Chapter sixteen
“So?” Gabriel questioned, as they drove up the north-bound slipway to the road to Dieppe, -having decided it was best to break the silence before it had long enough to harden.
“So …What?” Darcy turned her head from taking a last longing look at the rear bumper of her beloved car, fast disappearing in the opposite direction.
“So what did you think of the place? Good? Bad? Gabriel asked. “Did you steal lots of ideas to use in designing de Belagnac?”
“I didn’t come to steal ideas’”, she bristled, before relenting and acknowledging with a tiny smile, “well, maybe I did… a little, but that’s only part of what I was doing. It’s useful to check out other people’s work ...you know. Nothing’s created in a vacuum but, equally, it doesn’t mean that I intended to copy anything I saw.” Darcy was silent, thinking for a moment before she continued, “It’s mostly that I wanted to get a feel for what grows well in this part of the country and visiting similar gardens is an easy and enjoyable way of doing so.” She added thoughtfully, “plus, I’d read about the potager and I just wanted to see it for myself.” Leaning forward, she pulled her camera from the bag at her feet. “I took about a hundred photos. Digital is great for this kind of thing, I’ll download them onto my computer when I get back and sort through the images later. There’s definitely stuff there that I can use; learn from, maybe improve on.” She removed the batteries from the camera before returning it to her bag, “as for what I thought of it…hmm,” she ran her fingers through her hair as she ruminated.
He glanced across…tiny frown lines creased Darcy’s forehead and she was chewing her bottom lip…from the time he’d spent with her he already recognized the look…she did it without realizing when she was collecting her thoughts and sorting them into order.
“Good or bad doesn’t really come into it. Everyone has their own idea of what makes a ‘good’ garden. That’s such a personal thing and it’s often more subjective than objective. But it did get me thinking …the walled area at de Belagnac,” she shortened the title as she had heard him do, “covers around the same area. It’s a good-sized space but I’d like to sub-divide with another wall to create more intimate spaces within the existing walls …well, except I’d also like to make it a bit bigger…” she looked across at his bewildered profile. He turned and shot her a look the plainly said “excuse me?” Darcy quickly elaborated with “oops, that sounds contradictory even to me …what I mean is I like the basic proportions of our walled garden as it is”… she purposely emphasised the word ‘garden’. Since the ‘garden’ was, at present, nothing more than rough grass enclosed on three sides by high brick walls with the fourth side bordered by the former gardener’s cottage, untended trees and overgrown shrubs that looked as if they hadn’t seen a pruning shear in fifty years, she didn’t really think it qualified, as yet, to be called such ...but it would, most definitely, by the time she was done with it.
‘Our’ garden, he noted … interesting …he liked the sound of that. She didn’t seem aware that she’d used the possessive pronoun. What he did note as he briefly flicked a glance across at her for the second time in as many minutes was that, as he’d noticed the day at Ikea and while she had been talking with him upstairs in the chateau a week ago was that when she became passionate about something she tended to speak with her hands in a sort of fluid way that reminded him of some exotic dance… he liked that and didn’t want to stop her in mid-dance so merely nodded at her to go on.
She took a deep breath for courage before launching into her plan, “What do you think about extending the space to four or five yards behind the rear wall of the gardener’s cottage and building a fourth wall to completely enclose the garden with, maybe, a greenhouse, some cold frames for hardening off seedlings and perhaps espaliered fruit trees along the wall?” she added in a rush, before slowing to add, “It’s the warmest aspect and would be great for herbs, tomatoes and other plants that like the heat.” She held her breath, anxiously awaiting his reply.
“Sounds great,” he replied, nodding interestedly. “Draw it up … just a rough sketch outline of what you’d like and I’ll take a look at it.”
Darcy sighed with relief. Knowing her revised scheme would be expensive, she’d been prepared for a refusal. She wasn’t accustomed to this laissez faire attitude with a budget…but she’d do her best to get used to it…fast. She had already formulated a loose plan for the extra space in her mind… The additional high south facing wall would provide both passive solar heating for the greenhouses that she wanted for tender seedlings, extended-season fruits and vegetables and vertical space to train roses and espaliered fruit trees. There’d be beds full of fragrant herbs, fruits growing for the chateau’s kitchen and the cottage, once renovated, could be surrounded with pretty annuals and perennials. There would be shingle-paved paths where they were needed for winter access and mown grass for the rest to keep a softer serene green feel to the space –with some beds filled with flowers for cutting or drying for potpourri and others grown for seasonal colour. Shrubs and taller grasses for texture and built elements; perhaps a treillage walkway or an arbour covered in laburnum or wisteria for vertical interest until the trees could gain some height, and obelisks for training flowering climbers like sweetpeas or bean plants. Darcy hadn’t decided upon all the details for her garden yet but it was quite delicious to let all the ideas slush around in her brain for a time in the interim. The garden she had in mind would be timeless, a delightful hybrid of English and French design, which was one of the reasons she had included her third and last destination for the day, -a garden designed by the esteemed English garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll.
She sat back more comfortably in her seat, mulling over ideas and idly watching the green Normandy countryside flash by as Gabriel piloted the big SUV north to the second destination on her morning’s itinerary.
Seeing that she was pre-occupied with her thoughts Gabriel wisely left her to them.