The Last Garden in England

by Julia Kelly

  “You know, we’ve definitely done gardens in worse shape,” he pushed.

  “You might not feel that way after you see this,” she said as they broke through a gap in the yew and caught sight of the wild mess of brambles and branches over the top of the winter garden’s brick wall.

  Charlie let out a low whistle. “If it looks this bad from out here…”

  “I can’t even imagine what’s inside,” she finished.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Sydney says it’s a winter garden,” she said.

  “Then why is there a twenty-foot buddleia growing out of the middle of it? That’s not a winter plant,” he said.

  “Because buddleia will seed anywhere it can. It gets even better,” she said, leading him around the curve of the wall until they got to the gate. “According to Sydney, this has never been unlocked in her lifetime.”

  “Sinister,” said Charlie, giving the gate a shake. Rust shed bright orange against his dark brown skin. “It’s well made, but there’s no way it was treated like this for more than one hundred years.”

  She squinted, trying to see past the tangle of branches. Even in late February, thick greenery obscured the view. The tangle of climbing rose and the bright red bark of dogwoods were easy to spot. And was that a hellebore struggling out from under an unpruned camellia? It was hard to tell.

  “This looks like at least twenty, thirty years of growth. Someone’s probably used a ladder to hack at the worst of it when it’s started to creep into the rest of the garden. Look at the cuts to that dogwood,” said Charlie, pointing up at the oddly slanted tree.

  “Sydney said the gardeners cut things back once a year.” Charlie shot her a look, and she added, “I’ll have her bring a new team in before we leave.”

  “So how do we get into the winter garden? And what do we find when we get there?”

  And why had it been locked for so long?

  Charlie knocked back the faded Mets ball cap he’d picked up on a trip years ago and scratched his forehead. “From most to least destructive?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “We get a blowtorch and cut the gate open,” he said.

  “I love playing with a blowtorch as much as you do, but that’s off the table. The owners are very much on the side of restoring history, not destroying it.”

  “We get a cherry picker and hack a path in to get a ladder down there. Machetes at dawn,” he said, thickening his Scottish accent for effect.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the gap in the gate. “Maybe, but the plants could be valuable.”

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  “Yeah, a key, but until that turns up we’ll have to figure it out,” she said.

  “Hey, you heard about that Royal Botanical Heritage Society job?” Charlie asked.

  She froze. “What?”

  “They’re looking for a head of conservancy.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “You’d be good at it.”

  “Why would I need a job? I have Turning Back Thyme,” she said sharply.

  He held his hands up. “Hey, hey, I just thought it would be a good fit for you.”

  “I’ve spent six years building this business.”

  “Come on. Don’t pretend like you haven’t had days where you want to pack it all in. I know you get stressed. I know you don’t usually love the client side of the business,” he said.

  Or logistics or personnel or taxes or… the list could go on and on.

  “I love our clients,” she said firmly.

  Almost on cue, her mobile began to ring. She pulled it out of her back pocket and made a face. “Will Frayn.”

  “The influencer’s husband?” Charlie asked. “Didn’t he call last week?”

  With a sigh, she swiped to answer. “Turning Back Thyme, this is Emma.”

  “Emma,” boomed Will’s voice. “Gillian’s here, too. Let me put you on speaker.”

  “Emma,” Gillian cooed into the phone, “we miss you.”

  “What can I help with, Gillian?” she asked.

  “There’s a problem with the garden,” Gillian said.

  The garden consisted of a series of traditional English borders planted to create an ombré effect, going from deep purple to lilac to pale white, all connected by a weaving path of switchbacks that ended in a redwood deck surrounded by cherry trees. It would look good this spring, but it would be truly stunning in a few years when everything had a chance to grow in.

  “Did your gardeners have trouble with the handoff notes I left?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Gillian said.

  “What’s the matter, then?”

  “Nothing’s blooming!”

  “It’s a real problem,” Will jumped in. “Gilly has a shoot tomorrow, and there isn’t a single flower.”

  Emma pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead. “It’s February. Nothing in that garden is going to bloom until at least April, but the trees will start budding out soon.”

  “But, Emma, what’s the point of having a garden without flowers?” Gillian asked.

  “Gardens have cycles. You need to work with the seasons, which is why I suggested succession planting. Then you would have had something interesting to look at most of the year,” she said.

  A few feet off, Charlie snorted.

  “What do we have?” Will asked.

  “A lot of late-spring- and early-summer-blooming plants. It will look incredible in June.” She’d warned the Frayns about this very thing. However, when they heard that succession planting would have meant staggering the flowers’ blooms throughout the season, slightly reducing the impact of having full beds in flower all at once, they’d pushed back. Since they were paying the bills, Emma had been forced to acquiesce.

  “I need it to look great now. We’ve sold an ad campaign around this,” said Gillian, panic starting to enter into her voice.

  “What’s the company?” Emma asked.

  “It’s an organic meal subscription box,” said Gillian.

  “Talk about how gardens have seasons and so do vegetables. If you eat what is in season, you lower your carbon impact. If they’re organic, they’ll love the idea of seasonable and sustainable food,” she said.

  Whispers on the other end. Finally, Gillian said, “We can do that.”

  “Good luck with the shoot,” said Emma.

  When she turned around again, Charlie burst out laughing.

  “I’m going to get ‘Gardens aren’t just about flowers’ tattooed on my forehead one of these days,” she muttered.

  “I bet the Royal Botanical Heritage Society doesn’t have to deal with Gillian Frayn.” When she shot him a dirty look, he shrugged. “I’m just sayin’.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Come on, let’s go mark out the long border.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  • STELLA •

  FEBRUARY 1944

  Stella slammed the door of the larder so hard the clock on the wall trembled and threatened to fall to the floor.

  “Mrs. George,” she barked at Highbury House Hospital’s head cook. “This is the second time in as many weeks that you’ve made off with my milk.”

  “Miss Adderton, please,” Mrs. Dibble, Highbury House’s housekeeper and a member of the regular staff like Stella herself, said with a gasp.

  Mrs. George, that miscreant in blue serge and white linen, slowly wiped her hands on her apron while the two junior cooks who reported to her watched in wide-eyed fascination, a potato and a knife frozen in each of their hands.

  “Miss Adderton, think of what you’re saying. Are you really accusing me of stealing?” asked Mrs. George.

  “I’m sure Miss Adderton wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not accusing you,” Stella cut off Mrs. Dibble. “I’m telling you that I know you stole the milk from the larder again. And eggs. There were six in the green bowl this morning. Now there are just four.”


  The four chickens that Mrs. Symonds had let her keep in a corner of the kitchen garden weren’t laying as much as they had just six months ago, and eggs were becoming more and more precious. And real milk that wasn’t powder in a can was practically liquid gold. Stella didn’t even want to think of the criminal acts she would commit for a taste of real cream in real coffee.

  “This hospital doesn’t need your eggs and milk. We have our own rations,” said Mrs. George.

  “And what about the time I caught you in my flour, red-handed?”

  The woman dropped her eyes to the pile of carrots in front of her. “That was a biscuit-making emergency. I had every intention of replacing the flour I used.”

  “A likely story,” Stella muttered.

  “Excuse me, Miss Adderton,” said a meek voice from across the room.

  Stella spun around on her heel to face Miss Grant, the diminutive junior cook who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “What?” she demanded.

  Miss Grant opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water.

  “What is it, Miss Grant?” she prompted, trying to soften her tone.

  “I broke the eggs this morning. I backed into the counter and I must have hit it just the wrong way because the bowl tipped over and two eggs rolled out and fell onto the floor, and I’m very sorry, miss.” The truth poured out of the young woman like a waterfall until at last she was spent and her shoulders slumped forward.

  Mrs. George shot her a scathing look.

  Oh, why doesn’t the bloody floor open up and swallow me whole?

  Mrs. George said Stella scared her cooks more than the Germans frightened the wounded soldiers upstairs—and now Miss Grant would scurry away from her even faster. For as much as she disliked having her kitchen overrun by cooks from Voluntary Aid Detachment, she disliked it more when those cooks wouldn’t talk to her.

  She touched a hand to the synthetic silk scarf she wrapped around her hair to keep it out of the way and straightened her shoulders, preparing to make amends as best she could. “Miss Grant, accidents happen.”

  “I’ll replace the eggs. I’ll… I’ll find a way to do it,” promised Miss Grant.

  But she couldn’t by that evening, when Stella needed them. They were to make a custard, which she would be serving Mrs. Symonds; Father Bilson, the vicar at Highbury; and his wife, Mrs. Bilson. Mr. Hyssop, a solicitor from one village over, would round out the party. This long into the war, few people had illusions that any dinner party would come close to the ones they’d had before 1939, but Mrs. Symonds was one of the few holdouts. To not serve pudding—even in wartime—was unthinkable.

  “I’ll make do just fine with four eggs, Miss Grant,” said Stella.

  The young woman nodded several times in quick succession and scooted off down the hallway.

  “But, Miss Adderton, Mrs. Symonds ordered a custard specially because it the vicar’s favorite,” Mrs. Dibble said, her hands twisting before her.

  “I’m afraid Father Bilson will just have to be happy with a different sweet,” said Stella, flipping through her mental list of recipes to try to figure out what she could make with four eggs, a bit of milk, and not much else.

  “I’ll go tell Mrs. Symonds,” said Mrs. Dibble.

  “Do that,” said Stella to the retreating housekeeper’s back, knowing that the news would incur her employer’s disapproval. Not that Stella received much else from Mrs. Symonds these days.

  Mrs. George gestured to her other assistant. “Miss Parker, go see to Miss Grant.”

  The taller girl set down her knife and half ran from the room.

  When they were alone, Mrs. George began, “Miss Adderton.”

  She put her hand up. “I’m sorry to have upset Miss Grant. I will apologize.”

  “We must share these facilities, tight as the quarters might be,” said Mrs. George.

  “They wouldn’t feel quite so tight if you would keep a tidier work space,” Stella said, sweeping her eyes over the countertop covered in carrot peelings.

  Before she could continue her attack, a knock on the kitchen door cut her off. Stella marched over, wrenched it open, and froze. Standing in front of her was her sister, Joan, with her nephew, Bobby, in tow.

  “Hello, Estrella,” said Joan, deploying the pet name Joan always used when she wanted something.

  “What are you doing here, Joanie?” she asked, taking in Joan’s deep blue wool coat with a wide black felt lapel, which showed off her creamy skin and rich auburn hair to their best advantage. A smart little black hat Stella had last seen her sister wear to Joan’s husband’s funeral sat perched at a rakish angle on the crown of her head. The lipstick smeared across her lips was a brilliant vermilion—just a shade too bright to be respectable.

  “Aren’t you going to ask us in? It’s freezing out here.” When Stella didn’t move, Joan put a hand on Bobby’s head. “You don’t want your nephew to catch his death in this cold, do you?”

  Stella stepped away from the door.

  “What a lovely big kitchen you have here,” said Joan, looking around and nodding a hello to Mrs. George and the other cooks, who’d slunk back in.

  “It isn’t mine. Why aren’t you in Bristol?” She looked down at Joan’s hand that clutched a small battered brown case. “And why do you have luggage?”

  Immediately Joan looked contrite. “You’re going to be angry with me.”

  “What have you done?”

  “It’s just that I didn’t want to write to you only for you to say no—”

  “Joan…” Her tone was warning.

  Joan sucked in a breath. “I need you to take Bobby.”

  Stella blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Your nephew. I need you to take him. The bombing’s started again,” said Joan.

  “So evacuate like you did at the beginning of the war,” she said.

  “I have a job now at the munitions factory. I’m a vital worker,” said Joan.

  News to Stella. Joan had always run from work like it was a rash, but she supposed that had been before Joan’s husband had died.

  “Besides, I can’t evacuate with Bobby again,” Joan continued. “I’ll go crazy if they send me out to the countryside, but you’re here. You can take him.”

  Stella looked at her nephew, who gazed up at her with enormous hazel eyes and then dipped his head.

  “I can’t, Joan. I’m a cook. I work all day.”

  She was running Highbury’s kitchen on her own with no help, volunteering twice a week with an Air Raid Precautions unit, and spending long hours every night hunched over the little desk in her room, toiling away at her coursework. Trying her hardest to make something of herself.

  But as she looked down at the thin little boy in his little school coat and trousers with a tie that looked almost comically big on him, guilt welled up in her. How could she say no to her nephew?

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Oh, Estrella, thank you!” her sister cried, throwing her arms around Stella.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything yet. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Symonds first, and—”

  “Ask me what?”

  Stella stiffened and turned to find Mrs. Symonds, perfectly pressed as always, walking through the door.

  “Well, this is quite the scene. Mrs. Dibble told me that there was to be no custard tonight, but I didn’t expect it was because you were having a party, Miss Adderton,” the mistress said.

  “This is Bobby, my nephew, and my sister, Joan,” she said.

  Mrs. Symonds looked between the two of them, as though trying to find a resemblance between mousy Stella and brashly glamorous Joan. “Your sister?”

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Symonds,” said Joan, her hand outstretched.

  Stella wanted to crawl out of her skin. A cook’s sister approaching a lady for a handshake. Joan, a domestic’s daughter and a domestic’s sister, should have known better.

  Mrs. Symonds looked at Joan’s hand and flick
ed her gaze around the room, as though searching for someone to blame. “Can anyone please explain?”

  “Joan lives in Bristol and is worried about air raids. She’s concerned about Bobby’s safety, so she’s brought him here. It’s quite the surprise to all of us,” said Stella, hoping her employer could read between those incredibly broad lines.

  Something flashed in Mrs. Symonds’s eyes, and she fixed her gaze on Joan. “And where did you anticipate that Bobby would sleep, Mrs.…?”

  “Reynolds, ma’am,” said Joan, some of her earlier boldness faltering in front of the lady of the manor. “I had thought that maybe Stella could make room for him. She told me that she has a room to herself.”

  “Did she? Well, I suppose we shall have to find a cot for Bobby, then, won’t we?”

  “He won’t be a bother. He can help me do little jobs around the kitchen,” said Stella.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a child,” said Mrs. Symonds.

  “He just started school in Bristol this year,” said Joan.

  Mrs. Symonds strode forward before coming to a halt before Bobby and bending a bit at the waist. “How old are you, Bobby?”

  Bobby’s little hand grabbed on to the skirt of his mother’s coat, watching this new lady with rapt, silent attention.

  “Go on, Bobby,” said Joan, shaking his hand off. “He can be a little shy to start, but once he gets going he’s a proper chatterbox.”

  Mrs. Symonds paid the mother no mind, her gaze fixed on the boy. “I have a little boy, too. His name is Robin, and he has a whole room full of wonderful toys. Would you like to see them?”

  “Yes,” whispered Bobby.

  Yes, ma’am, Stella scolded silently.

  “Good. And maybe we can arrange for you to go to school with Robin as well. Do you like school?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “I’m very glad to hear that.” Mrs. Symonds straightened. “I will bring him along with Robin tomorrow and see that he’s registered.”

  It was a generous gesture—placing a child at midterm could prove tricky to anyone but a lady of Mrs. Symonds’s influence—but still Stella couldn’t keep from grinding her teeth. It was so high-handed and nonchalant, sweeping in and making the decision for Stella.

  “Now, why don’t you let Mrs. Dibble take you to visit with Robin and Nanny? I’m sure that your mother and your aunt have many things to speak about,” said Mrs. Symonds.