The Bluebonnet Betrayal

by Marty Wingate

  “They should be all tucked up in bed by now,” Pru told Christopher, heading that way herself. “I’m collecting them at seven in the morning—I hope one of them remembers to set an alarm, otherwise I’ll be standing on the pavement ringing them.” She retraced her steps to look into her vast canvas bag, confirming she had the list of phone numbers for the women. They were all using their U.S. cellphones while in England, but had said they would call home online.

  “And Twyla?” Christopher asked.

  “Yes, in a day or two. Or so I’m told.” At that moment, Pru was growing quite weary of the promised coming of Twyla Woodford.

  —

  Blue skies greeted the women of the Austin Rock Garden Society when they opened their door the next morning.

  “I thought it rained here all the time,” Sweetie said, blinking into the sunshine.

  Pru had seen the forecast for the afternoon, but decided not to share it. They walked to the Chelsea grounds.

  “Taxis would take longer in the morning traffic,” she explained. “Really—it isn’t far.” Each of the women lugged a large day bag stuffed with their gear. “Can I give any of you a hand?”

  “No, we’re okay, honey,” Ivory said.

  At the London gate, they paused to pull on high-vis vests, work passes, and boots before clomping down the roadway. At the top of Main Avenue, Pru turned to give a few words of introduction to the show, and saw that they had somehow lost KayAnn and Nell. The two women had stopped just inside the gate and cuddled up to one of the Chelsea pensioners who wore his formal scarlet coat and tricorne hat—they were taking selfies. Pru waved until she caught their attention, and waited for them to catch up.

  Down the avenue they all trailed, following Pru, who gave up on a tour when the noise from construction kept interrupting her narrative. Twice more, she discovered KayAnn and Nell lagging as they chatted with crewmembers at other gardens. Each time, mother hen Pru backtracked to collect them.

  They drew up at the Rock Garden Bank, and Pru spread her arms wide. “Right, here we are.” The women lined up on one side of the boundary rope along the road, and on the other side, Chiv, Iris, and Teddy stood with spades in hand. Roddy lounged near the excavator. Both his and Chiv’s eyes darted among the women’s faces.

  “This is it,” Ivory said in a whisper, and followed it with a shout. “This is IT, ladies. Yes!” All five women put fists in the air, whooped and hollered, and broke out into a chorus of “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You,” causing the Aussies next door to stop work and watch.

  The women dropped their day bags and dragged out bright blue hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with ARGS—AUSTIN ROCKS! across the back and front. They tore off their vests and pulled on the sweatshirts, after which they produced more from their bags and handed them out. During the commotion, Chiv nodded Pru over. Roddy stepped closer.

  “Where’s Twyla?” Chiv asked Pru.

  She sighed. Behind them, she heard Ivory say to Teddy, “Don’t worry, honey, we’ve got extras. We’ll find one with long enough arms.”

  “Delayed,” Pru said to Chiv.

  “She’s supposed to…”

  “Yes, I know. But if she isn’t here, she isn’t here.” Pru shrugged. “Something came up. She’ll be here in a day or two.” She repeated Ivory’s words, but with less conviction.

  To her astonishment, Chiv threw the spade against a pallet of stones. It hit hard, sparked, and a spray of rock fragments flew through the air. He stabbed a finger at Roddy. “This is your fault!” he shouted.

  “My fault?” Roddy shouted back. “You think I’m the reason she’s afraid to show her face round here?”

  “You’ve done everything you could to undermine this project.” Chiv grabbed rolled-up plans out of his pocket and pointed them at Roddy like a saber.

  “You’re off your nut if you think I’d spoil this for her!”

  Iris joined the shouting match. “Listen to the two of you. She’s got you wrapped round her little finger—always has!”

  “There!” Roddy pointed at Iris. “You want to know why she isn’t here, ask your little bulldog! Twyla probably fears for her life.”

  Silence fell, as if all the diggers and cranes and forklifts on the entire hospital grounds ceased at once. Pru, along with the Austin women, stood staring.

  “Good morning,” said a chipper voice, and Pru turned to see Forde. “Where’s Ms. Woodford?”

  “How to Make a Successful Garden: Prioritize your tasks, have everything at the ready, stay hydrated, and above all, do not bite off more than you can chew!”

  Tips and Trends, from Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

  Chapter 5

  It seemed as if every time Pru left the women at a task for five minutes, both minds and bodies wandered. They hadn’t been in the country twenty-four hours—Pru reminded both herself and Chiv that jet lag could be a lingering problem. Forde, a gnat no one seemed willing to swat away, took turns chatting with each of the Austin women while Pru tried to get them to work. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how important those bluebonnets are to me in my negotiations with GlobalSynergy. They are a symbol of my unique method of transference to create a worldwide energy source with only minimal changes to the structure. Each crop sown will provide…”

  “Crop?” Rosette cut in. “We don’t sow crops of bluebonnets—they reseed themselves into the native landscape where we’ve been able to reestablish them. We let nature have its way.”

  Pru walked away as Forde sputtered a reply.

  “We’ll need to check the contour and elevation of the soil at the back here,” she told KayAnn and Nell, who only a moment before had been behind her, but now had migrated to the rope boundary of the garden site, where they stood side by side, staring up Main Avenue. Pru saw one of them rummage in a pocket and draw something small out and hold it in front of her, while the other peered through a set of opera glasses.

  “Oh, um,” Pru began, but once again Rosette cut in.

  “KayAnn and Nell, get back here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they chorused, and scampered back to business.

  Pru counted their numbers—still missing one. She glanced round and spotted Sweetie leaning up against a forklift at the next garden, talking to a tall Aussie. He said something, and Sweetie laughed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Chiv noticed, too. “Oi, Skippy!” he called. “Hands off—she’s ours.”

  Skippy smiled. Sweetie blushed and returned to work.

  Only Ivory and Rosette kept their noses to the grindstone—half the morning with Forde at their elbows telling them stories of chemical compounds. Roddy had departed for Leicester not long after learning of Twyla’s no-show.

  “Can any of you run one of those things?” Chiv asked, nodding to the excavator.

  “I can,” Ivory answered. “I made myself a bulldozer garden when we moved into our house about fifteen years ago. Got a little earthmover and had the time of my life changing contours. It sure does beat a shovel.”

  “Good,” Chiv said. “I’ll get you on that trench at the back soon.”

  He unrolled garden plans and stood off to the side studying them. Rosette peered over his shoulder, and after a minute, she pointed to the drawing and said, “What’s this?”

  “MacWeeks wants to change the old petrol pump out for a rusted fruit machine,” Chiv said.

  “What’s a fruit machine?” Ivory asked.

  “It’s a slot machine,” Pru said. “It’s called a fruit machine here because the reels have pictures of fruit on them.” She spun her finger in a circle to demonstrate. “But that’s ridiculous—a fruit machine in the middle of the bluebonnets?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Ivory insisted. “We’re not putting a slot machine in the garden. Twyla won’t stand for it.”

  Chiv shrugged. Pru heard a voice behind her say, “Frau Woodford,” and another voice said, “Jawohl!” followed by giggling. She turned round
in time to see Rosette throw KayAnn and Nell a look. The two women cast their gazes down to their steel-toed boots.

  —

  In the afternoon, Chiv gave them a short course on wall construction, the different shapes and sizes of rocks and their purposes. He set them to sorting the first pallet, and after an hour, he graded their work. Pru wished she’d had the chance to remind him that the Austin Rock Garden Society was mostly about plants that grew in rock gardens, not the rocks themselves. No one received a high score until Chiv kicked a toe at a rock that Sweetie had set aside.

  “And this one—well, that’s a top stone, isn’t it?”

  “That’s why I put it there—I knew it was different from the others,” she said, pulling off a work glove to tuck hair behind her ear. “I used to help my daddy do this very thing. Daddy loved rocks. On weekends, just for fun, he used to drive out in the country and find old homesteads with tumbled-down walls and rebuild them. I always went with him.”

  Chiv grinned at her. “Good to know one of you can see straight when it comes to stones. You’re…er…”

  “Sweetie.”

  Chiv cleared his throat, as if working up the nerve to call her by her chosen name.

  “I could use some help here,” Iris called over. “I’m going for tea.”

  “I’ll come along,” Chiv said.

  “No, you stay,” Iris said, turning to the women. “Would you mind lending a hand? Sweetie, is it?”

  “Sure thing.” Sweetie got up, brushed herself off, and left with Iris. Pru wondered how long it would take for Sweetie to be set straight about Iris and Chiv’s relationship.

  “Right, you lot—” Chiv pointed, and Pru filled in with “KayAnn and Nell.” “Right, you can start again after tea.” Dismissed, KayAnn and Nell jumped up and scurried over to the edge of the garden. There they stood side by side staring up Main Avenue.

  “Which one is which?” Chiv asked Pru quietly.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  —

  The rain began after tea, and with every drip, drip, drip, the women’s energy and attention washed farther away. When Pru looked objectively at what they had accomplished for the day, it wasn’t much. She suggested to Chiv that they be let go early. He shrugged, and Pru thanked him, noting how quickly she’d learned to interpret his silent answers.

  Once dismissed, the women seemed to discover a new reserve of energy, shaking rain off the hoods of their waterproofs. Heading for the gate, they chattered about the Whole Foods they’d spotted near their house. Pru turned to Chiv.

  “It’ll be better tomorrow.”

  —

  But not much. And Monday evening during their bedtime chat, Pru couldn’t even speak of the garden with Christopher. On one hand, she wished she could give Twyla Woodford a piece of her mind for putting this fiasco in motion and abandoning them to it, and on the other hand, she half-hoped the woman would cancel her appearance completely and let them get on with it.

  “Why don’t you come home?” Christopher asked. “You’ve done what you could.”

  “No, I can’t. We’ll get it done one way or another.” He didn’t press, and only said he’d see her soon.

  She rang off and looked at the empty pillow next to her. Christopher would drive up on Wednesday—two days away, not too far off. They’d be further along and she would have only good things to tell him about the garden. She closed her eyes, weary, muscles sore, longing for sleep. It did not come. Instead, thoughts and images crowded into her mind—rain, pallets of stone, the trench a muddy river.

  Her eyes popped open, her teeth clenched. She felt her heart racing. Christopher was right—what good was she doing here?

  A deep breath and slow exhalation. No, it would be fine. She would see it through—it couldn’t last long, after all. Twyla would arrive soon. The rain would stop. They would build a garden. Pru forced her eyes shut. Still, it was an hour before sleep finally won the battle.

  —

  “These aren’t Texas madrones,” Rosette said the next morning, mouth set in a hard line as she read over a revised plant list.

  “No,” Pru said. “Sadly, they don’t do well enough here, and so we’ll have Arbutus unedo—a really fabulous multistemmed madrone. European, but a close relative—same lovely evergreen foliage, same red bark. I know you’ll like it.” That statement cost Pru a fair amount of optimism—Rosette hadn’t liked much of anything so far.

  “English plants in a Texas landscape,” Rosette replied. “Doesn’t it just figure?”

  “Not English,” Pru said, her face heating up. “It’s native to the Mediterranean. And Ireland.” She muttered that last part. “And anyway, we’ll have a sea of bluebonnets—the real thing, Lupinus texensis. It’ll be breathtaking, won’t it, Roddy?” The designer had made a rare appearance, and she turned to him now for backup.

  “We need to focus on the impact this garden will make on Chelsea visitors,” Roddy said, pumping his fist as if he were giving his team a pep talk. “Look at it as a grand art installation—would you care what brand of paint was used?”

  Pru tried to make sense of this but gave up, deciding it must have to do with art theory. Rosette shook her head and turned away.

  “Ms. Parke?”

  Arthur Nottle, assistant show director, stood at the curb of the roadway, his suit protected by an unbuttoned raincoat that flapped in the breeze. He had a pleasant smile on his face. He had been courteous during the meeting Pru had attended on Saturday. But she knew a pleasant attitude could go only so far.

  “Mr. Nottle,” Pru said. She looked round—she stood alone with the women. Roddy, with his sixth sense for avoiding responsibility, had disappeared. Chiv as well—Pru saw the door of the shed closing. “Let me introduce you to the members of the Austin Rock Garden Society.” She named off the women, who responded with nods and hellos.

  “Well, ladies, you’re very welcome to the Chelsea Flower Show,” Nottle said with a quick scan of the group. “And now, how many does this make you?”

  The answer was “not enough,” but Pru couldn’t speak it, because that would cast aspersions on the women, on Austin, ARGS, and Chiv. Roddy, too, Pru supposed, but she wasn’t sure if she cared as much about him. “We’ll be adding to our numbers, of course,” she said. “As needed.” They needed them now.

  “Mr. Chiverton?” Nottle called back to the contractor.

  Chiv emerged from the shed and feigned surprise. “Didn’t see you arrive,” he lied.

  “Perhaps you and I could take a moment to review the schedule,” Nottle said.

  Chiv hesitated. His eyes darted toward Pru—only for a second, but long enough for her to see the plea.

  All right, all right. “Mr. Nottle, can I help? I’d hate to take Chiv away right at this moment.”

  “Of course, Ms. Parke, that’s very good of you.”

  They walked away from the garden and stood near the construction site for the gift shop.

  “And how are things progressing?” he asked. “I’m sure you remember that in a very few days, heavy equipment will need to be off the site. I’m afraid there can be no exceptions. And, of course, planting should be completed immediately thereafter.”

  Pru reminded herself that Arthur Nottle was only the messenger and he had every right to check on them. She glanced over his shoulder at the ARGS site. Bare earth, pallets of stone—most of them untouched as yet—a trench for the wall but very little wall, and a shed.

  “Great,” she replied, smiling broadly. “Really great.”

  Arthur Nottle smiled.

  “We are keeping an eye on the calendar, of course,” Pru continued, succumbing to the silence, yet wishing people understood a conversation was a two-way event, and one should not leave it to the other to dig herself into and then out of an enormous hole. “But actually, everything is going along just as it should be. You’ll be amazed when you see the finished product.”

  Arthur Nottle’s silent, stoic countenance seemed to say, I’ll be ama
zed if it’s finished.

  “Have you been to Texas before, Mr. Nottle?”

  The brief appearance of surprise on his face told Pru she’d broken his concentration. Faced with a direct question, he seemed to realize he had no alternative but to answer. “I have not, Ms. Parke.”

  Pru seized on the opportunity to describe the hill country landscape to him. “Other ecologically sensitive environments have been on the world’s stage here at Chelsea, and we are ever so grateful for our chance. I look on this as the hallmark for horticultural education—as are so many of the large gardens here in Britain. Did you know that I studied briefly at Wisley when I first arrived in the country?”

  He nibbled at her bait, and they entered into a brief discussion of the perennial meadow behind the glasshouse at Wisley, the garden where she had interned her first month in London. When she saw him glance at his watch, she said, “Well, I certainly don’t want to keep you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your time,” Nottle said. “I haven’t been able to connect with Mr. MacWeeks lately, and it’s always good to stay in touch. May I consider you the liaison for the garden?”

  “Of course you may,” she said. That is, until Twyla arrived, upon which time Pru would dump the entire business in her lap.

  “International Gardening: Label the native country for each of these plants—lantana, crape myrtle, possumhaw, scaevola. Extra points will be awarded for the botanical name of each.”

  Quiz Time at the monthly meeting of the Austin Rock Garden Society

  Chapter 6

  By some miracle—and the concentrated efforts of Chiv, Teddy, and Pru—they managed to put in the liner for the water reservoir, which stretched seven feet across and two feet deep. It would hold more than seven hundred gallons of water—Pru had had to convert from the metric to reach a volume she understood. They installed the pump to draw up the water and buried the cord leading to the power source at the back of the garden. After that, Chiv, as if in a world of his own, occupied himself with setting the stones in place, stacking them up into a cairn, to hide the bubbler in the center. When he finished, the rocks looked as if they’d been there for eons and it took no stretch of the imagination for Pru to visualize the water gurgling out as if it were truly a natural spring.