The Last Garden in England

by Julia Kelly

  He smiled. “I’d marry you today if you’d have me, Elizabeth Pedley.”

  “How long is your leave?” she asked.

  “Four days.”

  “We’ll marry on Monday, the day after tomorrow.” The moment the words were out of Beth’s mouth, she knew that was what she wanted.

  “Do you really mean that?” he asked, touching his hand to her cheek.

  She didn’t want to wait for Graeme any longer. She didn’t know what their life would look like, but they would figure those things out. Together.

  “I’ll marry you, Graeme, but I want you to know that I’m not going to be happy picking up and blindly following wherever the army sends you,” she said.

  “We don’t have to talk about this right now,” he said.

  “Yes, we do. I want to be your wife, but I won’t do it unless you promise me that I can have a home. A permanent home.”

  He looked down at their joined hands and brushed his thumb over her knuckles, just as he had when he’d first touched her in the winter garden. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “If this matters to you, then we will figure out how to make that happen,” he said.

  She let out a breath. “Thank you. Now, we have a wedding to plan.”

  “We could go into Warwick,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want a town hall wedding. I want to be married in Highbury.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “I think we’ll find the vicar sympathetic.”

  “You have Highbury village wrapped around your little finger, don’t you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “It’s just home. That’s all.”

  He gave her a little smile and then nodded. “Understood.”

  And she hoped he truly did.

  • EMMA •

  AUGUST 2021

  Emma sat around a large outdoor table with Mum and Dad on her right and Sydney and Andrew on her left. Charlie should have rounded out their group, but he’d begged off because he had plans to take the boat up to Birmingham that weekend. Instead, Henry—wearing a burnt-orange shirt with an image of the late Bill Withers silk-screened on it—occupied the space across from her and kept grinning as her mother said things like “I suppose the house has some presence, doesn’t it?”

  A few times, Emma wanted to bury her head in her hands and moan with teenage-like embarrassment. But it turned out, Mum’s backhanded compliments were no match for Sydney’s bright optimism.

  “Any bigger and I’d lose Andrew in it,” Sydney laughed as she patted Clyde’s silky back. Bonnie was content to lay in the sun a few feet off, the perfect picture of a very good dog.

  “It is a lot of space for two people,” said Mum in an odd reversal that still managed to feel judgmental.

  “That’s entirely my fault. I’ve always loved it, and I practically begged my parents to let me buy it off them,” said Sydney. “It was a bit of a white whale for a long time.”

  “And”—Andrew picked up his wife’s hand—“we’re hoping that it won’t just be the two of us for too many more years.”

  Emma watched love spread sweet and glowing to Sydney’s eyes.

  “Good luck to you both,” said Dad. “Do you have plans for the garden beyond Emma’s restoration?”

  Sydney and Andrew glanced at each other. “Actually, we’d thought about reopening it to the public for the season in a few years when it’s matured.”

  “Really?” Emma asked, sitting up. “What about the community kitchen garden project?”

  “We’d like to do that, too, but it seems a shame to have all of this beautiful space and not share it.” Sydney paused. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about that.”

  “It’s your garden. I’m just the person who gets to work on it for a little while. If you don’t mind managing it yourself, you could look at what Kiftsgate Court has done. They’re still family run, and they’re close by,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t that be a lot of work?” said Mum.

  Emma lifted one shoulder. “Yes, but if you charged a small admissions fee, it could help offset the cost of some of the work it will take to keep the garden up.”

  “That will be good for Turning Back Thyme, won’t it, Emma?” Dad asked.

  “It will. If you don’t mind talking about the restoration in your materials and press releases when you’re ready to open,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving it out. I’m glad you like the idea.” Sydney flashed Emma’s parents her winning smile. “The work Emma’s doing is incredible. You should have seen the place before she got here.”

  “It’s looking a little patchy, don’t you think?” Mum asked as she craned her neck to look at the long border.

  Sydney’s eyes flashed, but Emma gave her a tiny shake of her head. She was used to this.

  “It will grow in,” she said.

  “Do you mind if we take another turn around the garden rooms? It’s almost overwhelming how much there is,” Dad said, always one to defuse an awkward situation.

  She wasn’t sure if he intended to split off their groups or not, but all of them rose from the table. Sydney, Andrew, Henry, and Dad all hung on to their mugs as they trooped through to the tea garden.

  “The gazebo looks great since Jessa and Vishal painted it,” Andrew remarked.

  “What is the pale pink rose that’s growing up it?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t know. We moved it from another part of the garden. I’ve never seen it before, and there doesn’t seem to be any record of its name.” She’d scoured Venetia’s plans, but the rose seemed to pop up in places she wouldn’t have expected, never labeled.

  They spread out around the tea garden, Andrew and Henry wandering off into the lovers’ garden with Bonnie while discussing a farm-to-table delivery service that had approached Highbury House Farm. Watching them, Emma hadn’t realized that Mum was on her heels until her mother said, “They’re nice enough people.”

  She started and turned. “They are.”

  “Not too stuck-up. And that Henry is good-looking in a farmer sort of way.”

  She sighed. “What is a farmer sort of way?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sunburned face, dirty hands. He looks as though he spends his time out of doors,” Mum said.

  “His hands are not dirty, and if you say things like that about him, you might as well say them about me,” she said, giving Clyde’s ears a scratch when he pushed up into her hand.

  Her mother pursed her lips in the way that told Emma she probably did say them about her.

  “I’m surprised Sydney’s so familiar with you. Usually toffs like her are too high-and-mighty to talk to the help,” said Mum.

  She rolled her eyes. “ ‘The help’? Really, Mum? It’s not 1860. And Sydney’s a nice person.”

  “You didn’t have to be the help, you know. You could have taken your place at the University of Bristol and been just like Sydney and Andrew,” said her mother. “All of your teachers said that you had the talent for law, or even business.”

  “I know I have a talent for business because I run a business.”

  “It’s hardly setting the world on fire, though, is it?”

  “Mum, this has to stop!” The words burst out of her all at once. Mum stared at her, stunned that her quiet daughter had talked back, but Emma wasn’t going to stop. Not now. “I made my choices. I decided that I wanted to train rather than go to university. If I had failed, you could tell me ‘I told you so,’ but I didn’t. I built something from the ground up. Something that is successful and that I’m proud of.”

  “Then why are you always phoning up, worrying about payroll or tax payments or whatever it is that day?” asked Mum.

  “Because doing this by myself is hard.” It was so very hard.

  “You don’t think about all of the things your father and I gave up so that you wouldn’t have to risk so much like
we did,” said Mum.

  “I didn’t ask you to give anything up! Mum, I’m never going to be the kind of woman who goes on skiing holidays in the winter or plays golf on the weekends. I like being in the garden. I like having a pint in the White Lion after work and saying hello to the people in the shops.”

  I like it here in Highbury.

  Mum stared at her for a moment. “I worry about you.”

  “I know you do, but I need you to stop judging everything that I’m doing as a failure because I didn’t pick the life you wanted for me.”

  “You shouldn’t have a hard life. Your father and I struggled so much before you were born,” said Mum.

  “I have a good life, Mum. One that I chose. It just looks different than the one you picked out for me. I may never have a job in the city and a house in the old neighborhood, and I need you to be okay with that.

  “And no more giving my information to people who you think might help my career. Unless they have a garden that needs designing, I don’t want to hear about it,” she said. “So, are we okay?”

  Mum gave an almost imperceptible nod. “All right. Fine. Yes, I understand and will not try to help you in your career anymore.”

  That wasn’t quite what Emma had said, but it was a start.

  “What else?” Emma asked.

  “I will stop worrying so much.”

  “Good. You could also be a bit more supportive,” she said.

  Mum hesitated. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Ask me how Turning Back Thyme is going. Ask after Charlie, Jessa, Zack, and Vishal. They always ask about you.”

  “I could do that.”

  She slung an arm around her mother’s shoulders and hugged her close. “I love you, Mum. Now, if you ask her, I’m sure Sydney will show you the construction in the house. She’s very proud of the work they’re doing here.”

  Her mother nodded and then kissed Emma on the cheek.

  * * *

  The Tuesday after her parents’ visit, Emma stumbled through the door of Bow Cottage, dodging a seed catalog and a letter on the entryway rug. She was exhausted. One of the pipes to the water garden had broken and had required digging up their hard work to find the breakage and repair it. They’d spend the next two days replanting, which would put them behind schedule. Again. It would also mean she would have less time to work on the winter garden.

  She’d begun to stake out the areas that she would replant based on Henry’s grandmother’s drawings. Charlie had ceded this project to her fully, and she was okay with that. Every time she went up and over the wall, she felt somehow calmer, as though this were her own space.

  Yes, she wanted to get back to it, but first she needed a square meal, a long bath, and about fifteen hours of sleep.

  She dropped her workbag on the kitchen table, pulling out her phone to plug it in. The thing had died sometime around midday. She’d thought about running up to the house to ask Sydney or Andrew if she could charge it, but the repair project had distracted her.

  Emma moved to the fridge, pulled out a tub of hummus, and tore into a bag of pita that sat on the kitchen counter. She popped the pita into the toaster, and set about hunting around for cheese, chorizo, and some fruit or vegetable that would serve as a nod to health. It was too hot to cook, and she’d learned that if she ordered too often from the Golden Swan Chinese takeaway in Highbury, her meal would come with unnecessary commentary about how often they saw her.

  She was cutting up an apple when she remembered the post she’d walked over. Setting down her knife, she retrieved it. She had been wrong; it was two seed catalogs—one stuffed inside the other—and a letter with her address handwritten on the front but no return. Slipping her finger under the flap, she ripped it open and pulled out a sheet of heavy cotton writing paper.

  A grin spread across her face. Professor Waylan had written.

  20 August 2021

  My dear Miss Lovell,

  I trust you are well. I was delighted to receive your letter. I do so enjoy the little challenges you send me and your rapacious interest in the past. If only more of your generation had such reverence for the gardens of our great forebearers.

  I’m thrilled that you thought to bring me this little challenge about our beloved Venetia Smith. This one was a tricky one. (How very clever of you!) I did not recall a Celeste ever being associated with Venetia, but then I have forgotten more about the great gardener than most will ever learn. When none of my searches in books at home proved fruitful, I broke my happy isolation and took the ferry to the University of the Highlands and Islands, where they are kind enough to allow me access to their research facilities. Finally, after three days of exhaustive hunting, I believe I may have found something for you.

  The name Celeste appears in none of Venetia’s archived papers. I had thought that perhaps she was a relation of one of Venetia’s clients, yet that path proved a false end. In Adam Smith’s letters, however, was a clue. He was long engaged to a young woman whom he later married after Venetia left Britain for America. In 1903, not long after the start of his sister’s career, he wrote a letter to his future wife. I have enclosed the pertinent parts below:

  You asked me if I miss my parents now that I am an orphan. Simply, yes. Sometimes, when I sit in my chair in front of the fire, I recall my father looking over at my mother with such love as she worked a little bit of needlepoint, completely unaware of his gaze. At those times he would call her his “Celeste” because being married to her was heaven itself.

  Quite the romantic, Venetia’s father, Elliot, was!

  The second reference appears years later and may be too labored a stretch for your purposes; however, I know you like to leave no stone unturned. Venetia’s eventual husband, Spencer Smith, wrote a letter to her in 1912 from their home outside of Boston while she was overseeing the construction of the Plinth Garden in Minneapolis. In it he writes, “Sometimes when you are away I think back to the celestial connection that forever binds me to you. The joy that slipped through our fingers led us to where we are now. I hope you do not hate me for having no regrets, because now I have you.” He then goes on to describe in quite some detail just how ardently he loves his wife.

  I do hope that these little tidbits prove helpful in your search, my dear. All I ask in return is that one day you tell me about what it is that has prompted your quest. I know you are unlikely to give me even the tiniest of hints until you are ready, but when you are, I beg you to remember…

  Your faithful servant,

  Walter Wayland

  She shook her head in bemused exasperation at the professor’s overwrought letter and the fact that he’d found something while on a university campus and hadn’t emailed her. But then again, what did she expect from a man who locked himself away from the world in an isolated house on a remote island on an annual basis?

  She read the letter again, lingering on the passage from Adam Smith to his beloved. Celeste. The heavenly one. Perhaps all those months ago, Charlie had guessed correctly. The garden was named for Venetia’s mother. It seemed the only connection to make sense.

  Emma snapped a photo of the letter and texted it to Charlie before swiping through her phone. She frowned when she came to a voice-mail notification from an unknown number. She hit play and put the phone on speaker.

  “Hello, Miss Lovell. This is May Miles from the Royal Botanical Heritage Society. I realize that this call might come as a bit of a surprise, but we underwent a budget review earlier this year, and I’m happy to say that our hiring freeze has now ended. If you are still interested in the head of conservancy position, please do give me a ring back, as we were very impressed with your initial interview.”

  The woman rattled off a phone number before Emma even thought about grabbing for a pen or pencil. The foundation job was open again.

  • STELLA •

  Come on, Bobby. We haven’t all day,” Stella said as she stood in her attic bedroom, holding out her nephew’s little navy jacket. S
he’d just brushed it clean that morning, but she’d waited to dress him until the very last minute, lest he dirty it. The problem was, now they were at risk of being late for Beth’s wedding.

  “But, Aunt Stella, I’m about to win the war,” he said, looking up from a set of tin soldiers he must have borrowed from Robin.

  “Bobby,” she said sharply.

  “We’re invading Tahiti!” he whinged, pointing to a postcard of the tropical island she’d found in a charity shop and stuck to the wall with Sellotape.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “You’re being a very naughty boy.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could pull them back. Her nephew seemed to close in on himself, become somehow smaller.

  She pushed her hair back from her forehead. She was rubbish at this. Pure rubbish. Despite trying her hardest to do right by her nephew, every time it was just the two of them, she seemed to put a foot wrong. Just last week, she’d tried to explain that he must wait to be asked up to the nursery because Robin might not wish to play with him now that he was sleeping in the cot beside her bed once again. Rather than chasing after him when he ran crying from the room, she’d slumped in her chair, defeated. All she’d wanted to do was warn her nephew that at some point the divide between servant and master would be too wide to overcome.

  Yet she hadn’t been able to rid herself of the guilt that had split her in two at the sound of his crying.

  “We have to get to the church, Bobby. Remember, Miss Pedley is getting married today, and you’re invited just like a big boy,” she said.

  He looked up from under a flop of hair she could never get to lay down quite right. “I like Miss Pedley,” he said softly.

  “Me, too,” said Stella.

  He held his arms out for his jacket.

  Stella blew out a slow, steady breath and slipped the sleeves over his arms and shoulders. Then she gave it another good once-over with the clothing brush.

  “That’s you done, then,” she said, picking up her handbag. “Let’s go see Beth married.”