The Last Garden in England

by Julia Kelly

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Diana asked.

  Cynthia shrugged. “Would you have listened?”

  “I might have.”

  That earned her a hard laugh. “The scared little girl my brother paraded in front of all of us, not for approval, but to show that he’d won an Eddings? I think not. You hung on his every word.”

  “I loved him,” she said.

  Cynthia sobered. “I’m glad for that. For all of my brother’s faults, I’m glad that he was loved.”

  Diana looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. She didn’t know if Cynthia was playing a game or speaking truthfully, but she did know one thing with a certainty that seemed to penetrate her very bones.

  Slowly she unknotted her fingers and smoothed them out over her skirt. “I am not a scared little girl any longer. No matter what you think of me, I will not be dictated to about how I run my household or raise my son.”

  “I know.”

  Diana’s chin jerked. “You know? You swept into my house and took over.”

  “Because you were useless. The day the requisition order came through, Mrs. Dibble telephoned me because she said you barely looked at the order.”

  “I was grieving.”

  “I came here because if I hadn’t stepped in, who knows what would have happened to the house. Look at Sir Parker’s home in Suffolk: It was practically burned to the ground thanks to the troops using it as a training ground,” said Cynthia.

  “But the way you speak about the house…”

  “How do I speak about it?” Cynthia asked.

  “As though you think it should be yours!” she exclaimed.

  Cynthia’s expression darkened. “I’m a Symonds by birth, and this was my home long before it was yours. I hate that after this war, this hospital will dissolve, I’ll be gone, and you’ll still have Highbury House.”

  Diana opened her mouth to say… what? That Cynthia could visit anytime? Neither of them would be comfortable with that arrangement.

  “I thank you for stepping in to Highbury when I was unable to,” Diana said, careful to control her voice as she lifted her drink like a shield.

  “Who else would have been commandant? You?” Cynthia gave a bitter laugh.

  “Mrs. Symonds!” a shout came from the lawn. Her head shot up to see a young solider hobbling, frenzied on his crutches. “Mrs. Symonds!”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, as people behind her began to murmur.

  “Come quick! Your son.”

  Her wineglass fell. It shattered, but she was already pushing through the crowd.

  “What is it?” she asked, racing toward the soldier. “Where is he?”

  “The garden in the middle. The one with the gate,” he said, wincing.

  The winter garden. Terror coursed through her. Something had happened to Robin. She had to get to him.

  “Diana!” Cynthia shouted behind her, but Diana was already racing down the stairs and across the grass.

  He will be fine. He will be fine. He must be fine.

  She ran around the soldier and across the lime walk to the pathway leading to the winter garden. A child’s sobbing cut through the sound of her blood roaring in her ears.

  He is fine. If he’s crying, he’s fine.

  When she saw the gate was open, she slid to a stop on the crushed limestone. A nurse knelt on the ground next to a prone figure—Robin.

  “No!” she shouted, racing forward and dropping to her knees next to her son. Vomit at the corners of his mouth, his eyes were closed. She took his little shoulders, so fragile, and shook him. “Robin!”

  As though through a fog, she heard Bobby trying to speak around hiccuping sobs. “We were playing and—and he said the plants were magic.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Symonds.” The nurse’s voice cracked. “I can’t wake him up. I think he ate that.”

  The nurse pointed to several stalks of pretty purple flowers. Monkshood. So beautiful and so deadly.

  “Find a doctor!” she shouted at the nurse. “Now!”

  The woman was up like a shot, racing out of the winter garden. Diana picked her son up in her arms, cradling him as she had when he’d been an infant.

  Something brushed her arm. Bobby had shuffled over to her.

  “It’s going to be okay, Bobby. Robin will be okay,” she said.

  “He said it was magic,” Bobby wailed, throwing his arms around her.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  They sat like that, Diana rocking her son and Bobby clinging to her, as what was left of her world fell apart.

  AUTUMN

  • VENETIA •

  THURSDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER 1907

  Highbury House

  Overcast with the scent of rain in the air. Autumn is coming.

  This morning I lay in bed, Matthew’s arms wrapped around me so his hands could rest on the slight swell of my belly. I am fortunate. Even four months into my pregnancy, I am hardly showing.

  “We could marry at the village church in Wilmcote,” Matthew said, drawing lazy circles on my side. “The priest at Saint Andrew’s is an understanding man and will hardly give a thought to a small ceremony with only two witnesses.”

  “The church will fall down around my ears given my current state,” I said.

  He kissed the side of my neck. “Then we’ll go to London, or somewhere no one knows us.”

  I twisted around to face him. “Are you certain you’ve made peace with the fact that the Melcourts could turn on both of us for this?”

  “Helen’s been after me to marry for years, remember?” he asked with a smile.

  “Not to me.” Mrs. Melcourt would have wanted a virginal bride for her brother—one who came with money and status. Marriage was a game of strategy to women like Mrs. Melcourt, and I don’t even come close to contending.

  “The sooner we marry, the sooner Helen and Arthur will come to love you,” Matthew said. “You needn’t worry.”

  “We should both be worried.”

  He nudged me. “We won’t be caught.”

  “That’s not the only thing to fear, Matthew.”

  He sank back onto his side of the bed. “Then what?”

  “Our lives will change.”

  “For the better,” he said.

  “What happens if I can no longer work?” I asked.

  He shifted on the pillow to look at me. “That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”

  “You might not have a choice. I might not have a choice.”

  He didn’t say anything then.

  Now that we share a life raft, I can’t imagine how I ever would have enacted my original plan. However, to wed under the veil of lies and deception… I haven’t considered marriage for a long time, but this would not have been the way I would have wanted it to start.

  And then there was another issue. I’m embarrassed to write about it, but I do not truly know how Matthew feels about me. I know that he is affectionate. I know that he is kind. I know that he is optimistic that we can create a life together, but we were pushed into this arrangement by our child. I can’t help but wonder if part of him doesn’t feel as trapped as I do.

  I do not know if he loves me, and I cannot bring myself to ask because I do not want to know the answer.

  • DIANA •

  SEPTEMBER 1944

  People. She was never without people, now. Staring at her or—even worse—sitting next to her. They all wanted to hold her hand, but she didn’t want that even if she hadn’t the energy to push them away. Instead, she simply sat with one of Robin’s little jumpers spread over her lap and stared at a spot on the wall.

  It was ink, she was almost certain. She’d become intimately acquainted with its shape over the last three weeks. In another time and place, she might have asked Mr. Gilligan to scrape that bit of wallpaper and replace it, but now she found the spot made things easier. When she focused on it, she didn’t have to think.

 
She needed space away from all of it—but a heavy fog hung around her, squeezing her so tightly sometimes she struggled to breathe. It made the world so very slow.

  Somewhere from the depths of that fog, Diana registered the opening and closing of the nursery door. China rattled on a tray. The scent of toast and eggs drifted to her. Two women whispered to one another.

  “Diana, Miss Adderton is here with your tray.”

  Diana looked up from her spot and found her sister-in-law standing over her, hands clasped and face pinched.

  “I have some eggs for you, Mrs. Symonds,” Miss Adderton said with forced cheeriness. “Real eggs.”

  “Isn’t that a treat?” Cynthia asked.

  Diana let her eyes fix back on the spot, her hands knitting into the yarn of the jumper again. “I am not a child.”

  Her sister-in-law straightened in surprise. “No, you’re not a child.” When Diana didn’t respond, Cynthia continued, “However, you are acting like one.”

  Diana’s fists clenched tighter.

  “You’ve suffered a great loss, and everyone understands that. However, many people are suffering as well. Some at this very hospital. You have a duty—”

  “I had a duty to my son. I was supposed to keep him safe,” she said.

  “What happened to Robin was a great tragedy,” Cynthia tried again.

  “He died because of my garden. Because I was too lax about hiding the keys. He died because I didn’t rip out the monkshood, even though I knew how deadly it could be. He died because of me.”

  The room fell silent.

  “You aren’t yourself, Diana,” Cynthia said.

  No, and she might never be again. Robin had been what was good in her life—a reminder of before the war, but also a harbinger of the future. She’d poured her love into him. She told herself she kept him close to her because Murray had hated his time at school, but her reasons went deeper than that. She’d thought that if she was near, he would be safe.

  In the end, there’d been nothing she could do.

  Robin never regained consciousness. The doctors hadn’t been able to do anything to save him. Neither could a manor full of nursing staff. Her beautiful boy had died with her head bent over him, keeping silent vigil through the night.

  “I would like to be left alone, please,” she whispered to the nursery wall.

  She heard Miss Adderton set down the tray, but only one set of footsteps left the room.

  “This isn’t going to be like Murray all over again, is it?” Cynthia asked.

  Diana slowly turned her head. “Like what?”

  Her sister-in-law huffed out a breath. “The way you go about your grief, Diana, is really too much. All of this haunting the nursery like Miss Havisham. Miss Adderton tells me that you haven’t eaten a proper meal in weeks, and if the state of your hair is anything to go by, you clearly are no longer caring for your appearance.”

  “Weren’t you the one trying to push us all to make do and mend for the war effort?”

  “This is unseemly,” said Cynthia.

  “I’m mourning my son,” she said.

  Cynthia threw her hands up. “And just as selfish about it as ever!”

  Diana shot to her feet, Robin’s jumper nearly sliding to the floor before she caught it up and brandished it before her. “He’s gone!”

  “And so is my brother, and Private Welthrope’s sister, and Mrs. George’s son, and the loved ones of a whole number of people,” Cynthia argued. “It isn’t natural the way you lock yourself up for weeks when something bad happens.”

  “You do not get to tell me how I should mourn my son,” she bit out.

  “I’m not—”

  “Murray should be here.” Diana’s voice broke. “He had no right to go join up without discussing it with me first. He didn’t give Robin or me one moment’s consideration, and by the time he told me what he’d done, there was no changing it.

  “My husband had so little regard for my opinion that he went off to fight and then got himself killed. And now my son is dead, and you think I’m being selfish because I’m taking time to grieve? How dare you.”

  “I didn’t realize Murray hadn’t spoken to you before he joined up,” Cynthia said quietly.

  Diana lifted her chin. “If you had once bothered to ask, I would have told you.”

  “I’m sorry for Murray’s sake and for Robin’s sake.” The words sounded drawn out and painful on her sister-in-law’s lips, but they were there. “I will leave you.”

  Diana turned away to the window.

  The fog of grief again hugged her in too close. A few moments later, she heard the open and close of the door once again.

  * * *

  “Good evening, Mrs. Symonds,” said Miss Adderton as the hallway clock chimed half past seven. So regular was the cook’s habit of bringing up a tray that Diana normally hardly noticed, except this time she couldn’t keep Cynthia’s words from echoing in her head.

  Selfish.

  “Thank you.”

  She looked over in time to see Miss Adderton’s shoulders stiffen under her blue dress. It was, Diana realized, probably the first she’d spoken directly to the cook in weeks.

  Miss Adderton folded her hands behind her back and then turned, a pleasant enough smile fixed on her face but one that showed pain around the edges.

  “Dinner is a pork medallion with beetroot and potatoes,” said Miss Adderton.

  Diana didn’t care about dinner. She cleared her throat. “How is your nephew?”

  The cook’s gaze dropped immediately to the floor. “Bobby is as well as can be expected.”

  “Given what he has been through, I would assume that means he isn’t very well at all,” she said.

  “He doesn’t sleep very well. He often has nightmares,” Miss Adderton admitted.

  “I see.”

  The cook hesitated but then said, “He’s quiet now, too. Like when he first arrived, before he started playing…”

  Diana’s heart squeezed as Miss Adderton trailed off. Before he started playing with Robin.

  The other woman was looking at her, waiting for her to say something. She knew she should. This was when a lady was meant to offer some sort of platitude. But Diana couldn’t find it in herself to be dignified any longer. Instead, she said, “Thank you, Miss Adderton. You may go.”

  The cook nodded, and when the door closed softly behind her, Diana began to weep.

  • VENETIA •

  MAYBE OCTOBER

  Highbury House

  I don’t know the day of the week or the date because I do not care any longer. I haven’t written for days because how does one record the worst day of their life?

  I knew that my time at Highbury House was coming to a close. I felt it acutely when I stood on the dew-softened soil with Mr. Hillock to discuss planning for next spring; the days had become shorter.

  “The daffodils will be ready to plant next week if we receive shipment of them,” he said.

  “I wrote to my brother four weeks ago to ask for the bulbs. I’ll write to him again tonight and see why there has been a delay,” I promised.

  “O’Malley told me this morning that the ground is prepared for the winter garden,” he said.

  I recall sighing then. “I will have the sketches ready for you shortly.”

  Mr. Hillock squinted at me. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Smith, it seems as though you’re not wanting to work on that winter garden.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, even though I knew he was right. It was the last of the gardens to be planted, and I had taken to tweaking and changing it almost daily. It would be my farewell to Highbury House, but I was not yet ready to say goodbye.

  We parted ways, and I took myself off to the children’s garden, where I had begun to spend much of my time. On my hands and knees, I weeded and tidied as best I could. It was becoming harder and harder to find the energy to garden like that. My knees and back protested as soon as I stood. However, after a while, I took
out secateurs to begin cleaning up a buddleia.

  I grasped a thin branch of the silvery-green plant and made the first cut close to the base. A twinge tweaked my back, and I hissed in a breath. I did not stop. Instead, I chopped the buddleia branch into three neat pieces and dropped each into the large canvas bag that one of the gardeners will haul off to the compost pile later.

  I worked like this for a few minutes, methodically cutting the plant back to half its height. When I reached for a thicker branch, my back spasmed more violently this time. I dropped the secateurs and grasped at my back, my fingers digging in to the stiff fabric of my corset. Another pain gripped me, but this time it squeezed deep inside.

  I knew something was wrong. I needed to sit down. Catch my breath. Think. I lifted my skirts to step gingerly over gaura and asters and saw it—a trickle of fresh blood snaking down the side of my shoe.

  * * *

  I lost my child—a daughter, Dr. Irving informed me, although I had not asked and had not wanted to know.

  It took hours from those first pains in the children’s garden to when Young John found me crouched on the ground, my arms clutched around my stomach and my skirt soaked with blood. I’d tried to stop him, but he ran straight to Mrs. Creasley. She helped me to the cottage, Mr. Hillock supporting my other side. She sent for Dr. Irving.

  And then she went straight to the Melcourts and told them everything.

  Mercifully, I saw no one but the doctor from the moment I was laid in bed. By midnight, it was done.

  Dr. Irving spent an eternity tidying his instruments and washing his hands. When finally he was finished, he cleared his throat. “Miss Smith, I’m very sorry—”

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t want his sympathy or his pity.

  “It is possible that you may have other children in the future.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I had lost my daughter, and my grief shocked me. Until that moment, I had convinced myself I could be dispassionate. Now I could see that all of my hours planning and worrying had been for her as much as for myself. I had wanted to give her the best life that I could.

  But she was Matthew’s daughter as well, and it would only be a matter of time before everyone else knew it. And so I mourned not only for her but for my life as it had once been. For my ruined professional and social reputations. For the loss of my income and my independence. And for Matthew. There was no reason for us to marry now. I would be forced to leave, and Matthew’s life would resume as before.