Hothouse Flower Read online

  ‘Of course I am. Do you want coffee or not?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Fine.’ Julia slammed the milk bottle back into the fridge. As she turned round, her amber eyes glistened with anger. ‘Look, I know you’re only doing this because you care. But, really, Alicia, I’m not one of your children and I don’t need babysitting. I like being by myself.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Alicia said brightly, trying to stem her rising impatience, ‘you’d better go and get your coat. I’m taking you out.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve got plans for today,’ Julia replied.

  ‘Then you’d better cancel them. I need your help.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s Dad’s birthday next week, in case you’d forgotten, and I want to buy him a birthday present.’

  ‘And you need my help to do that, Alicia?’

  ‘It’s his sixty-fifth, the day he becomes a pensioner.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. He is my father too.’

  Alicia struggled to keep her composure. ‘There’s a Sale of Contents at Wharton Park at noon today. I thought we might go and see if we could both find something for Dad.’ She saw a flicker of interest in Julia’s eyes.

  ‘Wharton Park is being sold?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you know?’

  Julia’s shoulders slumped. ‘No, I didn’t. Why is it?’

  ‘I presume it’s the usual story: death duties. I’ve heard the current owner is selling it to some City chap with more money than sense. No modern family can afford to keep up a place like that. And the last Lord Wharton let it fall into a dreadful state of disrepair. Apparently, it needs a fortune spending on it.’

  ‘How sad,’ Julia murmured.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Alicia, glad to see that at least Julia seemed engaged. ‘It was a big part of our childhood, especially yours. That’s why I thought we should see if we could pick up something from the sale, some kind of keepsake or memento for Dad. It will probably be all the rubbish, with the good stuff going off to Sotheby’s, but one never knows.’

  Surprisingly, without need of further persuasion, Julia nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll go and get my coat.’

  Five minutes later, Alicia was manoeuvring the car along the narrow high street of the pretty coastal village of Blakeney. Turning left, she headed east for the fifteen-minute journey to Wharton Park.

  ‘Wharton Park …’ muttered Julia to herself.

  It was her most vivid childhood memory, visiting Grandfather Bill in his hothouse: the overpowering smell of the exotic flowers he grew in there, and his patience as he explained their genus and where in the world they had originally come from. His own father, and his father’s father before him, had all worked as gardeners to the Crawford family, who owned Wharton Park, a vast estate comprising a thousand acres of fertile farmland.

  Her grandparents had lived in a comfortable cottage in a cosy, bustling corner of it, surrounded by the many other staff who serviced the land, the house and the Crawford family itself. Julia and Alicia’s mother, Jasmine, had been born and brought up there in the cottage.

  Elsie, her grandmother, had been exactly as a grandmother should be, if slightly eccentric. Her welcoming arms were open and there was always something delicious cooking in the range for supper.

  Whenever Julia thought back on the time she had spent at Wharton Park, she remembered the blue sky and the lush colours of the flowers blossoming under the summer sun. And Wharton Park had once been famous for its collection of orchids. It was strange to think that the small, fragile flowers had originally grown in tropical climes, and yet, there they had been, flourishing in the cool northern hemisphere, amidst the flatlands of Norfolk.

  When she was a child, Julia had spent all year looking forward to her summer visits to Wharton Park. The tranquillity and warmth of the hothouses – sitting snugly in the corner of the kitchen garden, sheltered against the cruel winds that blew in from the North Sea during the winter – stayed in her memory all year. This, combined with the domestic certainty of her grandparents’ cottage, had made it a place of peace for her. At Wharton Park, nothing changed. Alarms and timetables weren’t in charge, it was nature dictating the rhythm.

  She could still remember, in a corner of the hothouse, her grandfather’s old Bakelite radio playing classical music from dawn until dusk.

  ‘Flowers love music,’ Grandfather Bill would tell her as he tended his precious plants. Julia would sit on a stool in the corner by the radio and watch him, listening to the music. She was learning to play the piano and had found a natural ability for it. There was an ancient upright piano in the small sitting room of the cottage. Often, after supper, she would be asked to play. Her grandparents had watched appreciatively, and with awe, as Julia’s delicate young fingers sped across the keys.

  ‘You have a God-given gift, Julia,’ Grandfather Bill had said one night, his eyes misty as he smiled at her. ‘Never waste it, will you?’

  *

  The day on which she turned eleven, Grandfather Bill had presented her with her very own orchid.

  ‘This is especially for you, Julia. Its name is Aerides odoratum, which means, “Children of the Air”.’

  Julia studied the delicate ivory and pink petals of the flower sitting in its pot. They felt velvety beneath her touch.

  ‘Where does this one come from, Grandfather Bill?’ she had asked.

  ‘From the Orient, in the jungles of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.’

  ‘Oh. What kind of music do you think it likes?’

  ‘It seems particularly partial to a touch of Mozart,’ chuckled her grandfather. ‘Or if it looks like it’s wilting, perhaps you could try some Chopin!’

  Julia had nurtured both her orchid and her gift for the piano, sitting in the drawing room of her draughty Victorian home on the outskirts of Norwich – she had played to it, and it blossomed for her time and again.

  And she had dreamt of the exotic place from which her orchid had come. No longer was she in a suburban drawing room, but in the vast jungles of the Far East … the sounds of geckos, birds, and the intoxicating perfumes of the orchids growing all over the trees and in the undergrowth beneath.

  One day she knew she would go to see it for herself. But, for now, her grandfather’s colourful description of Far-Away Lands fired her imagination and her playing.

  When she was fourteen, Grandfather Bill had died. Julia remembered the feeling of loss vividly. He and the hothouses had been the one certainty in her young and already difficult life – a wise, kind influence with a listening ear – perhaps more of a father to her than her own had been. At eighteen, she had won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. Grandmother Elsie had moved to live in Southwold with her sister for company, and Julia had visited Wharton Park no more.

  Now here she was, at thirty-one, returning to it. As Alicia chattered about her four children and their various activities, Julia relived the anticipation she had felt every time she’d driven in her parents’ car down this road; staring out of the rear window, waiting for the Gate Lodge, which marked the entrance to Wharton Park, to appear as they reached the familiar bend in the road.

  ‘There’s the turning!’ Julia said as Alicia almost overshot it.

  ‘Gosh, yes, you’re right. It’s such a long time since I’ve been here, I’d forgotten.’

  As they turned into the drive, Alicia glanced at her sister. She could see a glimmer of expectation in Julia’s eyes.

  ‘You always loved it here, didn’t you?’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes, didn’t you?’

  ‘To be honest, I was bored when we came to stay. I couldn’t wait to get back to town to see all my friends.’

  ‘You always were more of a city girl,’ offered Julia.

  ‘Yes, and look at me now: thirty-four, with a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, a brood of children, three cats, two dogs and an Aga. What the hell happened to the bright lights?’ Alicia smiled ironically.

  ‘You fell in lov
e and had a family.’

  ‘And it was you who got the bright lights,’ Alicia added, without malice.

  ‘Yes, once …’ Julia’s voice tailed off as they turned into the drive. ‘There’s the house. It looks exactly the same.’

  Alicia glanced at the building in front of her. ‘Actually, I think it looks rather better. I must have forgotten just how beautiful it is.’

  ‘I’ve never forgotten,’ murmured Julia.

  They followed the line of cars slowly down the drive, both lost in their own thoughts. Wharton Park had been built in classic Georgian style for the nephew of the first prime minister of Great Britain, although he had died before the house was completed. Built almost entirely in Aislaby stone, the house had mellowed into a soft yellow over its three-hundred-year existence.

  Its seven bays and double staircases, which rose in front of the basement to the piano nobile, forming a raised terrace overlooking the park at the back, added an air of French glamour. With a domed tower on each corner, its vast portico supported by four giant Ionic columns, a crumbling statue of Britannia perched jauntily atop the apex, it had a majestic but rather eccentric air.

  Wharton Park was not large enough to be termed a stately home. It did not have the perfect architecture to compliment it either, having had a couple of odd additions from later generations of Crawfords, which had compromised its purity. But for that very reason, neither did it have the daunting starkness associated with other great houses of the period.

  ‘This is where we used to turn left,’ indicated Julia, remembering the track she had taken around the lake to reach her grandparents’ cottage on the edge of the estate.

  ‘After we’ve been to the sale, would you like to go to their old cottage and take a look at it?’ asked Alicia.

  Julia shrugged. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’

  Yellow-coated stewards were marshalling the cars into parking spaces.

  ‘Word must have got round,’ commented Alicia as she swung the car into the space indicated and brought it to a halt. She turned to her sister and put her hand on her knee. ‘Ready to go?’ she asked.

  Julia felt dazed, suffused with so many memories. As she stepped out of the car and walked towards the house, even the smells were familiar: wet grass, freshly cut, and the faintest hint of a scent that she now knew to be jasmine in the borders that lined the front lawn. They followed the crowd of people slowly up the steps and inside the main entrance of the house.

  2

  I am eleven again. I’m standing in an enormous room that I know is really an entrance hall, but looks to me like a cathedral. The ceiling is high above me and as I study it I see it is painted with clouds and fat little angels with no clothes on. This fascinates me and I’m staring so hard at them I don’t notice that there’s someone standing on the stairs watching me.

  ‘Can I help you, young lady?’

  I’m so startled that I nearly drop the precious pot that’s in my hands, and is the reason I’m here in the first place. My grandfather has sent me especially to deliver it to Lady Crawford. I’m not happy because I’m scared of her. When I’ve seen her from afar, she looks old and thin and cross. But Grandfather Bill has insisted.

  ‘She’s very sad, Julia. The orchid might cheer her up. Now run along, there’s a good girl.’

  The person on the stairs is definitely not Lady Crawford. It’s a young man, maybe four or five years older than I am, with lots of curly, chestnut hair worn, I think, far too long for a boy. He’s very tall, but painfully thin; his arms look like sticks, hanging out of his rolled-up shirt sleeves.

  ‘Yes, I’m looking for Lady Crawford. I brought this for her from the hothouses,’ I manage to stammer.

  He saunters down the rest of the steps and comes to stand opposite me, his hands outstretched.

  ‘I’ll take it to her, if you’d like.’

  ‘My grandfather said I was to give it straight to her,’ I answer nervously.

  ‘Unfortunately, she’s having a rest just now. She’s not terribly well, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I reply. I want to ask who he is, but I don’t dare. He must be reading my mind, for he says:

  ‘Lady Crawford is my relation, so I think you can trust me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, here.’ I proffer the orchid, secretly relieved I don’t have to deliver it myself. ‘Can you tell Lady Crawford that my grandfather says this is a new …’ I struggle to remember the word, ‘… hybrid, and just flowered?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  I stand there, not quite sure what to do next. So does he.

  Finally he says, ‘So, what’s your name?’

  ‘Julia Forrester. I’m Mr Stafford’s granddaughter.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘Of course you are. Well, I’m Christopher Crawford. Kit, to my friends.’

  He extends the hand that isn’t holding the plant and I shake it.

  ‘Good to meet you, Julia. I hear that you play the piano rather well.’

  I blush. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

  ‘No need to be modest,’ he chides me. ‘I heard Cook and your grandmother talking about you this morning. Follow me.’

  He’s still holding my hand from shaking it, and suddenly he pulls me with it, across the hall, and through a series of vast rooms filled with the kind of formal furniture that makes the house feel as if it is a life-sized doll’s house. I can’t help wondering where they sit and watch television in the evenings. Finally, we enter a room that is bathed in golden light, coming through the three floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the terrace leading on to the gardens. There are large sofas arranged around a huge marble fireplace, and in the far corner, in front of one of the windows, is a grand piano. Kit Crawford leads me to it, pulls out the stool and pushes me down.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s hear you play something.’

  He pulls up the lid and a shower of dust motes fly into the air, sparkling in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Are … are you sure I’m allowed?’ I ask.

  ‘Aunt Crawford sleeps at the other end of the house. She’s not likely to hear. Come on!’ He looks at me expectantly.

  Tentatively, I place my hand above the keys. They are unlike any my fingers have ever touched. I don’t know it then, but they are finished in the finest ivory and I’m playing at a 150-year-old Bechstein piano. I strike a note lightly and yet the echo of it resonates through the strings, amplifying the sound.

  He’s standing waiting by me, arms crossed. I realise I have no choice. I begin to play ‘Clair de Lune’, a piece I’ve only recently learnt. It’s my current favourite and I’ve spent hours practising it. As the notes appear under my fingers, I forget about Kit. I’m carried away by the beautiful sound this wonderful instrument makes. I go, as I always do, to another place far, far away from here. The sun shines across my fingers, it warms my face with its glow. I play perhaps better than I ever have, and am surprised when my fingers touch the last keys and the piece is ended.

  I hear the sound of clapping somewhere in the background and I bring myself back to this enormous room and to Kit, who is standing with a look of awe on his face.

  ‘Wow!’ he says. ‘That was brilliant!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re so young. Your fingers are so small, how can they move across the keys so quickly?’

  ‘I don’t know, they just … do.’

  ‘You know, Aunt Crawford’s husband, Harry, Lord Crawford, was apparently an accomplished pianist?’

  ‘Oh no, I … I didn’t.’

  ‘Well he was. This was his piano. He died when I was a baby so I never heard him play. Can you play something else?’

  This time he looks genuinely enthusiastic.

  ‘I … I really think I should be going.’

  ‘Just one more, please?’

  ‘All right,’ I say.

  And I begin to play ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’. Once again, I am lost in the music and I’m halfway through when I sudde
nly hear a voice, shouting.

  ‘STOP!! Stop that now!’

  I do as I’m asked and look across to the entrance of the drawing room. A tall, thin, grey-haired woman is standing there. The look on her face is one of fury. My heart begins to beat very fast.

  Kit goes over to her. ‘Sorry, Aunt Crawford, it was me that asked Julia to play. You were asleep so I couldn’t ask your permission. Did we wake you?’

  A pair of cold eyes stare back at him. ‘No. You did not wake me. But, Kit, that is hardly the point. Surely you know I forbid anyone to play that piano?’

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Aunt Crawford. I didn’t realise. But Julia is so wonderful. She’s only eleven years old, yet she plays like a concert pianist already.’

  ‘Enough!’ snaps his aunt.

  Kit hangs his head and beckons me to follow him.

  ‘Sorry again,’ he says, as I skulk out behind him.

  As I pass Lady Crawford, she stops me. ‘Are you Stafford’s granddaughter?’ she asks, her cold, blue, gimlet eyes boring into me.

  ‘Yes, Lady Crawford.’

  I see her eyes soften very slightly and it looks almost as if she might cry. She nods and appears to be struggling to speak. ‘I … was sorry to hear about your mother.’

  Kit interrupts, sensing the tension. ‘Julia brought you an orchid. It’s a new one from her grandfather’s hothouse, isn’t it, Julia?’ he encourages.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, trying hard not to cry. ‘I hope you like it.’

  She nods. ‘I’m sure I will. Tell your grandfather I said thank you.’

  *

  Alicia was waiting patiently in the queue for a sales catalogue.

  ‘Did you ever come into this house when you were a child?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Julia, ‘once.’

  Alicia indicated the ceiling. ‘Rather tacky, those cherubim, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’ve always rather liked them,’ Julia answered.

  ‘Funny old house this,’ Alicia continued, taking the proffered catalogue and following the crowd through the hall, along the corridor and into a large, oak-panelled room where all the sales items were on display. She handed the catalogue to Julia. ‘Sad it’s being sold, really. It’s been the Crawford family seat for over three hundred years,’ she mused. ‘End of an era and all that. Shall we take a wander?’ Alicia took Julia’s elbow and steered her towards an elegant but cracked Grecian urn – from the telltale moss lines around the inside edge, obviously used as a planter for summer flowers. ‘What about this for Dad?’