The Last Garden in England

by Julia Kelly

  “You wouldn’t happen to be Father Devlin, would you?” she asked, sliding her secateurs into Murray’s coat pocket.

  He smiled. “Miss Symonds told you about me, did she?”

  “You’ll find that there aren’t many secrets at Highbury House these days.” She gestured to a teak bench. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “I would, thank you,” he said.

  She watched as he slowly eased himself down and propped his crutches next to him.

  “What is it, if you don’t mind my asking?” she said, nodding to the crutches.

  “My hip. I’m afraid I rather shattered it. Very inconvenient.”

  She smiled a little. “Shattered bones seem to be a specialty of this house. How did it happen?”

  He looked sheepish. “I’m afraid I’ve no story of derring-do.”

  “We have rather enough of those around here.”

  “Quite. The truth is, I fell off a tank, and the ground broke my fall. And then broke my hip.”

  “How inconsiderate of it,” she said.

  “I thought so, too. So what did our dear commandant Miss Symonds tell you about me?”

  “She suggested that I might like to talk to you,” said Diana.

  “Well, we’re talking now, so you clearly didn’t object to the idea.”

  She raised a brow.

  “Ah, I see. It was one of those ‘Speak with the man of God’ suggestions. Do you think you need to talk to an old army chaplain?”

  “No. I don’t,” she said.

  “You know, I find that some people who don’t need to talk just need a friend.”

  A friend. How long had it been since she’d had one of those? She’d never been the most popular girl. She was far too focused on playing her harp and a touch too shy for even the singers and other musicians she accompanied. But all of that had changed when she’d become engaged to Murray. He was like a whirlwind, sweeping into a room and collecting people up in his wake. The early years of her marriage had been awash in parties, and his friends’ wives had become her friends. But how long had it been since she’d seen Gladys or Jessica or Charlotte?

  When she didn’t respond, the chaplain leaned back, folding his hands in front of him. “I will admit that I could use some company myself. The most disturbing thing about landing yourself in a convalescent hospital is realizing that you’re now surrounded by all manner of sick men.”

  “I would have thought that being an army chaplain would have prepared you for that,” she said.

  “Oh, it does. But every once in a while, it is good to spend some time in the land of the living, too.”

  She gave him a hard look, but then shrugged. If the man wanted to sit out in a half-wild garden and watch her prune a plant, that was his prerogative.

  She gestured at the clematis. “I’m going to continue my work here.”

  “Please do. I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you,” he said, tilting his head back to soak in the weak sunlight.

  With a shake of her head, Diana set about mastering the clematis once again, but as she did, she found that a little bit of the fury that had driven her out into the garden had passed.

  • EMMA •

  MARCH 2021

  This one, too!” Emma shouted down to Charlie. She was perched on a ladder, looking at the structure of a tree in what Sydney called “the ramble.” It had been a long time since anyone had given the trees any love, and a few of them needed to come down, either because they were rotting or to open pockets of air and light to the forest floor.

  “Got it,” Charlie yelled back.

  “How many is that?” she asked as she descended.

  Charlie tallied up the morning’s notes. “Seven if we include that elm near the cottage.”

  “I hope the Wilcoxes need firewood,” she said.

  Rustling in the yew branches behind them had them both turning just as Bonnie and Clyde raced up.

  Charlie immediately dropped to his knees and rubbed Bonnie’s ears. “Hello, gorgeous girl,” he cooed, his Scottish accent wrapping around each “r.”

  “When are you going to get a dog?” she asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said.

  “I move around too much for a dog. At least you have the narrow boat.”

  Charlie grunted as Sydney burst through the clearing.

  “Oh, good, you’re both here. I was going through some things and, well, I think I found something exciting!” Sydney said in a rush.

  “What is it?” Emma asked.

  Sydney just grinned and retreated.

  It could be anything, Emma reminded herself as she and Charlie followed Sydney back through the garden, into the house, and over drop cloth–covered stairs to the finished wing of the house. She always asked owners to dig through any papers that came with a house, but finding something new and significant was rare.

  “I was excited after talking to you, and poor Andrew and I have been spending every night up in the attic going through boxes. Granddad might have been a pack rat, but at least he was somewhat organized. The boxes are all marked ‘House & Garden,’ ” Sydney chattered as she opened the door into a study with a large mahogany desk in the center and bookshelves lining two sides. Several containers sat in the middle of the room, their tops open.

  “I was disappointed at first. It seemed to be a lot of receipts for roof repair and a new Aga in the seventies, but then I came across this.” Sydney pointed to a cardboard tube and an ancient-looking file folder. “Do you want to do the honors?”

  Emma picked up the tube, uncapped the top, and slid out a sheaf of rolled-up papers. Sydney and Charlie cleared the desk, and she laid them out.

  “These look like the house’s blueprints,” she said.

  “They aren’t originals. I think they’re from the late 1930s, just before the war. You can see where an architect moved a wall on this floor to create a larger bathroom,” said Sydney, pointing to the blue ink.

  Emma flipped through the pages. There was the entire house in view, then each floor, including the cellar, where the kitchen, pantry, and an old-fashioned stillroom had been. But when she flipped to the next page, her breath caught in her throat. On the large yellowing sheet of paper was a pencil sketch of the garden with “Highbury House” written across the top.

  Her eyes went wide. “That is Venetia Smith’s handwriting.”

  “You’re sure?” Sydney asked hopefully.

  “She’s sure,” said Charlie. “She’s been obsessed with this woman for as long as I’ve known her.”

  “Longer,” she murmured. “I should be wearing cotton gloves.” Not that that was going to stop her from examining the plans.

  “When I first saw them, I was confused because the way the garden is laid out didn’t look anything like it does today,” said Sydney.

  “This is what Venetia would have replaced. It’s a formal garden.” She pointed to the symmetrical beds laid out in a knot pattern. “There might have been a low border of bedding plants here, or it might have been hedged in.”

  “Ah, that makes sense. But take a look at the next sheet,” said Sydney.

  Lifting the garden plans, Emma found a thin piece of nearly transparent tracing paper. Carefully she lifted it and laid it over the original plans. She lined up the two sketches of the house, the kitchen garden, and the orchard and then stepped back. “There.”

  “That’s it,” said Charlie. “That’s the garden.”

  “And it’s labeled!” said Sydney.

  “The tea garden, the lovers’ garden, the children’s garden, the bridal garden,” Emma read.

  “Oh, that’s why it’s all white,” said Sydney.

  “Look. The one next to the water garden is a poet’s garden,” said Charlie.

  “There’s a book of poems in the library by my great-great-great-grandfather Arthur Melcourt. He was the one who commissioned the garden,” said Sydney.

  “Maybe Venetia was trying to flatter him into agreeing to
the rest of her designs,” she said.

  “Why would she need to do that?” Sydney asked.

  “She was ahead of her time. There were a very small number of designers in England who created the English border garden look that we are all familiar with now. Venetia would have been considered a bit of an artist, a bit of a revolutionary,” she explained.

  “How is Arthur Melcourt’s poetry?” Charlie asked.

  “Pretty terrible from what I remember,” said Sydney.

  Emma carefully lifted the page to reveal another drawing. “This looks like it might have been made a bit further along in the project. You can see she added a series of paths to the children’s garden.”

  “They look like the Union Flag,” said Charlie.

  “A playful nod to the Melcourt kids maybe. And it looks like there’s something here in the winter garden,” she said, pointing to a circle. “Maybe a pond or a small paved area.”

  “This must have been a working drawing. You can see where she rubbed out some of the pencil,” said Charlie.

  “Hold on.” Emma lifted the sheet up to the light. “Something’s written here above the winter garden. It’s so faint…”

  Charlie and Sydney leaned over her shoulder, peering at the spot. After a moment, Sydney said, “I think that says Cecil’s garden.”

  “No, it’s got too many letters,” said Charlie, pushing his ball cap up to scratch his forehead.

  “Celeste,” said Emma. “Celeste’s garden.”

  “Who was Celeste? And why is it written in someone else’s handwriting?” Sydney asked.

  Emma’s gaze flicked back to the faint writing. “I don’t know about a Celeste. And you’re right. Someone else wrote that in.”

  “Is it anywhere else?” Sydney asked.

  Methodically Emma sifted through the sheets, revealing details of all the major parts of the garden. Some of the details even had planting lists and diagrams of the borders. The children’s garden—overgrown with self-seeding wildflowers now—had once held impatiens, foxgloves, poppies, and gerbera daisies. Down the side of the poet’s garden’s detail was a list of flowers with their corresponding poets. A detail of the winter garden was drawn on a smaller sheet of paper that looked as though it had been ripped from a notebook.

  “No ‘Celeste’ on this one,” said Sydney. “Did she have a sister?”

  “Just her brother, Adam,” Emma said.

  “What about her mother?” Charlie asked.

  Emma screwed up her lips trying to remember. “I think her name was Julie or Juliet or something like that.”

  Charlie pulled out his phone for a quick search. “Her mother’s name was Juliet. Middle name Caroline.”

  Emma stared down at the faint pencil markings. Who is Celeste?

  “These are still good, right?” asked Sydney, interrupting Emma’s thoughts.

  Emma looked up. “Do you know how rare it is to find such an important collection of drawings?”

  “No idea,” said Sydney cheerfully. “Tech is my world.”

  “These drawings should be in an archive somewhere, or at least preserved correctly,” she said.

  “If you want them to be placed in an archive, either on loan or as a donation. It’s your choice, Sydney,” said Charlie.

  “But first we want to keep them here, right?” Sydney glanced between them. “You can use them to make sure that you’re restoring Highbury House’s gardens exactly as they were.”

  Emma nodded, even though proper preservation should have been her first priority. To be one of the few people in the world to know about a new set of Venetia Smith drawings was simply extraordinary.

  “Well, maybe we can hold on to them until the time is right, and then you can help me find the right people to take care of them,” said Sydney with a sly smile.

  “There’s a man I know, Professor Wayland, who would probably write ballads to you if he knew that you had original Venetia Smith drawings, especially for a garden we know so little about,” said Emma.

  “Just wait until your friend sees this, then,” said Sydney, handing over the file folder.

  Emma’s heart beat a little faster as she opened up the file. Instead of Venetia’s handwriting, she was confronted with a letter written in another—bolder, slashing—hand. She flipped it over. It was signed Adam Smith.

  “This is from Venetia’s brother. He acted as her man of business when she was working in the UK,” she said.

  Charlie leaned over her shoulder and began to read, “ ‘Dear Mr. Melcourt, please find included in this letter the bill of sale for thirty-six four-year-old limes intended for planting along the lime walk.’ ”

  “The next one starts, ‘Dear Mr. Melcourt, Please find included in this letter the bill of sale for twelve bare-root peonies of three varieties.’ ” Emma looked up at Charlie. “There are peonies in the tea garden.”

  “So this stuff is helpful?” Sydney asked.

  “It’s incredible,” she said. “It’s about as close as we can get to knowing what Venetia planted without having a treatise from her on the subject.”

  A knock came at the study door, and Andrew pushed it open, bearing a tea tray. “Hello. Why do I feel as though there’s a party I haven’t been invited to?”

  “Oh, Andrew, you’re a star. Would you put that tray over there?” Sydney pointed to a sideboard. Emma was about to warn about liquids anywhere near the drawings and receipts when Sydney said, “We might need to have tea standing up to keep it away from the documents.”

  While Andrew took milk and sugar preferences and poured tea, Sydney filled him in. When they were all settled with mugs in hands, Andrew said, “You should ask Henry if his grandmother did any sketches of the garden.”

  “Oh, that is a good idea. Henry Jones owns Highbury House Farm. His grandmother, Beth, was a land girl on another local farm near here. She ended up becoming an artist of some acclaim in the sixties, doing paintings of Warwickshire landscapes.”

  “We should be seeing Henry at the pub quiz this week. You’d be very welcome to come along,” said Sydney.

  “Oh, no, thank you,” said Emma quickly. “If you still want to go for historical accuracy in re-creating the garden, I’m going to need to scrap most of my plans.”

  “Yes,” said Sydney firmly. “Let’s bring the garden back to the way it was.”

  “It’s going to delay the project,” Emma warned.

  “This house is one giant delay,” said Sydney.

  “She’s not wrong,” said Andrew.

  “Okay, then. I’d better get started. I’m going to spend some time going through these,” said Emma.

  “Do you want a hand?” Andrew asked. “I’m not promising that I’ll know what I’m looking at, but I like systems.”

  “Sure,” said Emma.

  “Maybe you could help me with a couple of questions about access to the property, Sydney. We’re going to need to bring in a lot of compost to improve the soil,” said Charlie.

  “There’s access via the farm road and the gate at the back near the greenhouses. I can show you,” said Sydney.

  “Perfect,” said Charlie.

  When Sydney and Charlie left, Emma and Andrew settled into a companionable quiet. As Emma began to read through Adam Smith’s letters, she almost forgot Andrew was there. Between the letters and the drawings, it was easy to lose herself.

  She was reading a three-page list of plants when Andrew cleared his throat. She looked up. “Did you find something?”

  “Not unless you’re interested in the irrigation system installed in the kitchen garden in 1976,” he said.

  “Not really.”

  “I thought not. No, I just wanted to say, I hope you aren’t too thrown by Sydney’s invitation to the pub quiz.”

  “Thrown?” she repeated.

  “She wasn’t just being polite about inviting you. She’d be genuinely delighted if you came. If you wanted to.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” she hurried to s
ay.

  He laughed. “Trust me, you weren’t rude. Just know that you’re always very welcome.”

  For a moment, she considered what it would be like to walk into a village pub and find friendly faces waiting for her. A tiny part of her liked the idea that someone might have a drink ready for her. That she might be a part of something. But that was where danger lay. She didn’t socialize with her clients—even those she liked—because it just made it harder to unpick her temporary life and move on at the end of a job.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  • VENETIA •

  FRIDAY, 8 MARCH 1907

  Highbury House

  Rain overnight; overcast

  This morning, I borrowed a horse from Mr. Melcourt’s stables and rode to Wilmcote after overseeing the final marking of the lime walk. The trees were delivered yesterday, and I’ve already written to Adam to ask him how he had possibly found thirty-six four-year-old limes in such short order. He will only tease me and remind me that he can work his own magic with paper and a pen.

  I will admit that I am finding my employers as challenging as much of their ilk, but not so much that I cannot abide them. I dine with the Melcourts every night unless I beg off with a headache. However, Mrs. Melcourt remains high-handed. Just two days ago, she spent both the soup and fish courses espousing her brother’s virtues.

  “Mostly he is a collector, but he sometimes sells plants to a very select group of gardeners, such as Mr. Johnston,” she told me, the diamonds on her fingers glinting in the candlelight as she dipped her silver spoon into broth. “Do you know Mr. Johnston?”

  “I don’t have that pleasure,” I said.

  “He is a wealthy American who just purchased a house near Chipping Campden, although the rumor is his mother gave him the funds. I can’t imagine how Matthew met him.”

  “Has Mr. Goddard ever considered going into the horticultural business?” I asked.

  Mrs. Melcourt looked up sharply. “My brother is a gentleman, Miss Smith. He has no interest in trade.”

  She did not, I noted, look to her husband, whose fortune had been built on the back of his father’s business acumen that was so shrewd there is a bar of Melcourts Complexion Clearing Soap in my bath back in Wimbledon.