Chapter Twenty-five
“As I mentioned yesterday, my first course begins in a few days,” he says in a careful voice. “So shall we plan how best to use the participants?”
Last night when he offered this, it felt a much friendlier proposition. This morning he’s quick to business as if to leave no room for anything personal. And I’m like a weathervane: turning where his wind blows, I match his manner.
“I’m concerned this isn’t a fair exchange. They didn’t sign up to be unpaid labour.”
He considers this. “I don’t agree. They signed up for a practical, hands-on residential course in planting, cultivation and garden care.
They will get all that from you, plus the chance to learn from”—he points at me—“an expert artisan horticulturalist. An authority on gardens through history. I think they’re getting their money’s worth and then some. ”
I try really hard to stop the warm flush of pleasure at his implied praise.
Instead, I focus on possible difficulties.
They’re a group of people with psychological issues, and whatever artisan garden expertise I have, my usual solution to depression is to run away, move jobs, travel to the other end of the country.
“What about the emotional issues?”
“Oh, that.” He visibly relaxes. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s taken care of. Now, how do you want them to start?”
I’m not entirely convinced by his ‘taken care of’, but clearly he wants to move the discussion on.
“I think the rose arcade can wait. All it needs is pruning but the fans need planting from scratch. If the bulbs are planted in deep layers, we’ll have flowers for six to eight months. But we need to start ASAP.”
“Two workers per fan?” he asks.
“That’s what I was thinking. At 25 metres long by 20 metres at the widest arc, each fan is almost the size of an average back garden.”
“That’s perfect. Not too much for two novices to practice.”
“They’ll need supervision.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Tell me what you need them to do and I’ll make sure they do it right.”
“Well… if the students can—”
“Not students.”
“Isn’t your business called a training…” I can’t remember what he said he’d call it.
“The Perllan Centre for Wellbeing,” he answers. “It’s not a school. Maybe call them residents. Or”—he thinks for a moment—“participants.”
Despite the way this morning started, we have both begun to relax.
Garden talk has done its magic and defrosted the atmosphere between us.
Osian slides down in his seat and props his feet up on the railing in front of us.
The morning sun comes out from behind a cloud and washes the terrace in a soft golden light.
The shadows from our table and chairs are dark grey over the crumbling slate tiles on the floor.
Being outside in the fresh air, talking about gardening, the smell of spring, the freshly ploughed earth in front of us, the wide, wide ten acres of land waiting to be made into a beautiful garden… can anything be better?
A little cheerful spark lights up in me, and I can’t resist poking a little fun at Osian. “You know if your business is called the Perllan Centre, your students—” I catch myself. “Participants will end up being called the Perllans.”
“Perllan”—he pronounces his double Ls the Welsh way—“means orchard. Remember? You were the one to suggest the name. Otherwise, it would still be called the East Patch. You can’t call my participants ‘the orchards’.”
“I bet you fifty pounds.”
Osian cocks an eyebrow at me. “Weren’t you supposed to rename your North Park?”
“I have.” I grin because he’s clearly intrigued. Curiosity and reserve don’t go together so if he really wants to know he’ll have to unclench or I’m not telling him.
I, too, shift to sit more comfortably, and cross my legs so my foot can swing lightly with my mood.
He waits. When I still don’t enlighten him he tilts his head up, speaking to the sky. “God, she’s going to make me work for this.”
Laughing despite myself I say, “Okay, okay. Don’t have to enlist divine help. I’m calling it Hope Garden. Actually, plural: Hope Gardens because they’ll be a sequence of gardens.”
He glances at me, eyes bright. “That is an excellent idea.” He thinks for a minute. “You’re tying in the poem from the blue wall, aren’t you?”
His gaze goes over my shoulder to where the blue tiled wall curves down the steps to the brown earth below.
“Not just the wall,” I say, without looking behind me.
No need because I’ve memorised every detail already.
“I’m actually tying in the whole house with the gardens.
Because I still feel there’s a link we have not discovered.
And don’t forget the stained-glass panel over my door, and the Blue Lady who shows up where you least expect her all around the house. ”
“So?” he asks. “What colours are you using for the fans?”
I can’t help smiling because thinking about this makes me really happy. “The first will be blue.”
“Not pink, like the stained glass over your door?”
I shake my head. “Blue first, next one purple, then over by the sweet gum tree”—I point farther into the cleared wilderness—“pink, and nearest the pond yellow-orange and finally red.”
“No white?”
“White can’t graduate from light to dark. But there’ll be white in some of the others because it’s the palest hue of blue, pink and yellow.”
A clink of cups and spoons makes us turn in our seats to greet Leonie.
She comes over with our food and a pot of Darjeeling and sets down a bread basket, still steaming with freshly baked bread, a small dish with butter and two plates with sandwiches.
Osian pours me a cup of tea before attacking his bacon butties.
“On the house.” She places a small saucer in front of me. “It’s still an experiment: orange and oat cookies.”
“Oh Leonie, you can’t spoil me like this. I’m going to put on weight and never fit into any of my clothes.” I take a bite and lose myself in the heavenly rich flavour. “Forget what I said; please spoil me.”
She laughs. “That’s what I was hoping to hear. I’ll put them on the menu.”
Osian snatches the second cookie before I have a chance to take it.
“Hey!” I complain loudly.
“Don’t fight, I’ll make more this afternoon.” Leonie takes the empty saucer and goes back inside, but there’s a definite spring in her step.
“She’s definitely a natural talent,” I say to Osian as he wolfs down his bacon sandwiches.
“You wouldn’t last five minutes in Kendric House without passion.”
“Me?”
He shakes his head while chewing, swallows then answers. “All of us. Didn’t you ever wonder why we all wake up so early?”
“Because, as the professor said”—I glance behind me through the tall windows to where he sits typing away at his laptop—“slugabed entrepreneurs would fail.”
Osian holds my gaze; a faint smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “I don’t agree. I think we wake up early because we’re in love.”
Something thumps in my heart when he says the word love. He also said passion earlier. I can feel heat rising up into my face.
“W-we are…?” My voice comes out breathy.
“Aren’t you? You spend every waking minute down there”—he points towards the garden—“in back-breaking work. And you’re about to try planting the equivalent of five gardens, not to mention the pond and the rose arcade.
All of that in two months. That’s passion.
You’d never do all that unless you loved it. ”
I don’t answer while my heart begins to slow down. Osian goes back to his breakfast, eating with – yes, now he’s mentioned the word, I can’t forget it – passion.
If Leonie were here and heard him, she’d have given me one of her meaningful looks. Any other woman would see something in the way he asked me if I were in love.
I feel my feet on the slippery slope that leads to dreaming. To imagining.
To painful doubt.
Besides, nothing has actually happened. Has it?
Has it? The question keeps nagging, demanding an answer which I’m too scared to give.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” he suddenly says.
“Oh? What can you hear?” I answer before I can think, before I can stop myself. It all sounds very flirty.
He pretends to cock an ear. “You’re practicing Welsh phrases.”
“Why would I be doing that?”
“Because you hate it when you can’t understand. You get this look when the professor or Llewellyn make the odd joke.” He pronounces Llewellyn the Welsh way: chlewellun, which sounds surprisingly nice.
I might be a bit flirty but so is he.
Isn’t he? Or am I reading too much into an innocent jokey conversation?
Ever since my failed date with the younger Osian, I’ve lost confidence in my ability to judge how men feel about me.
I’m too scared of making a fool of myself, so I normally wait for them to make the first move.
Even when they do, there’s no guarantee that I’ve read the situation right.
Look at my ex-fiancé and the way he pulled the wool over my eyes.
“And you’re off again,” Osian says. “What are you thinking?”
“That for a language with so many guttural sounds, all the LLs and the hard Gs, it manages to sound very musical.”
“Musical,” he repeats slowly, and his face softens. Then he says, low and smooth, “Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb gallon.”
It floats on the cool morning air, up into the sky.
“What does that mean?”
He sends me a sidelong glance. “It means you look very beautiful in your pink dungarees,” he says, with a perfectly straight face.
“I told you before, you’re a terrible liar.”
He chuckles, a little soft laugh under his breath.
“Okay, it actually means a nation without a language is a nation without a heart. It’s one of those quotes you used to hear a lot, meant to jolly people into learning Welsh.
” Then he gobbles up the last of the orange cookie.
“You were right: Leonie is spoiling us. This experimental biscuit is addictive.”
“I think the orange zest with whatever spices she used make it strong but subtle.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Just like me.”
“Shut up.” I snort a small laugh.
“Language!” He shakes a finger at me. “You are learning too much from that bird.”
“Morning, you two,” says a cheerful soft voice.
I turn around; Haneen is coming across the terrace.
“Hi.” Osian drops his feet from the railing and springs up. “Sit; I’ll get myself another chair.”
“Don’t worry, Evan sent me to ask Evie if you can present something at the next partners’ meeting. Next week?”
“Of course. Next week when?”
“Saturday,” she says.
It’s Monday now. So that’s five days.
What the hell was I thinking? Sitting here worrying about flirting. I need flirting like I need a brain haemorrhage.
All my focus should be on work. The next progress meeting is in five days. Evan expects me to report to the partners and all I have so far is pretty plans. I haven’t planted a single thing.
And I promised we would open at the end of May. And make money by the end of summer.