand-in-hand leaning against the hedge and gazing at Greta.

  ‘I believe you may need several gardeners, Mrs Goldbaum,’ said Miss Hathaway at last.

  ‘Yes, of course. But first I must have plans drawn up. And I was hoping that one of your girls… ’

  ‘I’m afraid such a task is far beyond them. They are rather new, you see.’

  ‘But so am I,’ answered Greta, with a smile. ‘And I’m not in the least afraid of mistakes. Or not in the garden, in any case.’

  Regaining their composure, Miss Hathaway and Miss Ogden led Greta to inspect the individual plots, small lines of terracotta flowerpots or broken pieces of china marking the divisions between each girl’s patch.

  ‘I like that one,’ she said, pointing to the section at the end. Hollyhocks in creamy white with buttery crowns leaned casually against the brickwork, while candyfloss-coloured sweet peas grew in a tangle around a knot of willow, scenting the air with summer. It was a charmingly curated wilderness.

  ‘Whose is this?’

  ‘Mine,’ said a voice. A vigorous young woman of about the same age as Greta stepped forward. She had sandy-coloured hair, cropped short, and small green eyes, and her skin was sprinkled with a constellation of freckles. ‘Enid Witherick,’ she said and stuck out a hand that was rough and lined with dirt.

  ‘Greta Goldbaum,’ said Greta, shaking the hand, which clasped hers with surprising strength. ‘I should like to engage your services.’

  Miss Hathaway and Miss Ogden sat in the parlour, perched side-by-side on a hard Victorian sofa. While they would have noticed instantly if a garden rose had died from blight and would have had it dug up the same afternoon, neither Ursula nor Winifred observed that the rose fabric on the armrests was torn beyond repair.

  Greta was seated on the only good chair, an Arts and Crafts armchair carved in oak with ivy engraved across the back, and gifted to Miss Hathaway by Mr William Morris himself. It was immensely beautiful and immensely uncomfortable.

  Enid Witherick appeared mesmerised by the bobbing of the ostrich plume on Greta’s picture-hat, which moved as though it were trying to conduct the room each time she turned her head. A portrait of Queen Victoria surveyed them lopsidedly from above the fireplace.

  ‘While engaging Enid is an excellent choice, she is far too inexperienced to be a head gardener. The task is gargantuan.’ Ursula raised her hands above her head and then let them flop for emphasis.

  ‘I can manage,’ said Enid quietly, thrusting her hands in her pockets. ‘If you and Miss Hathaway will advise us.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Greta, clapping for joy. For the first time in months she felt a surge of something like happiness. ‘Fontmell was a priory before the Reformation. It began as a nuns’ garden, and it is exactly right that it shall be a women’s garden once again.’

  ‘And after all, we believe that the first ever gardener was a woman,’ said Enid softly, looking around. ‘And I’m quite sure that after she’d finished picking apples, Eve pruned the tree.’

  NUMBER ONE, PARK LANE, LONDON, AUGUST

  Lord Goldbaum was displeased. He complained in no uncertain terms to his younger son. Not only had his daughter-in-law hired a woman as a gardener, but the woman in question wore breeches.

  ‘You’ve not been married three months, and they’re already making fun of her in Punch.’

  He slid a copy of the magazine across the breakfast table and tapped at a sketch on page four. ‘Girton Gals dig for Gold-baum,’ read the line, while in the picture three bosomy women in breeches dug in a garden, while a caricatured Greta in a feathered hat egged them on, wielding a silver spoon as a trowel.

  ‘You must bring your wife to heel,’ he said to Albert. ‘We have standards to maintain. As a Goldbaum, she ought to understand. I will not have her in this ghastly publication again.’

  Clement saw his brother wince. His sister-in-law was quite capable of acting as the ideal hostess, holding on to Albert’s arm – family diamonds glinting at her throat – and she could make even the most austere of statesmen laugh. At the dreariest of gatherings she exuded just the right amount of mischief, puffing life into the assembled company as a bellows hurries flames from the embers. Arthur Balfour always made a point of asking that Greta be seated beside him at dinner. In the evenings, if the party was becoming stolid, Lady Goldbaum would ask her to entertain the guests, and Greta would sit at the piano and sing German lieder, the archness of the meaning clear from her expression. She was kind and attentive to all the guests, no matter how unimportant, and remembered everyone’s children’s names and ages like a brilliant schoolboy effortlessly recalling his Latin verbs. In fact, Clement concluded, she charmed everyone except her husband.

  Yet there were also moments when Greta seemed to forget what was required of her. She was late for luncheon with the American Ambassador, Mr Reid; and, sent out to look for her, Clement discovered her beside Poseidon’s fountain, using her stockings as a fishing net to rescue a drowning toad. After formal dinners excellently prepared by Monsieur Arnold, which she barely touched, she ordered bread and cheese and sat beside the fire in the Grey Salon with a toasting fork, while the others consumed coffee and petits fours and polite conversation. One evening the Swedish Emissary had joined Greta for what she termed a ‘carpet picnic’ and they sat on silk cushions on the floor, eating melted cheese and singed toast, which he declared was his favourite of the nine courses served to him.

  Since the afternoon of the coronation whe
n he had lost his temper, Albert had never uttered a word of reproach. He simply pretended not to see when Greta folded her table napkin into a fishing boat or a chicken (using a silver pepper pot as its egg) for the entertainment of her neighbour.

  In the matter of the lady gardeners, however, Lord Goldbaum had reached his limit. A line must be drawn. The girl must be made to recall that she was a Goldbaum.

  ‘I shall speak to Greta when I return to Temple Court,’ said Albert at long last, with great reluctance. He pushed away the magazine with displeasure, turning it over so that he did not have to see the grotesque of his wife.

  Lord Goldbaum grunted. ‘She’s a good girl. Just a little more… ’ he searched for the right word, ‘continental, than I expected.’ He frowned, evidently unhappy that he felt compelled to have this conversation with his son. ‘You understood your duty when you married her, Albert. Sometimes your mother and I worry that you have forgotten it since. Our house has always been strengthened by marriage. I won’t have yours undermine it. If your wife is misbehaving because she is unhappy, then make her happy, Albert. Increase her allowance.’

  ‘She does not want for money.’

  ‘Then find out what she does bloody want. Ask your mother. This marriage isn’t a simple union between you and Greta. It’s a union of Houses. You will fix this.’

  Albert sat silent and miserable. Clement surveyed him with sympathy, knowing perfectly well that his brother hadn’t the least idea how to address the difficulties in his marriage.

  ‘When the time comes, I want you to run for the seat at Fontmell West. And if you’re to be a Member of Parliament, your wife needs to be an asset and not a liability,’ said Lord Goldbaum.