Chapter 2
Cape Colman had been working in the grounds of Morton Hall for five years, but had never met the owner. He’d never even seen the elusive Emilia Morton. Well, he’d caught little glimpses of her at an upstairs window in the west turret, but not enough to know what she really looked like.
Every order he was given came through the housekeeper. Mrs Beatty was a stern woman in her sixties with a big bosom and eyebrows which hovered menacingly over her black-rimmed spectacles. She also handed him his wages at the end of each month. His job was simple: to keep the maze, hedges, topiary, and the borders around them, the house and the driveway, in tip-top form. No other part of the garden was to be touched. The old Victorian kitchen garden, with its long greenhouse and glorious old espaliered fruit trees, the rose garden full of fabulous old varieties, the fountain and the statues: all were left to rot, crumble and run riot. Never visited, never loved. It was a crying shame, but who was Cape to argue? He might have longed to take his shears and scythe and get to work clearing the area, restoring it back to its full Victorian splendour, but his orders were very specific.
He’d once made the mistake of clearing the ivy and brambles away from one of the statues. He’d seen its face peeping out of the undergrowth and he couldn’t resist setting it free, revealing its beauty to the world. The next time he’d arrived at Morton Hall, he’d been reprimanded by Mrs Beatty. Just what did he think he was doing? Cape had tried to explain, but he’d been told that it wasn’t his job to think for himself. He’d hated being spoken to like that and he’d very nearly walked away, but the garden meant too much to him to do that.
His father had been a gardener, although he’d never had the training that he’d made sure Cape had received. He was more of an odd-job sort of gardener. He’d plant, shape and cut a lawn, he’d happily hack his way through any overgrown borders, but he’d be less happy designing one from scratch. He had aspirations to learn more about the history of gardening and was passionate about visiting the great gardens of England. Cape remembered some of their trips together with great affection. They’d spent many a happy day at Blenheim Palace, which wasn’t too far away, but they’d journeyed further afield too, taking in the incredible landscape gardens of Stowe, Chatsworth, Petworth and Woburn. It had instilled in Cape a great appreciation for wide open spaces and a desire to spend as much time as possible outdoors, which was why he valued his post at Morton Hall so much.
His partner, Renee, didn’t share his enthusiasm and she’d made it quite plain that she hated him working at Morton Hall.
‘I don’t know why you go there,’ she told him. ‘You could be doing more proper work – work you get good wages for.’
She was referring to his design work.
‘But I do that as well,’ he told her. ‘And I like the garden at Morton Hall. It’s special.’
‘Anybody could cut the hedges.’
‘Not as well as me,’ he asserted. ‘Besides, I get a kick out of being there. It inspires me.’
No matter how many times he told Renee that, she never seemed to understand. He’d taken her there once, on a perfect September day when the golden light had fallen upon the garden like a blessing, but she hadn’t been able to see the beauty in the place. All she’d seen were the nettles and the briars and the rather austere house in the middle of it all. It had upset him, but it didn’t surprise him. For a beautician, Renee was quite remarkable in her inability to see the beauty in the natural world. But what upset Cape even more was that Renee strongly objected whenever he took their ten-year-old daughter with him. Poppy adored the maze and it thrilled him to see her running around the leafy playground. Mrs Beatty had given him permission to bring his daughter with him once a month, but the girl was to be kept under strict supervision and must not make any noise. Miss Morton didn’t like noise, he was told.
Cape told his daughter not to venture further than the garden that was in his care, not only because those were the rules, but because he’d seen the danger and desolation that lay elsewhere: the broken shards of greenhouse glass, crumbling walls and thistles, and the nettles and briars that would sting and lacerate the young girl’s legs if she dared to stray from the path. Luckily, she hadn’t shown any interest in the rest of the garden. The maze was adventure enough for her, as were the topiary birds and beasts that her father tended to. She was fascinated by them, giving them all names as if they were her personal playthings, and asking after them in between her visits. There was a peacock she’d named Percy and a bear called Freddy. The horse was called Starlight and the dodo was Arabella. Cape smiled as he remembered.
‘Why Arabella?’ he’d asked at the time.
‘She looks like an Arabella, don’t you think?’
Cape often wondered if Poppy was going to become a gardener too one day. How his father would have adored her. It was the great sadness of Cape’s life that he’d been taken away so soon. Poppy had been a baby when he’d died from complications arising from a rare form of dementia. Had he recognised his only granddaughter? It had been hard to tell. Cape’s mother had died when he was just seven years old and the loss of his father was a devastating blow. He’d thrown himself into his work, dedicating more time to it than was healthy, but he thought he had the balance right now.
And, oh, how he loved his days at Morton Hall. Yes, his job there was pretty unexciting as jobs went – there wasn’t much scope to flex his own creativity when he was simply keeping things in order with a pair of shears and a hoe, but he got so much pleasure from that. He felt more like a zookeeper than a gardener when it came to looking after the topiary animals. No wonder Poppy had named all the hedges – they really were characters in their own right and, officially, they were alive, weren’t they? He might not talk to them the way Poppy did, but he cared for them greatly.
Then there were the abstract shapes – the hedge that looked like a great fat wedding cake, the spirals and the pyramids, and others that were indescribably odd.
‘They’re every shape at once,’ Poppy had said when she’d first seen them.
But each had a distinct personality, there was no denying that.
It seemed such a shame that they were only enjoyed by one person. Well, he assumed the owner enjoyed them. Miss Morton never came out into the garden when he was there, although he came across occasional traces of her presence. He’d once found a book on a bench by the topiary hedge shaped like a wedding cake; another time he discovered a whisper-thin scarf in the maze. He’d hoped to return the scarf to Miss Morton in person and had dared to enter the main house via the servants’ stairs. The ground-floor rooms in that quarter were open to him so that he could make himself a cup of tea in the most basic of kitchens and use the toilet. It was one of those toilets with the cistern up on the wall. Poppy had never seen anything like it and had refused to go near it when she’d first encountered it, fearing it was going to fall off the wall and squash her. It had taken all of Cape’s powers of persuasion to get her to use it.
After Cape had found the scarf, he’d ventured up the servants’ stairs. He’d never dared to do that before: he’d not been invited to or told where they went and he’d never asked but, for some reason, he’d felt compelled to try to find Miss Morton that day.
The stairs were bare of any carpet and the walls, which were white, were cool and rather austere-looking. A door soon greeted him, but it had been locked and so he’d gone up another flight, finding a door that opened onto a dark landing lined with tapestries. His eyes were just adjusting when the buxom figure of Mrs Beatty appeared, silhouetted at a doorway.
‘Mr Colman!’ she’d bellowed. ‘What are you doing in here?’
He’d held out the scarf as if in explanation. ‘I found it in the maze. I wanted to return it to Miss Morton.’
‘I’ll take that!’ she’d said, charging forward and snatching it from him.
‘I’d really like to return it myself,’ he’d said.
‘Miss Morton does not see visitors.’
‘But I’m not a visitor – I’m her employee.’
‘Yes, and your place is in the garden. Kindly return there.’
They’d stood, staring each other down in a battle of wills. Cape had given in first with a weary sigh. The woman was impossible. All he’d wanted to do was say hello to his employer. Was that really asking too much?
‘Can you tell Miss Morton that I—’
‘Out now, please.’
He hadn’t dared to climb the servants’ stairs since.
He often wondered if, one day, he’d look up from his clipping to see Miss Morton standing there. She’d introduce herself, apologise for not having done so before and they’d become great friends. Cape would like that. He longed to ask her about the history of the garden, for there was only a little information about it online and in the local library and that wasn’t the same as getting to know the garden through the owner, was it? That’s what he wanted – the private, personal history of the garden. What a treat it would be to wander through the maze with her and to ask her about her family’s use of it. It seemed such a shame that he never saw her enjoying it.
But there was somebody he knew who loved the garden as much as he did. Well, he didn’t know her exactly, but he’d seen her countless times although she wasn’t aware of that.
She had long red hair, which caught in the slightest of breezes, and an anxious look about her as if she knew she was trespassing and feared getting caught. He longed to put her at ease, but instinctively knew that, if he made an approach, he would scare her off for good. So he left her alone, pretending not to see her, pretending that he didn’t hear her footsteps along the path. Who she was and what solace she found in the garden, he didn’t know. Much as she intrigued him, he left her to herself because he knew that gardens were sacred places and that people came into them to be still and to think private thoughts.
Plus, he liked knowing that there was someone in the garden other than himself. It made him feel less alone and made the place seem alive, which was so vital for a garden.
And so the days went by with Cape trimming and tidying, and the red-haired woman coming and going. It sometimes seemed that his days would always be the same, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, he acknowledged.
It was a cold day in January when Mrs Beatty made a rare appearance in the garden. He caught sight of her crossing the path and went to meet her, his heavy boots leaving their great imprints on the frosty lawn.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked as they met. There was something different about her, something less rigid in her manner. Her face was paler than usual and she was twisting her hands around themselves. ‘Mrs Beatty?’
‘Miss Morton died last night,’ Mrs Beatty said at last.
‘Oh, God! I’m so sorry.’
She nodded. ‘She’d been unwell. For a while. It wasn’t totally unexpected, but . . .’ She swallowed hard, the rest of the sentence forgotten.
‘Still, it’s a shock, I’m sure.’
She nodded.
‘Did you want me to go?’ Cape asked, suddenly realising that his presence might no longer be required.
Mrs Beatty shook her head. ‘No, stay today. And in the future. Your job will continue.’
‘Okay,’ he said, breathing a silent sigh of relief.
‘And there’s something else,’ she said. ‘She left you something.’
Cape frowned. ‘Miss Morton? Really?’
Mrs Beatty nodded.
Cape felt stunned. He couldn’t think what it might be. The pair of shears he’d become so attached to perhaps? Or one of the smaller topiary plants in a pot?
‘You’ll hear more in due course. That’s all I can say.’
He watched as Mrs Beatty turned around and disappeared into the house. He stood there for a while, his breath fogging the air as his frown deepened, and a great weight of sadness fell upon him at the loss of the woman he had never met.