“International Gardening: Label the native country for each of these plants—lantana, crape myrtle, possumhaw, scaevola. Extra points will be awarded for the botanical name of each.”
Quiz Time at the monthly meeting of the Austin Rock Garden Society
By some miracle—and the concentrated efforts of Chiv, Teddy, and Pru—they managed to put in the liner for the water reservoir, which stretched seven feet across and two feet deep. It would hold more than seven hundred gallons of water—Pru had had to convert from the metric to reach a volume she understood. They installed the pump to draw up the water and buried the cord leading to the power source at the back of the garden. After that, Chiv, as if in a world of his own, occupied himself with setting the stones in place, stacking them up into a cairn, to hide the bubbler in the center. When he finished, the rocks looked as if they’d been there for eons and it took no stretch of the imagination for Pru to visualize the water gurgling out as if it were truly a natural spring.
They secured the grille over the reservoir and took to setting flat stones along the edges to hide the liner, but hadn’t finished by lunch. When they left for the exhibitors’ marquee, Chiv stayed behind, fiddling with what they’d done, changing out this rock and shifting that one a few inches one way or another.
When they returned, he was on the phone, and stayed that way the rest of the afternoon. He had hired out the collection and delivery of the plants, because he couldn’t spare Iris and Teddy for the many journeys to and from Hereford it would take—a six-hour round-trip. But the small company that worked out of Leominster had abruptly gone out of business, and its two lorries had been repossessed by the bank.
Pru could hear the desperation in Chiv’s voice as he tried to find someone to bring their plants up to London. It couldn’t be just anyone—this wasn’t like moving furniture where you could shove the dresser and mattress into the back and slam the gate shut. Transporting plants to the show occurred at their most delicate stage. The wildflowers would be on the brink of bloom. The flats had to be handled delicately and set out as they had been grown—next to one another so that they would look like a wildflower meadow, not lines of black plastic pots on a nursery table. But without any vehicle to transport the plants, the distance in miles between the Chelsea Flower Show grounds and Hereford where their plants—arbutus and all—filled greenhouse upon greenhouse at A. Chiverton Gardens may as well have been to the moon and back.
It made their morning accomplishments shrink in significance—what did it matter if they installed the hill country spring if no plants would surround it? Once again, Pru’s duties were distilled into worrying about plants, stones, rain, and mud, along with dogging KayAnn and Nell, who seemed to be keeping some secret vigil, as well as Sweetie, drawn to the Australian garden like a yellow jacket to overripe peaches.
“I’ll go get her,” Ivory said, setting a large flat stone on the ground with a grunt. “It’s just that she’s fragile right now—her divorce was final a couple of days before we left home. Her husband walked out on her last year and straight into the arms of some young thing—they’d been married twenty-five years. It’s really bruised her emotionally. I think she just needs to prove to herself she’s still got it. You know?”
Pru felt for Sweetie, but was buildup to the Chelsea Flower Show really the time or place to work out your personal issues? Ivory was able to extricate her, and Sweetie was in a bad temper the rest of the afternoon.
When Chiv dismissed them with a jerk of his head at the end of the day, the garden couldn’t empty out fast enough. Chiv stayed behind to brood about his wall, and Iris and Teddy took the Bull Ring gate—they’d driven that day, and parked their minivan along the Embankment. Pru followed the ARGS women to the London gate, where she waved goodbye to them as they turned left toward Lamont Road. After a stop at their Chelsea digs, they were off to the theater. Roddy was long gone, of course, and Forde, subdued after a sharp word from Chiv when Forde had bumped into a cache of wall stones, had left early, too.
Pru dragged herself halfway up Lower Sloane Street toward the Tube station, her steps getting slower and slower even though she had changed out of her heavy steel-toed boots. She came to a stop at a corner, reluctant to go farther, weary in spirit and body. With each step away from the garden, she wondered if she would have the energy to make it back in the morning. A quiet lane took off to the left, and Pru impulsively followed it a short way down to where a mews led to a few converted flats and a pub with a swinging signboard that read: THE CADOGAN ARMS. A half pint—just what she needed.
It was a pub that time and the rest of the upscale neighborhood had forgotten—a narrow, dark room painted red with a leather Chesterfield sofa along a long wall opposite the bar. At the back, a fireplace with two chairs and a low table, and in each corner, wooden settles with high backs. Although smoking had been banned years ago, there was still a hint of stale tobacco in the air.
There were two old fellows at one settle, hunkered over their pints, and a tall, broad-shouldered man at the bar squinting at her. It was Skippy from the Aussie garden next door.
“Owyargone,” he said, looking down on Pru with a smile.
Pru hadn’t a clue what he’d said, but decided it must be some sort of greeting. She took the Chiv approach to conversation and lifted her eyebrows as a response. “You’ve found a good spot here,” she said to Skippy after she’d ordered a half of Bombardier and a packet of crisps.
“Yeah, a great little out-of-the-way place. No one knows about it.” He took a gulp of his lager. “Almost no one.”
Up till that moment, Pru had seen Skippy only from a distance. Now, close up, she could tell the Aussie must be in his late forties, with a rugged face, one of those men who oozed a strong magnetism. She pictured Sweetie tucking that strand of hair behind her ear as she looked up at this slightly younger, hunk of a fellow. Careful, Sweetie.
The door opened and Skippy looked past her. “Waiting for someone?” Pru asked.
His eyes moved back to her. “How’s that Texas garden of yours?”
She shrugged. “And yours? That’s quite a mountain you’re building.”
“Would you like to see it from up top? It’s no trouble—I could be your escort. What d’ya say?” He edged forward. She saw a twinkle in his eye as if he considered the whole world a bit of a laugh.
“No, thanks,” Pru said. She tore open her packet of crisps and stuffed a few in her mouth. “So, what’s the plant palette in your garden?”
Skippy grinned and backed off, launching into a description of the Aussies’ “Welcome to Oz.” Pru could follow little of it. Australian accents had a delightful cadence, but one that rendered them almost unintelligible to her. And the vowels—she expected them to go one way and instead they went off in an entirely different direction. At the end of it all, Skippy bought Pru her next half and another packet of crisps, and asked about Texas.
If anyone could understand the vast differences in the Texas landscape it would be an Aussie, whose homeland was even more vast. Pru explained the Gulf Coast of the south, the greenness of east Texas, and the arid, empty west and how the hill country sat in the middle, a beautiful compromise.
“Perhaps I’ll see Texas one day,” he said.
Perhaps that was just what Sweetie needed, to take gorgeous Skippy back to Austin with her, introduce him to her ex.
The second bag of crisps was empty but for crumbs and she’d reached the bottom of the glass. Pru said good evening to Skippy and stepped out, surprised for a moment to find it still daylight. She continued her interrupted journey to the Underground station, but stopped outside the entrance at a flower cart, where a middle-aged man was buying a bouquet—pink columbine, purple iris, and white bellflowers. Spring flowers—just the sight of them made Pru’s eyes sting as she thought about what the ARGS spring garden should be for Chelsea. Why couldn’t they make that happen—what did they need Twyla Woodford for?
She reversed her journey and marched back down Lower Sloane Street, arriving at the hospital grounds less than two hours after she’d left. She pulled her high-visibility vest back on to get through security at the gate. Past seven o’clock now, but work continued at one or two of the sites—daylight grew longer each day. Some crews took advantage of that, working until the grounds closed at eight, and even longer if they could manage it—those that had hopes of building a respectable garden at Chelsea.
As she strode down Main Avenue toward the Rock Garden Bank, she could see a figure in an ARGS blue sweatshirt picking its way round the site, bending over to touch a mound of stones. She thought it might be Chiv. Hadn’t he stayed late? As Pru neared the site, the sun dipped below a cloud, and light struck the figure as it reached up and pulled back its hood. Out tumbled a blond ponytail, a faded blond, mixed with gray. We are all of us mixed with gray, Pru thought.
The woman turned to her.
Her eyes were set at a slight angle so that the corners drooped, giving her a sad look. But then she smiled, and her face lit up.
“Hey, Pru,” she said.
“Twyla?”