The Midsummer Garden

by Kirsty Manning

  He’d mumbled, ‘Had to help Bruno with pruning the rosemary and bay hedges before we left this morning. I promised. Thought I’d have a massive headache. We ripped the head off a few of those reds, didn’t we? I’m good though. What about you?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks. It was really beautiful wine. I can see why you like working here.’

  In the van, the shoulder-banging got more intense and Valentina gripped the edge of her seat with both hands to keep from being thrown onto the floor or rammed against the window. The tools—secateurs, wrench, hand trowels—smashed together with clinks and clanks.

  ‘Hey, Bruno. Do you want to slow down, mate? We’ll be dead before we hit the forest.’

  ‘Si, si, Jack.’ The old man waved his left hand out the open window and Pip could see a big yellow sign. ‘We are almost there.’

  Indeed, the terraces and pencil pines had given way to a thick forest of oaks and chestnuts whose branches formed a canopy across the road.

  Bruno steered the van into a car park and pulled on the handbrake. There was no-one else around. ‘It is good we got here early,’ he said. ‘After lunch this forest will be filled with families walking off their Sunday lunch. Come, come!’

  Pip was disappointed when Jack took that as a cue to leap up, following Valentina out of the van. Pip could feel the imprint of the pocket of his cargo pants in her thigh and gave it a rub before she got out.

  The manicured terraces had disappeared, replaced with rocky boulders, the dappled light of beech trees and towering pines. If she looked up towards the canopy she could see the light while at her feet mist rose from the ground. It was chilly, but the morning light cheered her.

  ‘Here, Pip.’ Bruno pronounced her name ‘Peep’, just like Pedro. She stomped her foot as if to stamp out the memory. She knew she shouldn’t feel guilty about her night with Pedro, but she couldn’t help it. Not that it mattered. Jack was clearly about to move on—if he hadn’t already.

  Bruno passed her a bucket and a pair of worn leather gloves then led the way down a narrow track that ran into the forest.

  ‘When I was a child there were bears in this forest,’ he said. ‘Lots of big brown bears. Wolves too. My parents used to shush me on this trail, so we didn’t disturb them. When the leaves are turning, they are looking for food before they go to bed for the winter. My parents, they used to say if I did not behave they would feed me to the bears.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ said Valentina, wrinkling her nose. She glanced over her shoulder, as if checking for bears, and her thick ponytail swung in a perfect curve.

  ‘Come, the walk takes about one hour from here. After we find the chestnuts and the mushrooms, I’ll take you to Arrego’s.’ Bruno had promised lunch at a small bar in a tiny alpine village. Pip’s stomach grumbled; the Italian breakfast of espresso was really not working out for her at all. She was starving.

  They ambled along the path in single file. Bruno, Jack and Valentina were engaged in a heated discussion about malolactic fermentation. The wines were biodynamic—something to do with sheep manure in cow horns buried in the vineyard during certain cycles of the moon. It sounded dubious to Pip. Surely healthy vines owed more to the nutrients than the rotations of the moon. What next? Sacrificing virgins? Pip found it hard to believe a modern winemaker could believe such rubbish. When she was alone with Jack she’d ask him for the scientific evidence. He had an honours degree in viticulture. Surely he didn’t believe this?

  Ignoring the conversation, Pip walked at the back, studying the moist soil and moss. She wondered what the average rainfall would be; judging from the proliferation of lichen she estimated well over fifteen hundred millimetres. Her parents’ chestnut grove in Mount Macedon was lucky to get eight hundred millimetres in a good year. As she walked through the forest, she saw that many branches and trunks had been chopped right back. In fact, it looked like whole sections of the chestnut and oak trees in the forest had been coppiced. This gave a surprise element, as rows and rows of fine straight branches taller than she was thrust straight up into the air from stumps that looked like they were dead. It looked like this forest had been cultivated for years. She had been expecting wilderness, so this mark of civilisation surprised her.

  They walked up and up for nearly an hour, pausing only for sips of water. No wonder Bruno was so wiry—he was a proper mountain goat. Pip did a lot of hiking in Tasmania but Bruno had been at it for a lifetime. It showed. Soon the trees began to thin out, the coppiced rows disappeared and they came to a clearing of grassy meadow and delicate ferns. The mountain environment was so different to Australia, where granite boulders were covered with moss, soft tufts of brown-tinged native grasses and the glossy dark green dianella, acacias and bracken dotted the undergrowth, vying for both sun and precious drops of water, their roots spreading like desperate tentacles under the soil. The smooth white and grey trunks of the mountain eucalyptus dominated the snowline. Here it smelled of sweet rotting chestnuts, rich moss and humus.

  Pip gazed at the biggest chestnut trees she’d ever seen. The grey trunks, wrapped in moss, were so tall and wide, the branches so thick and magical. The mist was clearing; she could no longer see her breath. They all set about filling the buckets with chestnuts. These seemed bigger, darker than the ones at home.

  ‘Better take a pic for your folks,’ said Jack, grinning. ‘Show them what a real chestnut grove looks like. Here, stand against the tree there, so they can get the scale. Smile. Perfect!’

  ‘Thanks.’ Pip reached for the phone and sent a text.

  In the Apennines with Jack harvesting chestnuts. The real deal. Never thought I’d travel around the world to pick chestnuts. Here for another couple of days. Jack says hi. Hope you guys are well. Love, P x

  Pip’s pleasure dimmed for a moment as she recalled her most recent Skype call with her parents. Mary had just been across to Tasmania for the weekend—Megs was looking a bit worn out, she reported. Mary had suggested Megs take a week’s leave just to have a bit of a rest and offered to stay on and look after Chloé. Apparently Megs had laughed and dismissed the idea. A week off surgery meant more work for everyone else, including Will. Megs would never see him. Mary had tried to make light of it, but Pip could tell she was worried about her oldest daughter.

  ‘Pip, hello.’ Jack was waving his hands in front of her face. ‘Here, come and have a look at the huts. These are the old ones where they used to store the fruit that Bruno was telling us about last night. Let’s go have a look inside.’

  She looked up and could see the others about a couple of hundred metres ahead. Valentina glanced back over her shoulder at them and gave a slight wave when she saw them both looking her way. She then went back to pointing at the mushrooms. Even from this distance Pip could tell from the exchange of staccato Italian that she and Bruno were arguing about the type, and how they should be cooked. Bruno was holding his hand to his lips and waving the other as if he were shaking a frypan.

  ‘Here, let’s go inside this one.’ Jack pushed open the worn door and led her into a stone hut with a roof made from woven chestnut branches. The windows were just open squares in the wall. The dirt floor, compacted from years of storage and stomping, was dry and firm.

  Pip twirled around. ‘Wow, this is really something. I should take a photo to send to Dad. Maybe he can build one when he retires.’

  ‘Like that’s ever going to happen,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s talking about it. Mum’s just doing the one day in the clinic at Sunshine now and they were talking about maybe coming to see me in Paris.’

  ‘Yeah. So the secondment in Paris. National Museum of Natural History, huh? Ooh-la-la—very flash. I heard a fun fact about that place once on one of those quiz shows. Apparently they bought a giraffe from Sudan. No-one had ever seen one before. This is in the 1820s. They put it in the hold but had to cut a hole in the deck of the ship for the giraffe to poke its head through. Poor thing. Then, when they disembarked in Marseille, they had to walk
all the way to Paris. With a bloody giraffe. Can you imagine? A giraffe on a dog lead!’ He pulled a face. ‘The leather straps, the spots, the blue tongue. No-one had ever seen anything like it. The funniest thing, though, is that the giraffe hairstyle became the style for fashionable French ladies. À la Girafe.’ He paraded around the small hut with his hand on his hip, pretending he was a catwalk model. ‘Anyway, that giraffe is apparently somewhere in the museum.’

  Pip felt like her temperature had dropped five degrees. Pedro had also mentioned this giraffe. But she didn’t want to think about Pedro right now. ‘O-kay,’ she said, slowly recovering, ‘if I see it I’ll take a pic for you.’ Why was every breath laced with guilt? She and Pedro would probably keep in touch—they were friends and colleagues. That wasn’t unusual. It was just one night—

  ‘I want a selfie with the stuffed giraffe.’

  ‘That’s actually a bit sick. The poor giraffe.’

  They laughed uneasily and Jack tilted his head on the side. He took a step towards her, and then another. He was inches away from her. She could smell the rosemary. ‘I’ve missed you, Pip.’

  She said a touch too quickly, ‘But you and Valentina—is there … ?’

  ‘Shhhh.’ Jack reached out and cradled the back of her neck with a wide hand, and drew her towards him. Her cheek was pressed against his chest, and he stroked her hair with his free hand. Pip started to sob.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jack,’ she mumbled into his shirt.

  ‘Why are you really here, Pip?’

  Pip started to sob even harder. She wiped her nose, discreetly she hoped, on his shirt. The green drill felt so comfortable, so familiar.

  She knew she could be indecisive but she was sure in that moment that she wanted to be with Jack. Perhaps he was prepared to be a bit more flexible? San Sebastián had given Pip time to reflect, so why not Jack? Despite the mountain chill she could feel her cheeks burning. Plenty of people had long-distance relationships—surely that wasn’t beyond them while they sorted out some short-term plans?

  She ran her hands down his back and over his bottom, tucking her hands into his back pockets as she used to do. She squeezed. God, she’d missed him. She felt a flicker in her groin and was aware of her back arching a little and her breasts pressing a little harder into his chest. His arm circled tight around her back and slid under her shirt, tracing a line up her spine and lingering just below her bra strap. He unhooked it with a well-honed flick and Pip wondered—as she always did, with a flush of jealousy—just where the hell he had learned that trick. She took her right hand from his pocket and moved it to his head, her fingers sinking deep into his curls. She could feel Jack’s hips brush against hers slowly at first and then with a sense of urgency; she felt his knees bend slightly and then they were kissing, a deep, tender, familiar kiss.

  Jack inhaled and moaned softly, pulling Pip closer, and she closed her eyes and breathed in his scent of rosemary and sweat as she kissed him harder and deeper—

  There was a knock on the door. ‘Scusi! We have finished with the mushrooms and are heading down to the village.’

  ‘Bruno, hello,’ said Jack a little breathlessly. ‘We’re coming—I was just showing Pip the old huts.’

  They stepped away from each other. Jack cursed as he hitched up his jeans and tucked his shirt back in. He reached out and squeezed her hands. ‘What am I going to do with you, Pip?’

  ‘I want you, Jack.’ She stared at him, suddenly feeling small. ‘But …’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the edge of his mouth twitched into a broad grin as he interrupted her. ‘As in, you want to get marr—’

  ‘But I—I was with someone else,’ she interrupted in a rush. She stepped forward to put her arms around him. ‘I’m so sorry—it didn’t mean anything.’

  Jack’s smile vanished. He pulled out of her embrace and took a step back. ‘What? When?’

  ‘In Spain.’ Pip took a deep breath before lifting her gaze to meet his bewildered expression. ‘Jack,’ she begged, ‘it was nothing—one night.’

  Jack’s blue eyes flickered with hurt and he blinked.

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds as the wind rattled the thin walls of the hut.

  Pip swallowed. ‘Please, Jack …’ She reached for his hand.

  Jack flinched and backed away from her towards the door. Then he stopped. When he looked up at Pip briefly, his tanned face was red and twisted. Blue eyes watering. Then he dropped his head to study the dirt floor, drawing a circle with the toe of his boot. When he spoke, his voice was low and gruff. ‘So you’ve slept with someone else.’ He paused. ‘I hate the idea—’ he clenched his fist ‘—but fair enough. We’d broken up.’

  Pip took a deep breath. She pinched her thigh to stop herself from asking, What about Valentina?

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Just someone I worked with. Pedro. A chef.’ Pip squirmed uncomfortably.

  ‘Of course it was,’ Jack retorted. ‘But—’

  ‘Jack, it was nothing. I mean it.’ Pip closed her eyes, trying to ignore the memory of Pedro’s fingers tracing her hips. It was Jack’s strong hands she wanted. If she could just touch him …

  She opened her eyes to tell him as much when Jack began to speak.

  ‘Let me finish.’ He held up his hand. ‘Just so I’m clear. You came here because you want us to get back together.’ His voice was steady. ‘Are you sure?’

  Pip took a deep breath and almost wept with relief. It was going to be okay. Jack was going to forgive her—even if she couldn’t forgive herself.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. It was silly—it just made me realise how much I missed …’ She paused and gulped down some air. ‘How much I love you.’

  Pip took a deep breath and pulled back her shoulders.

  ‘I understand why you broke off the engagement. But I’m ready to marry you, I promise, just as soon as—’

  But when Pip looked into Jack’s eyes, they were like a wild grey storm. She froze.

  ‘You got your little romp off your chest, but instead of staying here, or coming home, now you want to go to Paris to finish your PhD.’ He squeezed his eyes closed and inhaled.

  The hair on Pip’s arms prickled as the atmosphere in the hut turned cold. Jack opened his eyes and spoke slowly. ‘So what’s changed Pip? You’re still saying we’ll get married when it suits you.’ His voice was hard and mocking.

  Pip felt tears running down her cheeks. Her heart was shattering all over again. Jack didn’t want to marry her at all. Coming to Italy had been a mistake. Worst of all, she’d misjudged Jack.

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ he thundered.

  ‘Jack, stop!’ Pip cried. ‘What about my research? It means more long-term than any stupid house.’ She swallowed, immediately regretting her words, even though she spoke the truth. The ocean would be there long after Ashfield House crumbled. ‘Don’t you want me to be happy?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Jack muttered, shaking his head. ‘What do I have to do with it? It sounds like you’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping yourself happy.’ He turned and strode towards the door. ‘Who am I to stop you from a date with a giraffe?’ he threw over his shoulder as he stormed out.

  Pip stood, rocking and crying with her hands on both cheeks as if she’d just been slapped.

  Jack felt like he was on fire. He was surprised how much he wanted to rip Pip’s clothes off. He’d wanted to do that ever since he’d seen her in that damn dress. And Pip had wanted him too. That much he could tell. But then what?

  He shook his head as he walked up the slope, smelling the sweet musky soil with each heavy step. Dappled light streamed through the yellowing leaves as he moved between shadows under the canopy of the chestnut grove. The mottled grey branches stretched high and wide, blocking the sky. The low boughs felt menacing, as if they were laughing at him. It was all so soft and green, the yellows bright and golden. He missed the scrubby grey-brown gnarled tea-trees protecting the waterfront with faded strappy grasses and brow
ning bracken clumped below. The smell of eucalyptus and the crackle of crisp dry leaves when he hiked to the beach, dry white sand between his toes. He missed the endless wide blue sky that could fill with moving white clouds and turn dark and grey within minutes. Standing in the middle of this majestic, damp forest, the cloying scent of chestnuts filling the air, he yearned for his wild rugged waterfront. Salt, sun and sea. He yearned for Pip.

  Jack studied a flat red toadstool that was bigger than his hand. There were perfect round white dots on top as if it had been painted by a fairy. So pretty, yet poisonous. Deadly.

  Pip had come here to reconcile. Yet she was set on heading for Paris. Why did Pip always put her work first? If she was serious this time, surely they’d work something out? Jack paused, allowing the niggling sensation to creep into his bones that somehow their broken engagement was his fault. Not that it mattered much now. He scratched the side of his neck where he could feel his vein throbbing and kicked the mushroom like a football so it tumbled through the clearing, smashing into tiny pieces.

  She’d slept with another man. Moved on.

  There was no such thing as a fairytale ending.

  Jack wasn’t sure what he would do workwise when vintage finished but he might stay on right through winter to see how they worked the land, pruned and then finished making the wine. It would mean an extra couple of months away from home, but the paperwork was probably going to take a couple of months and he wouldn’t get this chance again for years as he’d be working to pay the debt. The last few weeks Jack hadn’t been certain he wanted Ashfield House anymore. It seemed more burden than blessing. The plan had been to do it with Pip, but now—what?