WARNING TO READERS - This is a long, rambling, multi-part story and VERY British. The individual chapters will make more sense if read in sequence.
My apologies! This chapter may meander even more than usual as it is part of a collection of several very short 'day in the life' journal style entries which have now been linked to make up a readable chapter.
Chapter 35: A Present from France
The weekend had been quite relaxing as we all spent it together, Gwen, Emma, Maggie and I, just doing family things. As promised, Maggie took us all out to dinner on Saturday night at The Old Rectory near Warminster; it was the same hotel where we had a contract to refurbish the gardens in July but Maggie was the only one who had eaten there since the new owners re-launched the restaurant, and it was the first chance that I had to look at the grounds. The owner naturally recognised Maggie and gave us all the guided tour of the hotel and the gardens, there was a lot of work to be done to bring the grounds up to a high standard.
I figured that The Old Rectory Hotel was similar to the type of venue that Philippa was planning for Shelby House and made a mental note to tell her about it and maybe invite her out there for lunch or dinner. I was a little bit concerned that she want me to 'fix' her garden but hadn't really indicated what it was that she wanted to see as an end product and explaining to her the ideas that Maggie had visualised for the Old Rectory might give Philippa some focus.
The recently re-launched boutique restaurant at the Old Rectory was good, the food was very Cordon Bleu style, the chef was French, and Maggie and I shared an enormous double platter serving of Calf's Liver with Orange and Gwen and Emma each had the Sole Joinville with prawn butter. Maggie had picked us up and driven us over in the Range Rover, I was driving back and so we each had a single glass of Mouton Cadet and Emma had a mineral water. Emma had never been big on alcohol the way that many teenagers were but since she started driving had almost completely given it up. Maggie surprised us by ordering a bottle of champagne with our chocolate soufflés to celebrate Emma getting her driving licence and my being accepted to university.
As we were all planning to spend Sunday at Maggie's place anyway, we had brought our overnight bags and went straight there from the restaurant and stayed the night. It was nearly mid-night when we got in and Emma was dead beat and went up to bed almost immediately whilst Maggie, Gwen and I took our mugs of Cointreau laced chocolate and went out into the garden as it was another pleasantly mild evening.
The three of us sat and talked and smoked on the same arbour bench seat that Gwen and I had made love on at Easter; I don't think that Maggie noticed the little grins that kept passing between us or the way that Gwen nudged my knee with hers every few minutes. When we returned to the house I desperately wanted to say goodnight to her properly; to hold her close for a few minutes, to drown in one of her soft breathtakingly erotic kisses, but I had to make do with a chaste peck on the cheek from both Gwen and Maggie as we went to our separate rooms. It was tantalising and frustrating sleeping in the same house with both of them and not being able to share a bed with either.
I was up early as usual, it was my on-duty Sunday to check the greenhouses and do the watering at the garden centre and so I pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and walked down and spent an hour or so with watering cans and the hose. It was one of those jobs that I quite liked doing, it was a gentle, mindless chore that occupied your hands but gave you time to think; I always found it relaxing.
Gwen and Maggie planned to spend the day fussing about the house, although it looked good to me already, getting ready for Luci and Lulu's homecoming, vacuuming, changing bedding and the like; and so I volunteered Emma and myself to make the breakfasts and cook lunch, much to her chagrin.
My sister was not at all domestically minded, until just recently her room had always had the appearance of a trashed rubbish tip, I don't think that she even knew that Mum possessed a vacuum cleaner, and I seriously believed that she would rather starve than cook herself a meal. I had to admit that recently she had been trying.... without any prompting she had started to help Gwen with some of the household chores and I had even persuaded her to help with a few simple tasks in the kitchen although I believed that it would be a serious health risk to actually encourage her to cook. I really didn't mind... Gwen was a fantastic cook and I was pretty sharp in the kitchen and enjoyed cooking.
Maggie had put a nice gammon joint in water to soak over night and I let that simmer for most of the morning and then made up a mango, ginger and clove sauce, whilst Emma prepared a large tray of diced root vegetables for roasting. When the meat was well boiled I wrapped it in foil with chunks of the fruit and some crystallised ginger, dowsed it with a glass of Stone's Ginger Wine and put it into the oven on a slow heat, it could stay there for a couple of hours without coming to any harm.
I had promised Caroline that I would run over and see her with the early plans for her London project and so fetched the Land Rover from the garden centre and drove across town to Bishopdown. She was really pleased with the way the garden looked now that it was almost completed; no garden is ever fully finished, there are always small changes and additions to be made every season, but there was very little work left to do that summer.
"I really am thrilled with what you have done here, Jamie," she enthused, "It is absolutely fabulous.... Better than I ever expected."
She had made us both coffees and we were sitting on her decking patio in two of the new garden chairs that Steve had delivered on Saturday morning. The garden furniture that she had ordered was, as you would expect, top of the range each piece with its own waterproof cover and would just fit neatly into her little shed during the winter months. I had sweated blood over those measurements but they had worked out fine.
"Hopefully, I shall be out from under your feet by the end of next week," I told her, "One of us will come in during the week and top dress the lawn, then you can have your garden to yourself without my team in and out all the time and I have booked an entry in the garden centre diary for somebody to come in Friday afternoon each week to weed the flower beds and tidy up before you come down at the week-end."
"I hope that doesn't mean that you are glad to be shot of me?" she grinned, pouting in mock indignation, "You have still got my roof garden to do, and I shall expect you to at least supervise it personally.... and I am expecting you to be here for my little garden party in two weeks time."
"Aha! That's why you needed us to complete the work by the 20th. I guess."
"It isn't a big affair just a handful of the other partners and associates from my company, and a couple of friends, but I really would like you to be there, you can tell Maggie that she is invited as well... and bring that lovely artist lady...er... Rebecca."
"Thank you I would love to accept," I told her, I remembered Maggie saying that those were the type of potential clients that we needed to impress and cultivate. "Unfortunately my aunt is going to be away in France, but I am sure Mrs. Hill will be pleased to come." I would have liked to have brought Gwen as 'my date' but that would seriously have been pushing our luck even though she was technically a director of the company.
"Wow, I have just had a stupendous idea," she gushed grabbing my arm. "Do you think you can get her to do another watercolour of the finished garden and have it ready for the party... the other two she painted are on the wall of my office and everybody was really impressed with them... please make her do it, Jamie... do it for me...please!" She leaned in close, her generous breasts pressed tightly against my arm and touched her pouty 'Marilyn Monroe-esque' lips to my cheek, blatantly flirting to get what she wanted; but that was the way that Caroline was. I wasn't certain if she would ever deliver the goods, or even if I really wanted her to but she was certainly very alluring and sexy and great fun to flirt with.
"OK," I laughed, "I will try... I am meeting with Becca tomorrow to discuss doing some sketches of your London project and other work, and so, I will ask her then... if she agrees I will give her a key to the garden gate and she can come out and take some photographs or work out here from life if the weather holds out."
I needed to get back to Maggie's to finish off the lunch and so made my apologies and she walked with me to the car still chattering happily about the garden and clinging to my arm. "Call me when you are coming up to London again and we can get that lunch that you promised to buy me," she said and hooked my face down to her to give me a soft moist, groin tingling, kiss on the lips before closing the car door and stepping back so that I could drive away.
It had turned out to be another nice, mild sunny day and so Emma and I dragged the big wooden table around from the pool area and set it up for lunch on the patio outside the dining room.
We had talked about the twins coming home for Emma's birthday but it wasn't until we were chatting after lunch that I realised that their Aunt Nikki would be flying over with them and staying with Maggie for the week before they all went back to France. She was the sister of Maggie's first husband Robert De Vere, the twin's father, who had died when I was about six I think...I only vaguely remembered him but had never met Aunt Nikki at all, she had married a French farmer, Andre Bardin, and moved to Dijon to live before I was born. As far as I knew this was the first time that she had been back to England to visit Maggie although Lulu and Luci had often spent a couple of weeks at her farm during the school holidays. The Bardin's had no children of their own and loved to have the twins staying with them during the summer and the girl's enjoyed being there because the farm had a stable of quality riding horses.
I was sitting at one end of the table laughing with Emma; she was taunting me about taking up golf again and I was teasing her about her riding, just brother and sister stuff. Gwen and Maggie were sat at the other end of the table talking quietly and I just caught the gist of their conversation, I don't think that Emma picked up on it at all.... they were talking about Aunt Nikki.
".... I am really not happy about it.... But she loves the girls and they adore her..." Maggie was saying.
"It's only for a couple of weeks, one week here and another ten days at Dijon ... surely you can put up with her for that long?" Gwen replied. I guessed that everything was not perfect between Maggie and her sister-in-law, but there are skeletons in every family closet; I should not really have been eaves-dropping and returned to giving Emma my full attention.
Monday morning was aggravated for me because I had stupidly double booked myself out to do two things at the same time. I had arranged to meet Becca Hill at the garden centre for coffee at ten o'clock but had also picked up a job card to visit a new customer to give an estimate for laying a lawn and put in a decorative water feature and fish pond at a house off Manor Farm Road on the eastern outskirts of Salisbury, also at ten. Rather than cancel either one I called Becca and suggested that instead of her coming to the garden centre I would call and pick her up from her house, I thought that we could talk whilst I did the estimate and then drive on the half mile or so to Bishopdown and Caroline's garden so that she could take photographs.
It had just turned nine-thirty when I pulled into Becca's drive in the Land Rover and tooted the horn to let her know that I had arrived. The front door opened and she stepped out carrying her sketch case and her big camera bag was slung over her shoulder. She was dressed in a pale blue shirt, over washed out jeans and her auburn hair shone in the early morning sun, she looked terrific. She smiled, waved and started towards the car, I got down and walked round to take her bags. Just as she handed them to me there was a shout from the house.
"Mum!" It was Josh. He was standing in the doorway dressed in nothing but his under-pants and a pair of socks. "Mum...." He called. "Where are my grey jeans? I can't find them...." Josh was one of my best friends we had been mates for years but he could be a total idiot at times and I sometimes believed that he was getting worse as he got older. I guessed that he probably had a hangover from the night before, as was usual.
