Shall I give Carrie a ring and see if she wants to come round too?’
‘Is that greed talking?’ I said, because Carrie never comes visiting without bringing a selection of the home-made goodies she bakes for her café, Teapots.
Nia, already dialling, pulled a face at me over her mobile phone.
It felt wonderfully decadent with the three of us curled up on the big sofa in front of the TV, the coffee table groaning under the weight of pizza, leftover birthday cake and all the pastries Carrie had brought, scattering crumbs and drinking my home-made apple wine and Carrie’s mead.
Mal would have gone ballistic if he’d seen what we’d done to his immaculate living room.
We watched the news as an entrée, then Nia started going through my sparse collection of DVDs to find a film to watch as the main course.
‘Ten Things I Hate About You?’ I suggested, and the other two groaned.
‘We must have seen that a dozen times!’ Carrie complained.
‘Yes, but it’s my favourite film.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t let me get my favourite film,’ Nia objected. She may not have a DVD player but she usually carries Fargo round with her like a teenager with a new CD.
‘Too gory,’ I objected. I wanted something lighter.
‘What’s this?’ Nia asked, holding up an unfamiliar box.
Carrie reached over and took it. ‘Restoration Gardener?’
‘I’d forgotten I had that; Ma won it, but I haven’t watched it yet. It’s only a short one – the highlights of some TV series.’
‘I’ve heard of it – I think its sort of archaeology crossed with gardening. Let’s have a look at that first,’ Carrie suggested, ‘then decide on a film.’
‘OK, at least we haven’t already seen it a million times,’ Nia agreed, putting it in the machine.
We all replenished our plates and glasses, then started the DVD and sat back expectantly. Carrie’s a keen gardener, I’m passionate about roses and Nia loves flowers generally, so hopefully there should be something there to suit us all.
To the accompaniment of a gentle ripple of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, the title Restoration Gardener wrote itself across the screen with a quill pen over some speeded-up computer-generated images of a Japanese crystal garden growing like iced mould out of bare paper.
Carrie settled back with a plate containing a custard tart, a cherry-topped coconut pyramid and two cream-filled brandy snaps (and that was just for starters). ‘I do love gardening programmes – it’s such a shame we can’t get more channels on the TV in St Ceridwen’s.’
‘It’s a shame we can’t always see the ones we do allegedly get,’ Nia said, scattering shards of meringue. ‘The reception’s so bad they should be ashamed of charging us for the TV licence, and only a masochist would bother looking in the newspaper at what’s on everywhere else.’
‘Do you think Gabriel Weston is his real name?’ I asked, as the quill pen reappeared and wrote it with a flourish. ‘It’s a bit olde worlde and earthy, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t get much more earthy and olde worlde than Bob Flowerdew,’ pointed out Nia, ‘and that’s his real name.’
‘Gabriel is his real name!’ Carrie exclaimed, striking herself on the forehead with the hand holding the remains of the coconut pyramid, so that it was suddenly like being inside a snowglobe (though the custard tart would have been much, much worse). ‘Am I stupid, or what? I read all about him in a magazine last time I went to the hairdresser’s in Llandudno. He’s usually called Gabe, though.’
‘It’s starting,’ Nia warned, and we stopped brushing bits of coconut off each other and turned to face the screen.
Helicopter-borne, the camera homed slowly in on a small Tudor manor house sitting inoffensively among a rolling, sheep-nibbled expanse of grass, with here and there a flight of stone steps or a section of herringbone-brick pathway.
There wasn’t much more garden left there than around Rhodri’s mini-mansion, Plas Gwyn, I thought, taking a bite of Bakewell tart and settling back. All Rhodri’s old gardener, Aled, had to do was drive round and round on his little sit-on mower and indulge his passion for clipping trees into strangely rude shapes.
‘Approaching Slimbourne Manor you might think that there never was a garden here at all, or if there ever was, that all trace had vanished,’ said a warm, deep voice with just the faintest, tantalising hint of a West Country burr.
A strange shiver ran down my back and I sat up and stared at the screen. I’d definitely heard that voice before somewhere, I was sure of it – maybe on some other gardening programme. It certainly wasn’t one you’d ever forget, with a mellow tone that made you think of dark, rich honey and folded tawny velvet … of a pint of best bitter with the sunlight shining through it, or the dappled gold-browns of a peaty stream bed, or … well, you get the idea. Even if the programme was no good I could see how the audience was hooked. I was half-mesmerised myself.
‘Yet, as we get closer,’ the velvety voice continued, ‘we start to notice clues: grand steps that once led somewhere and the remains of beautiful old brick pathways. The grass at the front of the house that looked so flat from high above, from an angle shows the bumps and hollows of a long-vanished knot garden. Slimbourne was once a jewel in a beautiful setting, and we are going to resurrect it!’
‘I don’t see how he can see anything there,’ I said sceptically, trying to shake off the near-hypnosis of that voice. ‘Perhaps he just makes it up.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Carrie, suddenly our instant resident expert, ‘apparently he has an absolute gift for garden design, a huge knowledge of the history of old gardens and a degree in archaeology! And, what’s more, he looked totally hunky in his photo.’
‘I don’t think people say “hunky” any more,’ observed Nia. ‘They say a man is “fit” or “well fit”.’
‘Then he looked well fit. More than well fit. Well fit with knobs on.’
‘I should hope so,’ I said, watching critically as Gabe Weston slowly approached us on the screen, escorting a tall and ancient lady dressed in mottled tweed trousers and an old cricket jumper, her long string of pearls trapped under one pendulous breast.
I jerked upright as though someone had run their finger down my spine, the half-eaten cake in one hand.
‘I’m lucky in having the assistance of Lady Eleanor Arkleforth, the owner of this lovely house, who has already researched the garden thoroughly in the family archives.’
‘Thank you,’ Lady Arkleforth said graciously. ‘I’m delighted to restore the grounds to some semblance of what they once were at last.’
‘I believe you’ve found a plan of how
