Consider the Lily (6 page)

She smiled at his eagerness and handed over the reins. ‘How’s Simon, Sammy? I haven’t seen him for some time.’

‘He’s all right,’ said Sammy, busy with Guinevere and intent on demonstrating to Johnny how skilful he was with the bridle. Amused, Flora followed the horse’s rolling backside into the yard where the last buckle was being tightened on the carriage horse’s harness.

‘Miss Flora.’ Rolly wiped his hands on his apron and stepped back, obviously pleased. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Guinevere’s dropped a nail or two up at Caesar’s Camp. Have you got time to deal with her, Rolly? Will it take long? Not that it matters, of course.’ Flora had a tendency to rush at her words, and often muddled them. ‘I don’t want to keep Ada waiting. What I mean is, I’m sure she’s cooked your dinner and you’ve got lots of people waiting, I can see.’

‘For you, Miss Flora...’

Rolly glanced at the forge, which still had plenty of life, and nodded. Flora ran a finger down the black carriage horse’s nose. ‘What do all you horses do with your shoes?’

‘Eat ‘em, Miss Flora.’

Flora stroked and patted and Robin could tell she knew exactly the spot to place a soothing finger. So this was one of the Dysarts. He allowed himself a prolonged scrutiny from his vantage point by the shafts and saw a tall, well-built girl dressed in jodhpurs with a short-sleeved linen shirt and a plait hanging down her back. She seemed pleasant, open and harmless.

‘Over here then, Sammy,’ Rolly ordered. Reluctantly, Sammy yielded up Guinevere, twisted the peak of his cap to the back and returned to his post by the gate, where he lolled importantly.

‘Isn’t it your tea-time, you two?’ Flora looked at her watch. ‘Your mothers will be waiting.’

With a clatter of hobnails on the yard surface, the boys took themselves off. Flora relaxed against a pile of wheels and watched Rolly. A fly buzzed peaceably by her head, the men talked quietly to each other, Guinevere tossed her nose skywards as Rolly hooked up her back leg and there was the familiar, soothing smell of warm horseflesh. Content, Flora closed her eyes and rested her head against a wooden strut. Then she opened them again and squinted through the sun. ‘You must be Ada’s brother,’ she said to Robin. ‘The new doctor.’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said in a voice which retained a trace of the Hampshire burr.

‘And you were brought up in Alton—’ Flora came to an abrupt stop. She
was
going to say ‘and you are living with Rolly until your house is repaired, which, considering you have just had to buy into the practice, must be very expensive for you,’ but realized it would be rude.

Robin understood the hesitation. It amused him that his precise social status had been raked over and assessed by the family. He realized he presented a problem to the social experts — not quite villager, but not gentry. He knew perfectly well that an event as important as his arrival would have been chewed over in every pub and over every gate for weeks. What he had not been prepared for was quite the detail with which it had been broadcast.

‘I’m not really a stranger, Miss Dysart. My parents used to live up towards Clare Park but they moved to Alton before the war.’

‘But you’ve been studying in London. You must understand,’ said Flora, explaining to the outsider, ‘that now you are Tainted with Sodom and Gomorrah.’

‘I do see.’ Robin stuffed paint-splotched hands into his pockets. ‘Do I not score a point if my sister is married to the blacksmith?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I should set about marrying one of the local girls at once.’

Flora considered him. Robin was slight, almost delicate, a little undersized, even. He had white freckled skin which, when he was exhausted, took on a grey tinge. It looked a little grey today. He seemed older than she had imagined from the gossip, although he wasn’t, only tired from years of hard study in bad light, of working during his free time and too many hasty meals. The mixture of youth and age in his features made him enormously attractive – particularly with a large fleck of paint beneath his right eye.

‘Marry a local girl?’ Flora replied, her whip swishing to and fro, and again forgot to choose her words carefully. ‘If you like. It would prove that you mean business.’

He raised an eyebrow as much as to say, Why should I not?

Flora knew at once that in suggesting that he was playing at being doctor, she had put her great big size seven foot in it. ‘What’s wrong with Maidy?’ she asked after an awkward second’s silence, and pointed towards the back door where Rolly’s youngest sister was standing, crying.

‘Maidy’s just passed the labour exam, and she’ll be going into service in Farnham.’

‘I see. Oh, poor Maidy. She won’t want to leave home.’

‘No, Miss Dysart. I don’t think she does.’

Robin and Flora regarded each other across the social divide — on one side those who serve, on the other those who are served. Flora felt uncomfortable.

‘Do you know if Maidy asked Mrs Dawes up at the house if there was work?’

Robin did not take pity, nor did he wish to spare her feelings. ‘You earn better wages in Farnham,’ he said.

Sweat sprang across Flora’s upper lip. She pulled her yellow string gloves out of her pocket and attempted to wriggle her fingers into them, but had trouble doing so with Robin watching. He turned away. She was big, young, unwittingly arrogant and vulnerable, but her flesh was a healthy buttermilk, slicked with summer dampness that unaccountably quickened his responses.

‘Rolly will get your horse.’

He made no effort to help her onto Guinevere’s back, but once up Flora was on surer ground. The mare snickered affectionately and sent her tail dancing. Flora gathered up the reins. ‘I did not mean to offend you, Dr Lofts. Did I do so?’

He knew he should not mind that she was up there on the horse at an advantage, and normally he would not. He shrugged and stepped back. ‘No, of course not.’

Flora turned Guinevere round in a tight circle. ‘Bye, Roily. Good luck, Maidy,’ she called out. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

Robin never knew why he said what he did say, for he never admired people who laboured a point. ‘I don’t think so, Miss Dysart,’ he cut through the goodbyes. ‘Maidy doesn’t get a day off until Christmas.’

Half-way along Well Road, the bone cart bound for the flock and glue factory passed Flora. For a couple of seconds, she and the driver were neck and neck. The cart bounced along beside her, before it pulled away, spraying maggots shaken loose from the bones onto the road.

The smell made Flora retch and she squeezed Guinevere’s sides and urged her into a trot.

I forgot to say: lilies are greedy feeders. Ask any gardener. They drive down roots which, like hidden drones, suck goodness out of the earth in the service of the flaring trumpet flowers glittering in the sun, awaiting violation by the bees.

Of course, lilies have their enemies. I watched Mother battle for years against slugs. In the end, she decided coarse sand heaped around the bulb when it was planted was the only answer. I often think of those mortally wounded molluscs crawling away to die of a thousand cuts.

Ironically, Mother never liked lilies, but my father did. ‘The queen of flowers, darling,’ he would say. To please him, my mother planted them all over the garden, which had become famous by then. There they are still. The lovely Madonna,
Lilium candidum,
the Regale,
Lilium regale,
‘Achilles’ and the exotic, knowing ‘Black Magic’.

No, Mother preferred roses. She understood them, loved them, even the diseases and pests. ‘The froghopper is at it again,’ she would say, cheerfully, or the greenfly or the sawfly. I think she liked the rose’s conviviality: the way it forms a natural complement to other plants. She admired its fertility – its generous, remontant, fat-budded fertility and easy propagation.

Neither she nor my father would like the motorway that now runs near Odiham, nor the housing developments built in unsuitable brick that infill the village, nor the neon glow over Farnham at night, nor the forest of television aerials where beeches once rustled.

No matter. Nothing can, or should, remain still. Not even families. They change, break up, knit closer, fall apart – or draw to a faltering conclusion. Like ours.

When you first take up gardening, or rather
it
takes you up, blooms are all important. I used to tease Mother about that and tell her she had never got past the hors d’oeuvres. Later, the architecture of the garden becomes more important: the bones which support flesh, if you like – the contrast in foliage and structure, the shape of one leaf against another. Think of a hosta’s ebullient shape or
Alchemilla mollis
(Lady’s mantle) whose acid yellow blooms and scalloped leaves foam along a border. Think of the allium with its spherical head of star-shaped purple flowers (which, like us, go stiff and dry in death). Or the Falstaffian cardamom swaggering and bullying its way into life. Contrast those perpetual qualities with the acrylic colours of the modern dahlia or the kiss-me-quick qualities of the annual bedding plant. Do you see what I mean about progression?

For the novice, the first steps in gardening are the most difficult. There is much to learn, wrote a great gardener, Miss Gertrude Jekyll. But, unlike the lessons in love or hate, even the lessons in money, they are pleasant, oh, so pleasant, and the fallings by the wayside do not wound, only teach. The beginner, said Miss Jekyll, should be both bewildered and puzzled, for that is part of the pre-ordained way; the road to perfection. Each step becomes lighter, less mud-clogged, until, little by little, the postulant becomes the novice, the novice the fully professed. Oh, yes, Miss Jekyll, you were so right. A garden is a grand primer. ‘It teaches patience and careful watchfulness: it teaches industry and thrift: above all, it teaches entire trust.’

Polly had bequeathed several daughter-of-the-house duties to her reluctant sister and when the telephone rang a week after the wedding, Flora looked up from the hash she was making of a flower arrangement in the hall. Since Ellen was balanced on top of a stepladder wielding a feather duster, Flora dropped two long-stemmed sweet peas back into the pile of cut flowers and lifted the receiver.

‘Hinton Dysart.’

‘Hallo. Hallo? Oh, you are there. This is Susan Chudleigh. Could I speak to Miss Dysart?’

‘This is she.’ With a smothered sigh, Flora hooked a leg around a chair leg, pulled it towards her and manoeuvred her bottom onto the seat. She was planning to ride up to Roke Farm and check out their foal, Myfanwy, and round by Wheeler’s Dell and Itchel Manor, with a last call to Danny, and she had a feeling that Mrs Chudleigh was about to insert a spoke in the wheel.

‘How nice to hear you, Miss Dysart, and thank you again for allowing perfect strangers to your sister’s wedding.’ Susan Chudleigh did not exactly gush – she was too clever for that – but almost.

‘Do call me Flora, please, Mrs Chudleigh.’ Flora dangled the scissors over her knee and pressed the open points gently into the flesh so generously parcelling her thigh and wished she could cut it off. Snip, snip.

‘Flora, then. I won’t keep you, but I have a little proposition.’

Flora raised her eyes to the ceiling in need of repainting: ‘little propositions’ had a way of taking up all day.

‘Mr Chudleigh and I have decided to be daring this year, and we have taken a villa near Antibes for August and September. We wondered if you and your brother would care to join the houseparty? You would be very welcome...’ You mean Kit would be very welcome, Flora thought. ‘Very informal. Nothing smart.’

Flora was acquiring a useful mental dictionary of social euphemisms and concluded at once that ‘nothing smart’ meant precisely the opposite: dismal shorts and made-over silk georgette would definitely not do. She injected what she prayed was enthusiasm into her voice. ‘What a ripping’ (Susan Chudleigh was the sort of person who made you say ripping) ‘idea, Mrs Chudleigh. I’m sure Kit and I would adore to come.’

‘Well, it’s not Biarritz, of course, but lots of people prefer this area. We’re bound to bump into friends.’ Flora was not to know the hidden text to Susan’s last comments read that, since Matty had offered to foot the bill, Ambrose Chudleigh had insisted they kept the holiday as cheap as possible and Biarritz was not on.

Flora glanced at the clock, and the scissors disappeared down the side of the chair. ‘How
lovely.
And how kind of you to think about us.’

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you that both Marcus...’ Mrs Chudleigh paused for a second ‘and Daisy were very taken with you two. We talked it over and this seemed an excellent way of getting to know you better. Next year you will be so busy with the Season, of course.’ She assumed an intimacy with Flora’s coming-out plans that made the latter wince. Her voice sharpened. ‘Can I take it you will say yes, Flora?’

Flora made an effort and undamped her lips. ‘Mrs Chudleigh. It’s a perfectly lovely invitation and I know we will both want to come, but I must speak to my father first. May I ring you back?’

‘Ye gods!’ she said, putting the telephone back on the table, and left Ellen to stare after her retreating back.

Kit and her father were closeted in the ‘Exchequer’. Flora’s riding boots clattered on the stone flags as she ran down the kitchen corridor (originally white, now dingy cream) past the general dump for outdoor things – mackintoshes, coats sprouting trailing threads along their seams, torn hacking jackets and a collection of unclaimed hats – and past the gun room with its almost empty cabinets.

The Exchequer had been so dubbed because it housed title deeds, letters, the family Bible, a framed genealogical tree written in Gothic script, and a less romantic accumulation of bills and business papers. Wreathed in pipe smoke, Rupert was standing looking out of the window, and from the set of his shoulders it was obvious that things were not progressing smoothly. Seated at the table stacked with papers, Kit rolled a pencil between his fingers. It was the monthly accounts meeting that all parties dreaded – and since Rupert was not gifted with financial acumen, nor able to allow Kit, who was, to take decisions, the results were predictable: Rupert turned sarcastic and Kit simply withdrew.