EG02 - The Lost Gardens (12 page)

Kingston closed the door of the workshop behind him, went across the large airy room with its three vertical skylights and sat down at the drawing board. The workshop was one of the first new buildings to be constructed on the garden site. He had designed it to function as the nerve centre, as it were, for the entire garden operation. It served as an office for him; a place to store records, which were becoming more voluminous every day; a design centre with computers appended with all the obligatory peripherals and a large drawing board; a library for garden books and catalogues; and a place where they could hold meetings and the occasional celebration—as they had when the reflection pool was uncovered.

In front of him on the architect’s drawing table was a large sketchpad with rough designs for what would soon be the rose garden. It was one of his pet projects and so far he had given Jamie no hint of what he was planning. As far as he was concerned, roses would get top billing and he was spending a disproportionate amount of time making sure that both his design and his selection of shrub varieties, climbers and ramblers were impeccable. He wanted it to come as a complete surprise.

Just when he first became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started as an amusing dalliance had developed over many years to become a passionate love affair. In this respect, he was certainly in good company—that much he knew. He had lectured on the subject so many times that he could still rattle much of it off by rote. The names of writers, poets and artists who have commemorated and eulogized the rose would fill volumes. Starting with Sappho, Horace and Virgil, the rose weaves its literary way through the centuries in the prose of Shakespeare, Herrick, Wordsworth, Yeats and the Brownings. To this day books about roses appear and will continue to appear on bookshop shelves with predictable certainty. In the history of art the rose reigns supreme. Botticelli, Manet, de La Tour, Georgia O’Keefe were all enthralled by the queen of flowers.

Botanists, plant biologists and historians generally agree that roses were cultivated five thousand years ago. (Fossil evidence in North America suggests that roses flourished at least thirty-two million years ago.) Over the centuries they bloomed in the land of the Pharaohs and were cultivated in Bronze Age Crete; Grecian coins of the fifth century BC depict a rose on one side. Roses just kept growing and growing in the plots and hearts of gardeners all over the globe. By the end of the eighteenth century there were more than a thousand varieties.

Today’s would-be rose aficionado is faced with a dazzling choice of old and new hybrids. Take your pick: from chaste whites and negligee pinks all the way to peppery and damson reds. Blooms the size of a fingernail or as large as a pie plate. Many voluptuously perfumed, most bristling with thorns. Miniature, ground cover, shrub, landscape, patio, standard, climber, rambler—there’s a shape and size for every space.

Next the neophyte rose buyer has to decide what species or variety to choose. Navigating the thicket of options is a bewildering exercise, one that requires considerable study and deliberation, professional help or a sharp pin. Four basic groups define the genus: species roses, antique roses, early nineteenth-century hybrids, and modern roses. Within each of the first three groups there are up to as many as two dozen different families of rose, and within those families, more roses. In the last group, modern roses, the division is enormous, resulting in many thousands of varieties.

Kingston had spent several weeks ruminating over his choice of roses for Wickersham. There was no shortage of space for planting so the starting list was lengthy. Winnowing down the candidates had been both a trial and a pleasure. Adding names and crossing them off conjured memories of garden visits past. He could picture the lovely single Gallica, ‘Complicata,’ threading its joyful way up through the branches of the old apple tree at Graham Stuart Thomas’s rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey and the exuberant
Rosa felipes
‘Kiftsgate’ zooming fifty feet into the copper beech at the charming Gloucestershire garden after which it was named.

The few pictures they had of the original rose garden at Wickersham all showed a typical layout. Orderly beds, some surrounded with low clipped box hedges, filled with nothing but regimented rows of roses. Kingston abhorred this kind of municipal garden look, judging the practice barely one step above the use of multicoloured bedding plants designed to replicate the Union Jack or the city name.

The new rose garden at Wickersham would be one of the few areas that didn’t mirror its predecessor. Roses would be mixed in with shrubs, perennials and other plants, allowing them to show off their individuality and form, a technique now in common practice as exemplified at the garden at Sissinghurst. He was, however, going to make one small concession, in recognition of Britain’s celebrated rose hybridizer, David Austin, who created an entirely new category of roses known worldwide as English Roses. In any gardener’s dreams, the perfect rose would combine beauty of form, subtlety of colour, irresistible fragrance, resistance to disease and, above all, the ability to flower repeatedly. Such are the roses of David Austin. And Kingston was going to showcase them.

At noon, he took a break to check on progress in various parts of the gardens. Still, there was no sign of Jack. A couple of phone calls went unanswered. He decided that if Jack didn’t show up in the morning, he would drive over to his house and find out what was going on.

Seven o’clock on a Wednesday night at the White Swan in Coombe St Mary was just as busy as Saturday—or any other night, for that matter: three-deep at the bar, a surround-sound din of conversation and a minimum twenty-minute wait for the dining room. The quintessential horse brasses type pub, it had, hands down, the best food within fifty miles in any direction.

It was Jamie’s birthday and the dinner was on Kingston. He’d brought along a small gift: Mirabel Osler’s
A Gentle Plea for Chaos,
one of his favourite books, musings about the joys and trials of her garden. They’d had a glass of house white in the bar while waiting for the table and, now seated, were on a second, from the bottle of Sancerre that Kingston had just selected for their first course.

Their conversation was mostly about food and wine, which suited Kingston fine. He didn’t often get the chance these days to flex his epicurean muscles. He was quickly finding out, however, that there was more than just Dot’s talent at work in the kitchen at Wickersham; that Jamie probably had a great deal more influence than he’d given her credit for. ‘By no means a foodie,’ as she had put it, she credited her father—more so than her mother—as having the most influence on her when she was growing up. ‘He just
loved
to cook,’ she said with a wistful smile. ‘He was real easy to buy Christmas gifts for. Of course, growing up surrounded by grapevines and wineries in one of the world’s great wine-growing regions didn’t hurt either.’ Whether it was the wine or not, she seemed comfortable talking about her past.

Kingston placed his fork and spoon on the white china bowl in front of him and leaned back in his chair. ‘What did you do in California, Jamie? Your job, I mean?’

For a moment she said nothing, then broke into a smile. ‘I was a winemaker.’

It was if she already knew what his reaction would be. She waited, the teasing smile still on her lips. ‘You look surprised, Lawrence.’

‘Well—I am. A winemaker?’

‘That’s right.’ She was clearly enjoying watching Kingston fumbling for the right words. She saved him the trouble. ‘Did you know that in French there’s no word for winemaker? Nor is there in Spanish, Italian or German. The French use the word
vigneron
, which means wine grower.’

‘I’d never thought about that,’said Kingston, rubbing his chin. ‘Interesting.’

‘Most men think of it as being a male-dominated profession, which it still is in Europe. It used to be that way in California but nowadays more and more young women are graduating from U.C. Davis and Fresno each year, with degrees in enology and viticulture. Same thing happened in the restaurant business. Some of best chefs in the bay area now are women. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse is probably the most famous. As a matter of fact, she was invited to open a restaurant at the Louvre, in Paris. You can just imagine what the Frenchmen would have said about that.’

‘I must say I’m very impressed. I should’ve had you pick the wine.’

‘No, you made an excellent choice.’

‘So, where did you work? Would I recognize the name of the winery?’

‘I doubt it. It’s quite small. About twelve thousand cases a year. It’s called Hargrove. Near a small town called Glen Ellen.’

‘What varietals?’

‘Old Vines Zinfandel, Syrah and Merlot, mostly—but we’ve planted several acres of Carignane and Mourvedre and they’ll be ready in a couple of years.’

‘All reds.’

‘Yes. I want to start blending varietals, soon. If and when I go back, that is.’

‘The Rhone style varietals lend themselves to that, as I understand.’

‘They do. Sounds as if you know quite a lot about wine.’ He shrugged. ‘All learned by drinking it for many years, I’m afraid.’

‘The best way.’

‘I would imagine it’s a frightfully competitive business these days, with so many countries producing good wines.’

‘It is. And it can get expensive. We have a saying, that if you want to make ten million in the wine business, start with twenty.’

Kingston laughed. ‘Clever,’he said. ‘You’ve been holding out on me, then? You do know something about horticulture. That’s certainly part of winemaking.’

‘A very big part. Most people don’t think of winemaking as farming but that’s essentially what it is. The enology part comes later and, as you know, that’s got to be right, too. But it all starts out there in the vineyard. Agriculture pure and simple—well, not quite so simple as it looks.’

‘Did you quit to come over here?’

‘No. I took a leave of absence. The couple that owns the winery, the Hargroves, treat me as if I were the daughter they never had. Neither of their two sons wanted to be in the wine business.’

‘So, do you plan to stay here indefinitely?’

‘It’s hard to say. When I first saw the estate and how big it was—’ She picked up her glass and sipped some water. ‘By the way, I don’t think I told you, David hired a helicopter that very first day. He said that was the only way I could grasp an understanding of what I owned. It was quite a trip, I can tell you. All those acres of beautiful land.’

‘I can imagine what a thrill it was. Good for David.’

‘Naturally, the first few weeks here I was really homesick. Then David told me about a winery not too far from here called Moorlynch. He took me there and I met the owners. It’s quite lovely and their wines are excellent—all whites. That’s when I got the idea.’

‘What idea?’

‘To try making wines here one day. At Wickersham.’

‘That’s a
wonderful
idea.’

‘I hadn’t brought it up so far because I want the gardens to be the only priority. But down the road, that’s what I might do.’ She smiled. ‘Providing you haven’t spent all my money by that time, Lawrence.’

‘Did you have a garden back home?’

‘I did. A tiny one, at the house I rented on a big piece of property not too far from the winery. I grew mostly herbs and perennials, a few roses, too—some climbers. Mediterranean, I suppose you’d call it.’ She grinned. ‘Stuff that’s hard to kill.’

‘It sounds delightful. I envy you that weather.’

‘Like they say, the grass is always greener—’

‘Which usually means the water bill is higher.’

She chuckled. ‘How true. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve prayed for rain during our endless summers. ’

They fell silent as the waiter arrived to take away the plates, topping up their glasses before making a polite exit.

‘What do the folks back home think of all your good fortune? Your friends?’

He couldn’t miss the flicker of apprehension in her eyes. She looked away and then, as quickly, back to him. ‘My parents died quite a while ago,’ she replied softly. ‘Nearly seven years.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, glancing down at the tablecloth for a moment to give her pause to reflect. There was no point in telling her that he knew already, that Latimer had told him. He looked up at her.

‘No, it’s okay. It took a long time but I’m fine talking about them now.’

‘I know how it is, Jamie.’Aware that it would come across as an empty platitude he found himself saying it anyway, if for no other reason than to fill the void: ‘I lost my wife ten years ago.’

‘I’m sorry, Lawrence,’ she said. She toyed with her wineglass, looking into it as she spoke, her voice now more upbeat. ‘They were killed in a plane crash. My dad’s Cessna. They went down in a snowstorm in the Sierras. It was a crushing irony, because they were on their way back from Lake Tahoe. They’d spent the weekend there celebrating their anniversary. It was one of their favourite places.’ She looked at him with a fragile smile and eyes that tried desperately but couldn’t hide her love and her sorrow. ‘My dad fancied himself as a poker player,’ she added.

‘How terribly sad.’ Kingston shifted in his seat, thinking a change of subject might be prudent. But she went on talking about them for another minute or so. He learned that her mother met Jamie’s dad-to-be—Warren Arthur Gibson, nickname, Wag—in San Francisco. At the time he was vice president of a wine-importing company, her mother, a private secretary for Bechtel, the international engineering company. Within a year they married and Jamie was born the following year.

The waiter reappeared with their main courses.

‘As for friends,’said Jamie, ‘I keep in touch with Todd and Suzanne Hargrove on a fairly regular basis. I’m in touch with other friends, mostly by e-mail, and once in a while, when I get really homesick, I’ll pick up the phone. Matter of fact, Matthew, one of the guys I worked with—neat guy, you’ll like him—may come over in a couple of months. He’s got three weeks’vacation due.’ She smiled. ‘I told him we were a little short on rooms but we’d fix him up somehow.’