Happily Ever After

Chapter 13

13

THE SECRET GARDEN – THE SECRET GARDEN, FRANCES H BURNETT

A few days later I met Jay again.

I had wandered down to the village for something to do, yet again, with my day off. Templewood had begun to feel static and cut-off, as though anything could be happening in the world outside and we would still be here, bent double under the weight of good manners and expectation. Lady Tanith didn’t seem to take a newspaper or read online news stories and I wondered if it was because she wanted to inhabit a world where Oswald was still alive. Cock-ups by the current government or scandals of the rich and famous didn’t seem to mean anything to her, stuck as she seemed to be in her own grieving.

It was bloody claustrophobic. Even the only-marginally-less closed off scenery of the little estate village was better than the house, where hours felt endlessly recycled, I thought, resting on the little gate in the yew hedge to watch two birds of unknown species fighting over berries. The sun leaned its weight against the hedge which left me in shadow, trying to appreciate the great outdoors while really hoping to flag down a passer-by just to have someone to talk to. Even a dog would do, I thought moodily, picking flakes of paint off the gate, aware that the heroines of novels very rarely had to make do with staring into space and monologuing while watching birds squaring up to one another. Fiction didn’t seem to have much to say on the subject of boredom. Ennui was more picturesque but conjured images of wan tubercular heroines in muslin and I had too large a chest and too much nylon to ever be mistaken for a consumptive Miss.

‘Hello.’ The voice made me jump and I turned around so quickly that I panicked the birds into a metallic chinking as they flew off.

‘Oh, Jay! You startled me,’ I said, aware as I said it that I sounded like the heroine of a badly written romance. I stopped myself short of clasping my hand to my bosom. ‘I didn’t hear you coming.’

‘Welcome to my world.’ He was wearing shorts again, his knees were muddy and covered in grass stains and his socks were rolled down to the tops of his work boots. It made him look like a slightly wicked schoolboy. ‘What are you up to?’

I didn’t want to blurt out that I knew who he was now. He’d not used his full name when he’d introduced himself to me, so he didn’t want me to know, for reasons of his own. Well, that was fine, I didn’t care. But I hugged the secret knowledge to me, as though it gave me a measure of power. He’s Jasper. He’s renounced his birthright and his brother resents him. But, of course, now I knew, I couldn’t say anything about Lady Tanith and her demands and I’d already let slip Hugo’s resentment about his situation. I went a bit clammy round the neck when I remembered how much I’d blurted to Jay when we’d last met, and hoped he’d forgotten most of it.

‘I’m out for a walk,’ I said quickly to distract myself from the flush of embarrassment, despite all evidence to the contrary.

‘Fed up with the Great and Good back at the house?’

I didn’t dare acknowledge that. Partly because I wasn’t sure who was the great and who the good, and partly because I was terrified I might let some more information slip that Jasper wasn’t supposed to know. ‘Mmmm,’ was all I said, and he could take that however he wanted.

‘Would you like a tour of the gardens?’

‘Why?’

‘What an odd question.’ Jay rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Because they are here and you are here and it’s my job and I thought you might like to know what’s growing? Besides, I’m fed up with weeding and you look as though you might like some company.’

I was a little bit dumbfounded. For a son of Lady Tanith, Jay was incredibly straightforward and ordinary and, dare I say it, thoughtful. Then it struck me that renouncing your heritage, having a mother who had trouble processing this fact and a brother who could hardly bring himself to mention you, might make him rather lonely too. I looked at him. His hair was, as usual, awry and there was something rather endearing about the bare knees and socks, like a grown up Just William , only lacking the gang and awful dog.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’

‘Good.’ His face was animated now by a broad grin. ‘Come on. I’ll show you the roses first, very romantic are the roses.’

I had to sit down hard on the urge to tell him that I knew he was gay and so he could stop the slightly arch allusion that he was wooing me. It might have been my imagination, but that tattoo on his wrist seemed very much more in evidence today, the little bouquet tied by the rainbow flicking into view as he pointed to various shrubs and reeled off Latin names.

‘I’m impressed,’ I said, when he’d shown me his sorbus aucuparia and a particularly lovely bed of dianthus caryophyllus on our way to the roses. ‘How do you know all their names?’

Jay gave me a knowing smile. ‘Years of study, hours spent memorising, working with them on a daily basis – and the names are written on little labels, look.’ He pointed. Thrust deep among the leaves were indeed small white labels with the Latin names written on.

‘Oh. I thought you were being clever.’

Jay’s smile broadened. ‘Andi, you are too easily impressed. Actually, I wrote the labels, so I have to know the names anyway, but gardening is ninety per cent basic grunt work and ten per cent being stylish. So I like to wheel out the knowledge when I can.’

‘Ten per cent stylish,’ I said, trying not to stare obviously at his outfit and messy hair.

‘I scrub up well. Do you like plants? Have you ever done any gardening?’ The smile had faded now and he was rubbing his wrist as though unaware that he seemed to be trying to erase his tattoo.

I shook my head. ‘Never had a garden. Buses aren’t known for their acres of…’ I hunted around for something to use as an example; ‘grass,’ was what I settled on.

‘I suppose not. You’ve never lived in a house at all?’ He really did seem to want to know and it was refreshing change from Hugo’s lack of curiosity about my upbringing.

‘No. I was born on the bus – no, actually I was born in a hospital, my parents being prepared to compromise their society-smashing beliefs for childbirth. But I always lived on the bus, so no gardens unless you count hours spent playing in parks.’ I looked out across the shining grass, where sunlight glimmered off the distant pond and chased through flickering leaves in fairy-wing shadows. ‘It’s lovely though,’ I said, half to myself. ‘I didn’t know what I was missing.’

‘Also a phenomenal amount of getting soaked to the skin, muddy to the elbows and stung, prickled, snagged and ripped by rampant vegetation,’ Jay said. ‘It’s not all skipping through daffodils in the sunshine, whatever Wordsworth might lead you to believe.’

‘Wordsworth, that well known market gardener?’

‘He was the only author I had to hand.’ Jay beamed at me again. ‘I bet your sister has got a garden.’

So, he’d remembered my outburst about Jude. I felt that hot sweatiness pull close around me again. ‘Well, yes,’ I admitted. ‘But she learned gardening at school, they all had little plots they were allowed to grow things on. It was a very posh school.’ Then I remembered that he had probably gone to Eton or somewhere and wanted to bite my tongue off.

‘Don’t be bitter, Andi,’ Jay said quietly, which I thought was a bit rich coming from someone who’d dumped an estate and a mother onto his brother. ‘She’s still your sister, and it’s not her fault that you didn’t get the life you wanted.’

I snorted, unbecomingly, at that.

‘Anyway. I had better go and make myself look busy. Will you be all right?’ His question surprised me, as did his tone. It was oddly gentle and concerned and it crossed my mind to wonder whether he thought Lady Tanith was planning my downfall, in league with Mrs Compton.

‘Yes,’ I said stiffly. ‘Of course. Thank you very much for showing me the garden.’ I didn’t immediately move off, and neither did he. We stood for a few seconds as though reluctant to part.

‘Oh, and I still need my jumper back,’ he said eventually. ‘So, you know, next time you’re passing, because it’s bloody freezing at 5a.m. now.’

His levity was cheering. He wasn’t holding anything over me. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve only got one jumper.’ I looked him up and down. ‘Actually no, I can believe that.’

‘Oy! I’ll have you know that I have a varied wardrobe; it just so happens that one is my favourite jumper and it keeps out the cold really well. So unless you want me to fade away to nothing but a small cough and a bloodstained hanky like one of your louche hero-types, get it back to me, please.’

I grinned as I turned to walk back to Templewood Hall. Jay might be Hugo’s brother and as all kinds of messed up as the rest of the family, but he was kind and he made me smile.

He must take after his father’s side of the family, because he surely didn’t get that sense of the ridiculous and humour from his mother.