The Rose Girls

by Victoria Connelly

  She nodded. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘We need to get the manor in the best state possible if we’re going to put it on the market.’

  ‘What?’ Evie snapped. ‘Back up a minute because I’m not sure I heard you properly.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Celly?’ Gertie asked.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Celeste said. ‘Don’t tell me neither of you has thought about selling up before. You must have. I mean, it’s the obvious solution.’

  A look passed across Gertie’s face which Celeste couldn’t quite read. ‘Well, I have, but not seriously.’

  ‘What?’ Evie cried again. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You can’t be serious, Celeste.’

  ‘I’m dead serious,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’

  Evie sank onto the bench. ‘But that’s crazy.’

  ‘Why is it crazy?’ Celeste said. ‘Just think about it for a minute. Think about how much this place costs to keep going and how much it’s going to take to keep it running in the future. There’s just the three of us here now and I’m not planning on staying here, and it seems such a waste to maintain it all when we’re not using it. If we sold the manor, we’d have the funds to buy a really great place and homes for us all too. Think about it, Evie. Selling Little Eleigh Manor would free us all up to do whatever we wanted!’

  ‘But I don’t want to do anything else but live and work here,’ Evie said in protest.

  ‘Really?’ Celeste said.

  ‘Yes, really! Why do you find that so hard to believe?’

  ‘Listen!’ Gertie said, raising her hands. ‘I think we should hear Celeste out.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re siding with her over this,’ Evie said.

  ‘I’m not siding with anyone,’ Gertie said, ‘but there are definitely issues to consider here.’

  ‘Like what?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Like what we all want out of life,’ Gertie said. ‘I mean, it’s never been an option for us before, has it? We’ve all kind of been bound to this place because it was the family home and the business too. But that’s changing now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ Evie said.

  ‘It is if we want it to,’ Celeste said.

  ‘I can’t believe you two are even thinking about this,’ Evie said. ‘Doesn’t this place mean anything to you?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Celeste said, ‘but I really can’t see how we can go on living here. It just isn’t practical.’

  ‘What about asking Dad for some help? He’s got a bit of money tucked away in accounts, hasn’t he?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Yes but can you imagine Simone letting him withdraw any of it to help us?’ Celeste said. ‘She hates us!’

  ‘We could try Uncle Portland or Aunt Leda,’ Gertie suggested. ‘They always loved this place.’

  ‘But they’ve got less money than us and they’ve always thought Mum was mad to even think about keeping the manor going,’ Celeste said. ‘They wouldn’t be able to help us.’

  Evie shook her head, her dark eyes wide and fearful. ‘Can’t we at least wait and see what happens with the paintings first?’ she asked. ‘Who knows – they might be worth millions and solve all our problems!’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Celeste said.

  ‘But we can wait and see before we make any drastic decisions, can’t we?’

  Celeste looked across the table at Gertie, who nodded her consent, and then she got up from the table with a weary sigh.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Evie asked, panic rising in her voice.

  ‘I’m going to ring a man about a painting.’

  Celeste should have gone straight to the study and made the phone call to Julian Faraday but she didn’t. Instead, she walked across the hallway and into the drawing room where the painting hung. The drawing room was one of the loveliest rooms in the house, filled with two huge red sofas on which nestled heaps of tapestry cushions. It was also one of the few rooms in which one could keep warm in winter because, just before their parents had divorced, their father had insisted on a wood-burning stove being installed.

  ‘I’m not going to spend another cold winter in this blasted house,’ he’d told their mother. It looked tiny in the giant fireplace but the heat that it pumped out was quite remarkable and many a fine evening had been spent with the three girls curled up on the sofas drinking cocoa and watching films together. Their mother had rarely joined them. When she wasn’t out socialising, which she did on most weekends, she virtually lived in the study, which had only a plug-in radiator to keep the room from freezing completely. There she would stay, wrapped up in her winter coat and scarf, until the early hours of the morning because there was always so much work to do and she simply refused to hire any help as she was a complete control freak.

  ‘This is a family business,’ she would tell anybody who challenged her on the matter, ‘and I’m not paying through the nose for some outsider to meddle in our affairs.’

  But Celeste wasn’t there to reminisce – she was there to look at the painting. Hanging on the wall above a mahogany table filled with silver photo frames was the Henri Fantin-Latour. It wasn’t a large painting and yet it grabbed the attention of everybody who entered the room. Celeste studied it now, realising that it was years since she had looked at it properly. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d really looked at it. It had, she thought, been taken advantage of and had become so much a part of the fabric of the house that nobody really noticed it anymore, which was a great shame because it was very beautiful. But perhaps that was the true value of something – you did not need to sing its praises every day but, if it was suddenly lost, its absence would be enough to break the hardest of hearts.

  Standing in front of the painting now, she took in the full beauty of it. It was a still life featuring a simple earthenware bowl full of roses; the background was dark and unobtrusive as if nothing should distract the viewer from the beauty of the flowers.

  Celeste loved the way that the roses were all heaped together in voluptuous abundance, leaving little room for greenery and no room at all for any other species of flower. They were predominantly pale pink roses but there were also white roses, pale apricot ones and a single crimson rose that seemed to sing aloud in the pale palette. Each rose was at its most perfect with its full blooms unfurled and Celeste could imagine the heavenly scent of the flowers as the artist had painted them. She wished she knew the names of the individual roses but she guessed that they were Centifolias or Bourbons with their many-petalled blooms. Perhaps these were roses that no longer existed but had been lost to the world. Perhaps they now existed only in this painting.

  Her grandfather had often speculated on this very question.

  ‘You see that one?’ he would say, pointing to one of the creamy-white roses in the foreground.

  ‘Yes?’ Celeste would say.

  ‘Damask rose – Madame Hardy. I’d put money on it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Celeste would say, desperate to know the true identity of each of the roses.

  ‘No,’ he would say. ‘Goddamn frustrating. Wish I could find out for sure.’

  And so the Hamilton family had done nothing but speculate on the identity of each flower down the years.

  ‘I think that one’s Souvenir de la Malmaison,’ someone would say, only to be shot down by somebody else.

  ‘You need your eyes tested. The colour’s not right at all!’

  ‘What about Charles de Mills for the red rose?’ someone would say.

  ‘It doesn’t open like that,’ somebody else would point out. ‘It’s flatter. I thought you’d know that.’

  Celeste smiled as she remembered the friendly disputes and then felt a deep sadness that those sorts of conversations would come to an end if they sold the painting. But what choice did they have? If one painting
could keep the house from falling down around their ears, then they couldn’t afford not to sell it. It was common sense. Yet, as she looked at the painted roses, she couldn’t help but think that she would sooner live in a tiny terrace with the painting than live in the big draughty manor house without it.

  Leaving the living room, Celeste walked to the study and found the business card that she’d left on the desk. One simple call – that’s all it would take. All she had to do was pick up the phone and dial the number on the card. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?

  She took a deep breath, willing herself to stop thinking about the beauty of the painting and think about the practicality of cold, hard cash. The manor didn’t need the painting but it did need a new roof, rewiring and the damp situation resolved. The painting had to go, and so she picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Faraday’s,’ a bright voice answered a moment later. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Julian Faraday,’ Celeste said.

  ‘I’ll just see if he’s available,’ the bright voice chimed and Celeste was put on hold and her ear was blasted with Beethoven. She waited, drumming her fingers on the desk in time to the music, wondering if she should hang up. They obviously weren’t interested in the painting. The whole being put on hold was a sign, wasn’t it? She should take the opportunity to run away whilst she still had the chance.

  ‘Hello. Julian Faraday speaking.’

  Celeste blinked. ‘Mr Faraday?’

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

  It was a pleasant voice – warm and patient, Celeste thought as she cleared her throat. ‘I have a painting,’ she began. ‘A Fantin-Latour.’

  ‘Right,’ he said a moment later. ‘And you’d like it valued?’

  ‘Yes. Yes please,’ Celeste said. ‘And some other paintings too. Perhaps. I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Will you be able to bring the paintings into town?’

  ‘You mean London?’ Celeste said in horror. ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘You can’t come into London?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really like to if I can help it,’ she admitted.

  ‘Whereabouts are you?’ the patient voice asked.

  ‘Suffolk – in the Stour Valley. Do you know it?’

  ‘Do I know it? I’m coming out that way this weekend,’ Mr Faraday said.

  ‘Really?’ Celeste said. Perhaps he was just curious to see the paintings and wouldn’t let a little thing like a trip into the country put him off.

  ‘Why don’t I swing by your place whilst I’m in the area? When would be convenient for you?’

  Celeste swallowed hard. All of a sudden, this seemed far too real. Somebody was swinging by. Somebody who might take their paintings away forever.

  ‘Hello?’ he prompted. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Celeste said, pulling herself together. ‘Saturday morning would be okay,’ she said, thinking that it was probably best to get things over and done with as quickly as possible.

  ‘Okay,’ Mr Faraday said. ‘Would ten o’clock suit you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And your address?’

  ‘We’re at Little Eleigh Manor. Just south of –’

  ‘Sudbury – yes, I know it,’ he said. ‘A very fine house.’

  ‘In need of many repairs,’ Celeste said.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe Faraday’s can help you with that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Celeste said.

  ‘Then, I’ll see you on Saturday.’

  ‘Ten o’clock,’ she said and, as she replaced the phone, she realised that there were tears in her eyes.

  6.

  Evie Hamilton looked in the broken mirror that hung in the potting shed and grimaced. She wasn’t sure she liked herself as a blonde. Perhaps she’d go back to being a redhead at the end of the month.

  At least her hair was something she could control, she thought, unlike everything else that seemed to be going on around her. She paused in her work, her gaze blurring as she thought about the last few months and how so much had changed since their mother had been diagnosed with cancer. It had been swiftly cruel, only a few short weeks from her initial feeling that something wasn’t quite right until the last goodbyes.

  Evie blinked away the tears. She was still prone to crying at odd moments when her emotions would creep up on her unannounced. Her beautiful mother, who spoilt her and told her how wonderful she was each and every day. She missed her so much. Nobody would ever love her as much as her mother had, would they? From teaching her how to apply make-up to how to walk in high heels, Penelope Hamilton had been there for her daughter. A little smothering at times, it had to be said, but wasn’t that a sign of her deep affection?

  ‘You remind me so much of myself at your age,’ she would constantly tell Evie. ‘Only you’re not quite as pretty as I was, of course.’

  Evie had never thought that a strange thing for her mother to say because she’d known that it had been the truth. From the countless photographs her mother had shown her over the years, Evie knew that Penelope had been an extraordinary beauty and it had been hard for her to lose some of that beauty when she’d been ill. It had made her cruel, saying things that she didn’t mean and behaving in an impossible way. Evie had never seen that side of her before but it was the illness that had done that to her, wasn’t it? She knew Celeste would have said otherwise but she hadn’t been there at the end so she couldn’t possibly know.

  Evie frowned. And now Celeste was back, thinking she could bulldoze her sisters into making decisions they didn’t want to make. What right did she have to do that? Just because she was the eldest, it didn’t mean that she was in charge. Yes, they needed her help, but Evie was quite determined that she wasn’t going to be forced to do something she wasn’t totally happy with. There was no way she was even going to consider selling the manor. The manor was her home – it was all of their homes and much more besides. It was the place her grandparents had fallen in love with, and she knew that Celeste had negative memories of it, so she was just going to have to make her sister fall in love with it again.

  Evie wiped her hands down the front of her blue jeans and grabbed the keys to the van. She would have loved to have spent more time with her beloved plants but she had an appointment with Gloria Temple and she could not afford to be late. If she managed to secure this client, it would do the Hamilton coffers no harm at all and would prove to Celeste that selling the manor wasn’t the only option available to them.

  Following the path outside the walled garden, Evie made her way towards the front of the house. The white van could really have done with a wash but there wasn’t time for that now. It was a terrible vehicle and Gertrude was always saying that they would have to replace it, but it just wasn’t a priority. Evie looked at the faded paintwork that read ‘Hamilton Roses’ – although it looked more like ‘Hamil ose’ now. The back doors hadn’t closed properly for years and there was rust everywhere. It really wasn’t a good advertisement for their company and yet the reputation of their roses seemed to triumph over such small matters as the business vehicle. Just as well, really.

  Getting into the driver’s seat, Evie checked to make sure that their Album of Roses was on the seat next to her and she smiled when she saw it. It was the most precious of books, capturing the very best that their business had to offer. Sometimes, Evie would curl up on one of the sofas in living room and lose herself in the pages of the much-loved album. Each photograph brought back memories of a special occasion when Hamilton Roses had played an important role. There were christenings, weddings, birthday parties, retirement dinners – every kind of celebration one could imagine – and each one was made all the more beautiful by the presence of roses.

  ‘And there are no more beautiful roses than ours,’ Evie said to herself as she started the van and drove across the moat and down
the lane onto the road that would take her to Lavenham.

  It was always a little strange to leave the manor. Evie was so used to spending her days there that whole weeks could go by without her leaving home. But it was always wonderful to cross the moat and venture out into the Stour Valley and beyond, and she was particularly looking forward to today’s little outing.

  Gloria Temple was a bit of a local celebrity. She was in her late fifties and was about to be married for the fourth time. In her youth, she had been an actress on the London stage, wowing audiences with her beauty and her talent. But she had really hit the big time in the nineteen-eighties when she landed a starring role as the eccentric mother in a TV sitcom about a dysfunctional family living in a caravan. Evie was far too young to know anything about Caravandals but she’d seen clips of it and was just a little bit dazzled by her client’s illustrious past.

  She was also just a little bit dazzled by her client’s house. Although not as large as her own family home, Blacketts Hall was an impressive medieval manor house in the black and white timber framed style that tourists flocked to Suffolk to see. Standing in its own grounds just outside the pretty town of Lavenham, it had far-reaching views and yet remained a very private place, sheltered behind an enormous wall and gates that were opened only to visitors who were expected.

  Driving up to them now, Evie wound down her window and pressed the intercom.

  ‘Evelyn Hamilton to see Miss Temple,’ she announced, and the gates swung open before her.

  She drove down the driveway, which was lined with a tall yew hedge trimmed to perfection and opened up to a circle of gravel in front of the house.

  Evie switched the engine off, picked up the Album of Roses and got out of the car, gasping as she realised that she hadn’t got changed out of her jeans. She brushed them down quickly, for there were still the remnants of the potting compost down the front of them. At least she was wearing a pretty pink blouse – the one that always reminded her of one of her favourite roses, Madame Pierre Oger, a delightful shell-pink Bourbon rose.