Virgin Earth Read online

  J directed the carter past the rarities room, where the terrace overlooked the orderly gardens, on to the stable yard so that the plants could be unloaded directly beside the pump for watering. The stable lad, looking out over the half-door, saw the waving tops of small trees in the cart and shouted, ‘The master’s home!’ and came tumbling out into the yard.

  They heard him in the kitchen and the maid came running up the hall and flung open the back door as J mounted the steps to the terrace and stepped into his house.

  At once he recoiled in surprise. A woman he did not know, dark-haired, sober-faced, with a pleasant confident smile, came down the stairs, hesitated when she saw him looking up at her, and then came steadily on.

  ‘How d’you do,’ she said formally, and gave him a small nod of her head, as if she were a man and an equal.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ J asked abruptly.

  She looked a little awkward. ‘Will you come in here?’ she said, and showed him into his own parlour. The maid was on her hands and knees lighting the fire. The woman waited until the flame had caught and then dismissed the girl with a quick gesture of her hand.

  ‘I am Hester Pooks,’ she said. ‘Your father invited me to stay here.’

  ‘Why?’ J demanded.

  Hester hesitated. ‘I imagine you don’t know …’ She broke off. ‘I am very sorry to have to tell you that your father is dead.’

  He gasped and swayed. ‘My father?’

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  J dropped into a chair and was silent for a long moment. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised … but it is a dreadful shock … I know he was a great age, but he was always …’

  She took a chair opposite him without invitation, and sat quietly, folding her hands in her lap. When J turned to her she was waiting, judging her time to tell him more.

  ‘He didn’t suffer at all,’ she said. ‘He grew very tired, over the winter, and he went to bed to rest. He died very peacefully, just as if he fell asleep. We had brought many of his flowers into his room. He died surrounded by them.’

  J shook his head, still incredulous. ‘I wish I had been here,’ he said. ‘I wish to God I had been here.’

  Hester paused. ‘God is very merciful,’ she said gently. ‘At the moment of his death he thought that he saw you. He was waiting and waiting for you to return, and he woke as his bedroom door opened, and he thought that he saw you. He died thinking that you had come safe home. I know that he died happy, thinking that he had seen you.’

  ‘He said my name?’ J asked.

  She nodded. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”’

  J frowned. The old fear that he was not first in his father’s heart returned to him. ‘But did he say my name? Was it clear that he meant me?’

  Hester paused for a moment and then looked into the gentle, vulnerable face of the man that she meant to marry. She lied easily. ‘Oh yes,’ she said firmly. ‘He said: “Oh! You at last!”, and then as he lay back on the pillow he said “J.”’

  J paused, and took it all in. Hester watched him in silence.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to go on without him. The Ark, and the gardens, the royal gardens – I have always worked beside him. I have lost my employer and my master as well as my father.’

  She nodded. ‘He left a letter for you.’

  J watched her as she crossed the room and took the sealed letter from a drawer in the table.

  ‘I think it’s about me,’ she said bluntly.

  J paused as he took it from her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.

  She took a little breath. ‘I am Hester Pooks. I’m all but alone in the world. Your father liked me, and my uncle told him I had a good dowry. I met him at court. My uncle is a painter, commissioned by the queen. My family is a good family, all artists and musicians, all with royal or noble patrons.’ She paused and smiled. ‘But not much money. Your father thought I might suit you. He wanted to make sure that there was someone to bring up his grandchildren, and to keep them here. He didn’t want them living in London with your wife’s parents. He thought I would marry you.’

  J’s jaw dropped open. ‘He has found me a wife? I’m a man of thirty years of age and he found me a wife as if I were a boy? And he chose you?’

  Hester looked him squarely in the face. ‘I’m no beauty,’ she said. ‘I imagine your wife was lovely. Frances is such a pretty girl, and they tell me she takes after her mother. But I can run a house, and I can run a business, I love plants and trees and a garden, and I like children, I like your children. Whether or not you want to marry me, I should like to be a friend to Frances in particular. It would suit me to marry you and I wouldn’t make great demands on you. I don’t have great expectations.’

  She paused. ‘It would be an arrangement to suit ourselves,’ she said. ‘And it would leave you free to garden at the royal palace of Oatlands or to go abroad again and know that everything was safe here.’

  J looked from her to his letter. ‘This is outrageous! I have barely been home a moment and already I learn that my father is dead and that some woman, who I’ve never met before in my life, is half-betrothed to me. And anyway …’ He broke off. ‘I have other plans.’

  She nodded soberly. ‘It would have been easier if he had lived to explain it himself,’ she said. ‘But you are not half-betrothed, Mr Tradescant. It is entirely up to you. I shall leave you to read your letter. Is it your wish that I wake the children and bring them down to see you?’

  He was distracted. ‘Are they both well?’

  She nodded. ‘Frances especially grieves for her grandfather but they are both in perfect health.’

  J shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Bring them in to me when they wake,’ he said. ‘No need to wake them early. I will read this letter from my father. I need time. I do feel …’ He broke off. ‘All my life he has managed and controlled me!’ he exclaimed in a sudden explosion of irritation. ‘And just when I think I am my own man at his death I find that he had my future life in his hands, too.’

  She paused at the doorway with her hand on the brass door ring. ‘He did not mean to order you,’ she said. ‘He was thinking that I might set you free, not be a burden. And he told me very clearly that you had buried your heart with your wife and that you would never love me nor any woman again.’

  J felt a pang of deep guilt. ‘I shall never love a woman in my wife’s place,’ he said carefully. ‘Jane could never be replaced.’

  She nodded, she thought he was warning her. She did not realise that he was speaking to himself, reproaching himself for that runaway sense of freedom, for his sense of joy with the young girl in the wood so far from home and responsibilities and the normal rules of life.

  ‘I don’t expect love,’ Hester said simply, recalling him to the shadowy room. ‘I thought we might be able to help each other. I thought we might be … helpmeets.’

  J looked at her, looked at her and saw her for the first time as she stood in the doorway, framed by the dark wood. He saw the simple plain face, the smooth white cap, the intelligent dark eyes and the strength of her jaw. ‘What on earth put it into his head?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I did,’ she said with a glimmer of a smile. ‘It would suit me very well. Perhaps, when you are over the surprise of it, you will think that it will suit you too.’

  He watched her close the door behind her and opened his father’s letter.

  My dear son,

  I have made a will leaving the Ark entire to you. I hope that it will bring you much joy. I hope that Baby John will succeed you, as you succeed me, and that the name of Tradescant will always mean something to people who love their gardens.

  If I am dead when you return then I leave you my blessing and my love. I am going to join your mother, and my two masters, Sir Robert and the Duke, and I am ready to go to them. Do not grieve for me, J, I have had a long life and one which many men would envy.

  The young woman called Hester Pooks has a substan