The Rose Girls

by Victoria Connelly

  ‘Not so cold today,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your hand,’ he said. ‘It was cold last time.’

  ‘Was it?’ she asked in surprise.

  He nodded. ‘But not so cold today.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said, quickly removing her hand from his and leading him through to the living room.

  As soon as he entered the room, Julian walked over to the Fantin-Latour. ‘So, you’ve decided to sell all the paintings?’

  ‘All of the rose paintings, yes,’ she said. ‘We just can’t afford to keep them – not when they’re worth so much and we have so little to keep the house going.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sure it’s been a difficult decision to make but perhaps it is the best one.’

  Celeste took a deep breath. ‘I think it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve cleared the desk for you in the study.’

  ‘Thank you. I have a bit of paperwork and then we can take care of the paintings.’

  She led him through to the study and, as soon as the doors opened, Frinton leapt up from his little wicker basket and tore headlong towards Julian, his bark shrill and full of enthusiasm.

  ‘Whoa there, little buddy!’ Julian said, bending down to stroke the soft chestnut and white head. ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘That’s Frinton,’ Celeste said, ‘who should be in his basket.’ She pointed a finger in the direction of the basket and Frinton slunk back towards it.

  ‘He’s adorable,’ Julian said. ‘We used to have a Jack Russell when I was boy. I’ve never known a dog so full of mischief.’

  ‘I think all terriers have some sort of mischief gene,’ Celeste said.

  Julian laughed. ‘You could be right there.’

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  ‘That would be most kind,’ he said and she left the room, returning a few minutes later with a small tray. She watched as he added a splash of milk and took a sip and then got down to work.

  ‘You said your grandfather bought a rose painting each time one of your family’s roses did well,’ he said as he examined the Jean-Louis Cassell.

  ‘That’s right,’ Celeste said, looking at the painting fondly. ‘I was just talking to Gertie about this one. Grandpa brought it home all wrapped up in pink tissue paper and Grandma was taking great care to unwrap it gently. She didn’t want to make a mess of the paper and Grandpa was getting more and more frustrated with how long she was taking. “Just rip it, woman!” he shouted. We were all laughing so much and then we saw the painting and we were all stunned into silence. It was so beautiful.’ Celeste paused, remembering the moment as if it was yesterday, her eyes moistening with tears so that the image of the white roses in the painting blurred.

  ‘You okay?’ Julian asked.

  Celeste looked at him in surprise, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there. ‘I haven’t thought about that day in years,’ she said, ‘and now I’ve remembered it twice in one day.’

  ‘Selling things like paintings can often stir up memories,’ he said.

  ‘Can it?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Paintings are usually an emotional purchase, you see. There are collectors who buy for investment but most people – people like your grandfather – buy out of love and they come to associate the painting with a particular time in their life.’

  ‘And that makes it harder to part with them,’ Celeste said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  There was a moment’s pause.

  ‘If you want to change your mind at any time,’ he said, ‘you can. Just give me a call and we’ll remove the painting from sale.’

  ‘No,’ Celeste said quickly. ‘There’s no need. We’re selling.’

  It took the best part of an hour to take down, inspect and wrap each of the paintings and fill out the corresponding paperwork. Celeste watched as Julian wrapped each painting carefully and then placed them into a large padded silver bag.

  ‘Will they be all right in your car?’ Celeste asked.

  ‘I shall take very good care of them,’ he said.

  ‘But you don’t even have your roof up,’ Celeste pointed out. ‘What if it rains?’

  ‘Rain isn’t forecast,’ he said.

  ‘But you might have an accident – the car might overturn – anything could happen.’

  ‘I will put the roof up if it makes you feel better,’ he said and she nodded. ‘And,’ he cleared his throat, ‘I was wondering if, perhaps, you could give me a bit of a tour.’

  ‘A tour? Of what?’ she asked.

  ‘The house – the garden –’

  ‘Why?’ Celeste asked, genuinely surprised. She wondered how a stranger could make such a request and how she could deflect him because she didn’t like the idea of it at all. This was their private home, after all.

  ‘Well, I just thought –’

  ‘You’re here to collect and sell our paintings, Mr Faraday, not our estate.’

  ‘It’s Julian,’ he said. ‘Please call me Julian, and it would help if I could put the paintings in a context – you know, “They belonged to the renowned Hamilton family who own the such and such manor house and garden”. People love context.’

  ‘But surely you can say all that without the need for a personal tour,’ Celeste said with a frown.

  ‘Well, I could, of course, but it would help if I could personalise things. I mean, I’m sure you wouldn’t try to sell somebody a rose if you hadn’t ever seen or smelt it yourself, would you?’

  Celeste looked at him with suspicion in her eyes and didn’t bother disguising a quick look at her watch.

  ‘Look,’ he said, suddenly appearing ruffled, ‘I really don’t want to impose. You’ve got more than enough to cope with without me putting pressure on you too. Perhaps I could come back another day –’

  ‘No, no!’ Celeste said, holding a hand up to stop his protest. ‘I’ll give you your tour.’ Her voice was cool and official even to her own ears, and she couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty when he smiled at her.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s really very kind of you.’

  Gertrude was forking a layer of mulch onto one of the rose beds and smiling idly at a particularly lovely pink Baroness Rothschild which had just revealed its many-petalled splendour to the world. She was trying her best not to think about the conversation she’d had with Celeste. Trying but failing miserably.

  You must have thought about it before, Gertie.

  Her sister’s voice echoed around her mind. Of course she’d thought about selling the manor. During the last few weeks of their mother’s life, Gertie had thought of little else. It had been her little escape, a wonderful what if? But she hadn’t dared to talk to Evie about it. Everything had been so raw when their mother had died and they’d been buried under a mountain of paperwork and debts. There hadn’t been an opportunity to talk about the future – their future – because they’d been so wrapped up in the present and sorting out the past.

  But if they sold . . .

  ‘That’s an almighty if,’ she told herself but she couldn’t shake the thought from her mind. How many times had she dreamed of getting away, of leaving the confines of the manor, crossing the moat for the last time and seeking a new way of living? Since she’d met James, that dream had become even more enticing, with her imagining them running away from the claustrophobic Suffolk village and starting a new life together. It had been an escape for them both to talk about their dreams of the future, and they would spend hours talking about it. How perfect it would be, she thought, and selling the manor would go a long way to making that dream come true. But the time for dreaming, she felt, was coming to an end. It was now time to start building a real life for themselves.

  It was just as she was picturing a gold-stoned villa in the lush Umbrian hills that she heard the strange hissing noi
se. She looked around her, half expecting to see a couple of boys from the village who liked to sneak into the gardens and play hide and seek, but it wasn’t boys from the village. It was James.

  She looked nervously around for signs of her sisters before she dared to approach the shrubbery where James was hiding very badly.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she whispered as he bent to kiss her.

  ‘I had to see you!’ he said, raking a hand through his hair like a bad actor.

  ‘Here? You’re not like a normal boyfriend, you know. You can’t just call by on a whim!’

  He nodded. ‘It couldn’t wait.’

  ‘But what if you’re seen?’ Gertrude said.

  ‘I was careful not to be seen.’

  ‘Which way did you come?’

  ‘Across the fields at the back. There was nobody about.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Gertie!’ He protested, taking hold of her shoulders. ‘We’re wasting time. I’ve got to go away. I’m leaving this evening and I want you to come with me.’

  ‘What?’

  A smile broke out on his face. ‘Come with me, Gertie!’

  ‘But this is our busiest time of year. All the roses are out, we’ve got weddings and birthdays, hotel orders, private parties and the garden to maintain, and we’re about to be invaded by workmen too. I can’t just leave.’

  He shook his head, his smile still firmly in place. ‘Why don’t you do just that – just leave! The roses can survive a couple of days without you. They’re not going anywhere and your sisters will have to take over whatever needs doing.’ He leaned in to kiss the tip of her nose.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s a work’s conference in Cambridge. Truth be told, I can get there and back easily in a day but I’ve told Samantha I’ll be away for two nights. I’ve already booked a little hotel out in the Fens for the two of us, and we could have dinner in Cambridge first.’

  A little hotel in the Fens, Gertie thought, and dinner in Cambridge together. She imagined walking hand in hand along the Backs with James – maybe they’d even have time to take a punt in one of those funny little boats. Then they’d go on to a beautiful restaurant where she wouldn’t be scared of bumping into anyone from Little Eleigh. They could be a real couple, and then they would book into the hotel in some secluded part of the Fens. Two whole nights with James without him having to run back to Samantha. She’d have him all to herself for two whole nights. It was so incredibly tempting.

  ‘Come with me,’ James whispered, stroking her hair in that maddening way that he knew she adored. ‘Your beloved roses will survive without you but I won’t.’

  She looked up into his face. His eyes were filled with desperate tenderness, and she relented.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

  ‘You will?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve no idea what I’ll tell my sisters –’

  ‘You’ll think of something,’ he said. ‘Tell them you’re going to a rose conference or an important meeting about mulch.’

  She laughed at him and he kissed her. They were going away together and she could barely contain her excitement.

  It seemed that Frinton had a new best friend in Julian because the little dog was following him everywhere he and his mistress went, keeping close to his heels and looking up at him as if he was his new master. He followed them through all of the main rooms of the house, his little feet tap-tapping on the floorboards and flagstones as Julian took in the sights and delights of the manor, admiring everything from the ornate plasterwork of the ceilings to the exquisite metalwork of the window latches. Nothing, it seemed, went unnoticed.

  ‘I’ve never seen a more beautiful house,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s not all beautiful, I’m afraid,’ Celeste said as she led him down the corridor to the troublesome north wing. Opening the door, she held her arm up, barring the way. ‘It’s not safe enough to enter but I thought you’d want to see it. This is the main reason for selling the paintings.’

  ‘Ah,’ Julian said, poking his head around the door. ‘Now I understand.’

  ‘It’s needed attention for decades but we’ve never had the capital,’ she said, ‘and even if we had, I have the feeling that my mother would have spent the money on the business. Roofs come a poor second to roses here. The garden has always come before the house in our family, I’m afraid, and we seem to be paying the price for that now.’ She closed the door and they retraced their steps to the hallway, Frinton following with his nose practically touching Julian’s ankles.

  ‘Frinton!’ Celeste said in a warning tone but the dog took absolutely no notice of her. Julian looked down and smiled.

  ‘I seem to have acquired a dog,’ he said.

  ‘I am sorry. He can be a real pain sometimes.’

  ‘Maybe he can smell Picasso,’ Julian said.

  ‘Picasso?’

  ‘Pixie – my cat.’

  ‘Oh,’ Celeste said.

  ‘She’s at the cottage in Nayland. She comes everywhere with me. I once tried to leave her in my flat in London and she hid under the bed and wouldn’t come out. Didn’t eat anything either. My neighbour was frantic so I’ve bought a little cat carrier for her and she comes away with me now.’

  ‘I see,’ Celeste said, surprised by this deluge of feline information that she hadn’t asked for.

  She opened the front door and they stepped outside.

  ‘How wonderful it must have been to grow up in a moated manor house,’ Julian said. ‘I mean – a moat! That must have felt so safe.’

  ‘Not if the threat comes from within,’ Celeste said and then bit her lip. What on earth had made her say that?

  Julian turned to look at her, a quizzical expression in his eyes.

  ‘Forget I said that,’ she said.

  ‘Whenever somebody says, “Forget I said that,” it’s immediately flagged up as something vitally important which cannot be forgotten under any circumstances.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she told him, glancing away quickly.

  ‘And that usually means that it’s something very important too.’ His expression was kind and gentle.

  They stopped walking and Celeste turned to look him. ‘Whether it’s important or not is irrelevant seeing as it’s of no interest to the prospective buyers of our paintings – and that’s the whole purpose of this little tour, isn’t it?’

  He held her gaze from moment. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep the mark.’

  ‘Let’s get on with the tour, shall we?’ she said, clearing her throat and marching across the driveway towards the rose garden.

  Julian must have got the message because he quickly turned the conversation to a less emotive subject – roses.

  ‘So, the rose business began with your grandparents?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Celeste said. ‘Arthur Hamilton was my grandfather and he and my grandmother, Esme, began breeding roses in the nineteen-sixties.’

  ‘And they bought this place to do it?’ Julian asked.

  ‘My grandfather inherited a small fortune from his father’s factory business in Yorkshire. He sold absolutely everything and ploughed it into this place.’

  ‘Apart from the money he spent on the paintings,’ Julian said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Celeste said. ‘He bought all the paintings with money made from Hamilton Roses.’

  Julian smiled. ‘I’m baffled as to why I’ve never heard of them before.’

  ‘Not many people realise that there’s a team of people behind a rose. A rose is just a rose. People don’t really think of the person who has taken years to create it.’

  He nodded. ‘I was thinking, what would have happened if all you Hamilton girls had been boys?’

  ‘What do you mean
?’ she asked.

  ‘I mean, roses are a girls’ thing, aren’t they? I doubt you’d get three brothers running a rose business.’

  Celeste looked at him as if he was quite mad. ‘That’s a common misconception,’ she told him. ‘All the great rose breeders were and are men – Alexandre Hardy, Wilhelm Kordes, Joseph Pemberton, Peter Beales, David Austin. There was Empress Josephine, of course, who grew hundreds of roses in the gardens of her chateau and took a passionate interest in rose breeding. She was even given the nickname “Godmother of modern rosomaniacs”, which is rather wonderful.’

  Julian laughed. ‘And are you a rosomaniac?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said.

  ‘You know, I had no idea that roses had such an interesting history,’ he said.

  ‘They’re the most fascinating flower,’ she said.

  ‘But what if you didn’t like roses?’

  ‘Not like roses?’ Celeste said with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what if you’d rebelled against your family? What if you’d wanted to do something else in life that didn’t involve roses?’

  ‘I don’t think we could have,’ she said. ‘Roses are in our blood. We grew up surrounded by them, seeing them and smelling them, learning their names and breeding new ones. Some of our roses were like members of our family.’ She looked wistful. ‘I did try to rebel a few years ago. I got married and moved away. It was kind of a relief to leave the roses for a while. I loved them dearly but they were suffocating me and I felt I had to get away. So I took a job in my husband’s company but, well, things didn’t work out.’

  For a moment, she thought about the Celeste she had briefly been, away from Hamilton Roses. It had been a whole new her and she couldn’t help wondering if she could expect another change of job in the future. She still felt so uncertain about her role within the rose business.

  Suddenly, she was aware of Julian’s eyes upon her and she felt as if she’d said too much. She picked up speed and led him down the path towards a rose bed filled with glorious pink blooms.

  ‘The Queen of Summer,’ she said a moment later, and she couldn’t hide her smile as she bent to inhale its sweet scent. ‘She’s our bestseller.’