Maybe it had thorns.
Stemmed
I woke up really early and checked my emails, finding one from Mal saying my phone line was out of order when he tried to ring me last night, and he would try again today. How he thinks I’ll be able to read his email if my phone line is really out of order, I don’t know, though the way emails come down phone lines and TV gets plucked out of thin air by the aerial never ceases to amaze me. Certainly it seems much more magical and unlikely than Gabriel’s claim to be able to sense lost garden features.
Bigblondsurfdude had also been emailing again.
Dear Fran,
Rosie’s probably told you I’m taking her surfing next weekend—don’t suppose you want to come too? You’d love it, surfing’s great fun, and we could spend some time together, catching up. Looking forward to seeing you soon anyway.
Love, Tom
Is he completely insane? Even were it summer I would still not be up for encasing myself in rubber and throwing myself gaily into the briny deep. And, also, what sort of catching up does he have in mind? Am I reading too much into his little communications?
It is ironic that I would positively welcome the same ambiguity in Mal’s, since they have become increasingly short, terse and businesslike, except when he is enthusing over any of his major interests, of which clearly I am not one.
Dear Tom,
Thanks, but no thanks—watersports aren’t my thing. I hope you and Rosie have lots of fun, though, and I expect I will see you briefly when you pick her up, if my eyes will open far enough at that time of the morning.
Fran
I was out in the garden the moment it was light enough to see what I was doing, pulling out the decapitated rose stems from along the trellis and pruning the ends properly. I was wearing one of my best smoky blue patchwork tops and the crochet edging kept getting caught up, which didn’t make the job any easier. I can’t think what got into me to put it on this morning instead of a sensible T-shirt.
It was a long fence, and I wasn’t halfway along it and tiring fast, when I heard the squeak of the side gate.
‘Good morning! Can I come in?’ called Gabe, standing on the patio with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and the light breeze tossing his knotted tangle of hair about like a slightly nonplussed invisible hairdresser. He was wearing the kind of old jumper that would have gone straight into the rag bag at the church jumble sale: pre-owned is one thing, pre-holed another.
‘You are in,’ I said resignedly, sinking down on to the edge of the wheelbarrow to rest my trembling legs. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘Rhodri told me you were usually to be found working in your studio in the back garden, but left the side gate unlocked for friends. I didn’t want to disturb you if you were busy, but I’ve got the morning free until your mother arrives, and I’d love to see your roses, so I thought—’
He stopped, having got near enough to take in the significance of what I was doing. ‘That’s a fairly radical way to prune climbing roses!’
‘I know that,’ I interrupted brusquely, ‘but my neighbours don’t seem to. I found it like this yesterday.’
‘Your neighbours did this?’
‘If you don’t believe me, just look where I haven’t trimmed yet: they’ve stuck their secateurs through the holes in the trellis all the way along and cut through everything they could reach.’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,’ he said, examining the butchered stems, ‘and the evidence bears you out. But why would your neighbours do such a thing?’
I shrugged. ‘They’re both weird, and they seem to have it in for me, although I haven’t done anything to provoke them. This is the worst thing yet. I’m not sure my poor Mermaid will ever recover, and it took so long to get it established.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t advise hacking a Mermaid down, but it looks pretty healthy, so there’s a good chance it will recover. I hope so—it’s one of my favourites too. What’s the one you’ve already pruned?’
‘Golden Showers. I’m not so worried about that: it barely touched the ground before it was off like a rocket, so it should be all right.’
I wiped a tired hand across my forehead, which had damp wisps of hair clinging to it. ‘I’d better get on.’
‘You’re shattered—look, let me do it. It would be a pity to snag that pretty top on the thorns too. It’s exactly the same woodsmoke colour as your eyes.’
‘Oh, this old thing doesn’t matter,’ I said, going slightly pink.
He held out his hand for the secateurs, but I still hesitated.
‘Don’t you trust me with your roses?’ he said, grinning.
‘Yes, of course—you must have pruned more of them than I have.’ I handed them over, but still watched him critically as he began to snip, quickly and neatly.
‘So,’ he said, his back turned, ‘what else have your weird neighbours done?’
I sighed. ‘It’s more a case of what they haven’t done. They’ve spread rumours about me by telling people that they don’t believe in some story they’ve just invented…and they—they watch me all the time.’
I paused. ‘It never sounds very much when I try and describe it because it’s all such petty stuff, but since they moved here about eighteen months ago they seem to have been slowly building up a sort of harassment campaign against me, and I’ve no idea why.’
‘Does your husband know about this?’
‘No—it’s pointless telling him, because he’d just think I was exaggerating things. They’re totally different when he’s there—they’re different when most other people are around. He even goes sailing with Owen Wevill, they’re friends. If they hadn’t been nasty to me once or twice when Nia was around I might even have started to think I was getting paranoid! Oh, and Ma can’t stand them either.’
He looked over his shoulder and smiled at me. ‘Well, not only do I have the greatest respect for your mother’s judgement, but I’ve seen the proof myself now, and I certainly don’t think you’d damage your roses when you thought hard about letting even me near them!’
He was carefully working his way along, but was still much faster than I was, so I got up and started to gather the clippings together in one big heap.
‘Does Nia have a thing going with Rhodri?’ he suddenly asked, to my surprise.
‘I hope so, but Nia’s a very private person, and she’ll tell me when she wants to.’
‘But the three of you are really old friends?’
‘Yes, we’ve been friends as long as I can remember. Rhodri and Nia have both got divorced recently, but I’m hoping when they get over that they will realise they are just so right for each other.’
‘He’s a brave man. Your friend Nia frightens me to death!’
‘I can’t believe that! And, anyway, she’s got lots of backbone, which Rhodri needs, and he’s got a sweet, affectionate, loyal nature—’
‘Like a dog?’ he suggested blandly, but I ignored him.
‘Which is what she needs after her ex, Paul, dumped her like that for someone much younger. They both deserve a little happiness.’
‘And do you deserve a little happiness?’ He turned and looked at me again, the April sunshine catching golden glints in his dark honey hair.
‘Me?’ I said, surprised. ‘But I’ve already got my lovely garden, and my work and Rosie, so this is as close to paradise as life gets. Especially when my husband is home,’ I added firmly.
‘He can’t see it quite the same way, to leave it—and you—for six months?’
‘He’s always gone away on contracts. It just happens that this one is slightly longer than usual,’ I said defensively. ‘I’m flying out there soon, and we’re going to renew our wedding vows and have a second honeymoon.’
Now, what on earth made me blurt that out?
‘Very romantic,’ Gabe said drily, and turned back to the clipping.
‘Have you heard any more from your daughter?’ I asked, changing the subject.
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br /> ‘An email, just general chit-chat. I’ve told her about Fairy Glen. I thought it might—well, I thought she might find the idea fascinating. I’m going to email her some pictures of the cottage with the little turret.’
‘I don’t see how she could resist that,’ I agreed.
I made some tea (Earl Grey in rose-spattered Royal Albert mugs), and brought it out to find he’d finished pruning and was now stuffing all the debris into the old fertiliser sacks I’d left on the grass ready.
‘What are you going to do with these?’
‘Put them by the gate and feed them into the wheelie bin over the next couple of weeks until they’ve all gone.’ I sipped my tea, watching him and thinking that I quite liked this sort of gardening, where someone else did the hard work. Ma has a point.
The three brown hens, treading delicately, finally ventured out of their run onto the lawn and, making ‘oh-er!’ noises, began to scratch around with one eye on us.
‘Thank you for helping me,’ I said. ‘I’m not very fit yet, and I was getting tired. It’s terribly frustrating: I feel I should be completely back to normal by now, and then my arms and legs go all rubbery on me!’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself: you’ve been through a really bad time and should still be taking it easy. I’m just glad I showed up this morning—but when I’m around, all you need to do is ask if you want me to help you with anything.’
‘You’re very kind!’ I said, tears pricking my eyes, because I’m still prone to crying at the slightest provocation.
‘Look on me as an old friend,’ he said, grinning. ‘Not as old as Rhodri and Nia, but perhaps a little more intimate.’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t say that kind of thing!’ I snapped, the tears popping straight back into the ducts again.
He widened his eyes in hurt innocence. ‘What kind of thing?’
‘You know.’ I got up. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the garden—but there’s nothing much to see. Sometimes I have roses practically all winter, but it’s been a bit colder than usual this year.’
The hens followed after us under the arch, but at a safe distance in case we suddenly turned into psycho chicken-murderers.
It was so lovely to have a fellow enthusiast there that after a bit I forgot who I was talking to and ended up telling him about my artwork too, and taking him into the studio to show him my latest Fran March Rose Calendar designs.
‘And this is a painting I did of the Mermaid in bloom last year. I do hope it will recover, it’s one of my favourites!’
‘It’ll be fine, trust me. When you work to a schedule like mine you find yourself pruning and planting everything at the wrong season, just because it fits in with the filming schedule. We’ll probably be planting the roses in the Regency garden in late May.’
‘Will they be all right?’
‘Well, they’ll be container-grown, but I’ve found they usually settle, though sometimes it’s as well to remove any buds the first year so they can concentrate on making strong roots. I don’t expect it to look very spectacular for a couple of years, but then that goes for a lot of the restoration gardening. It doesn’t happen overnight.’
‘I looked up some of the roses you could have found in a Regency garden,’ I said, picking up a list, ‘and most of them still appear in specialist rose nursery catalogues. Some are the older roses that have been around for ever, like the Alba—Cuisse de Nymph would be nice, don’t you think?’
‘Very,’ he said gravely. ‘When you can get it. Go on, what else?’
‘Banksiae for climbers…China roses, like Old Blush…cabbage roses—the Centifolia. Oh, and I wondered whether you’d considered infilling the knot garden with Petite de Hollande. I think it would look very pretty.’
‘I’ll make a note of it.’
‘Then there are Damasks, and Gallicas—Rosa Mundi, of course—Moss roses…’ I stopped for breath. ‘I expect you’ve already thought of most of those.’
‘I have started making a list and sourcing them,’ he admitted. ‘But perhaps you could bring your list up to Plas Gwyn next time I’m down and we’ll go over the terrace again and compare notes. You might have some ideas for the newer rose garden below too.’
I was quite flattered even though I was sure he didn’t really need my help—but there was no way I could resist the lure of talking roses. ‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘When are you thinking of coming back?’
‘A couple of days before Easter, when we shoot the opening scenes, and I’ll stay on to open Plas Gwyn and help with the Easter egg hunt. I’m looking forward to that.’
He was now wandering around looking at all the stuff I’d got pinned to the walls, including cuttings of my cartoons, which might as well have been wallpaper last time Mal was up here for all the notice he took of them.
‘I love your sense of humour!’ he said, grinning.
‘It’s a bit black, generally.’ I looked down at a half-finished Alphawoman strip. ‘And sometimes feminist.’
He leaned over my shoulder to see. ‘You do comic strips too? Are they published?’
‘This is my very first one, and an alternative women’s magazine has taken it as a regular feature.’
‘What’s it called?’ he said, reading the captions. ‘I’ll subscribe!’
‘Skint Old Northern Woman, and you can’t possibly subscribe—it’s not your kind of thing at all!’
‘I don’t see why not. Clearly I ought to be exploring my feminine side.’
I gave him a look of disbelief and he laughed. ‘Well, I can see you are dying to get back to work, so will I see you later at Fairy Glen to give the sale the royal seal of approval?’
‘It’s all up to Ma, but I’ll pop over later if she wants me to.’
After he left I went back to the comic strip feeling rather revived: must have been all the invigorating rose talk. I mean, talking about roses to the hens gets my juices going, never mind someone who actually responds.
I’d left Alison Alphawoman crisply informing her tiny daughter that she couldn’t possibly produce an angel costume overnight for the school nativity play, she had work to do and it wasn’t scheduled.
In the next frames she’s opening the kitchen cupboard to get a bar of chocolate as a consolation prize for her weeping offspring, and then we see her smeared round the mouth with chocolate and metamorphosing into—tara!—Blobwoman.
I began to draw the final picture where she’s sitting in the school hall as Alphawoman again, and someone is asking her how she managed to make such a wonderful costume when she is so busy. ‘Something just came over me,’ she says. ‘Must dash—I’ve got a meeting.’
Oh, Alphawoman, if I could only transform myself into you, I would be Mal’s idea of perfection!
Mother Makes Three
‘Where were you last night?’ Mal demanded, when he finally managed to reach me just before I set off for Fairy Glen.
This was keen, since if my sums are correct it must have been the crack of dawn over on Grand Cayman.
‘At the pub,’ I said shortly, since there is no point in hedging when your neighbours are reporting your every move to your absent spouse. Anyway, it’s not like I have any guilty secrets—or any more guilty secrets. ‘I was looking at the plans for restoring Plas Gwyn’s gardens with Nia and Rhodri—and Gabriel Weston.’
‘Oh? You seem to be getting quite friendly with him!’
‘If friendly is showing him around Fairy Glen, and accepting a couple of lifts home from him, then yes, we are bosom buddies.’
‘Apparently he visits the house too!’
‘He visited the garden this morning,’ I corrected him. ‘He wanted to see my roses, because it helps to see what kind already thrive in the area. But my, my, how quickly news travels!’
‘I didn’t mean to sound suspicious, Fran. It’s just that he suddenly appears to be around all the time.’
‘He’s going to be around even more. Ma’s definitely agreed to sell Fairy Glen to him.�
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‘She has? I thought she didn’t want to sell it as a second home.’
‘She doesn’t—he intends living here. She’s finalising things with him today.’
There was a short but expensive silence. ‘Well, I suppose it’s a good thing, because once it’s known that celebrities are buying into the area the value of all the houses including ours will go up even more.’
‘So you keep saying, but I’m not sure that is a good thing—and immaterial in our case, because we’ll never sell our lovely cottage, will we?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t envisage living in a rural backwater for ever when I bought it.’
‘You didn’t? That’s not what you said when we first met! You said we would live happily ever after in St Ceridwen’s!’
‘Well, we have, haven’t we?’ he said snappily. ‘But things change and we might want to move on sometime.’
I held the receiver away and looked at it as if it had bitten me. It made a quacking noise, so I put it back to my ear in time to hear Mal say, ‘So, does this TV gardener have any family? And how old is he?’
‘He’s divorced, and in his early forties. Older than me, younger than you,’ I said callously, since Mal approaching the big five-oh is sore point. I don’t know why he’s worried. Men are allowed to have grey hair and wrinkles, and he’s always going to be handsome, because it’s in his bones. ‘And the only thing we have in common is an interest in roses, so don’t start imagining anything.’
‘Of course not—I was just interested. I trust you, darling.’
‘And I trust you, too—which is just as well when we are apart for so long!’
‘Yes, but you’ll soon be coming out for your holiday, and you’re going to love it here. It’s a wonderful place.’
‘It sounds a very expensive place, what with swimming pools and maids!’
‘No, it’s just a different lifestyle, and I’m still economising: I’ve made up my mind to sell Cayman Blue!’
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