Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
She seemed weary as Ned conducted her down the path that bisected the walled garden and into the area that had been allowed to fall fallow – and he had a curious impression that he was leading her by the hand. Even stranger, that she wished him to.
‘That was the old dairy,’ he said, pointing it out. ‘My grandmother used to give me glasses of buttermilk when she made the cheeses. But, you can see, we don’t use this bit of the garden any more. It’s too much for one person to manage.’ His finger moved on. ‘That was the rose house, that the peach house and that the vinery. In the old days, you understand...’
Once upon time, the glasshouses had been handsome buildings – arcs of shining glass and white ironwork. But now, with their smashed windows, they looked like buildings that had gone blind.
‘When did it all start running down?’ Matty was profoundly affected by the desolation.
‘After the soldiers left. That must have been 1916, in the winter after Lady Hesther died. Sir Rupert decided to keep on only one gardener, that was me. The garden wasn’t the same after the war.’
‘What soldiers, Mr Sheppey?’
‘The ones that had been wounded. The house was used as a convalescent home for officers. Lady Dysart wanted to help out while Sir Rupert was at the front.’
Matty digested this in silence. ‘So you don’t grow special fruit any longer?’ she said. ‘What happened to the vine?’
‘It was dug up after Lady Dysart died.’ Ned appeared to think that this explanation was sufficient, and Matty did not probe.
The inspection continued. Ned was not talkative, but what he said was to the point. He took Matty inside the vinery and the peach house, and then towards a row of sheds built onto the north wall.
Matty poked her nose into the first one, and the chill lapped her face. The shed was jammed with cobwebby bits of wood and wicker baskets with rotting straps.
‘What are all these?’
Ned stood behind her. ‘We used those hampers to send the fruit and vegetables up to the town house every week. But Sir Rupert sold it when things got bad.’
Mould coated the majority of the baskets. Matty ran her hand over one and it left a green-blue residue on her skin.
When she emerged from the shed, the daylight was bright and she put up a hand to shade her eyes.
‘This one was the mushroom house, that the potting shed, and that one the carpenter’s shed. That one, there, was the forcing house and this one...’ Ned showed her through a green wooden door, ‘is my office.’
Inside it was very cold, because the room faced north, and the brick floor added to the chill. Matty felt guilty and asked Ned if he spent much time in here. When he said he did, she resolved to procure him somewhere warmer.
There was just space enough for two people to lean against the counter top, which was so fixed that it caught the maximum light from the window. Stacked on a shelf were Ned’s account books, their marbled backs powdery with age. On each of the spines was inscribed the name of the house and the date. ‘Nineteen fifteen,’ Matty read. ‘Nineteen eighteen. The war years.’ She touched the faded leather cartouche on the spine. ‘I was only eight in nineteen fifteen.’ A puff of dust rose from the spine and settled. ‘A terrible war.’ She paused and said, rather self-consciously, ‘Sometimes, Mr Sheppey, I think the war will be with us for the rest of our lives. It’s always hanging in the background and we can never get rid of it.’
Ned said nothing. He had been too flat-footed and chesty to go.
‘Was anybody in the family killed?’
This was safer ground for Ned. ‘Lady Dysart’s brother, Mr Kennedy. Very fond of him, she was. When the war started, he was over here from America, visiting. Anyway, he wangled his way into the Hampshires with Sir Rupert. You could do that if you talked to the right person. We went to see them off at Farnham station...’
The station was choked with reservists making their way to their regiments, and the boys being sent out from the barracks, Ned said. There was a boy trumpeter, too. They blew the orders for the units to go forward with the guns or to cease fire. Only a trumpet can carry over the noise of battle. Anyway, he was there, and a lot of women and children, shrieking and waving banners, some of them crying.
The train at the platform was hung with a rough-and-ready banner made by the village children. In the first-class compartment sat a hamper filled with chicken pies, an Irish ham, hard-boiled eggs and a bottle of port, which Ned’s mother had got up for the master.
Anyway, the band did them proud. Lady Dysart pecked Sir Rupert on the cheek and he climbed into the train. He looked fine in his uniform, it suited his kind of looks. Then she and Mr Kennedy talked for a long time – they were very alike to look at. He hugged her and she hugged him, and she pulled down her veil so it hid her face. She was dressed in dark green, Ned remembered, in a material that floated around her feet.
‘Mr Kennedy stood on the steps of the train and waved, and that was the last we saw of him. Lady Dysart was not the same after he died.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Matty sadly.
‘I do my seed orders here,’ Ned said. Matty took her cue to change the subject.
She gazed at the books, the piles of paper stacked on the bench, Ned’s pencil laid to one side and a list of seeds, written in a large hand, tacked up on the wall. She inhaled a mixture of soil and whitewash. There was sanity in the things here, she thought, which must help to douse old griefs. Not even the blood and pain of war could penetrate the heart of a garden.
‘Thank you, Mr Sheppey.’ She backed out into the sunshine. ‘Do you think we could get the garden back to what it was like?’
A variety of expressions crossed Ned’s face, all of them unreadable. ‘It would take years,’ he said.
She pointed to the paths that criss-crossed the walled-in space. ‘Isn’t it there? The old garden, I mean. Underneath? It’s just a question of finding it. And of compost, of course.’
‘I felt that mean,’ Ned reported later to his wife, ‘discouraging her. But she doesn’t have an idea how much work there’d be to put the garden to rights.’
It was bath-time in Clifton Cottage, and Ned was in a tin bath in front of the fire. Ellen examined for cleanliness a washcloth, which had once been part of her mother’s nightdress, before soaking it in the hot water. She squeezed it over Ned’s head.
‘You should have been a bit kinder. The poor thing doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
‘It’s only a passing fancy.’ Ned allowed Ellen to soap between his toes. Hard at the best of times, the water was beige-coloured and scum-flecked. Ellen winced as she knelt on her bad knee to wash Ned’s back. It had developed a lump since the accident and was uncomfortable. Ned’s skin was dead white across his shoulder blades, and flecked with moles, but where his neck rose out of his shirt collar, the skin was light brown and softly wrinkled. When she had finished, Ellen got up and picked up the towel airing by the stove. ‘Up,’ she said.
Ned dried himself. A good rub between the legs, over the back and down the arms. He never varied the ritual. Ellen held out his long johns, then his shirt and, hampered by his damp skin, Ned fought to get into his clothing. Ellen went on, ‘Mrs Dawes is worried that she’s going to poke her nose into everything. I said to her, why shouldn’t she? Apparently she wants to have the attics out, and to make a list of everything in the house. If you ask me, Mrs Dawes has a bad conscience because she hasn’t kept everything up to scratch. I’ve seen cupboards of stuff in the old laundry and the attics are a disgrace.’
Ned was not paying attention. ‘I suppose it could be done.’
‘What?’
‘The garden, Ellen. What do you think we’ve been talking about?’
‘Well, I’ve been talking about something, and you weren’t listening.’
Ellen scooped the bucket into the tin bath and brought it up dripping. ‘You have to watch it, Ned. That family can be careless. They could be careless with us.’
Ned pulled out his pipe, and knocked burnt tobacco shreds into the stove. ‘Been to the cinema lately, girl?’ he asked. ‘Giving you ideas, is it?’
As soon as Matty felt the moment was right – and she had not quite gauged how to tackle Kit – she asked him if he had plans to overhaul the garden.
Kit was reading a letter from Raby. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said and did not bother to look up. ‘Do you think we should put your railway shares into steel?’
‘Would you allow me to do so?’
At that Kit gave Matty his full attention. She fiddled with a loose thread on her suit. ‘I’m quite keen on the idea and I’ve been reading about it. Gardening, I mean.’
‘Oh.’
‘
The Home Gardener’s Year
and
Popular Gardening Annual
cost the grand sum of half a crown and there’s heaps in them.’
‘Good,’ said Kit.
‘Then there is Miss Jekyll.’
‘Yes, I have heard of her.’
‘She thinks flowers should be planted in drifts, just like a painting. It’s a lovely idea.’
‘If you like that sort of thing.’
Matty got up and poured Kit some whisky. ‘It’s the roses that fascinate me. Listen to this... albas, chinas, Bourbons, noisettes...’
‘Have you gone Pre-Raphaelite or something?’ asked Kit, accepting the glass.
‘No,’ said Matty with a smile. ‘Those are the names given to the roses. Bit like poetry, really. So are the colours. Frothing white. Waxy cream. Blush pink.’
Kit put down the letter and spread his arm along the length of the sofa. ‘All right,’ he said, with his uneven smile. ‘You’ve made your point. What do you want?’
Matty dropped down beside him. ‘Let me organize the garden. Please, Kit. It would give me so much pleasure. I wouldn’t tamper with it. Only restore it to what it was.’
He stared at her, the remote look, and she realized that she had made a mistake. Kit did not want her in the garden.
He did not want her anywhere.
Kit struggled to be polite. Matty’s request touched on complicated feelings, not properly understood nor admitted, dark feelings from which he had distanced himself over many years and which had become a habit.
The house, yes, and Kit was grateful for all Matty had done, truly he was. But the garden belonged to another part of his past, and he did not wish Matty to be involved.
Not yet, anyway.
‘Look, Matty,’ Kit took both her hands in his and held them tightly – for this problem was not of Matty’s making – and gave her the half truth at which he was becoming adept, ‘there’s too much to do. What with Father and Flora’s coming out.’
‘Please, Kit.’ She looked woebegone and unhappy, and her excitement was visibly draining away. Kit cursed himself.
He took a deep breath and lied. ‘I promised the doctor that you wouldn’t do too much. He gave me a serious lecture about your health, Matty.’
March is a dangerous month: like a sexual tease, it can blow hot and cold, and it is impossible to anticipate which. A gardener
knows
November for what it is, expects nothing of January, but March is different. Seduced by the sun creeping through bare branches and by earth freckling with green, gardeners and, let it be said, plants, enjoy a collective
folie de grandeur.
How many times have hydrangeas, roses and clematis fallen cheerfully to growing, only to be savaged by frost and a north wind?
So, you ask, what can the gardener expect from March? After all, it is named after the god of war. Here I must put in my apologia for forsythia. ‘So violent,’ says Thomas. ‘But brave,’ say I. What other plant is generous enough to pour out gold at this time of year? I love it, and look for it each spring.
The forsythia does not sulk, unlike the hellebore. If sited in too heavy a shade,
Helleborus argutifolius,
another favourite of mine, collapses and yields its ghost to the wind. From the safety of the nursery till, I advise its lovers to give it deep rich soil, preferably lime and dappled shade and it will reward you with pale green flowers in March and April. Mix with the
Helleborus orientalis,
throw in a nostrum and good management, and the effect can be startling.
This is not to overlook the primulas or anemones, which do such valiant work under trees. I prefer white anemones, with their plump buds that open into slim white fingers. Once established, you can happily neglect them, a quality to cherish, and they will puff into charming drifts.
Apparently, the numbers visiting Hinton Dysart have doubled in the last five years and a new car park is being constructed in the East Field. ‘The roses,’ the Trust has concluded in its annual report, ‘are the main attraction.’
Yes, that is right, but there are other things about Hinton Dysart. It exudes an indefinable quality, a nostalgia peculiar to England, a sense of order and, lying below the surface, the suggestion that the memory of many lives is folded into its fabric. Traces of old passions and tears, of striving, disappointment and happiness are echoed in the elusive scent of the pot-pourri, in the memorabilia and fading photographs.
Thomas tells me he does not agree. What is remembered by the visitor? he asks. A glimpse of a face in a grainy photograph, or the pink beauty of my mother’s favourite ‘Queen of Denmark’?
Unlike March, April is a roundabout of sun and rain. A dazzle of warm days and sharp evenings. April means wallflowers in spicy-scented formation, like soldiers deployed on a battlefield. In my grandfather’s memory, I plant only tawny crimsons, as dark as the blood on the fields in Flanders.
‘Vulcan’ is my favourite, and I make sure there are pots of it under the drawing-room window of the cottage, placed in the spot where the sun warms their scent glands – and where Thomas and I will drowse after too good a lunch.
In health, Rupert was a difficult man and he was even more so in illness. On the afternoon that he returned home from hospital, he demanded whisky and to see Danny. Neither wish was granted then or later – which was just as well as Robbie was waiting, battlelight in her eye, to take on Danny.
In fact, she had been waiting for years, for when Bert Naylor,
Sergeant
Bert Naylor, donned his khaki, pressed the then young Violet Robson to his manly chest in farewell and went off to die of a blown-off head at Ypres, he left behind a woman of passionate emotions. Luckily for Violet, the Dysarts needed her services and, as Violet slipped into ‘Robbie’ and her life was subsumed by a family that was not her own, so she transferred her energies from the dead Bert to the living Rupert.