Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
‘You’re full of shit,’ I say to Evan. ‘It’s warmer here than in Surrey. Where’s all this rain you keep bleating on about?’
‘You’ll get it soon enough.’ He throws me a lazy grin from the driver’s seat.
I think that was an unintentional double entendre, but I can never be sure with Evan. There’s always been an underlying tension between us, the kind that a tussle between the sheets would probably cure, but that sort of thing would have been inappropriate before.
I doubt it would be a good idea now either, seeing as we’re about to start working together, but at least I’m fully qualified. When I was doing my training, the balance of power was far too heavily weighted in his favour.
We met while I was doing a horticultural operative apprenticeship at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey. I’d secretly been looking into doing a Level 2 qualification with the Royal Horticultural Society when I saw that applications for their apprenticeship programme were open. On a whim, I applied, but I didn’t think anything would come of it. I couldn’t believe it when I landed a place.
The lady who interviewed me said that my design training was an asset and easily transferable, but I think she was touched on a personal level by the stories I shared about Nan.
Accepting the apprenticeship required a leap of faith, a full-on jump into a new career. It was a two-year, fully paid position, but the salary was a pittance compared to what I’d been earning at Knap. I can’t deny it – I was terrified to walk away.
My dad and I speak every couple of months or so, but our conversations are strained. He texted me the same night I left home, asking me to keep him abreast of what I was doing.
It took several months for me to pluck up the courage and confess that I’d left Knap in pursuit of gardening. He was shocked. I can’t imagine what my mum thinks: that I’ve lost my mind, that I’m having a breakdown, that I’m breathtakingly stupid … Probably all those things and more.
She and I haven’t spoken since the day I walked out. She’s estranged from her own mother, so I shouldn’t be surprised that she has it in her to cut me out of her life. My chest feels tight when I think of her, so I try not to do it often.
Christmases are the worst. I may have hated living with my parents at times, and often I felt desperately lonely, but only now do I appreciate what it means to be truly alone.
Sometimes the weight on my shoulders feels so heavy, but not when I’m gardening. When I’m surrounded by nature, I am happy and light.
Evan was one of the staff members who trained me, a down-to-earth Aussie with a cheeky sense of humour – he was only three years my senior and we hit it off immediately. He used to work at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, but had been living in the UK for a few years – his mother is Welsh.
I was gutted to see him go towards the end of my apprenticeship when he accepted a job at Berkeley Hall, a privately owned estate on the Welsh side of the border with England, but we stayed in touch.
Once I’d qualified, I managed to secure part-time work staying on at Wisley, filling my free hours working as a gardener for private clients. But it’s been tough financially, and my living arrangements have also been a challenge. For the last three years, I’ve been a lodger in a family home, living with a couple in their late thirties who have two small children. They’re nice enough to me, but I’ve always felt like I’m encroaching on their space. It has never felt like home.
‘Almost there,’ Evan says.
He collected me from Wrexham train station in a big black estate-owned Range Rover and is wearing his uniform of a dark green polo shirt with black shorts and brown boots. I’ve seen him donning the Berkeley Hall get-up on his #hotgardener profile on Instagram. His handle is his name, Evan Kite, but his friends and colleagues have taken to using the hashtag in the comments to tease him because he occasionally posts bare-chested pictures of himself.
I’m a little mortified that he puts himself out there in this way – you’d never catch me posting half-naked pics of myself for likes – but there’s no denying that the sight of him shirtless does get me a bit hot under the collar.
He’s gorgeous – tall at just over six foot, well built, with a head of thick, short, scruffy hair – and so likeable and easy-going that I’m surprised he hasn’t been snapped up. He was dating someone in the early days of my apprenticeship, but that ended and to my knowledge he hasn’t been serious with anyone since.
I drag my eyes away from his toned forearms and tanned hands gripping the steering wheel and feel kind of edgy.
Now thirty to my twenty-seven, Evan is still senior to me, but he’s not my direct boss. I’m one of three gardeners and he’s assistant head gardener. We both answer to the head gardener, Owain, who interviewed me over the telephone a few weeks ago. It made my heart pinch to hear his warm Welsh accent – the way he rolled his Rs was exactly the same way Ash had – but he was a lot older, in his early sixties from what Evan has told me. I sensed he had already made up his mind about hiring me on Evan’s recommendation. Jobs rarely come up at Berkeley Hall, so I’m lucky.
‘I reckon,’ Evan says thoughtfully as we drive along a narrow country road lined with leafy beech trees, ‘I might be able to show you the gatehouse before it shuts up shop.’
‘What time does the house close to the public?’ I ask, checking my watch. It’s four thirty.
‘Usually five o’clock, but last entry is at four unless there’s a private function. They don’t do many of those, though,’ Evan says as we pass by a group of modest 1970s houses. The land opens back up again onto fields on our right, while on our left is a red-brick wall, too high to see over. He slows to a snail’s speed and turns left, passing through tall wrought-iron gates.
‘This is the family’s private drive. The public entry runs parallel to this road, just a bit further on, but you need to see the hall from this perspective for your first time.’
My eyes widen with wonder. Up ahead, at the end of a long, narrow stretch of asphalt flanked by green fields, is the house.
I’ve seen it in pictures, of course, but nothing compares to seeing it in real life. The sunlight is hitting the cream stone, making it look golden, and the crenellated facade is so wide that if it were set down parallel to one of the ordinary London streets where I grew up, it would be the length of ten terraced houses.
‘The bays on the left and right were added in the late 1700s, but the Tudor gatehouse in the middle was built in the early sixteenth century, although it’s had a few alterations over the years,’ Evan tells me of the central, more decorative section of the building. It has hexagonal turrets and curved bay windows with long, thin panels of glass that reflect the sunlight. ‘It was gifted to the family by Henry VIII,’ he adds, throwing me a significant look.
I’ll admit I’m fascinated by the history, even if I don’t agree with the principle of wealthy white men handing down property to wealthy white men for hundreds of years.
‘Has the same family owned it all this time?’ I ask curiously.
‘Yep. Five hundred years and twenty-one generations.’
‘Holy shit,’ I murmur.
He grins at me. ‘Once upon a time, people on horses and carts used to ride straight through the gatehouse to a courtyard at the back.’ He points to enormous arched doors at the base of the gatehouse, which are wide open. ‘But when the bays on either side were built, the owners sealed it up and incorporated it into the rest of the house.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Wait until you see the gardens.’ He pulls to a stop in front of the house.
‘Can you just park here like this?’ I ask with surprise. There are no other cars in sight.
‘Yeah, the main car park’s down the hill, but staff use this door for deliveries.’
‘We don’t have any deliveries.’
‘You’re a delivery,’ he says flippantly, reaching for the door handle. ‘I’m delivering our lovely new gardener to her new home.’ He winks at me as he climbs out of the car.
‘Where are the workers’ cottages?’ I ask, because I know that I’m not living here .
‘On the other side of the walled garden, so not far at all.’
I would have jumped at the chance of a full-time gardening job anywhere, but the fact that this position came with accommodation was a massive bonus.
Evan was the person I most connected with at Wisley so I’m thrilled to be working with him again and I’m excited to meet some new people – apparently there’s a whole social aspect to living in the workers’ cottages. There’s a sawmill and a workshop on the estate that employ a team of cool young guys, some of whom also live at the cottages, and Evan thinks I’ll really get on with Sian, my new housemate, and Bethan, who I’ll be working alongside in the gardens.
I had no problem about leaving the South of England to relocate to Wales, even with all the teasing about the weather. But I still can’t think of Wales without remembering Ash. It’s been almost six years, but I’m not over him and I’m not sure I ever will be. He was at the forefront of my mind when Evan told me he was moving here, and when a gardening position came up, I thought of Ash again.
It can still keep me awake at night, wondering what happened to him. It’s a mystery that I’ve had to accept I will never solve.
I’ve tried to let him go, but being here in his home country is probably going to set me back.
It’s not that I haven’t been on other dates because I have in the last couple of years, and I even had a short-term relationship, though it didn’t last more than a few weeks. The chemistry I felt with Ash was so electric, nobody else has come close to lighting me up the way he did.
Evan is the only person I’ve felt might have potential.
It’s getting late in the day, but it’s a Sunday and the weather is so temperate that I’m surprised this whole place is not teeming with visitors.
‘Is it usually this quiet?’ I ask as we enter the gatehouse, our footsteps reverberating off the thick stone slabs of the floor.
‘No, but most people will be outside in the gardens on a day like this,’ Evan replies.
Above our heads is a gorgeous vaulted ceiling and there’s a large faded tapestry hanging on a wall. A suit of polished steel armour stands in one of the bay windows. Double doors lead off to the left and right, where a couple of people are loitering, but my attention is drawn by what’s beyond the big arched doors straight ahead.
We step outside into a courtyard garden with low hedges and flower beds bursting with miniature pink roses, set around a beautiful central fountain. On the left is what looks like a very old section of the house. It has a pitched roof and is part timber-framed and part red brick, with lead-panelled lattices on the windows holding tiny glass panes.
‘There used to be two other wings just like that one,’ Evan says, pointing at the old section.
‘Tudor?’ I ask.
‘Yep, built not long after the gatehouse. The Great Hall is Regency.’ He nods to our right at a second, more modern but still very old wing made of cream stone with tall windows and glass doors that open directly onto the garden. Looking through a window, I can see a bunch of round tables dressed with white tablecloths. ‘This courtyard used to be fully enclosed,’ Evan says. ‘But the north and east wings burned down in the early nineteenth century. Whoever was custodian of the place at the time decided not to rebuild the north wing, and why would you?’
He nods ahead at the view. It’s breathtaking, a gently undulating hill that dips and then rises into woodland in the distance.
There’s a clanking sound to my right and a large window in the Regency wing flies open. An attractive older woman with windswept chin-length blonde hair leans out.
‘Evan, darling, can we borrow you a minute?’ she calls in a cut-glass accent. ‘We need a nice big pair of strong male hands.’
‘Sure, Mrs B,’ Evan replies amiably, turning to me and saying: ‘If you want to head that way and hang a right, you’ll come to the rose gardens and a view of the orangery. I’ll see you there in a minute?’
‘Okay.’
‘Oh, is that Eleanor Knapley?’ the woman calls out eagerly as I begin to walk away.
‘Fresh off the train,’ Evan replies.
I glance over my shoulder to see him genially beckoning me back.
‘It’s wonderful to meet you,’ she gushes. ‘And we must have a proper chat soon, but right now I’ve a small emergency with a fridge-freezer. Come, come!’ she urges Evan.
He gives me an amused look as he sets off towards a pair of double doors further along the building.
I come out of the courtyard garden onto a wide gravel path that’s lined by towering topiary columns. To the left, a couple of hundred metres away, is an old church sitting in a field of long grass accessed by a winding path. My eyes sweep right over the far sunlit trees climbing the hill in the distance and pause on a stretch of water at the edge of the woods. The estate certainly seems vast. Luckily we’re only responsible for the formal gardens.
A neatly mown lawn slopes down from this top terrace to a lower level where a young family is playing with oversized Jenga blocks. As I wander right, along the path, I notice giant chess pieces and other garden games too, and there are a couple of people lying on the steep slope, soaking up the last of the day’s sunshine. There are a few other visitors about and it occurs to me that this might be my one and only chance to enjoy the gardens just like them – from tomorrow, I’ll be an employee here, wearing a gardener’s uniform.
Today, I’m dressed in jeans and a lightweight jumper, with my long hair piled up on my head in a messy bun. I breathe in deeply, my gaze roaming over the cottage garden plants in the beds by the house: spicy orange roses climbing the old stone walls, clusters of blowsy pink peonies and tall vibrant purple irises swaying in the late-spring breeze. The perfume from the rose gardens up ahead hits my nose.
Everyone who heard I was moving to Wales warned me to:
‘Pack your wet-weather gear!’
‘Don’t forget your raincoat!’
‘Make sure you’ve got a good umbrella!’
Or some variation on the same theme.
Even Evan told me to ‘Say goodbye to sunshine!’
But according to the weather forecast, it’s supposed to be sunny all week. It’s only the middle of May – I can’t believe my luck.
I head in the direction of the formal rose garden, which is laid out in a traditional design around a central grey stone fountain, and then I take a left past a tall hedge. The orangery comes into view at the end of a long sloping lawn and it’s stunning: Georgian, I assume, with tall double doors and a pitched glass roof that I can just make out from this higher perspective. At the bottom of the hill behind the orangery is a glittering lake – the stretch of water I saw from the house – and beyond it, the woods climb back uphill in the distance.
My attention is caught by a vibrant block of red in the wide garden beds butting up against the lawn that leads down to the orangery. My breath catches: lupins. Masses of them. And not just in red, but all colours.
My heart lifts as I walk down a few steps and come to a stop, drinking in the sight. It’s like Nan’s rainbow garden scaled up to the power of fifty, beginning with reds and oranges, morphing into pinks and purples, and ending with blues, yellows and whites.
Nan would have given her right arm to come and see me working in a garden like this.
For a moment, I imagine her standing there beside me, her face lit up with wonder and pride. Tears prick my eyes at the thought.
I have come a long way.