by A. W. Exley
She mourned not just her parents but the loss of a garden she had lovingly crafted and which now belonged to another. If only she could mould and nurture some other piece of ground. She imagined a grand estate where she would plant enormous trees that would take decades to reach maturity. It would be a kind of immortality, to plan a garden that endured for generations.
And why couldn’t she make plans? Death had turned a blind eye to her. Perhaps he failed to visit because she had not yet lived. There was a whole world beyond the front door, and she had never been a part of it. All over England, estates both old and new needed gardeners and landscape designers. She resolved not to settle for being a companion or seamstress, when she would much rather have dirt under her fingernails.
Admittedly her constitution was something of an impediment, but most grand houses had labourers to do the hole digging and other such manual tasks. She could carry a rolled up plan under her arm and gesticulate as the architect of a verdant new world. If she acquired a few bottles of her tonic, and if she were careful with what she did, it might be possible. After all, she had exceeded doctors’ expectations for her survival. And rather than being taxed by her modest garden, she had improved with the gentle exercise.
It almost seemed her heart troubled her the most when she did nothing, and therefore lying around actually weakened her. Gentle exercise might very well invigorate her overall condition. Of course, there was also a good chance too much activity might hasten her end. Either way, nothing ventured nothing gained.
Once the idea took root, it was a most resilient seedling. She argued with herself as she paced the lime chip paths. It was ridiculous. Head gardener was a job suited only to vigorous men. Yet she had such a way with plants and nature, what could she achieve on a larger scale? She had spent years drawing landscapes. Some fanciful, with water features and follies and a riot of summer blooms. Others clipped green spaces with intricate parterres delineated by careful shading of tones. All she lacked was a practical outlet to prove herself.
Inside, she sat at the dining room table with the newspaper spread open. She read through the usual acceptable vacancies for women. Governesses urgently sought for a variety of unruly children. Companions wanted by wealthy women who were boorish and old. Shop girls and factory workers, who were expected to wear their fingers to the bone for a handful of shillings a week.
As she read each advertisement, she realised the foolishness of her idea. There were no jobs for gardeners. They were probably passed between noble families in gentlemen’s clubs, rather like coveted butlers and mistresses. A sob welled up in her chest and a tear escaped the corner of her eye.
“What shall I do now?” The dream of an expansive landscape waiting for her to sculpt its curves suffered a catastrophic earthquake and the land fell away.
Dawn wiped away the tears. She would simply have to apply for the positions society expected of her. She fetched pen and paper and began. As each word formed on paper, despair etched deeper into her skin. She had no experience, no references or letter of introduction, and no skills to recommend her. Being gently bred was the only thing in her favour, and that wasn’t an achievement but an accident of birth.
Still, she had to try. On the first day, she applied for one governess position and one as companion. On the second day, she sent off a letter to a local milliner looking for a shop girl. Dawn adored hats, although she had trouble turning her affection for chapeaus into a skill worthy of employment. On the third day she found an advertisement for clerical work. That appealed more; books didn’t require snotty noses to be wiped or heavy parcels to be carried.
What a shame she wasn’t a man. She could have stepped into the vacuum left by her father and continued the family business. Instead, Uxbridge’s Bookkeeping closed its doors, and the men who had maintained the ledgers were in her position – seeking employment elsewhere. Dawn envied their desirable skills and experience that would make the process easier.
After a week of silence, the slim replies began to trickle through the slot in the front door. On reading the first rejection, she told herself the next one would be the offer of a job. Or perhaps the third. By the fourth letter declining her application, she was becoming an expert in how many ways an employer could say no.
Unfortunately I cannot…
It is with deepest regrets…
I am sorry to inform you…
The few bleak lines telling her she was unsuitable resembled the letters of condolence that arrived after her parents’ deaths.
Dawn sat at the dining table with a heart that had turned to stone and weighed heavy in her chest. It all seemed so pointless. She had no skills to offer an employer. Her only chance would be to find someone in a situation as desperate as her own.
She opened the paper and turned to the employment section. The pen and paper sat at her elbow, ready for another letter detailing her pathetic worth that would be summarily spurned. Dawn ran a fingertip down bolded headlines until her hand stopped of its own accord on one.
Green fingers needed. Neglected estate needs a gardener to breathe new life into the grounds. Applicants to submit a plan for a new ornamental plot. The successful applicant will be selected on merit. Apply to Lord Seton, Ravenswing Manor, Alysblud, Cumberland.
Her dead heart jumped in her chest. Surely her mind played tricks on her and she merely imagined that at long last a gardening position was advertised. She read the few lines five times before she believed they were actually printed on the page and not a figment of her desperation.
Success will be judged on merit. Here at long last was the opportunity she dreamed of, but was she brave enough to grasp it? Her attention kept wandering back to the little advertisement. Even the name of the estate – Ravenswing Manor – seemed an omen. Her wee garden had its own raven who watched her movements; perhaps his stone masters had seen her plight and sought to remedy the situation.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered and closed the newspaper.
The letter slot rattled and Dawn rose to collect the mail. She returned to the dining room as she read aloud the response to her application to be a companion.
“While we sympathise with your circumstances, we require a robust girl to support our daughter—” Another rejection.
She looked up to find one of the birds on the fiery wallpaper staring at her, and it saw through to her unworthy soul. Dawn snatched a pencil off the table and crossed to the bird. With a few quick strokes, she closed its eye so it no longer watched her shame. Yet still she felt the weight of her failings.
She dropped the pencil to the table and returned her attention to the paper. What did she have to lose by applying for the gardener position? In a few more weeks she would be homeless anyway, and she was now accustomed to receiving letters telling her she was eminently unsuitable for employment.
Dawn drew a deep breath and opened the newspaper again. Picking up a pencil, she circled the advertised gardening position. She would not be the frightened woodlice that scuttled into a dark spot when it encountered a setback. She would be the brave ladybird who headed off into the wilds of the undergrowth. She would challenge life to throw her only dream back in her face.
If her constitution were unable to cope with labour, she would rather grab what moments remained doing something she loved than hoard long seconds shut in another parlour. She would rather expire with dirt under her fingers than covered in sticky muck from children or with her arms full of someone else’s parcels.
Before allowing herself to dream a little, she would be practical first. The paper contained advertisements for two positions more suitable for a well-bred woman with no skills. Dawn wrote letters outlining her education, background, and unfortunate circumstances. Then the missives were sealed and addressed, waiting to be dispatched with the outward mail.
Having applied for the more realistic positions, she fetched a blank sheet of paper and her pencils. What would she design as a new area for a grand estate? Allowing herself a few moments
of freedom from grief and despair, her mind took off on flights of fancy. She envisioned enormous avenues of pleached elms, their branches intertwined to form a living wall. Or a rill of rushing water that ran for over a hundred feet and reflected the sky above. Or perhaps ornate rose gardens laid out in a pattern that rambled over an acre.
No. None of it felt right. A big estate needed small spaces. Private places for quiet contemplation, away from the busy life of managing a large house.
The garden needed a secret.
By the end of the day, the dining room floor was deep in a paper ocean. The obsidian paperweight had been relocated from her bedroom to assist, but it kept rolling to one side, unable to contain the drawings. Dawn had to right the object and place it on a bare spot of table, where it wobbled back and forth like a metronome, reminding her of time slipping past.
Dawn started and abandoned ideas. A quiet, private space was harder to design than a grand expanse. Plants had to be carefully chosen for their harmonious relationship with each other. The dimensions had to speak of seclusion without feeling cramped. She paced the hallway, imagining she walked a shaded avenue. When her body said she had reached the perfect length, she retraced her steps and calculated the distance in feet.
Every day she rose with a new sense of purpose, and each letter declining an application became an impetus to pour her hopes into the garden design. Dawn lectured her unreliable heart to either adapt to the new regime or to end her efforts now. This shilly-shallying around and being endlessly sick would no longer be tolerated. She had a purpose, and only death would deter her.
It took one week and four more refused job requests before she was happy with the design and declared it done. Meanwhile, the house’s new owner quietly exerted their presence around her as furniture was removed and sold. Dawn shut herself in her bedroom when her parents’ bed was dismantled and carried down the stairs. Bangs, thuds, and muttered curses accompanied the large armoire being manoeuvred down the hallway.
They emptied the parlour next. All the sofas and armchairs were carried away by discreet workmen, leaving her just one chair by the window. At that point the emptying of the house paused, as though they had realised she still rattled around in the rooms and wasn’t a ghost. Real people need furniture to sit upon and a bed to lay down their heads. Spectral occupants did not.
Finally, she could delay no more, and the day came for her to seal the plan and commit it to the postal system. But how to sign her letter? If she wrote Miss Dawn Uxbridge on her application, it would be thrown upon the fire before her design was even considered. But she couldn’t bring herself to be deceptive and write Mister.
She decided to lie by omission and simply signed her name as D. Uxbridge, without any prefix or form of address. Let this Lord Seton think her a common working type unused to salutations. Satisfied, she sealed the letter and donned her bonnet and coat. She braved the streets of Whetstone to purchase a penny stamp and hand the slim package to the postal worker herself.
Now there was nothing to do but wait as her life was drained around her. Paintings were removed from the walls, exposing ghostly rectangles. Rugs and carpets were rolled up and tied. They made a pile on the front step before a cart drawn by solid-looking draught horses carried them away.
Next, the sideboard was cleared of all her mother’s prized porcelain. Then the workers started on the kitchen, much to Aggie’s annoyance. Copper pots, crockery, and glasses were slowly packed up and moved to the auction house.
Dawn was to be left nothing, it seemed. When the men packed up her father’s study and their diminutive library, she sneaked in one night and retrieved two botany books. She hid them under her mattress and hoped she wouldn’t be flung onto the rug-less floor if they overturned it searching for the books. She found an old suitcase and a steamer trunk in the attic and began to pack the remnants of her life into them.
The suitcase would accompany her wherever she ended up. Her first choice of what to pack was easy: the canvas apron to protect her gown whether working in a garden, factory, or below stairs. The choice of gowns was a more difficult decision. Dawn stared at her wardrobe and stroked a green silk evening dress. The colour reminded her of deep shade and lush grass, but she would have no need of such a dress in her new life. She didn’t even need it in her current life but her mother had insisted a young woman should have at least one beautiful gown, even if it was only worn around the house.
Dawn pushed the silk gown to one side and selected three plain day dresses. Two were of thick cotton and one of light wool. They would do. It didn’t matter what she wore underneath, and she barely glanced at the chemises and nightgown she grabbed and rolled up to fit the scant remaining space.
Personal possessions were harder to whittle down. Firstly, a duet of photographs of her parents in a plain frame that snapped shut to protect the portraits when travelling. Then the botany books, obviously. She tucked three bottles of tonic obtained from the local dispensary into the folds of her spare dress. Then, on impulse, she included the aquilegia seeds. She would find a patch of dirt somewhere to plant them so she could enjoy their nodding heads and think of the last time she saw her parents.
She retrieved the obsidian paperweight from her desk. Heavy and warm in her hands, the stone egg conjured memories of her mother telling stories at night. Her mother had spun a tale of love and tragedy around it, turning the boring paperweight into a rare and sought after treasure.
“I have vowed to protect it, and in turn it will protect us,” Dawn whispered. Then she tucked the egg safely in among her clothes.
With the dining room table and chairs gone, Dawn took her meals in the kitchen, seated at the worn pine table that served as both workspace and place to eat.
“Where will you go, Aggie?” Dawn dipped a piece of bread into her broth.
The older woman smiled and patted Dawn’s hand. “I have a sister in Bristol. She has found a position for me in a neighbouring house. Nice older couple whose housekeeper has just retired. They also need a maid and I will take Sarah with me, so don’t you worry about us.”
Sarah gave Dawn an apologetic smile. She needn’t feel guilty. They too were homeless and needed new positions to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.
“What of you, miss? Where will you go?” Sarah asked.
A weak smile pulled at Dawn’s lips. “I am applying to positions in the newspaper, and I am sure something will present itself.”
Sarah’s attention fell to her cup of tea and Aggie rose and busied herself clearing the table. The clatter of crockery covered the silence that fell in the kitchen. Nobody wanted to broach the topic of her uncertain future, and Dawn alone knew of the numerous rejections she fed to the fire. She was mistress in this house for a little longer, and yet the staff had more to offer the world than she.
Conversation resumed with easier topics like the unnaturally warm spring and the swallows nesting by the back porch.
The next day, Dawn paced in the near-empty parlour. What would the neighbours think if she pulled back the lace curtains and they could peer into the stripped-bare rooms? They likely twittered in their parlours about the terrible tragedy that befell the Uxbridge family. They probably speculated about the parents taken in a grisly accident and the daughter left destitute for the rest of her short and sickly days.
She made a circuit around the edge of the room when the mail slot rattled. In the entranceway, Dawn found a single letter resting on the tiles. It was addressed to D. Uxbridge.
She stared at the cream envelope at her feet. This was her answer to the gardener’s position. Her heart fluttered weakly in her chest like an exhausted butterfly. It would surely be another rejection. The other jobs she had applied for would have offered bed and board and a little extra to put aside for her later years. This position offered her a chance to dream. If that letter bore the words I regret to inform you, it might be the final blow to her delicate health.
She had only a week before she had
to vacate the house. With no prospects and no employment, she would be out on the street unless she found affordable accommodation. Given her scant budget, that would mean a cold, dirty, and probably unsafe boarding house.
Or she could open the final letter and see if a new direction beckoned.
She picked up the letter with a tremble in her hand. Then she carried the slim correspondence to the parlour and sat in the lone chair by the window. A shaft of sunlight squeezed through the parting in the drapes and fell onto the cream paper. The black ink used to write her name and address shimmered under the sun’s caress.
She flipped the envelope over. A dark red seal was stamped with a pair of spread wings. Using a fingernail, she lifted the wax and unfolded the missive. The thick paper crinkled as it stretched. A piece of cardboard fell out, and she dropped it into her lap to concentrate on the letter. Her vision swam for a moment, and she could make no sense of the large, ornate script.
She told her heart to behave and took a deep breath. She focused again. At least the Earl of Seton had a lovely hand, with swoops, curls, and flourishes that belonged to another age. He was probably very old.
Mr Uxbridge…
Oh dear. She swallowed as she was drawn deeper into her deception. It would be better if it were a rejection, then she wouldn’t have to face up to her fraud.
Your plan for the ladies' contemplation grove was considered to be the best of the applicants. You are hereby offered the position as Head Gardener at Ravenswing Manor. Please find enclosed a train ticket from Whetstone to Alysblud for next Friday. Yours Sincerely, Lord Seton.