‘Well now, that’s not quite true…’ The old gardener rummaged unhurriedly in the gaping pocket of his jacket, unearthing seed packets and lengths of twine before eventually pulling out a pipe. ‘There are no lilies here now, but that’s not to say I haven’t had them blooming in winter before. Let me see –’ He peered thoughtfully into the bowl of the pipe, and gave it an experimental tap. ‘It’ll be eleven years ago, if I’m not mistaken. Your mama was a February bride, and I grew them for her wedding. It wasn’t easy mind – I had to keep the fire burning behind that glass-house wall day and night to make it warm enough, but it was worth it. The perfume in there was strong enough to make you swoon. And of course, she was a beautiful bride.’
Miss Lovelock gave a dubious sniff. ‘Well, we mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m sure you have a lot to be getting on with.’
‘You’re welcome to come here anytime,’ the old gardener said, looking at Alice. ‘I’m sorry I can’t show you any lilies, mind.’
As Alice followed Miss Lovelock back along the cinder path she peered through a pair of high iron gates that led to the rest of the garden. She caught a glimpse of tall hedges, dense and dark, and a pathway between them, twisting out of sight. She longed to linger, or to open the gates and follow the path into the abandoned kingdom beyond, but Miss Lovelock had already disappeared. Her voice swooped over the wall.
‘Come along, Alice!’
She looked back. Mr Patterson, standing at the door of the glasshouse, raised his hand in a solemn salute, and she waved shyly back, thinking about what he’d said.
She’d known Mama had had a bouquet of lilies when she got married. There was a photograph in a silver frame in the drawing room at home, of her in her white satin dress with the long sheaf of pale blooms over one arm. Her other arm was hooked through Papa’s, who looked as stern and distant as ever, as if he was going to a meeting at the bank rather than his own wedding. Alice loved looking at that snapshot of a moment before she existed, at Mama’s luminous eyes gazing straight out at her, as if to say ‘soon…’ and it made the back of her neck tingle to think that the flowers in the picture had been grown here, and that the old gardener had known Mama in that mysterious time. The Grands had the same photograph (beside a bigger one in a fancier frame, of Aunt Miranda and Uncle Lionel on their wedding day) on top of the piano in the drawing room, beneath the portrait of Uncle Howard in his soldier’s khaki. (There would be no wedding photograph for him.)
Alice’s heart gave an uneven thud. The lilies in the photograph – could they be the ones the clue referred to? Her mind raced, going over the lines again, trying to remember if the photograph was in a place where the morning sun might reach it, and if it was, where the door, the drawer and the box might fit in. The surge of excitement subsided as she realized how difficult it would be to go and check. Blackwood’s stately downstairs rooms were not part of her domain; she rarely ventured into them at all, except on Sundays, and then she was always under the chilly gaze of her grandparents and was forbidden from touching anything. Had Mama forgotten what it was like here?
She trailed along the carriage drive in Miss Lovelock’s brisk wake, listening to the shrill squabbling of the rooks in the bare branches above her. She could feel the house crouching at her back, its rows of windows like blank eyes, watching, and she turned round to meet its gaze.
The nursery corridor ran along the back of the house, so she couldn’t see her own bedroom window from here. To the right the shutters were closed behind all the windows on the upper floors, where the rooms that had once been occupied by guests had been closed up on corridors that were no longer used. To the left were the family rooms, and she wondered which one might be Mama’s old bedroom, trying to remember if it faced out to the front. She had slept in it once, with Mama, when she was quite small …
The memory began to emerge from the shadows at the back of her mind, taking shape, gathering colour. Aunt Miranda and Uncle Lionel had been at Blackwood too, with Cousin Archie who had been a tiny baby. Alice remembered the atmosphere, brittle with tension, and knew that some-how it had been her fault (she’d had a cough that had woken Cousin Archie and made him cry? Something like that …) Mama had come up to the nursery in the night and brought her down to sleep in her bed.
The exact reason might elude her, but she vividly remembered the delicious perfumed warmth after the hard little iron cot in the night nursery and the luxury of having Mama all to herself. She had woken up early the next morning and lain very still as the light glowed through the curtains, not wanting Mama to wake up and the ordinary day to begin.
The air left her lungs in a long, slow stream, making a pale garland around her head.
Of course.
Mama’s bedroom, where the walls were pale green and the curtains were patterned with columns of ivory lilies, which got the full flood of golden morning sun, rising over the lake. Alice felt goosebumps rise on her arms, caused not by the February cold but by the delicious sense of having slotted the vital piece of the puzzle into place.
Behind her Miss Lovelock called her name crossly. Alice immediately turned and ran, propelled by a sudden burst of exuberant energy – much to the governess’s obvious astonishment.
* * *
She knew she could have told Polly, but something held her back; a greedy impulse to keep the secret to herself perhaps. She drank her afternoon milk quickly, then tiptoed past Miss Lovelock’s door and down the servants’ stairs to the bedroom corridor below.
She immediately noticed how much warmer it was; how the thick carpet muffled the sound of her footsteps completely and made the thud of her heart seem louder. For a dizzying moment she couldn’t think which room was Mama’s, but some long-dormant memory resurfaced of a tall blue and white jar on a polished table, and she knew that the door opposite was the right one.
At least, she thought it was. She hesitated, her fingers clasping the handle, her courage faltering as her imagination tormented her with the image of Grandmama waiting on the other side of the door with an expression of thunderous rage. It was only the thought of Mama, who wasn’t scared of anything – least of all rules – that stopped her from fleeing back to the Spartan safety of the nursery.
She turned the handle.
She had expected it to be dark inside, but it wasn’t. The shutters and the lily-strewn curtains were open and the room was filled with the last dusky light of the winter afternoon; a melancholy glow, that seemed full of Mama’s absence. The sadness that had retreated since the letter arrived curled its fingers around Alice’s throat again. She tried to push it away, steering her mind back to the clue.
A box, in a drawer, through a door.
Did that mean the bedroom door? She turned round, uncertain, until she glimpsed her own ghostly reflection in the mirrored door of the wardrobe and another piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Inside, dresses still hung on the rails, their colours muddied by the fading day. As she ran her hand down them tears stung suddenly at the back of Alice’s eyes. This was the closest she’d felt to her mother since she’d arrived in this cavernous, shadowy, silent house; the most vivid and personal evidence she had to remind her that Mama had lived here. Caressing the velvet sleeve of an evening coat she wondered if that had been Mama’s intention; if, knowing how much Alice was missing her, she had deliberately brought her to where comfort would be found amongst her things. It would be just like Mama to think of that.