How I wish you had all the lovely distractions that I do, but since you only have Blackwood Park, and The Grands and Miss Lovelock (who sounds terrifying – I must ask Papa where he found her) I’ve been trying to think how we might make things more fun for you. You have Polly too, of course – and she is the best accomplice for any adventure – and don’t we always say that one can find treasure in the most unlikely places, if one looks carefully enough?
Blackwood Park might seem an unlikely place to find anything exciting. My darling, I know better than anyone that it can seem as still and silent as the sleeping castle in a fairy tale, and how time there seems to drag more slowly than anywhere else. But all old houses hold stories and Blackwood is no exception. It may be silent and empty, but it has its store of treasures to be discovered and secrets waiting to be revealed …
Please know, my dearest darling, how much I miss you – every moment – and how I’m longing to be back with you soon. Have courage, brave girl. In a world that is small enough for the same moon to hang over us both, we can’t ever be too far apart.
With love from my heart to yours, and a lipstick kiss
Mama xxxxx
A lipstick kiss. There it was at the bottom of the page – the scarlet stamp of her mother’s lips, just like she used to leave on the back of Alice’s hand before school in the morning, or in the evening when she was going out with Papa. She lifted the paper to her face and breathed in a faint trace of Mama’s scent, noticing as she did so that there was more writing on the other side of the paper.
She turned it over.
Where the sun’s first rays
Turn lilies to gold,
There’s a box in a drawer through a door.
Open it up
And the paper unfold,
And see if you want to know more.
‘Well, was it a nice letter?’
Polly’s voice behind her was soft and cautious. Alice turned and handed her the letter, curiosity quickening inside her. ‘It’s a poem, or a riddle. What do you think it means?’
Polly’s eyes skimmed the paper. She was smiling as she handed it back. ‘I’d say there’s only one way of answering that. You’ll just have to find this box, won’t you?’
* * *
Alice would never have believed that she might actually look forward to her afternoon walk, but as they set off there was something very close to excitement beating beneath her tightly buttoned coat. Putting on her outdoor boots she had asked if they might vary the route today and go through the kitchen garden, and when Miss Lovelock asked why on earth she wanted to do that, she was able to say quite truthfully that she wanted to see what was growing there. Miss Lovelock had seemed surprised, but taking it as a sign of some fledgling interest in botany or horticulture, grudgingly acquiesced.
The drab park stretched away on all sides. Surely there were no lilies blooming at this time of year – had Mama forgotten what England was like in February? Alice thought of the wilderness that lay beyond the kitchen garden’s walls, closed up and out of bounds, and the great orangery, with the overgrown plants inside pressing like prisoners against the clouded glass. Were there lilies inside its jungly tangle?
She remembered going in there once, with Mama, on a long-ago summer visit to Blackwood. She remembered the hot, damp air and the unfamiliar smell of earth and vegetation and something sweet and rotten. The plants looked like they’d been stolen from a giant’s garden, towering above her with leaves as large as umbrellas. Little paths had wound between them and Alice remembered a fountain, tiled with tiny iridescent squares that shimmered beneath the splashing water like a mermaid’s tail. She had said that to Mama, she remembered, but Mama had hardly seemed to hear. She had been distracted – it stuck in Alice’s mind because it was so unlike her – as if she was listening to someone else. When she looked at Alice it felt as if it wasn’t her she saw.
They didn’t follow the carriage drive beneath the trees today, as they usually did, but turned under the archway into the stableyard. There used to be lots of horses at Blackwood, Alice remembered Mama telling her, but the stables were all empty now, with only the lingering horse smell and rows of saddles and harnesses – the leather now dull and cracked – to show that they had ever been there. Many of them had been taken by the army at the start of the war, Mama had said, and her voice had been flinty with blame and bitterness. There were no men to look after those that remained and so they were sold and the stables left empty.
The War. In Alice’s head it always had capital letters. It was barely spoken about at home, and never in front of Papa, but Alice felt that it had always been there, like a presence in the house, invisible and unwelcome. Sometimes she encountered it on the streets too, in men with missing limbs and rows of medals selling matches outside the underground, or shouting at nothing in the park. It’s The War, darling. Poor man. Don’t stare.
The kitchen garden was beyond the stables, reached through a door in a high wall of crumbling brick. Miss Lovelock led the way with her Sergeant Major march; she might not have instigated the change of routine but it appeared she certainly intended to take charge of it. She ushered Alice in, unnecessarily pointing out a large puddle in the path and speaking in a loud voice, as if she were marshalling a battalion instead of one small, quiet girl.
Alice hung back, looking around. The high walls were rosy in the weak winter sun and they enclosed its tentative warmth, hiding the bulk of the house and keeping the desolate expanse of parkland at bay. The earth beds were mostly brown and bare, she saw with a stab of disappointment. A row of glasshouses lined one wall, and beyond them, tucked into one corner was a neat cottage, as square and symmetrical as a picture in a storybook. A wisp of smoke curled out of the chimney and faded into the afternoon sky.
As Miss Lovelock lectured in a loud, know-it-all voice about the optimum conditions for seed germination a stooped figure emerged from one of the glasshouses. His clothes were worn to the same mossy colours as the walls and the soil and his face was creased like autumn leaves. Earth clung to his hands. Catching Alice’s eye, he nodded.
‘Afternoon.’
Miss Lovelock, who had been too preoccupied with airing her collection of horticultural facts to notice him, looked round in alarm, as if one of the winter cabbages had spoken. The gardener, coming over, gave Alice the ghost of a wink. ‘You must be Miss Selina’s girl. Heard you were staying.’
Miss Lovelock cleared her throat. ‘Alice expressed an interest in seeing the gardens, Mr…?’
‘Patterson.’
‘Very good.’ Miss Lovelock spoke as if addressing a soldier of inferior rank. ‘I did say there wouldn’t be much to see at this time of year, but she insisted.’ She turned to Alice. ‘Perhaps now your curiosity has been satisfied, child, we can resume our walk.’
‘Just because you can’t see things in the garden, doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on,’ Mr Patterson remarked, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘That’s part of the magic, to my mind.’
Alice was intrigued, and emboldened enough to ask the question that had brought her here.
‘Are there any lilies?’
‘Lilies, child?’ Miss Lovelock gave an incredulous laugh and rolled her eyes. ‘Good heavens, I believe I could have told you that myself and saved us a wasted journey. Lilies don’t grow in February! Not in England, anyway.’