The Last White Rose Of Summer - Brian Doswell (epub read online books .TXT) 📗

The Last White Rose Of Summer

by

Brian Doswell

The house was built in 1932, just after the roaring twenties. For those who could afford it, it was a period of extravagance, just long enough after the first world war to have escaped any thoughts of austerity and before the sobriety of the depression years came into view. I suspect it was a time of high hopes and supreme self-confidence when anything was thought to be possible, much as would happen again two generations later in the swinging sixties. The term ‘Art Deco’ was coined much later, but the very notion of a period when art and decorative design was paramount was indicative of a period when the people felt that these, somewhat ill defined, values were worth spending time and effort on.

It was late autumn when I first saw the house. Leaves were strewn across a curving driveway that had lost its edges in an unceasing battle with the ever encroaching weeds. An octagonal sunken rose garden looked more like a land fill site, liberally dusted with empty crisp packets and debris blown in on the wind. The house had stood empty for almost three years following the death of its previous occupant. The estate was supposedly managed by a distant relative, somewhere in New York, who had provided for a house keeper and a gardener, but clearly no one had been near the house for several months, maybe longer.

It was actually a case of mistaken identity. I had set out to find another address and followed the estate agent’s instructions, or so I thought, but I suppose that I must have missed a turning somewhere in an unfamiliar town. There was no sale board to advertise the property and yet it was clearly unoccupied. A five-bar wooden gate was not so much open as collapsed on it’s one remaining rusted iron hinge, not exactly inviting me in, more that it was too tired to resist my entry. My car ploughed through the sea of leaf mould that was the drive up to the front door. Two tall Palladian columns framed a substantial oak door set into a porch with some of the most decorative brickwork that I had ever seen on such a town property and, in hindsight; I was hooked from then on. I had no keys but I was able to walk around the house and its gardens which backed onto woodland separated only by a low post and wire fence that had also known better days.

I tried five different estate agents in the town before I found the one that admitted to acting for the current owner. It seemed that the previous occupant had been a local character, the widow of an industrialist and local councillor who had built the house in 1932. As a comparatively wealthy widow, she had become something of a recluse and taken to demanding services from the town such as she might have enjoyed in the thirties. I imagined her perhaps seeing her butler riding into town on his bicycle to bring back her daily newspaper to be ironed and placed by her side, doubtless with a glass of port. Ah, Golden days.

Armed now with the keys and the estate agent, I inspected the house but in truth there was no need, I knew that if I could afford the asking price then I would buy the house regardless of surveys or any other questions. This was definitely a ‘coup de coeur’.

A year later my wife and I were installed in our new home. The drive was cleared of leaves and the lawns mowed. Newly imported Asian lilies floated serenely on the pond beneath the willow trees. All that remained was for me to revive the lost rose garden. Although I’m not really a gardener I felt a personal need to do this myself. The debris removed, I set to work on the backbreaking task of changing the old topsoil for a ton of new specially imported rose soil delivered directly from the National Rose Gardens at Wisley. My wife and I toured the local specialist rose growers and scoured the internet until we had found the most perfect combination of pale cream and white roses which I planted over the course of two gruelling weekends. At last everything came together. We had no way to know for sure but we felt that we had created a rose garden equal to anything that might have been there in the 1930’s. This labour of love became my pride and joy. Each morning before leaving for the station I gazed with pride on the Lazarus-like miracle we had brought about. Each evening I would take my pre-dinner drink into the garden and gaze on the beauty of the roses that filled my beautiful octagonal rose bed. Until that is, until the evening of the dinner party.

It must have been a Saturday. Dinner parties were always on Saturdays because the last train from town during the week was far from being as predictable as the train operating company would have you believe. It was also late summer and I recall that although the weather was still warm, we had chosen to insist on gentlemen wearing dinner jackets and black ties. The ladies always go to such efforts to look their best on these occasions that it seems only fair that the gents should have a good wash and brush up.

George had been in on Friday to see to the lawns and trim the edges along the drive so that everything was looking just right for the party. The menu had been discussed in great depth and had been agreed by the home team, although I suspect that most of it was really sorted out by my wife and the town butcher. Champagne cocktails on arrival, with an assortment of nibbles, to be served in the logia. I don’t much like champagne myself but it does always get an evening off to a good start. A terrine of wild hare, shot by the members of the local Conservative club, and then Osso Bucco, which literally means ‘bone with a hole’, a favourite Italian recipe of veal shin braised in white wine with onions and tomato. In deference to the late summer I planned to serve a chilled white wine, also from Italy. I had stumbled on Orvieto just a few years before, during a holiday in Umbria. Orvieto is a rich and wonderful wine made from Trebiano blended with Verdello, Grechetto, Drupeggio and Malvasia Toscano grapes and, I have to say, is well worth its price in the local supermarket.

The hall clock chimed seven times as stood at the bedroom mirror to tie my tie. I refuse to wear one of those clip-on things but I must admit to a certain degree of frustration with the damned thing that always seems to have a mind of its own, especially when one is late getting dressed. Determined not to be defeated by a silly piece of ribbon, I persevered until it all fell neatly into place. At last, a perfect bow. I stood back to admire this perfection in the mirror and foolishly allowed my eye to look over the polished antique wooden mirror frame, through the newly installed, leaded windows and into the garden where should have been my perfectly manicured octagonal rose bed.

I came down the extravagantly restored, art deco, oak staircase two, no, three at a time but it made no difference. My roses were gone except for one single remaining white bloom. Of the rest, there was nothing left but stalks with a few lost and scattered petals lying on the neatly mulched earth like confetti on a church path after the bride has gone by.

Furious would be an understatement. Who could have done such a thing? My wife, taking a few roses for a table decoration perhaps, but this bordered on criminal damage. The culprit must be caught and publicly lynched, preferably now and definitely before the guests arrive, and the clock was ticking.

I must have called out on my way to the garden because my wife arrived just moments after me, equally horrified by the carnage that lay before us.

Had they been there at the time, a good team of divorce lawyers would have had a field day while we amicably discussed who might have been so neglectful as to allow this to happen, on this of all evenings. But, we were no so daft as to realise that what was done, was done. What next? What was to be done to repair the damage? Was there time to call the florist in the town and selotape cut blooms onto the severed stalks? Clearly not. We would just have to tough it out. Perhaps we could casually ask our friends if they had also suffered from the South American rose weevil, known to be rampant in these parts this summer? Better still, we could forego the champagne on the logia and settle for meeting everyone with a glass of champagne at the door, then herding them straight into the dining room so that the octagonal rose bed remained out of view.

My wife is always the one to come up with the best ideas at a time like this. ‘Bugger the roses, let’s have the champagne anyway,’ was her admirable and much welcomed suggestion.

With less than thirty minutes to go before our guests were due, there seemed no better option. Hold the cork and turn the bottle. My father taught me that when I was a boy and it really does work. The cork popped and I filled our glasses, we drank and then I filled them again.

We sat together, glass in hand, in the over stuffed garden armchairs on our logia, admiring our neatly trimmed lawns with their tidy box hedge borders, our weeping willow with its branches dipping down into the pond below and to the side a neatly set, octagonal rose bed with one its one remaining white rose holding its head proudly against the verdant green background of laurel hedges.

I remember that it was a still moment such as only happens in an English summer garden. Neither of us spoke as we sipped our champagne. The last of the evening sun was resting on the tops of our hedges before sinking gently into the woods beyond; nothing moved.

Well, almost nothing.

We both watched in continued silence as the hedge appeared to part like a theatre curtain and a young fawn strode purposefully across our lawn, round the pond, under the trailing willow branches and then straight towards the sole remaining white rose. The fawn paused, for just the briefest of moments, and then I swear it looked directly at us sitting in our armchairs, before biting the head off the last white rose and chewing it to shreds.

I have never seen such big brown eyes or such an enchanting face. Bambi was a cartoon, but this was a real, live, rose-eating baby red deer; and it was in our garden.

We dared not move or speak