The Last Garden in England

by Julia Kelly

  “Have you known them long?” she asked.

  “About a year since. I would see Sydney’s grandfather, Rob, around a fair bit. He wasn’t a talkative man, but we’d say hello.”

  She frowned. “I would have thought you’d known each other longer. Sydney mentioned a pub quiz.”

  “Have you been recruited to Menace to Sobriety yet?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s the team name. I come along most weeks, although unless the subjects are about farming, classic soul music, or British military history I’m not particularly helpful,” he said.

  “I would be gardening, garden writers, historic gardens, so you’ve got a more diverse knowledge base than I do,” she said.

  “We need to bribe the quiz master to start gardening. Even out your chances of getting some questions you could ace when you come along.”

  “Oh, I’m not coming to the quiz,” she said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not really my thing.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “You don’t have to drink, if that’s what you’re worried about. You don’t really need to help with the questions, either. The same team wins every week. We never stand a chance.”

  “I’m usually exhausted in the evenings.” The excuse sounded as lame as it was.

  “I get that. Farming means early hours. If you do ever change your mind, though, you know where to find us,” he said.

  She didn’t actually, but since she’d only seen one pub in Highbury so far—the White Lion—she could make a pretty educated guess. Not that she would be going.

  Her phone chirped. She glanced at it as a text from Charlie flashed up:

  Rosewood’s sent the wrong order. Everything’s got to go back.

  “Dammit,” she cursed softly. Any more delays and she was in danger of running so far behind on this project that she’d cut into all of the grace period she’d built into the contract.

  “Trouble at work?” Henry asked.

  She shoved her phone into her back pocket. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Is the business just you?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I started it after I got tired of working for other people.”

  He gave a low whistle. “That is impressive going it alone.”

  “Thanks, I think,” she said.

  He flashed a grin. “It’s a compliment. Want to give me your number? I’ll look around for those sketchbooks this weekend and give you a shout when I find them.”

  He grabbed his phone off his desk and held it out. She hesitated. It had been ages since she’d given her number to a man, but they weren’t sitting in a bar or even on the opposite ends of a dating app. This was work.

  She tapped in her number, and when he took the phone back, he shot her a quick text.

  “Now you can message me if you ever need anything,” he said.

  “From a farm?” she asked, a smile tugging at her lips.

  “You never know. You might wake up one day and think, ‘I could really use Henry’s hay baler.’ ”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks,” she said when she reached the front door of his office.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around at the White Lion. It’s tradition to buy new neighbors a drink.”

  “Is it?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She found herself considering his offer. A simple drink with a nice man who had an easy way about him sounded appealingly novel, but almost immediately she dismissed the idea. Forming bonds with anyone in Highbury would only make it tougher when she inevitably left.

  “Maybe sometime,” she said.

  Out in the rainy farmyard, she pulled her collar up closer around her neck. Even though the mud clung to her boots harder than ever, she couldn’t help but feel a little lighter.

  • BETH •

  19 March 1944

  Dearest Beth,

  Reading your letters makes me want to be back on the farm again. I’m glad to hear how much you are enjoying your work. It warms this farmer’s heart to know that you’ll soon be as comfortable in the field as anyone.

  I have forty-eight hours’ leave coming to me, and I’ll be spending it with Clifton, Macintyre, and Bates. I can’t say yet when I will have enough leave to make the trip back to England. When I do, though, we’ll go anywhere you want: tea, dinner and dancing, whatever. It’s strange to think that it will be our first date.

  With all my affection,

  Colin

  “Now, you’re sure you know where you’re going?” asked Mrs. Penworthy as Beth once again checked the leads on the horse and trap.

  “Down the Fosse Way, left at the bridge over the river, and then two miles south until Highbury Road. It will be the big house on the left, half a mile down,” said Beth.

  “And don’t forget the grand gates were taken down—”

  “For scrap,” Beth finished with a smile.

  Mr. Penworthy lugged over the second wooden box bound for Highbury House. “Will you leave her be? The girl’s smart.”

  After a little more fussing from Mrs. Penworthy, Beth climbed up onto the seat of the cart, flicked the reins, and turned to wave goodbye.

  On the road, she couldn’t help herself from grinning as the cold wind whipped at her hair. Her free time tended to be spent going to the cinema with Ruth and two girls who worked on a dairy farm in Combrook, and she rarely found herself alone. When she did, she felt guilty if she didn’t use it to keep up with the steady stream of letters from Colin every few days. However, with reins in hand, she had nothing to do but enjoy the peace of her own company.

  Her good mood carried her all the way to Highbury House. She pulled past the gap in the wall where the iron gates would have once stood and turned into the service entrance, just as Mr. Penworthy had told her she should. She hopped down from the cart and tied up the horse before letting down the gate and stacking the two boxes on top of each other.

  Carefully she maneuvered around the cart to the kitchen door. She could hear the clatter of pans and the rush of water. Wedging the boxes between the door and her stomach, she knocked.

  A moment later, the door swung open, revealing a woman in an apron with her chestnut hair caught up in a snood. The woman squinted at her and then looked down at the boxes. “No Mr. Penworthy today?”

  “No, he couldn’t get away,” she said.

  The woman stepped aside. “You’d better come in, then.”

  “Where would you like the boxes?” Beth asked.

  The woman nodded to the big worktable in the middle of the room. “Right there’s fine. I’ve just put on the kettle. Can you stay a minute?”

  Beth hesitated but nodded.

  “Good, I’ll fix you a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said quickly.

  “I’ll need to go through the delivery and give you a list for next week. You might as well have your tea while I do it. They’ll be leaves from this morning used again, but at least it’s hot.” The woman began pulling down stoneware mugs. “What’s your name?”

  “Beth Pedley,” she said.

  “I’m Stella Adderton. How are you liking being a land girl?” Miss Adderton called over her shoulder.

  “Oh, I like it very much.”

  “The work isn’t too hard, then?” Miss Adderton asked.

  “It’s not too bad when you get used to it, but there’s a lot to learn,” she said, rubbing at a chapped spot on her hands absentmindedly.

  Miss Adderton placed a mug in front of her. “I don’t suppose you enjoy dried milk, do you? No, of course not. Who does?”

  She watched Miss Adderton reach into a delivery box and rummage around before pulling out the bottle. “Ah, here we are.”

  “We sent milk?” Milk was meant to be rationed.

  “Mr. Penworthy has been supplying Highbury House for so long he never asks Mrs. Symonds to pay for real milk. I don’t think it violates the rationing rules because it’s a gif
t well before the milk would ever see the market.” Miss Adderton paused. “I haven’t shocked you, have I?”

  Beth laughed. “No. It seems to me there are far worse ways that people cheat rations.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Miss Adderton, dropping a tiny dollop of milk into each of their mugs. “What’s your name again?”

  “Beth Pedley.”

  Miss Adderton passed her a mug. “I like you, Miss Pedley.”

  That simple statement tore at Beth, and she stared down at the mug clutched between her hands, afraid that if she looked at Miss Adderton, she would start to cry. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone her age had been this easy with her.

  “Please call me Beth,” she managed after a moment.

  “And you’ll call me Stella,” said Miss Adderton with a nod. “It’s much better than being ‘Cook.’ ”

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look far too young to be a cook,” Beth ventured.

  Stella sighed and began unpacking grit-covered leeks from one of the wooden crates. “I grew up in Highbury and was the most senior kitchen maid before the war started. One by one, all of the other girls left to join up. I went, too. I wanted to be a WAAF because I think flying around the world would be grand.”

  “What happened?” Beth asked.

  “I was deemed medically not fit for service—asthma, just like Master Robin—so that dream died.” Stella offered her a half smile. “Anyway, it all worked out because now my nephew, Bobby, is staying with me.”

  “Do you like working at Highbury House?” Beth asked.

  “I like the money from my wages. I like that I can have a dash of milk from time to time that others might not have. And on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I put on a uniform and work for the Civil Defense unit and feel as though I’ve done something in this war. But no, I don’t think I like working at Highbury House at all.”

  “Why don’t you leave?” asked Beth.

  Stella smiled. “One day I will.”

  “It sounds as though you have a plan.”

  “I take correspondence courses. I can do shorthand and take dictation. I’m working on typing now, but I don’t have a typewriter, so I have to use a chart and pretend.”

  “Will you go to London?” Beth asked.

  “To start,” said Stella. “Then wherever I can go. I collect postcards and photographs of all of the places I want to go someday.”

  “Where is first on your list?” Beth asked, fascinated.

  “Tahiti. There is an island called Moorea. I’d like to go there.” Stella’s face fell. “It’s more complicated now that I’ve got Bobby, of course.”

  The cook looked so sad Beth rushed to change the subject.

  “And what of Mrs. Symonds?” she asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Mr. Penworthy spoke very highly of her.”

  Stella snorted, glanced over her shoulder at the door, and then dropped her voice. “She’s very grand. When the government requisitioned this house right after her husband died and the hospital moved itself in, Madam tried her very best to go on as though nothing had changed. She still entertains. Still dresses for dinner, even on nights where it’s just her in her morning room because the hospital put beds in the formal dining room. She spends time with the soldiers, I’ll give her that, but more often than not she’s in the garden.”

  “The garden must be beautiful,” said Beth.

  Stella shrugged. “If you enjoy gardens. You can see them on your way out if you like.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said.

  “No one will know, if you’re worried about that. Mrs. Symonds went up to London this morning to take care of some business, and the patients will pay you no mind. You can just let yourself through the side gate from the kitchen garden.”

  “Well, maybe, if you’re sure it’d be all right,” Beth said.

  “I will say one thing for Mrs. Symonds,” said Stella. “She loves her son. Master Robin is a sweet, handsome boy, although he doesn’t have the size of his father. He was sickly when he was very young, but maybe he’ll grow into himself one day.” Stella put her palms on the worktop. “Well, this seems to be all in order. You’ll have to thank Mr. Penworthy for giving us cauliflower. We haven’t seen that since last year.”

  “He asked me to tell you that more will be coming. We’ve only just taken up the first heads.”

  Stella nodded and then stooped to scribble a few things on a scrap of paper. “This will do for next week.”

  Beth reached for the paper, but Stella grabbed her hand and flipped it over, exposing one of the cracks in her skin that had been nagging at Beth for the last few days.

  “That has to hurt,” said Stella.

  “It mostly stopped stinging yesterday. Now it’s only uncomfortable when I hold a pencil,” Beth admitted.

  “Writing letters?” Stella asked.

  Fewer than I should. She was managing just one to Colin’s three.

  “I sketch, too,” Beth said. “Just for fun.”

  “Well, we can’t have chapped hands keeping you from that. Wait one moment.”

  Beth sat obediently in front of her empty mug until Stella came back with a small package wrapped in clean cloth. “Here. This will help.”

  “What is it?” Beth asked, unwrapping a corner to expose a hard ball of creamy wax.

  “Beeswax and olive oil heated up and then cooled together. If you rub it on your hands whenever you wash and dry them, it will help,” said Stella.

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  Stella waved it away. “It’s an old trick you learn when you first start working in a kitchen. A few days of plunging your hands in and out of hot water, and you’ll want to cry. If you come again next week, you can tell me if it helped.”

  “I’m sure it will,” said Beth.

  She said her goodbyes to the cook and let herself out the kitchen door. She fully intended to climb up into her cart and head off again, but the gate to the kitchen garden caught her eye. After a moment’s hesitation, she loaded the empty crates she’d taken from Stella into the back of the cart and let herself through the gate into the kitchen garden.

  An iron gate that must have been overlooked in the scrap collection connected the kitchen garden to a yew hedge. Beth opened it, wincing at the squeak, and glanced around. No one in sight. She scurried down the column of yew and found herself in a circular garden with a statue of a winged god in the middle. Though it was barren now, she could tell that in the spring it must be lush.

  She found a gap in the overgrown hedge and followed it to another garden, and then another. She itched for a watercolor palette and some thick paper, but a bit of pencil would have been enough to commit the space to memory. She could see why Mrs. Symonds would want to spend time here. In these garden rooms, one could find something close to peace in a time when none was to be had.

  Beth rounded a corner—this one constructed from brick—and found herself staring at another gate. If the garden rooms she’d just walked through were still dormant with the winter season, this one was audaciously alive, awash in greens and silvers and reds.

  Glancing over each shoulder, she tried the gate. Locked. She stood there, her hands wrapped around the bars, wishing that she could enter. To see life springing forth so vigorously in the first weeks of March felt almost… obscene.

  She was about to leave when something caught her eye under a bush just to the right of the gate. She crouched down and snaked her hand through the bars, just managing to grasp it—a toy train, the paint slightly chipped but otherwise in good nick. Tilting her head, she could see other toys stored under the same bush. A smile touched her lips. This must be Mrs. Symonds’s son’s playground.

  Voices drifted to her from somewhere nearby. Quickly Beth replaced the train and hurried out of the garden the way she’d come, shutting the gate quietly behind her.

  • STELLA •

  Stella hurried down Church Street, her hand
clapped on the crown of her head to keep her green felt hat from blowing away. She was not supposed to be out and about at this time of day. She should be in the kitchen, trying to coax a final rise out of the stubborn brown bread she was baking for the household staff’s tea. In her own quiet, worrying way, Mrs. Dibble was as much a stickler for tradition as her mistress, and she had refused to let meals around the servants’ table fall by the wayside even if Highbury House boasted only a fraction of the staff it had before the war. However, the strict tradition meant that if Stella didn’t have tea on the table by half past five, her timings would all be off for Mrs. Symonds’ dinner. And now, pulled away from her duties, she would almost certainly be late.

  It was Bobby, of course. Half an hour ago, a hospital clerk had clattered down the servants’ stairs and announced that the village school was on the telephone. There had been a fight.

  Stella rushed up the school’s steps, her disbelief still fresh. Bobby had been in a fight? Her meek little nephew, who only spoke when spoken to?

  Inside, Stella stopped at a pitted pine desk manned by an ancient man.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  “Could you show me to the headmaster’s office?” she asked.

  The man stood and slowly began to shuffle down the hall. “You’ll be the other boy’s mother then.”

  That was just what she needed. The mother of another child, raging or fretting or crying, wasting her time when she had a job to do.

  “Here you are,” said the man.

  She thanked him and let herself into the door marked “Mr. Evans, Headmaster.” As soon as she was inside the small reception area, her eyes fell on Bobby, who had a plaster over his right eye and—was that Robin Symonds under all that dirt?

  “Bobby, what happened?” she asked, even as she threw an appraising glance at Robin. He had no visible injuries, just a torn shirt collar and his share of smudges. Thank God.

  Behind her, a door creaked open and a voice called, “Miss Adderton, would you care to join us?”

  She swallowed hard, as though she’d been the one caught misbehaving.