Summer Season (31 page)

The band of elderly men, with their poppies and regimental medals proudly displayed on their breasts, marched through the gates of the Memorial Gardens. It was a sharply bright November day, and they were led by a small band of soldiers in full kit. They marched down the newly gravelled path, up to the Heartsease War Memorial, now proudly returned to its place of honour. The flowerbeds to the right and left had been cultivated in the shape of poppies, and the flowerbed behind the memorial was dotted with tiny wooden crosses, each with a poppy attached; one for every man in Heartsease who had given their lives for their country.

Eileen stood proudly watching as Jamie, newly and safely returned from Afghanistan, laid a wreath at the newly restored war memorial. She wiped away a tear, while Tony squeezed her hand.

Kezzie and Richard, now happily sharing two homes between Heartsease and London, waited till the ceremonies were over, and then came forward with their own small wreath, which Kezzie insisted she wanted to lay in Harry Handford’s honour.

‘I feel I should,’ she explained. ‘For Edward.’

Joel, Lauren and the children had been standing next to them, and they walked forward with the lilies Joel had felt were appropriate. Together they watched silently as the rest
of the crowd came by to either lay a wreath or pay their respects, and they all bowed their heads to the haunting sound of the Last Post.

When the band and the marching soldiers had finally gone, the four of them remained behind, contemplating the war memorial, while the children ran around on the grass.

‘Sixty-five men from Heartsease dead in World War One alone,’ marvelled Kezzie. ‘Every house in the village must have been affected. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘And look, Harry’s name, just there quietly in amongst them,’ said Joel. ‘Edward could have designed it so Harry’s name stood out, but he chose not to. He wrote Connie a letter about it, saying he wanted every family in the village to feel they owned the memorial too, that it wasn’t just for Harry.’

‘And now it’s been restored to the village,’ said Richard. ‘All thanks to you guys.’

‘The war memorial’s mainly down to Eileen,’ said Kezzie. ‘Although I will take some credit for the garden.’

‘But it wouldn’t have been worth pursuing if you two hadn’t restored the garden,’ said Lauren. ‘I think if Edward Handford’s up there somewhere, he’d be really proud.’

‘Do you know,’ said Kezzie, ‘I think he would.’

1919–1955

After the funeral, Connie immediately came home to be with Edward, which was some comfort. At first he spent time – too much time – brooding in the garden. He saw Lily constantly there, and it reminded him of what they had had, but it was also too painful, and at times he could almost not bear to leave. In the end Connie took him aside one day, and gently said she was locking the garden up. It gave no more comfort now. Occasionally Edward thought of it, but as the years passed and Connie eventually married, and produced his new grandson, Jack, he thought of it less.

Tilly and her family were rare visitors – Connie was never able to forgive her sister’s betrayal, so Edward saw them alone. But as the years passed, and he grew old, his visits to them grew more infrequent, until eventually they stopped altogether.

One day, when Connie was away and he was dozing by the fire, a knock on the door announced a visitor.

‘I’m Daisy,’ the young woman who stood before him said.
‘Tilly’s daughter. You remember? Your granddaughter. And this is Lilian, your great granddaughter.’

Edward looked down at the angelic beauty by Daisy’s side.

‘She looks so like Tilly at that age,’ he said.

They stayed for the afternoon, and it being a summer’s day, Edward allowed himself to be persuaded to sit in the garden.

‘Can we go to the secret garden?’ said Daisy. ‘I remember cousin Jack hiding in there when I was little.’

‘It’s locked up now,’ said Edward, ‘but I believe there’s still a key hanging in the scullery.’

Daisy fetched the key, and together they walked to the garden. Edward slowly opened the gate. It had been years since he’d been there, and the sun shone on his neglect.

He could have wept to see what had become of his creation, born out of love for Lily and ruined and destroyed in his despair. Connie had promised to look after it for him, but it had clearly been too painful for her.

He sat down heavily on the ornate bench, carved with the letters E and L, which he’d had made on the occasion of their wedding. It was now rusted after years of damp, cold winters, and Edward stared at the garden with deep sadness. All his labours turned to dust.

Lilian came up to him shyly. ‘Look, Grandpa,’ she said, ‘pretty flowers, just for you.’

She held up a bunch of pansies.

‘They’re called heartsease,’ he said, ‘thank you.’

He sat back, holding the flowers and smiling. The garden and all it meant to him had gone, but here was another Lily come along, like a miracle, to ease his aching heart.

Edward dreams of Lily. She comes to him as he sits on the veranda, looking out at the view they both love so much. She is as young as when he first knew her. His lovely, laughing, joyful Lily, dancing towards him in the sunshine.

‘Edward, it’s time to come home,’ she says. ‘Here, take my hand.’

She leads him down the path, towards the sunken garden, and he walks through the gate into a bright sunlit world.

‘For your heart’s ease,’ she says, and presses a bunch of pansies into his hands.

Edward dreams of Lily, still clutching the pansies his great granddaughter brought him. Edward dreams of Lily, and in his sleep he smiles.

Read on to discover Julia’s inspiration for writing
The Summer Season,
a glossary of Flower Meanings and Edward Handford’s Knot Garden design.

Writing is always an organic process, and while I usually start with an idea of what I’m going to write about, the story often delves off into different directions. And en route, I find inspiration comes from all sorts of interesting sources.

My initial idea for
The Summer Season
was to write a story about four people who had been unlucky in love, but I needed something to bring them together. I came up with the idea of them living around a square, which had a garden that had fallen into disrepair, but then my editor (rightly) felt it needed more …

It was then that inspiration struck. The house where my husband grew up had a wonderful garden, at the end of which was a rose arbour. The original owner of the house had created it for his wife as a wedding present. As he lay dying, the rose garden became neglected, but he never knew, as the people looking after him would tell him every day how lovely it was. I always thought that was terribly sad and touching, and it provided the seed for Edward and Lily’s story.

I became interested in knot gardens after a visit to Stratford, and it seemed a natural fit to make Edward create a knot garden for Lily, because not only are they beautiful, they can be invested with so much meaning. And the more I delved into it, the more their story grew, and I realized
that I needed to make their story as important as Joel’s, Kezzie’s and Lauren’s.

While I was in the process of writing the book, I was also doing a lot of research into my family history, and discovered that, like Harry, one of my great uncles, Alfred Clark, had died at the battle of the Sambre, a week before the end of World War 1. Not only that, but another brother, Ernest, died of sickness in 1916. I got thinking about this, and also about the twin babies my great grandmother, Jemima Clark, lost at six weeks. Jemima, by all accounts, was a much tougher character than Lily, but thinking about the heartache she must have endured, gave me the basis for Lily’s story, and it only seemed appropriate that she should share Jemima’s surname.

Inspiration comes from more than one direction, and Heartsease, though made up, could be a village on the Surrey/Sussex border close to where I live. The downlands which surround it are certainly familiar to me. I also realized when I got to the end of the book, that Joel’s garden has come out of a deep well of memory. Not only is it reminiscent of a garden I played in as a child – which had high redbrick walls and a wilderness of bushes, perfect for small children to hide in – but the notion of a secret garden is one I find appealing. I reread
The Secret Garden
, a favourite book from childhood, as research, and discovered to my amusement that a robin which plays a key part in the book, seems to have made its way into Joel’s garden to befriend Kezzie. I was struck by the vividness of the descriptions of spring, and the way the garden comes back to life after the winter, which I have definitely drawn from. It occurred to me that another favourite childhood book,
Tom’s Midnight Garden
in which a plain back yard by day is magically transformed to the beautiful garden it once was by night, has also been an influence.

There are two real life gardens which have also been inspirational: one is in Germany, owned by family friends, who have created an amazing space full of nooks and crannies: there are stone artefacts, such as a water feature made from an old mill stone, and a signpost to Berlin; there’s a pond complete with lily pads, looking for all the world as if a handsome prince will hop by, and there are beautiful and unusual plants, which stun and delight. It is quite magical. The other garden is on my school run, and is another secret garden. It’s hidden behind the wall of a graveyard we walk through, and my children and I discovered one day, that if we walked up to the huge tree overlooking it, we could peer in, and see a lovingly tended garden, although mysteriously we rarely see anyone in it. That experience definitely fed into Kezzie’s excitement at her first viewing of Joel’s garden.

I thought very carefully about the kind of plants both Edward and Kezzie would grow in the knot garden, and while I may have taken liberties with the real gardening cycle, I hope I can be forgiven. I wanted the plants they chose to be invested with some kind of meaning. One of the joys of writing this book has been the journey of discovery I’ve made about flowers and their secret meanings. None more so than when I discovered that by chance I had given Edward a wisteria bush growing outside his front door. The meaning of wisteria?
Welcome.
I’m sure he’d have chosen it with care.

Agapanthus

Immortality

Blue Hyacinth

Constancy

Crocuses

Cheerfulness, Gladness

Daffodils

Joy, Happiness

Forget Me Not

True Love, Memories

Geranium

True Friend

Gloxinia

Love at First Sight

Heartsease

Loving Thoughts

Hollyhocks

Ambition, Fruitfulness

Impatiens

Maternal Love

Ivy

Wedded Love, Fidelity

Peonies

Healing and a Happy Life

Petunia

Your Presence Soothes Me

Rosemary

Remembrance

Snowdrops

Hope

Sweet Pea

Blissful Pleasure, I Think of You

White Carnations

Good Luck

White Lilies

Purity

Wisteria

Welcome

I’d like to say a huge thank you to my outgoing editor, Kate Bradley, who made many helpful suggestions in the early stages of writing this book, not least by suggesting I made Edward and Lily’s story a stronger thread, and also to my incoming editor, Claire Bord, who has made the transition so smooth, and been nothing but helpful and encouraging.

Heartfelt thanks as ever to my fabulous agent, Dot Lumley and to the rest of the Avon team: Charlotte Allen, Sammia Rafique, Helen Bolton, Claire Power and Caroline Ridding.

I’d also like to say thanks to William Dawson for his help on knot gardens, and to Liz Heymoz and Ita Flach for showing me the knot garden he created at Buckden Towers.

My twin sister, Virginia Moffatt is my keenest supporter and critic, and thanks are due to her for giving me such an enthusiastic thumbs up at an early stage.

I’d also like to thank my brother-in-law Nick Williams, for his fantastic detective work in uncovering the story of my family in World War 1, which has been hugely influential in the writing of this story.

There were several people who were enormously helpful with last minute queries, so thanks are due too to: Emma Alston, Sarah Duncan, Penny Jordan and Kate Wilstone who generously and swiftly responded to questions which
were making me tear my hair out. And a huge thanks to all the lovely people on Twitter, who said, yes, you can buy freesias in September.

And belatedly, I’d like to say a big thank you to you, the reader, for not only buying this, but supporting me in so many ways with my previous books. If you’d like to know more about what I’m up to you can follow me on Twitter @ JCCWilliams or on my blog http;//maniacmum.blogspot.com