He assumed wisteria would bloom, of course. He knew nothing about the temperamental plant — what a fickle beast it was to establish, the amount of careful pruning required to coax it into flower, the possible decades before it looked as he expected. This was emblematic, Jo thought, of Graydon’s entire approach to life. People all around him committed seppuku to achieve his heart’s desires, and in reply he gave a charming lift of the lips, a flick of a wave, already on his way elsewhere. Jo’s mouth pursed now, remembering what he’d said about wisteria: But at Princeton it trailed over everything. All the dorms. The lecture halls. Nobody fussed about it —
That was Gray, she thought: determined to re-create This Side of Paradise in his Long Island backyard.
The cell phone vibrated. The shudder in her hand turned to a pulse in the blood. She ought to send him directly into voice mail, but —
“Jo,” he said, intimate in her ear. “Did I wake you?”
“Hardly.” She heard the crack of adrenaline in her own voice, closed her eyes, and cursed herself. Weak. Susceptible. “I’ve already had breakfast. What can I do for you, Gray?”
“Tell me about the garden. I like to think of you there.”
It was uncanny how seductive her client could make those few words sound: Tell me about the garden. He seemed to know that the sight and smell of growing things were for her an aphrodisiac, an almost painful happiness she longed to share. He slipped right through her best defenses, because somehow he had glimpsed her soul all those weeks ago, when they had met in the rain for a hurried cup of coffee over the first draft of the plans, Alicia absent at the London auctions, Gray’s time as always precious and stolen. Lilium regale, he’d said. Rising white in the moonlight. We could drink wine in the garden under the stars, with the scent of lilies all around us —
For that brief moment, his dream included her.
“Sissinghurst is bittersweet this time of year,” she said now. “Drowsing into sleep. A few shafts of bloom amidst the withering of growth. Space clearing around the fallen places and the angular shape emerging: all the clipped boxwood, the pyramid beneath the roses. The White Garden fading to black.”
He was silent a moment. “Is it raining?”
“It is.”
“So there’s mist in your hair.”
“Cigarette smoke, actually — I’m in the hotel dining room.” She drew an unsteady breath. “Gray — did you call for a reason?”
“I wanted to hear your voice,” he said. “I’m in Rio de Janeiro. Tomorrow, Buenos Aires. After that — who knows? Touch something for me this morning, Jo — a last rose. A wet leaf.”
He hung up before she could answer.
“Shit,” she whispered into the silence.
“THIS IS TERENCE,” IMOGEN CANTWELL SAID CRISPLY. “HE’S a National Trust intern, in his final year of fieldwork. We’ve had him the better part of six months. I’ve made him responsible for deadheading the White Garden — it should have been done yesterday, but he pulled a few, Wednesday night, and was bloody well useless. He’ll take you along now.”
The Head Gardener was not exactly unfriendly as she stood before the Powys Wall, feet planted in much-abused Wellies; but she was as focused as Eisenhower off Utah Beach. Sissinghurst opened to paying visitors at eleven o’clock, and despite the rain, there would soon be hundreds of garden lovers strolling along the stone and grass paths, umbrellas vying for passage between the towering yews. A professional poacher like Jo was a nuisance today, and knew it.
“I printed a few files,” Imogen added grudgingly, and thrust some damp pages at her. “Plant lists. They go back five years, as long as I’ve been Head. Terence will explain the notation.”
Terence, who was probably Ter to his friends, was a squat, muscular youth with a lumpen face and a shock of bleached hair. He grinned cheerfully at Jo, pruners dangling from one hand and a tip bag from the other. “You’re from the States, then?”
“Yes. Just outside Philadelphia.”
He looked disappointed. “Ever been to L.A.?”
“Once.”
“I reckon that’s where I’ll head, when this internship’s done,” he said as he led Jo through the drenched Rose Garden. “Reckon there’s a film star who’d pay a good bit for real English gardening.”
“Undoubtedly there is. But the climate’s Mediterranean.” Jo ran her eyes over Imogen Cantwell’s lists as she walked, noting the familiar names of cala and lupine, paeonia and iris; the dates certain plants were divided or first put into the ground, with notes for revised schedules in the future; early bulbs and perennial bloomers, June elements, late summer show; fertilization schedules, losses due to frost or disease or poor performance. Sissinghurst was a huge outdoor arena for the entertainment of the masses, with no tolerance for plants that disappointed. Those that failed to live up to hope or reputation were swiftly uprooted and tossed on the compost pile. The White Garden showed evidence of these trials: any number of tested performers held their ground in Imogen’s lists, but perhaps a fifth of the plants were regularly changed out due to poorly sustained bloom, or a tendency to disease, or an unacceptable yellowish cast to their creamy petals.
Jo stopped short in the midst of the Yew Walk, her brow furrowed. She could feel raw ambition almost crackling off these pages. And something else: a grim denial of all that was imperfect — of the force of nature itself. Was that Imogen Cantwell’s goal? Or the National Trust’s? Sissinghurst had hardly been perfect in its first four decades — the Nicolsons were family gardeners, working on ideas they tossed across the dinner table and jotted down in their daily letters. They were always searching for funds to throw at stone pavers and suppliers of bulbs. They were chronically short of help. Friends gave them cuttings of prized plants, sent hybrid offerings to Vita when her fame as a garden columnist put Sissinghurst on the map. But Jo had read those columns. The garden Vita’s columns described was most beloved when it was most human — when the failures and mistakes cast the glorious triumphs into sharp relief.
“Question?” Terence called from the entrance to the White Garden.
“Yes,” Jo replied, as her fingers tidied the errant lists. “What in God’s name is pulling, and how did it make you useless?”
Terence smirked. “Pulling a pint. Or seven. I was hungover yesterday. Didn’t come in to work at all. I’ll start on the right-hand bit, and leave you a clear field on the left. Just shout if you’ve need.”
Jo stood for an instant in the gap between the yew, staring out over the White Garden. Cosmos still flowered gamely in the October rain; Artemisia aborescens spilled wildly over stiff boxwood. These, Vita would have loved and understood. But a hidden forest of brushwood stakes, relentless trials, and a war against nature itself? That was uncannily like Gray Westlake. Jo had come here looking for a way to bring the White Garden home — but he’d wanted a public showplace, not an intimate wilderness.
He’s going to get something else, she thought with amusement. Something unsettling. Unexpected. Beyond the bounds of his control.
Perhaps they both were.
With a small sigh of exasperation, she forced Gray aside, dumped her shoulder bag on the White Garden’s uneven brick walkway, and rummaged inside it for her digital camera.
Chapter Three
THE CAMERA, A TINY OLYMPUS RESISTANT TO BOTH cold and wet, had been a gift from Jo’s grandfather.