The Rose Girls

by Victoria Connelly

  It seemed quiet in the house without Gertie, Celeste thought. The longcase clock had just struck nine and Gertie had rung to explain that she’d met an old friend in Cambridge and that she wouldn’t be coming home.

  ‘Which just leaves me and Evie,’ Celeste said to herself. She didn’t relish the thought. Evie was being decidedly prickly around her. Celeste couldn’t say a single thing to her without upsetting her in some way so she’d decided to give her little sister as wide a berth as possible. She carried a cup of tea into the living room, Frinton trotting at her heels.

  It was as Frinton was settling down on a rug that Celeste noticed something on the coffee table and recognised it instantly. It was an old photograph album and Celeste was quite sure it hadn’t been there that morning. Had Evie been looking through it, she wondered?

  She picked it up and sat down on a sofa next to the enormous fireplace. A photograph album was a rare thing these days, she thought. A real physical one, at least, and not a virtual one you had to click on and which you wouldn’t be able to access if there was a power cut or if your internet connection wasn’t working. How lovely it was to sit and flip through the pages, staring at the images from the past.

  The album was of black leather and was home to hundreds of black and white photographs which Celeste hadn’t seen for years. There was Grandpa Arthur looking so young and handsome in the wilderness of the walled garden before he’d kicked things into shape. And there was Grandma Esme, her long dark hair, which all the Hamilton women had inherited, falling about her shoulders in glossy waves as she leaned against one of the towers, a huge smile on her face. They must just have moved in, Celeste thought, wondering what that must have been like after their modest terrace house in the north. Just imagine buying a medieval moated manor house. It had been such a crazy thing to do.

  ‘A wonderful crazy thing,’ Celeste said, causing Frinton to raise his head and look at her for a moment.

  She’d forgotten how young her grandparents had been when they’d bought the manor. Esme looked to be no older than Celeste was now and they’d already got two children at that time: Celeste’s Uncle Portland and Aunt Leda. What an adventure it must have been, but a real struggle too, making the old house liveable whilst restoring the garden, starting up the rose business and raising a young family too. It made Celeste realise that the battle they were facing now was nothing out of the ordinary in the history of the house. Each generation had to fight to keep everything together.

  She continued flipping through the pages, delighting in seeing photos of her grandparents working in the garden, the young Portland and Leda dancing around their feet.

  ‘They really loved this place,’ a voice said from the door.

  Celeste jumped and saw Evie standing there watching her.

  ‘Did you leave this out for me?’ Celeste asked.

  Evie didn’t answer the question but walked into the room and sat on the sofa next to Celeste. ‘Look at these ones,’ she said, taking the album from her and turning the pages. ‘That’s the first photo of Mum.’

  Celeste looked at the picture, barely recognising the tiny infant sitting up in a big old-fashioned pram in the garden with the gatehouse turrets towering behind her.

  Evie pointed to another photo of the four Hamilton children, Portland, Leda, Louise and Penelope, all holding hands and looking into the moat, their little figures reflected in the water.

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely!’ Celeste said. ‘We should frame it.’

  ‘I know,’ Evie said. ‘Three generations have lived here now. Isn’t that amazing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Celeste said simply. ‘It is.’

  ‘And it could be four if we keep this place going long enough,’ Evie said.

  ‘Evie –’ Celeste said in warning.

  Evie raised her hands in the air. ‘Don’t say anything! Just think about it, okay?’

  Celeste wasn’t in the mood to fight with her sister that evening and so she nodded. ‘Okay.’

  They sat quietly together, turning the pages of the album over and looking at the photographs.

  ‘That’s the last one of Mum,’ Evie said when they reached the end of the book. ‘Gertie wanted it in the album. She took it just before Mum stopped her chemotherapy. We’d gone for a walk around the garden and the light was so beautiful. It was the last time Mum went outside. She looked really well, didn’t she?’

  ‘She did,’ Celeste agreed, looking at her mother’s pale but still astonishingly beautiful face.

  ‘She went downhill pretty rapidly after that,’ Evie said. ‘We’d bring her flowers from the garden but nothing made her smile. She became moody – more so than usual – and would shout at us no matter what we did for her. She must have been in so much pain at the end.’ Evie’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, Evie,’ Celeste said, putting an arm around her shoulder.

  ‘You should have been here, Celeste,’ she cried. ‘I hate that you weren’t here to help us!’

  ‘I wish I could have been.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’ Evie said. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘Evie, listen to me –’

  ‘We were so tired, Gertie and me. It wasn’t fair of you not to help. Mum was’ – she paused, her tears spilling down her cheeks, – ‘difficult. Really difficult. We needed you here, Celeste. Where were you?’

  Celeste bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Evie shrugged her arm away and got up from the sofa.

  ‘I need some air,’ she announced, whipping the tears away with an angry hand. ‘Can I take Frinton out?’

  ‘Sure,’ Celeste said and watched as Evie motioned to Frinton and the two of them left the house together.

  Evie walked around the gardens until she felt quite sure Frinton’s paws must be on the point of wearing out. He took some tiring, that dog, but it had been good to get out in the air after the scene with Celeste and to watch the garden slowly fading into dusk as her heart rate returned to normal. Rose gardens were often at their best in the evenings because the perfume from the flowers was so strong and scented the air with intoxicating power. Evie liked to test herself as she walked, trying to pick out the individual roses.

  There was the deep, rich scent of Madame Isaac Pereire and the fruity muskiness of Penelope – the rose their mother was named after – and dancing softly through the air were the honeyed notes of their very own Moonglow.

  The white roses were particularly glorious as night drew in, their luminous beauty still visible long after the sun had set, painting the garden in ghostlike swathes. There was the Hamilton rose, Eden, with its incurved petals; the classic climber, Iceberg, which tumbled over the pergola in a white waterfall; and the stunningly beautiful damask rose, Madame Hardy, with its double-bloom flowers and its bright, citrusy scent.

  Evie stopped and admired each and every one of them, dipping her nose deep into the soft, cool petals. Moments like this weren’t to be rushed even if there was a mad fox terrier barking his little head off for some attention on the other side of the border, and even if her heart was still racing after her latest conversation with Celeste.

  Sometimes, inhaling the perfume of a rose was like losing yourself to another world. All the other senses seemed to switch off as scent took over, seemingly entering the bloodstream until the whole of your being was intoxicated – and that was just the very thing she needed at the moment.

  ‘Hush, Frinton!’ Evie said as her nose dived into a fully blown Alba Maxima – one of her favourite roses and one of the oldest. ‘The Jacobite Rose,’ she said to herself, knowing that the rose had existed in classical times.

  Frinton’s barking continued.

  ‘Honestly,’ Evie said, ‘dogs have no souls! No passion for what is beautiful!’ She shook her head in despair but couldn’t help smiling as she saw that Frinton had found a stick and was shaking it from side to side as if it was his mor
tal enemy. ‘Come on!’ she said, and the two of them headed across the lawn at the back of the manor which sloped towards the river.

  The fields beyond were slowly being enveloped by darkness and a startled pheasant ran out from its cover on the other side. Frinton dropped the stick and looked on after the bird, wondering if it would be worth leaping down the bank and swimming across the river in pursuit of it. He decided not and, instead, stuffed his square nose into a clump of grass that smelled decidedly rabbity.

  ‘You love this place too, don’t you, Frinton?’ she said to the little dog. ‘You don’t want to leave here, do you? Well, we’ve got to persuade your mistress that she loves it too, haven’t we?’

  The little terrier went on sniffing amongst the grasses and Evie took a deep fortifying breath. After the long winter months and the cold East Anglian winds, it was wonderful to walk around the garden so late in the evening and to feel the warmth of the air on her skin. It was evenings like this that got her through the short, dark days of winter; this had been a particularly arduous one, reaching its icy fingers long into April. It was why rosarians worked long into the evenings in the summer, luxuriating in their special time of year – those precious few months when the roses were at their brightest and freshest.

  Evie picked up Frinton’s slobbery stick and threw it for him along the river bank, watching as he tore after it, a flash of white curly fur in the lengthening shadows. It was then that her phone beeped from the depths of her pocket. She gasped when she saw who it was from.

  ‘Lukas,’ she whispered.

  He’d spent a month working with them during March when the pruning was done. He was an art student working his way around the UK and had wanted to see the county that had inspired Constable and Gainsborough – only he’d been far more interested in Evie’s contours than those of the gently undulating Suffolk landscape. It had been hard to resist him, too, because he’d been so handsome with his butter-blond hair and piercingly green eyes but Evie hadn’t wanted to get into any sort of relationship at the time. For one thing, her mother’s health had been declining rapidly and she’d needed round-the-clock care. Evie had been constantly exhausted and a relationship was the very last thing on her mind. A fling had been good but she’d been happy and rather relieved to say her goodbyes to Lukas, vaguely promising him that she’d keep in touch.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed as she read his brief but passion-filled message. She’d hoped he’d forgotten all about her by now but it was quite clear that he hadn’t.

  13.

  It was the next morning and Celeste was taking a rare break from working in the study with a walk around the garden. The early morning mist that had rolled across the fields of the Stour Valley had been vanquished by the sun and the rose garden looked perfect.

  ‘I’ve got to spend more time out here,’ she told herself, knowing that it wasn’t possible, of course, and that she never would.

  As she rounded the corner to where a bed of their famous Queen of Summer roses bloomed, she saw the spot by the moat, from the photograph in the album, where her mother had stood with her brother and sisters, all hand in hand. It had been such a sweet image and Celeste felt tears pricking her eyes as she remembered it. Then she remembered what Evie had said about a fourth generation living at Little Eleigh Manor and her sister’s words stabbed her in the heart because she sincerely believed that that was never going to happen.

  She was just about to return inside when she saw a man walking down the path towards her.

  ‘Julian?’ she said.

  ‘Celeste!’ he cried. ‘I tried the house and Evie said she thought I’d find you out here.’

  ‘Did you forget something?’ she asked, surprised to see him there at all.

  ‘In a way,’ he said as he reached her. ‘I meant to ask you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How would you feel about a private sale? I’m thinking about the Fantin-Latour in particular. We have quite a few good clients on our books and we could put out a few feelers if you like.’

  ‘That would be kind. Thank you,’ she said. ‘But you should have just rung us.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was no bother calling by,’ he said. ‘I don’t head back to London until tonight and it’s always a pleasure to come here. It’s such a lovely spot.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Celeste said again, waiting for him to leave, but he didn’t. Instead, she watched as he shielded his eyes from the sun and looked around the garden and then began to walk down the path alongside the moat.

  ‘Isn’t it a perfect day?’ he said, rolling his sleeves up and revealing surprisingly tanned arms. ‘It’s on days like this that I wish I lived in the country all the time.’

  ‘You want to leave the city?’ she asked, the question out of her mouth before she had time to check it.

  ‘God, yes!’ he said with a sigh. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong – I love my job. I can’t think what else I would have done for all these years, but there’s something in me that wants something more now. It’s not just all about working anymore. I’ve got this great flat with a balcony but the thing is, I can only see other flats from it. There isn’t even a single tree in sight. It’s just all bricks and pavement.’

  ‘I don’t think I could live like that,’ Celeste said.

  ‘No,’ Julian said, ‘and I’m beginning to think that I can’t for much longer.’

  She took a sideways glance at him, seeing him as a human being for the first time rather than the man who was there to sell their paintings for them.

  ‘So, you’d like a garden?’ she asked as their feet crunched along the gravel pathway between a neat knot garden filled with deep red roses.

  ‘Well, not one on this scale,’ he said. ‘In fact, the one at Myrtle Cottage would do me. It’s quite small but there’s a nice lawn, some flower beds and an area for a table and chairs. It’s glorious at this time of year. I just wish I could live there permanently.’ He stopped talking and smiled at the sight that greeted him as they rounded a corner. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. You didn’t show this part of the garden to me last time, did you?’

  ‘Er, no,’ Celeste said, feeling slightly ashamed that he’d found her out. ‘I was a bit busy.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary.’ His face took on the stunned expression that Celeste was used to seeing in people who viewed the rose garden for the first time, and her heart leapt along with his own: it really was a glorious sight and it never failed to make her spirits soar.

  There were roses everywhere. Roses creeping over banks, spilling out of containers, climbing up walls and scrambling up trees. There were arches, trellises, obelisks and tree stumps – anything and everything was designed with roses in mind. The whole garden was a playground for them, and they came in all colours, from the purest white through to the creamiest yellows, the most romantic of pinks and the deepest reds.

  Julian’s eyes were wide and full of wonder as he tried to take it all in. ‘This one’s just like one of the roses in the Fantin-Latour painting,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, we’ve always thought so too but we can’t be sure,’ Celeste said, softening towards this man a little; his enthusiasm for roses seemed so genuine, and there was something else about him too. His openness. Yes, she liked that.

  She looked into the crowded petals of the rose frou-frouing into the air like an upside-down ball gown, and then she remembered something. ‘Where are the paintings now?’ she asked.

  ‘Back at my cottage in Nayland,’ he told her.

  ‘And they’re safe there?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Everything is insured. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m one of life’s natural worriers,’ she said, ‘and the paintings are still ours until we sell them.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but they’re perfectly safe. Please d
on’t worry about them. You’ve got more than enough to take care of so please let me take care of the paintings for you. It’s the very least I can do for you.’

  They walked through an arch which was smothered in large salmon-pink roses.

  ‘Albertine,’ Celeste said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The rose,’ she said, waving a hand towards the blooms.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Lovely. They look like one of the roses at Myrtle Cottage.’

  ‘You have an Albertine?’

  ‘Well, I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘I’m not very good with identification.’

  They walked on, passing a huge border stuffed with blooms.

  ‘And these are?’ Julian asked, bending down to take a fat purple flower in his hand.

  ‘Geraniums,’ Celeste said.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘They make a good companion plant for roses.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So they’re of no value in themselves? They’re simply to set the roses off?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Celeste said. ‘It’s all about the roses here.’

  ‘So the other flowers are like a frame on a painting?’

  She smiled. ‘That’s a very good way of looking at it. Roses are the most beautiful flower in the world, of course –’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, mirroring her smile.

  ‘But it’s possible to highlight their beauty by carefully planting around them with light, airy flowers in complementary colours – like deep purple geraniums and clematis mingling with rich pink roses. That’s a favourite combination of mine. Lavender, too, and catmint and verbena bonariensis.’

  Julian nodded as if he was beginning to understand.

  ‘Now, let me show you some of our very old roses if you’re really interested,’ she said, charging ahead of him across the lawn towards another border, one of her favourite parts of the garden. It was a special place for Celeste because her grandfather had led her there by the hand on countless occasions and taught her about some of the world’s oldest roses. How she had adored listening to him, hearing the romantic names and the stories associated with them.