The Last Garden in England Read online

  Emma offered her a small smile. “And now you’ve decided to put it back together again.”

  “That’s right. We’re Sydney and Andrew Wilcox, saviors of old houses.”

  “And their gardens,” Emma said.

  “I hope that the scale of the project hasn’t scared you off,” Sydney said.

  Even if the size of the Highbury House project had been intimidating, Emma still would have taken it. Mallow Glen had run over by a month because of three different issues with suppliers, forcing her to sacrifice a smaller job doing up a cottage garden in Leicestershire while prepping for Highbury House. Losing that additional injection of money into the business hurt, but Highbury would be a much bigger prize.

  “It is tricky,” she admitted. “We just don’t have that much to go on in the way of original documentation or photos, so I’ve drawn up plans based on Venetia’s other designs from the same era.”

  “I’ll work on those boxes, I promise,” said Sydney. “Now, what happens next?”

  “The crew arrives. You’ve already met Charlie, but there’s Jessa, Zack, and Vishal, too. They’ll start by clearing away the overgrown vegetation so we can really see what we’re working with. I should be able to show you final plans this week.”

  Sydney clasped her hands in front of her, looking for all the world as though she was about to break out into song like the heroine in a musical. Instead, she said, “I cannot wait.”

  Neither, Emma thought, can I.

  * * *

  Emma shifted the groceries she’d picked up from one arm to the other and pulled the keys out of her pocket. The letting agent had offered to walk her through Bow Cottage, but she had politely declined. After a day of following Sydney around, she was craving the peace and quiet of her rental.

  After just two attempts, she managed to open the red front door and switch the hall light on. She let the door swing shut behind her and let out a sigh of relief before setting about searching for the kitchen in her home for the next nine months. She would deal with the luggage crammed into the back of her car later. First she needed a cup of tea and to charge her mobile.

  She found a good-sized sitting room right off the entryway and a small study next to it. Across the hall was a dining room with a big plank-topped table that she would use for drafting rather than entertaining. Next door was the kitchen: basic but pretty, with gauze curtains hanging in the wide windows that looked out over a brick patio and lawn of dwarf ryegrass with a mature Magnolia grandiflora at the back. She slid her grocery bags onto the counter, plugged in her dead phone, filled the electric kettle that stood ready, and began stocking her temporary refrigerator.

  She’d just put yogurt and milk away when a message chimed through. She winced when she saw how many texts she’d missed, including several from Charlie asking her if she wanted him to bring anything the next morning when they met on-site and then teasing her for letting her phone run down yet again.

  As she kept scrolling, she saw she’d missed a call from Dad. She dialed him back and put the phone on speaker so she could continue to unload her provisions.

  “You all right, Emma?” came her dad’s voice, his South London accent out in full force.

  “You sound chipper,” she said with a smile.

  “I’ve been waiting by the phone all day to hear how your first day went.”

  “Hello, love!” called her mother, somewhere in the background. “I’m glad to see you aren’t neglecting your loving parents.”

  “Your mother says hello,” said Dad, tempering his wife’s greeting.

  Emma sighed. “Sorry I didn’t call earlier. My phone died.”

  He laughed. “Your phone is always dying. How was the garden?”

  She placed bread out on the counter. “Sad. The current owners, Sydney and Andrew, bought it off Sydney’s parents, who inherited it from her grandfather. It sounds like Sydney’s parents did what they could to keep the place standing, but anything else was beyond their reach. You can imagine the state of the garden.”

  “That bad?” he asked.

  “In some places it’s been dug over entirely, but others are just wild. There are four morello cherry trees that look as though they haven’t been properly dealt with in thirty years. And then there’s the bottom of the garden. It’s all a mess, and there’s one garden room I can’t even figure out the theme of.”

  “Sounds as though you’ve got your work cut out for you,” he said.

  “I do. The place must have looked beautiful even just five years after Venetia finished it.” Except she doubted Venetia Smith ever saw her work come to fruition. As far as Emma knew, she’d never come back to Britain once she left.

  “I’m sure it was.” The line went muffled, and she could tell Dad had done his best to cover the microphone on his mobile. She braced herself for the moment he came on again and said, “Your mum wants to speak to you.”

  Before she could give some excuse—she was tired, she needed to get dinner on—she heard the shifting of the phone from one hand to the other and Mum came on. “Have you heard anything from the foundation?”

  “Hello, Mum. I’m doing well, thanks for asking.”

  “We’re waiting on pins and needles here, Emma. You need that head of conservation job,” said her mother, ignoring her.

  “Need” wasn’t the way Emma would put it, but she tried her best to shove her annoyance aside. Mum wanted the best for her, and to Mum a stable job at the prestigious Royal Botanical Heritage Society was the best a girl from Croydon without a university degree could hope for.

  “I don’t know yet. They said they’d call if I progressed into the next round of interviews,” she said.

  “Of course they’ll want to bring you in again. They couldn’t find anyone better to head up their conservancy efforts. And you could have a steady paycheck for once in your life.”

  “I have a steady paycheck,” she said. Most of the time.

  “Didn’t you spend last summer chasing down that horrible couple who refused to pay you?” her mother asked.

  It would have been more accurate to say that her solicitor chased the couple who’d refused to pay the last half of her fees and tried to stick her with a bill of £10,000 for rare plants and hardscaping they’d insisted she work into their garden’s design.

  “They paid in the end,” she said with a sigh, remembering the legal fees that had cut into the money she’d recovered.

  “After you threatened legal action.”

  “That doesn’t happen very often,” she said.

  “Admit it, love. Turning Back Thyme is a good little business, but it isn’t exactly paving the streets with gold.”

  “Mum—”

  “If you took the foundation job, you could finally buy a house. Prices aren’t so bad if you go far enough south of the Thames. You could have your own garden, and you could be so much closer to your father and me instead of roving all over the place,” said Mum.

  “I like moving around,” she said.

  “Your father and I didn’t pay all of those school fees for you to be homeless,” her mother pushed.

  “Mum! I’m not homeless. I live where I work. Besides, if the foundation offered me the job—which they haven’t even done second interviews for—I’d still have to figure out what to do with my company. That isn’t an easy decision.”

  “You could sell it.”

  “Mum.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  The denial didn’t come as fast as it should have. She loved Turning Back Thyme, but owning a business alone was hard. She lived with the near-constant stress of wondering if this was going to be the year things came crashing down. A few bad jobs—or a stretch of no work—and it wouldn’t just be her livelihood on the line, but her entire crew’s.

  If all she had to do was design, it would be heaven, but it was so much more than that. She was also accounting, HR, payroll, marketing, sales all rolled into one. Some days she’d stumble from working on a
site to a night spent over her laptop, processing the piles of digital paperwork that came with running a small business. Then she’d fall into bed, only to wake up with a gasp from the recurring nightmare of logging in to the business’s bank account only to find a £75,000 overdraft.

  It was days like that—and conversations like this—that made her wonder if she was kidding herself that she could do this for the rest of her life.

  Clearing her throat, she said, “I need to make dinner and get ready for tomorrow.”

  “You have so much potential, Emma.”

  I didn’t raise you to dig around in the dirt all day.

  You were supposed to be better than this.

  You threw everything away, Emma.

  What a disappointment.

  Emma couldn’t unhear those words thrown at her during every single fight they’d had when Emma had turned her back on university and chosen this life. A life that Mum, who had risen above her working-class roots, hadn’t wanted for her.

  “I need to go, Mum,” she said lamely.

  “Send us photos of the house you’re staying in,” her mother said, her tone shifting to cheerfulness now that she’d gotten her shots in.

  “And the garden, too!” her father shouted in the background.

  “I will,” she promised. She hung up and turned back to her groceries, trying to shake off the creeping doubt that Mum was right.

  • VENETIA •

  TUESDAY, 5 FEBRUARY 1907

  Highbury House

  Sunny; winds out of the east

  Each new garden is like an unread book, its pages brimming with possibility. This morning, as I stood on the step to Highbury House, I nearly trembled with excitement. Every garden—every hard-fought commission—feels like a triumph, and I am determined that Highbury House shall be my greatest effort yet.

  But I am rushing my story.

  I rang the bell, setting a dog off barking somewhere in the house, and waited, tugging at the lapels of my navy wool coat that looked so smart against the white of my shirt. Adam had approved of my appearance before sending me off on the train with a promise that he would look after the house and garden while I was in Warwickshire.

  I glanced around, wondering at how stark Highbury House looked stripped of the wreaths and garlands that had merrily hung on doors and windows when I visited in December. Mrs. Melcourt, the lady of the house, was out visiting that day, but Mr. Melcourt spoke to me at length before letting me walk the long lawn and tired beds of a garden so lacking in imagination it saddened me. He purchased the house three years ago and now, having done over all the rooms, he’s turned his attention outside. He commissioned me on the recommendation of several of my past clients whom he no doubt wishes to impress. He wants a garden imbued with elegance and ambition, one that will look as though it has been in the family for years rather than being a new acquisition funded by the recent inheritance of his soap fortune.

  The huge front door groaned open, revealing a housekeeper starched into a somber uniform of high-necked black with a chain of keys hanging off her like a medieval chatelaine.

  “Good morning,” she intoned, her measured voice laced with Birmingham.

  I gripped the cardboard tube of papers I’d carried up from London a little tighter. “Good morning. I am Miss Venetia Smith. I have an appointment with Mr. Melcourt.”

  The housekeeper assessed me from the brim of my hat to the toe of my boot. Her mouth thinned sharp as a reed when she spotted the mud I’d acquired performing one last check of my roses that morning.

  “I can remove them if you like,” I said archly.

  The housekeeper’s back stiffened as though I’d poked her with a hatpin. “That will not be necessary, Miss Smith.”

  The woman led me to a double drawing room and gestured to me to wait just outside the door. I could see that the room was undeniably grand, with a half-open set of pocket doors that could divide the hand-tooled wood-paneled walls. At one end, a carved marble fire surround stood watch over a roaring blaze. Overhead, a large chandelier glinted with electric lights in dozens of glass cups, illuminating tapestries and paintings. Yet the grandest ornament of all sat at the center of the room: a tiny blond woman in a white wool day dress belted with a slash of black. Across from her were three children, sitting in a row, their nanny watching over the eldest girl as she read out, “Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing!’ ”

  “My dear,” said the woman in white, who I presumed was Mrs. Melcourt.

  The child stopped at once. From the armchair rose the barrel-chested Mr. Melcourt, wearing a suit of inky black.

  “Miss Smith,” the housekeeper announced.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Creasley. Please show her in,” said Mrs. Melcourt.

  Mrs. Creasley stepped back so I could take her place.

  “Miss Smith, I trust your journey was not too difficult,” said Mr. Melcourt with a curt nod of his head.

  I watched, fascinated by the way his Adam’s apple bounced against the stiff collar of his shirt. Was every member of the household a prisoner to starch?

  “It was very pleasant, thank you,” I said.

  “My wife, Mrs. Melcourt,” said Mr. Melcourt.

  I gave a shallow curtsy, which Mrs. Melcourt returned with a slight nod. She did not rise.

  “Are those the plans?” Mr. Melcourt asked eagerly.

  I lifted my cardboard tube. “They are.”

  “I trust that corresponding with Mr. Hillock was helpful,” he said.

  “He’s a very knowledgeable man.” A good head gardener can be a great asset in executing a new design. Long after I leave Highbury, Mr. Hillock will be charged with maintaining the spirit of my creation.

  “Would you like to see the latest drawings?” I asked.

  Mr. Melcourt nodded. Mrs. Melcourt managed only a small smile, sent the children away, and rose to join her husband’s side.

  As I unrolled my plans on a rosewood table, I studied my employers over my steel-rimmed spectacles. I don’t strictly need them for anything other than detailed sketching, but I’ve found that people vastly underestimate a bespectacled woman, most often to my advantage.

  “We will start with the overall vision for the grounds. You told me that you wanted to combine formal and natural styles for a sense of elegance and surprise. The great lawn is your formality.” I pointed to the rectangular shape that represented the long stretch of grass that already existed at Highbury House. “The view from your veranda down to the lakeside is beautiful, but it is missing something to draw the eye. A sense of drama. We will cut stairs into the slope and create a small wall edged with plantings. The stairs will lead down to a wide, shallow reflecting pool and then an uninterrupted stretch of lawn all the way down to the lake.”

  “Will you remove the trees at the edge of the lake?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “You have mature beech, birch, and hawthorn trees that will lend the property a sense of history. You’ll find that the most formal parts of the garden are also those nearest to the house, where you are most likely to entertain.” I glanced up at Mrs. Melcourt. “Perhaps your guests will picnic or play croquet on the lawn and then wander the long border that will run along the eastern edge of the lawn or the lime walk and shade borders opposite. As they approach the lake, the garden will naturally transition to a looser, wilder style.”

  Mr. Melcourt’s lip curled. “Wilder.”

  “Mr. Cunningham and Mr. McCray both hesitated when I suggested such a move, but I can assure you that they are pleased with the result,” I said, mentioning two wealthy industrialists who were members of the same London club as Mr. Melcourt.

  I held my breath, because this was the telling moment. Would the Melcourts be the sort of clients who thought they wanted new, beautiful, and innovative but really sought the comforting familiarity of the strictly manicured, formal spaces of the previous century’s gardens? Or would they allow me to give them something so much more—a liv
ed-in, lush piece of art more vibrant than any painting?

  “McCray did mention that you have some radical ideas,” said Mr. Melcourt. “However, he told me that the effect has won him nothing but praise.”

  When his wife raised no objections, I smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Quickly, I pulled free a detail of the long border next, showing him how tall columns of clematis would tower over roses, Echinops, campanulas, allium, and delphiniums in soft pinks, whites, silvers, and purples. I showed them how walls of hedge and brick would create garden rooms of varying themes just to the west of the shade border. I warned them that some elements of the garden would take time: the lime trees would need to be carefully pleached each year by tying in flexible young shoots to give the impression of walking between two living walls. We talked about which pieces from the Melcourts’ growing collection would look best in the sculpture garden, and where the children might play.

  A distant bell rang in the house, but the Melcourts hardly looked up.

  “I’ve maintained the kitchen and herb gardens to the side of the house. There’s no need to move them, and the orchard is already mature and producing fruit for you,” I said.

  “But so close to the house,” murmured Mrs. Melcourt.

  I understood the lady’s objections immediately. “At the moment, you have only a yew hedge separating the kitchen garden from the rest of the property. I would recommend building a wall between the kitchen garden and the garden rooms to create a greater sense of separation between the gardens for work and for pleasure. I can show you if you like.”

  A man’s heavy footsteps raised all of our heads as a newcomer joined us. Unlike Mr. Melcourt’s, this man’s tie was slightly askew, and even from where I was standing I could see the splatters of mud on the cuffs of his trousers.

  “Matthew!” Mrs. Melcourt exclaimed, her coolness transforming into real affection.

  “Hello, Helen. You look lovely today,” said the gentleman, kissing her on the cheek before shaking Mr. Melcourt’s hand.