The Last Garden in England(20)
“Two.” When Cynthia looked up at her, she pressed on. “But that is only a symptom of the real problem.”
“And that is?”
“This is not the first time that my cook has dealt with the damage or disappearance of rations since the hospital arrived at Highbury. The VAD explicitly promised that you would keep to your own rations and leave ours alone.”
“Ours? I’m a member of this family, too, lest you forget,” said Cynthia.
Lest she forget? How could she when Cynthia mentioned it so often? But it was Diana whom Murray had left the property and all of its contents to, not his sister.
“The hospital cooks are not to touch the family’s rations,” Diana said slowly. “That is food your nephew eats.” It is food you eat night after night because, while you want to rule over the nurses, you won’t eat with them.
“I will speak to Mrs. George,” Cynthia finally said.
“Thank you,” Diana said.
Cynthia glanced down at her notebook. “Before you go, I wanted to talk to you about the night nursery. Is it really necessary for Robin to sleep there?”
“Where is he supposed to sleep if not in the night nursery?” The hospital had already requisitioned the day nursery for four patient beds.
Cynthia looked up. “Well, he could sleep with you.”
“No,” said Diana.
“Or you could send him out to school,” Cynthia said.
“He’s not yet five.”
“I took the liberty of writing to Mr. Keen at Charleton Preparatory School, and he said that, given the extraordinary circumstances we are living under, he is prepared to take boys as young as seven.”
“He’s only four.”
Cynthia waved her hand. “A small matter of making arrangements. With Robin away at Charleton, he would be well prepared for Winchester just like his father—”
“I am not sending Robin away to school,” said Diana.
“Diana, be reasonable,” her sister-in-law said.
“I am.”
“If this is about his ailment—”
“His asthma,” she corrected. “No, it is not.”
“He has always been a sickly boy.”
“He is not sickly any longer,” said Diana. “He is healthy and in little danger so long as he keeps his inhaler with him.”
“He’s so thin,” said Cynthia.
“Please feel free to take the matter up to the Ministry of Food who issues his ration book.”
“Robin is a Symonds, Diana. Symonds boys have been going to Winchester for decades.”
“Robin is my son, and I will decide what to do about his education. He stays at home,” she said.
“Is that really wise, considering? All of these men coming and going from the hospital, and some of them can be quite rough. And then there is the issue of space. I have a third of my staff living in cold attic bedrooms, a third in barely habitable cottages, and a third down the road in the village. The Royal Army Medical Corps wrote last week that we’re to expect more men by midmonth, and the surgeon is demanding that we find him another room for a surgical suite because the old storeroom is too poorly lit. If Robin were to go, we could have the night nursery, too.”
“No,” she bit out.
“We all must make sacri—”
“You will not tell me about sacrifices,” Diana said fiercely. “You will not dare.”
Her sister-in-law folded her hands one over the other. “I understand that you are still mourning my brother’s death.”
Diana pushed herself up out of the chair. “Please remind Mrs. George that she and her cooks are to stay out of Miss Adderton’s way.”
Diana was halfway to the door when Cynthia called out, “I thought you should know, we have a chaplain in Ward C. I thought that you might like to meet Father Devlin.” Cynthia hesitated. “Perhaps you could speak to him about Murray.”
A long pause stretched between them as Diana clenched her fists. Finally, she said, “Cynthia, my request to stay out of my rations extends to matters of my personal life as well.”
For once, Cynthia was silent as Diana shut the billiards room door behind her.
* * *
Still seething, Diana made her way to the mudroom off the kitchen—too small a space for the convalescent home to commandeer—and pulled on Murray’s old waxed jacket and a well-worn pair of leather loafers. She wrapped her hair up in an old scarf that she kept on a hook by the door and gathered up her trug and secateurs.
She threw open the side door to the kitchen garden and crunched across the gravel to the gate. It wasn’t raining, but she could smell it in the air. It was her favorite time to be in the garden, with the urgency of impending weather hurrying her along.
She was not a great gardener by any means. But then, none of the women in Murray’s family had been. Murray’s grandfather, Arthur Melcourt, had brought in a woman named Venetia Smith to do the design. Even decades later, the effect was breathtaking any month of the year, and Diana was determined to be an excellent caretaker of the grounds. However, after four and a half years at war, she was beginning to admit that bare competence was more realistic.
When Murray was alive, six gardeners on staff were led by a head gardener named John Hillock. After the declaration of war, though, half of the young men had enlisted, with the others called up one by one. Then Mr. Hillock, who had worked on Venetia Smith’s designs under the direction of his father, had died of a heart attack while dividing bleeding hearts in the lovers’ garden. Now two men who were too old to fight came up from the village every other day to tend to what they could, calling on a pair of young boys to do any heavy lifting they couldn’t manage. The garden had taken on a loose, shaggy quality, with faded blooms that desperately needed deadheading. Even the yew had become more wild shrub than wall as it waited for a much-needed trimming.