The Restoration Garden: A Novel - 10

Julia

“I hope you don’t mind spaghetti and tomato sauce for dinner,” Helen said, unpacking the rest of her groceries on the kitchen counter. “I’m not much of a cook.” She looked a little embarrassed by the admission.

“Neither am I. Ever since Sam came to live with me, he’s had to put up with peanut butter sandwiches for dinner every night.” My job required so much travel, it was easier to rely on takeout for most of my meals. My last boyfriend had wooed me with wonderful home-cooked meals, but he’d never wanted kids and broken up with me the moment Sam entered my life.

Sam was sitting at the kitchen table, practicing with the set of jacks Margaret had given him, oblivious to our conversation.

Helen frowned. “He didn’t live with you before?”

I winced, wondering how much to share. Helen’s friendliness was disarming, but I’d only just met her. “He’s my nephew. I became his legal guardian after my sister passed away.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Hopefully you don’t mind if he doesn’t eat much,” I said, eager to change the subject away from painful memories of my sister. “Sam doesn’t do well with new foods. Although Andrew got him eating wheat bread and jam this morning, so maybe there’s hope.”

“Andrew has that effect on kids.”

“I got the impression he didn’t really appreciate Sam being here,” I said, wondering whether Helen would react the same way.

She cocked her head with a wry smile. “Let me guess. He did his whole stern-and-serious routine with you?”

“You could say that.”

She laughed. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s an absolute softie beneath all that gruffness. But kids are a bit of a sore spot for him. His last girlfriend had a teenage son that Andrew adored. She was a fellow doctor at the hospital where Andrew works. They dated for almost four years, but she ended things a few months ago when she accepted a new job in Australia, and he hasn’t seen the boy since. I think that broke his heart worse than losing Amy.”

“That’s awful.” No wonder he had reacted so strangely. I couldn’t imagine Sam being suddenly ripped out of my life like that.

“The emergency department’s been short-staffed since Amy left, and it’s fallen to Andrew to cover her shifts until they can find a replacement. All this business with the gardens has been stressful, too. I think it’s hurt his feelings that Margaret won’t tell him why she’s so set on fixing up the gardens now.”

“It is odd. Most people I’ve worked with have really clear reasons for wanting a restoration.”

“Margaret’s not like most people. Fill that for me, will you?” She pointed to a pot she had just retrieved from the cupboard.

I filled the pot at the sink, then set it over the element. I fumbled with the stove’s igniter, releasing a little too much gas before the spark took hold in a large burst that nearly singed my sleeves. I quickly adjusted the knob to lower the flame. At Helen’s instruction, I added salt to the water and put the lid on the pot while she finished with the groceries. The last item she retrieved from her paper bag was a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

“Fancy a glass?”

“Yes, please.”

She uncorked the bottle and poured a generous amount into two long-stemmed glasses. “I can’t tell you how much I needed this after the week I’ve had.”

The wine was bold and spicy, coating my tongue with its velvety flavor. “You’re an accountant, right?”

“A good, responsible job for a good, responsible girl.” She sighed and took a hefty sip of the wine.

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

She laughed once more. “I like it well enough. Or, at least, I like the salary. But it sucks the soul out of me sometimes. There’s a reason no kid Sam’s age ever says they want to grow up to be an accountant.”

“Not all jobs can be passion projects.”

“Is yours?”

“Yes. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. There are parts of it that are hard and tedious.”

“I can only imagine you’ve got your hands quite full with Havenworth. I don’t think anyone’s given the gardens any attention for decades.” She set her wineglass down and peeked inside the pot, which was only just starting to boil.

“I’m used to working on large gardens. The challenge is not having a clear sense of what Margaret wants. She can’t remember much about what they used to look like. Did she ever talk to you about that time in her life?”

Helen dumped a bag of spaghetti into the pot. “Sorry. Margaret never talks much about her past.”

“Andrew mentioned Margaret is your godmother. Does that mean you grew up at Havenworth?”

She shook her head. “We grew up in Cambridge, but my grandpa Charlie was sent here during the war. He lived with Margaret’s family for almost six years. He and Margaret were very close and remained friends for the rest of their lives even though they came from such different backgrounds. Our parents weren’t particularly wealthy, but Margaret made sure we always had new clothes and that we were able to attend the best schools. Now that she’s getting on in years, Andrew insisted on moving in to help her manage the household. I told him I could do it, but he doesn’t trust me. As though I can’t pay the gas bill or call a repairman. Anyway, Andrew works so much that he’s got no choice but to rely on me to help. So if there’s anything you need, just let me know. I can be around whenever you need me.”

“Actually, there is something you could help me with,” I said.

She raised a curious eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“What I mostly need help with is uncovering the past. Old photographs of Havenworth or diaries written by Margaret’s relatives. Anything that speaks to the history of the place.”

“You want to go snooping.” She said it with more excitement than accusation, confirming my instincts. In every project, the key was finding the one person who was eager to help, and Helen seemed more than up to the task.

I nodded. “Margaret said you might be willing to help me.”

She polished off the last of her wine. “Let’s go to the library after dinner. I know exactly where to start.”

“I think they’re in here,” Helen said, leading me into a room on the second story not far from where Sam and I were staying. He had settled to bed easily after dinner, despite not eating much.

A wave of dust assaulted my nose as soon as I stepped inside. It looked like no one had been in this room in years. There was a single bed in the far corner of the room and a small dresser, but the room had clearly been used as a storage space in recent years, with dozens of Bankers Boxes stacked on top of each other along the floor.

“What’s in all of these?”

“I’m not sure,” Helen replied. “Mostly Margaret’s work papers, I expect. The photo albums should be up here.”

She opened the wardrobe and pulled out a stack of albums from the top shelf and set them on the bed. I sat down and opened the top one. A color photo of a young girl with unruly dark curls and the most mischievous smile I had ever seen. It was unmistakably Margaret.

Helen and I pored over the albums, which didn’t seem to be organized in any discernible way, each one providing another peek into Margaret’s storied life. Her graduation from Cambridge. The many awards she had received for her work and charitable efforts. Even snapshots of her with her parents. But not a single picture of the grounds.

“Oh, look,” Helen said excitedly. “It’s one of Andrew and me.”

She angled the album to show me the grainy photo of her as a toddler and teenage Andrew standing stiffly with his hand on her shoulder. “He looks so serious,” I said.

“He’s always been that way. Too serious for his own good and always acting like the entire weight of the world rests on his shoulders.” She laughed as she said it, but the undercurrent of bitterness was unmistakable.

“I can imagine it’s quite stressful taking care of an estate of this size on top of his work as a doctor.”

“He doesn’t have to do it all alone, but he doesn’t trust me or anyone else to help. I’m surprised he didn’t attempt to take on the garden renovations himself, to be honest. I guess that’s just big brothers for you, though.”

I pulled out another album from the pile and flipped open the soft burgundy cover. The black-and-white image of a little girl with huge brown eyes and wild curls standing next to a serious-looking man with dark hair and wire-framed glasses, and a thin woman with a birdlike face, set off a spark of excitement in my belly. These photographs were older than anything we’d seen so far. “Do you think this could be Margaret?” I asked, showing Helen my discovery.

“Ooh, that could be. What’s on the back?”

With painstaking care, I peeled back the plastic layer and lifted the photograph. Margaret, John, and Mary Clarke, 1937.

“She would have been just four years old there,” Helen said. “She was born in 1933. And those are her parents: John Clarke and Lady Montgomery.”

Margaret’s resemblance to her parents was uncanny. Her dark hair and stocky build were so like those of the man next to her, but the pointed chin and pert nose were from her mother. Lady Montgomery wasn’t beautiful in a typical sense, but she was striking, with pronounced cheekbones and fair skin.

I replaced the photograph and flipped to the next page. Unlike the other albums, which were stuffed with photos, this one was noticeably sparse. A single image at most adorned the pages, and some had none at all. All the photographs were of Margaret and her parents. A few included Helen’s grandfather Charlie. Nearly all of the photos were taken indoors, with a few pictures of them on vacation at various beaches and landmarks.

“There are photographs missing from the album,” I said, flipping to another page, where a brighter square of blue stood out against the faded backing. “Someone’s removed them.”

Helen frowned. “How odd. Why would anyone want to get rid of their own history like that?”

“Do you think we can ask Margaret about it?”

“I suppose we can try. She doesn’t like to talk about her past much, though. Especially the war.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“I think it’s true for their entire generation. My granddad was the same. We knew he was sent to live here as a child to escape the bombing in London, but he would never talk about it. Andrew told me I wasn’t to ask him because it made him sad. But I never understood it. He and Margaret remained friends their entire lives, and after his dad and siblings died in the war, Margaret’s parents supported him and my great-grandmother. Andrew said it was a traumatic experience for him, being ripped away from his parents at such a young age like that, no matter how well he was treated by Margaret’s family.”

“The thing is,” Helen continued, “it makes sense that my grandfather was so hesitant to talk about his past after all the loss he experienced. But why Margaret? Her father was a scientist at Cambridge University. By all accounts their life wasn’t upended quite as much as so many others, who didn’t have as much wealth or privilege.”

“Maybe it was the bombing,” I said.

Her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “What bomb?”

“Margaret told me that a bomb fell on the far end of the garden. It’s why that part of the wall was replaced. They had to move to a country home for the rest of the war.”

“She never told me that.” She looked down at her hands, seeming hurt that I’d known something she didn’t.

We flipped through the rest of the album in silence, searching for more clues of what the estate had been like in the past. I suspected Helen was searching for something entirely different from what I was, but, regardless, there were no photographs of the gardens.

“I’m sorry,” Helen said, closing the final album. “I was sure we would find something.”

I looked around the dusty space. How could a home this old have so few memories of its past? Surely there must be some ghosts still lingering. I stood up, needing to settle my restless energy. “Do you mind if I look around some more?”

Helen shrugged. “Suit yourself. Don’t know if you’ll find anything other than dust mites and lab notes.”

I opened the vanity drawers and peeked inside the boxes. Helen was right. There was nothing here. On a last, desperate whim, I looked under the bed. The floor was empty save for the decades’ worth of dust bunnies. But there was something tucked beneath the mattress, against the metal frame. “Helen, get up,” I said excitedly.

“What is it?”

I lifted the thin mattress. “This.” A thick hardcover book the color of a robin’s egg was hidden beneath.

“Maybe it’s someone’s diary,” Helen said excitedly. “Open it.”

The spine creaked ominously. The pages inside were shockingly delicate and crumpled from age, but I was greeted with the most incredible sketch of a daffodil, the details meticulously captured in the sharp lines and gentle shading. Below, details about the flower were written in precise cursive.

Narcissus.

Blooms February through April.

Meaning: Unrequited love.

The sketch itself was dated March 12, 1937. Havenworth Manor. I carefully paged through the rest of the book. It was filled with botanical sketches—some of single flowers, some collections of plants, and, more importantly, some landscape sketches of the gardens.

“What is it?” Helen asked over my shoulder.

“A florilegium,” I said, my voice rising with excitement.

“Come again?”

“It’s a collection of drawings of flowers,” I explained, turning the pages carefully. “It was a way of recording all the plants in a garden.”

I studied the detailed illustrations, feeling a growing sense of wonder. This wasn’t just a keepsake; it was a record of Havenworth’s gardens in their prime—a blueprint for bringing them back to life.

“I wonder who made these,” I whispered, still entranced by the incredible details.

“I doubt it was Margaret,” Helen said. “She’s the only person I know who could walk by a Van Gogh and not even turn her head for a second look.”

“Do you know who lived in this room?”

“It’s been a storage room for as far as I remember, but I think my grandfather stayed here during the war. He didn’t have an ounce of artistic ability, though. Maybe it belonged to one of the other evacuees.”

“The dates don’t line up. This was done in 1937. See?” I angled the florilegium in her direction. A photograph slipped out from between the pages, landing in my lap. Inside the yellowed edges of the square frame was an image of two girls with their arms wrapped around each other. The young one was clearly Margaret, staring up at the other with unabashed reverence. The other girl was at least a decade older, with long blond hair and a dazzling smile.

“She’s beautiful,” Helen said.

“Do you know who she is?”

She shook her head. “No, but they must have been close.”

“A nanny, maybe?” Even as I said it, it didn’t feel right. The affection between the pair was too uninhibited. “Why would it be folded up like that?”

“Who knows? Maybe they meant to throw it out.”

The sound of footsteps echoed in the hall.

“That must be Andrew,” Helen said. “He was supposed to be home hours ago.”

He appeared in the doorway a moment later. “What are you two doing in here?”

It would have been easy to assume he was annoyed by the tone of his voice, but his face told an entirely different story. There were deep purple bags under his eyes and a sag in his shoulders. He was exhausted.

Helen walked over to him with the bent photograph. “That’s Margaret as a little girl, right? Do you recognize who the other one is?”

He took the photograph from her and studied it closely. “I haven’t a clue. Where did you find it?”

“We were searching the old photo albums for pictures of the gardens,” I said. “I thought that would be easier on Margaret than trying to get her to remember the details.”

He nodded. Was that a sign of approval? His reactions were so guarded, it was almost impossible to read into them.

“We found a florilegium under the bed, too,” I added. “It’s full of sketches of the garden. This photo was inside it.”

“We should ask Margaret if she recognizes the girl in the photo,” Helen said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Andrew replied.

“But look how happy she is,” Helen pleaded. “I bet she would love to remember whoever this is.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go see what she has to say.”

Margaret was sitting in the orangery reading when we came in. She raised a finger without looking up, indicating she was determined to finish her page before brooking any interruptions. Finally, she set her book face down on the quilt draped across her lap. “Why do I have the feeling that the three of you coming in here together means you’ve been up to no good?”

“Because you’re so accustomed to stirring up trouble yourself that you assume the rest of us are, too,” Andrew said teasingly.

She chuckled. “All grown up and you still haven’t lost one ounce of that cheekiness. If not for trouble, then what are you here for?”

“I was showing Julia the old photo albums in the storage room, and we found this picture of you,” Helen said, handing the photo to her godmother. “It was inside a sketchbook with a bunch of drawings of flowers.”

Margaret gasped, the memory clearly a shock.

Andrew rushed to her side and squeezed her hand. “Margaret? Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“You recognize her,” I said gently.

“Yes.”

“Who is she? Was the florilegium hers? Whoever created it clearly loved the gardens.”

Margaret swallowed, still visibly shaken. “Irene. My half sister.”

Helen’s gaze whipped to Andrew. A silent exchange passed between them.

With his lips pressed into a grim line, Andrew crouched down next to Margaret. “What happened to her? How come you never told us you had a half sister?”

She stroked a trembling finger along Irene’s image. “We weren’t supposed to talk about her. That’s why Mummy made us throw out all the photographs of her.”

“Why would you throw away her photographs?” Andrew prodded gently.

Margaret was silent for a long time before finally speaking. “Because she was a traitor. She betrayed our family by spying for the Nazis during the war. She ran off to Germany during the Blitz, and I never saw her again.”

I froze, stunned by the weight of Margaret’s revelation. I had pressed her for answers—it was the only way to do the job Margaret had hired me for—but I never expected to unearth something this devastating. The shock on Andrew’s and Helen’s faces sent a ripple of guilt through me. I wished I could spare all of them the hurt this secret had caused. But I’d known from the moment I walked through the front door that Havenworth was a place filled with long-buried stories. If I was going to see this restoration through, I had no doubt more secrets would come to light.