Consider the Lily (29 page)

‘We can’t do anything else,’ Matty pointed out to Kit. ‘Robbie has to look after your father, and Flora must not miss the rest of the Season because of me.’

‘No,’ said Kit.

‘I think you should stay up in London as long as possible to give her support.’

‘Well, I will,’ said Kit. ‘It’s nice of you to be so understanding about it.’

Neither of them mentioned Daisy. Kit leant over to give Matty her goodnight kiss on the cheek and on an impulse slid his hand round her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been disappointed and miserable, but things will get better.’

After he had gone, Matty did not feel nearly as empty as she often did. Instead she picked up one of Miss Jekyll’s gardening books. ‘The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives.’

Good, thought Matty and marked the place. I could do with some.

Next to Miss Jekyll lay two books by Mr Bowles –
My Garden in Spring
and
My Garden in Summer
– full of humour and artistic arrangements. Beside them were stacked
The English Rock Garden
by Mr Farrer and Mr Robinson’s
The English Flower Garden,
plus an article by the novelist Vita Sackville-West from the
Evening Standard,
which Matty loved for its mixture of the poetic and the practical.

Matty realized that the scope of her ambition needed to be bigger: clearing the earth was fine, but a plan was needed if the work was to mean something. On a piece of paper she drew in the shape of the garden: the south and west sides bounded by the perimeter wall, the east side by the avenue of birches and the north by the scrub.

‘Clematis’, she wrote and drew an arrow to indicate its position on the west wall. Which clematis? The book said clematises flowered either in early summer or early autumn and were lime-loving. ‘Roses’. Matty was keen to have as many as possible. ‘Queen of Denmark’, of course. The Jacobite rose which she had seen in a painting. ‘Maiden’s Blush’. The ‘Duchess of Montebello’.

Next: ‘
Salvia patens’
to underplant the roses. Delphiniums and white foxgloves against the wall. Some silver-leaved plants in front of them? Plus a drift (thank you, Miss Jekyll, for the idea) of pink sedum for the autumn. After that, she scrawled ‘
Trillium grandiflorum
(shady bits)’, blissfully unaware of how tricky they were to grow, ‘saxifrage?, santolina (must have),
Tradescantia
(blue or white?)’

Circles and arrows sprouted all over the diagram and the list grew.

‘Mrs Kit,’ said Ned once he had succumbed to a pair of pleading eyes, a request for an extra wheelbarrow, compost, a lesson on planting, an order to buy up stock at the nearest nursery and an injunction for the deepest secrecy. ‘Mrs Kit, what are you asking me to do?’

‘I’d like you to help me. You know the garden, the bit that no one goes into?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Ned’s face wore an expression which she could not place.

‘You don’t want to be bothering with that, Mrs Kit,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s not the best place. The soil’s tainted.’ He added, ‘It gets like that sometimes.’

‘
Please
, Mr Sheppey.’

She waited. He appeared to be struggling with the wish to speak out, and then the habit of following orders won.

‘If that’s what you’re telling me to do. But I don’t like it, Mrs Kit.’

Matty produced her plan. Ned stared at the hieroglyphics and then wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘You haven’t measured the garden. Nor have you allowed for the plants to grow. You can’t start until you’ve done that.’

Matty sighed. ‘Nor I have, Mr Sheppey.’

He smiled, enjoying his little triumph. ‘Never mind, Mrs Kit. You can do it again.’

‘Will it take long to get the plants, Mr Sheppey? I’d like to come with you.’

‘Depends,’ said Ned. ‘There’s only one nursery in the area and they don’t keep everything. We’ll have to ask around other gardens for seeds and cuttings.’

Every day Matty visited the garden. When she first began work, she found it almost impossible to lift the wheelbarrow. A couple of weeks later she was wheeling it half loaded without losing her breath.

‘Mark out the area to dig, Mrs Kit,’ said Ned during one of their daily confabulations. So she did.

‘Push the spade straight down. Use the shaft to lever the soil, not your back.’ So she did.

‘Sharpen the blade with a stone. Choose a good day. Dig down one strip to the depth of the spade, Mrs Kit, and make a trench. Jiggle the spade at the bottom to loosen the subsoil.’

The soil peeled back, revealing its secret greys and browns: So shall my life turn over. Matty felt sweat soak into her blouse.

Next, she tackled the second strip, deposited its soil into the first strip and mixed in spadefuls of compost: Go then, and multiply. Scrambled back muscles, jagged fingernails, a smell of turned earth, a gritty feel on her hands: unfamiliar sensations became friendly, part of a repertoire that she hugged to herself.

In the end, because it was a huge task, Ned came to help and they cleared and burnt the debris side by side. Matty was impatient for her garden, badgering him for results, and he told her over and over again that it would take time. That the garden required preparation before she could plant it.

‘What about the lily bulbs that Mrs Pengeally sent over? Can’t we plant those? In a pot, perhaps?’

‘You need to know what you’re doing with lilies, Mrs Kit.’

‘But you know, Mr Sheppey, and you can teach me.’

‘Top dressed and staked.’

‘Top dressed?’ Matty felt much as Echo must have done, dashing about in mythical Greece hearing her words repeated.

‘Equal parts manure, lime rubble and loam.’

Next year, thought Matty, the idea giving her extreme pleasure, I will have more roses, more lilies. Hundreds of them.

I’m not going to hang around for ever, you know.’

Tim Coats pressed up against Daisy and, since they were trapped in the crush moving towards the Royal Enclosure, no one noticed that his hand slid across her bottom. He bent over and whispered, ‘Come on, Daisy. Give a chap a proper answer.’

Daisy smiled. Tim was tall, dark and knowing, and she liked him. But not enough. He had been surprisingly faithful, in view of his reputation and the provocation she had given him. ‘Down, Rover,’ she said, and brushed his hand away with a finger sheathed in kid. ‘Naughty.’

‘Why not, damn it?’

Daisy’s eyelashes shielded the expression in her eyes. ‘Because.’

Watching her, Tim was conscious of a desire to wring her neck. Then, perhaps, when the bones cracked satisfactorily, she would tell him what was going on in that head of hers instead of holding him – with undeniable skill, but holding him, all the same – like a bull in a pen.

‘It would be fun,’ he persisted. ‘Think of it, Daise. I want to settle down. So do you. We like the same things and if you wanted adventures I wouldn’t mind.’

‘And if you wanted adventures?’

‘The same applies. We understand each other.’

At that, Daisy looked up at Tim – and yet again he examined the arrangement of features and interplay of colour that made up the exquisite face. ‘How do you know, Tim?’ she challenged. ‘If we understand each other, I mean.’

‘For God’s sake, Daisy. I give up.’

She smiled and turned her head away.

Unusually there had been no rain for the past three weeks and, in an effort to stem the ravages, millions of gallons of water had been pumped onto the Ascot race course. The result was bright green grass, a ribbon that swirled past the dry, dusty area of the stands. But, in true English fashion, the weather now threatened to make up for the lack of rain. A black cloud sat above the racetrack and the temperature had fallen. Daisy shivered. ‘I’m cold.’

For once Tim did not say: Let me warm you.

‘Let’s hope the weather holds. It would be too ghastly,’ said Susan, viper smart in a silk dress, but missing her fur. ‘For goodness sake, cheer up, Daisy. You don’t look as though you’re enjoying yourself one bit.’

‘I don’t need to cheer up, Mother.’ Daisy waved at Francis Beauchamp. ‘I am feeling perfectly all right. Would you prefer me to grin like a baboon?’

For once, Susan could not think of a suitable reply. Instead she snapped her bag shut and said, ‘This whole outing was arranged for you, though goodness knows why.’

An arched eyebrow greeted this information. ‘Don’t tell lies, Mother. You enjoy this more than I do.’

Susan shot her daughter a look which did not bode well for the evening. ‘Daisy. Please make an effort. All of us feel in the dumps occasionally... I do... but have you ever seen me give in to them? And in this world, it is no use behaving like a shrinking violet.’

‘Mother. Have I ever been a shrinking violet?’

‘Well, no.’ Even Susan had the grace to agree.

‘And what good has it done me?’

Although not by any means a natural mother, Susan was not entirely deficient in maternal feelings, merely a woman who took the world on its own terms, but the bleakness etched onto Daisy’s face made her feel guilty for a second or two.

‘In my experience,’ continued Daisy in the same logical manner, ‘shrinking violets do rather well for themselves.’

With a razzle-dazzle of rounded vowels, flapping canvas and the creak of tightening guy ropes, the Royal Enclosure filled up. Outside, the horses being walked up and down played to the house. Bow-legged and prematurely lined from dieting, sweating with nerves and suppressed flatus, their jockeys traced a fretwork of tracks in the paddock. The enclosure was soon littered with horse droppings, saddle-soaped leather straps hung in soft ribbons, bits clinked against horses’ teeth, and the jockeys clung to their saddles like exposed limpets at low-tide.

Funny how the men looked like massed penguins, ready to slide into the sea with an escort of floating top hats, thought Daisy. The women in pink reminded her of cough lozenges, those in blue of hyacinths, and the daring ones in white were runaways from a Hollywood film set. She got out her binoculars and swept them over the stands. Then she stopped.

Magnified several times, Kit rose from the subfusc and cohered into the circle defined by the lens. Suddenly Daisy, who had imagined he was miles away, was close enough to make out a blue vein running down the side of his neck. Her grip tightened.

Thirstily, she retraced him. The way his face was put together – ungovernable hair, sun-lines round his eyes, uneven smile. His rumpledness and contradictory elegance. He was talking to Flora – a green leek, thought Daisy hysterically — and his jaw was set in the way it did when he grew passionate about something. Watching, Daisy felt every nerve burn with longing.

Of course, she thought. Of course, I would see him here. For a second or two she reclaimed him for herself. Then the image she held between her gloved hands wavered and broke up.

‘Darling, which jockey are you madly fancying?’ Annabel Beauchamp teetered up on high heels and slipped her arm through her friend’s.

‘No one, Annabel, actually. I was looking at the colours. Aquamarine is in.’ Daisy lowered the binoculars and eyed the carmine stroked onto Annabel’s thin but kindly lips. ‘For example, did you raid a paintbox for that red?’ The gibe was neutralized by her smile.

‘I borrowed it.
Parce que
I was late and had to borrow our supervisor’s.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Marie Stopes Committee.’ Annabel gave her charming giggle.

‘It’s civil war between Marie Stopes and the National Birth Control Association who’re accusing each other of stealing their thunder. I made a very good punch bag.’

‘Oh, Bel,’ cried Daisy passionately. ‘You’re a good person.’

‘Why don’t you join me on the committee?’ asked her friend. ‘I need allies and Marie Stopes needs volunteers.’

‘I will, I will,’ said Daisy. ‘When I come back from America.’

She looked over the Royal Enclosure towards the stand where Kit had disappeared into the shifting colours. ‘I love all this, Bel, don’t you? Even though I feel guilty about it sometimes.’

Annabel patted Daisy’s arm. ‘There, there,’ she said, quite used to Daisy’s occasional flights of guilt. ‘We’re rich, privileged and pretty. Now what are you going to do? Have a good weep?’

‘Rich, privileged and pretty selfish,’ supplied Daisy. She turned to Annabel and life had come back into her face. ‘And, on a day like this, blissfully gay.’ She tucked her hand into Annabel’s elbow. ‘But I’ll join you when I come back.’

Later, Tim Coats picked his way through the hats in the refreshment tent towards Daisy’s tilted white affair. ‘I trust the champagne has made you see sense,’ he said and hooked his finger under her chin.

‘If by sense you mean I have to give in to your every wish, then I require some more.’ Daisy held out her glass. Tim obliged, and Daisy drank it far too fast.

‘I told the Fellowes’ to join us tonight.’

‘That sounds fine.’ Daisy held out her glass for an encore.

‘Good God,’ said a male voice rising above the hubbub. ‘It’s Daisy Chudleigh, the flower of them all.’

Tim’s expression darkened perceptibly as Daisy greeted a spectacular-looking youth. ‘Gordon! Where have
you
been?’

‘Searching the world for you, my darling. Now that I’ve seen you I absolutely know that I must have you by my side for the next race. You don’t mind Timmers, old boy, do you?’

‘As it happens I do, Latham.’

‘Daisy, I implore you.’ Gordon wagged a finger at Tim. ‘It’s a far, far better thing you do, dear boy.’

Daisy looked from one man to the other. This situation was one she understood perfectly. Kit’s image faded and with it, for the moment, the trapped, desperate feelings.

All right, she had said later to Tim, when I come back from America I will give you my final answer. Why not now, damn it? he had argued. Because, Tim... His knowing hands had circled her neck. Well, hurry up and make yourself ready, Daisy. Get over that stupid man and start to live.

What about love? she had asked.

What about it? Tim had replied. You know I love you.