Midsummer Mayhem Page 6

  “Of course we won’t.” Pru put her hand on Christopher’s. “Will we?”

  “I don’t see any reason why we should,” he replied.

  “Penelope knows the setup, of course,” Ambrose said, “but she won’t give it away. She’s happy to see her uncle back to his old self.”

  “Uncle? Yes, ‘Uncle Max,’ ” Pru said. “That’s what she called him yesterday.”

  “Right, then.” Ambrose downed the last drop in his glass and stood. “I’d better be off. Thanks for the drink.”

  Pru leapt up. “So soon?”

  Where was Polly? Why hadn’t Bernadette arrived? Had Evelyn listened to her voicemail?

  She’d have to try again another day. But as the three of them walked round the back of the house to the yard where Ambrose’s car was parked, inspiration hit.

  “Say, I don’t suppose you and Max would like to come to dinner. Tomorrow? It’s short notice, I know, but if you’re free—”

  Ambrose’s face lit up. “We’d love it—I’ll accept for Max, too, as we’re knocking round Southampton on our own, two lonely old bachelors.”

  “Perfect! Isn’t it?” She turned to Christopher, and he repeated the invitation.

  Most definitely perfect for Pru, who could dispatch her duties as liaison to the Ambrose Grant fan club and be done with it.

  She included Penelope in the invitation, and pressed Ambrose for the names of other cast members. But the young ones had their own lives, Linden spent every available minute at her country house in Kidlington, near Oxford, and Les Buchan went home to his wife in Bedfordshire. “Miriam—” he started, and then shook his head. “No, she’ll be in Tunbridge Wells until Monday.”

  Just as well, Pru thought. With an actor, the director, a stage manager, and three groupies, the dinner party was teetering on the verge of a crowd.

  * * *

  —

  Ambrose left, and Christopher accompanied Pru to the kitchen garden. While she gathered greens for their supper, Christopher popped fat peas out of a pod and into his mouth. “And your second day—as exciting as the first?”

  “Exciting and busy. The children are adorable—the fairies.” Pru frowned in concentration. “But there are more cast members I’ve yet to meet. More names to learn.”

  “So, we’ve a dinner party tomorrow evening,” Christopher said as they walked back to the kitchen.

  “Yes, and I certainly hope they appreciate it,” Pru replied.

  “Ambrose and Max Stirling?”

  “No—these three.” For as she spoke, Polly’s Fiat turned into the drive, followed by Bernadette’s Smart car, and, bringing up the rear, Evelyn in the passenger seat of her husband’s van, painted with PEACHEY’S REPAIRS on the side.

  Pru waited as the women approached, talking among themselves. Polly spoke first.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” Pru said, putting on the saddest face possible. “I’m sorry, but you’ve just this minute missed Ambrose Grant—he stopped in to have a drink.”

  She should’ve had her camera out to record the shocked looks and dropped jaws. She snorted and laughed and coughed before she could go on. “On a brighter note, are you free for dinner tomorrow evening?”

  * * *

  —

  The Sunday evening dinner party was deemed a success on all fronts—Evelyn’s fine cooking, convivial company, and enjoyable entertainment, including Pru’s recitation from the play. Exhausted, she fell asleep in an instant and knew nothing until five-thirty the next morning when her eyes popped open.

  So far, Pru felt she’d done nothing for the production except stand and listen—and make a lot of notes—but this morning would change all of that. She’d assigned Hal to collect orders from several nurseries that opened early for the trade—silvery brunnera and massive hostas, spires of Italian cypresses, and a great deal of thyme. Nothing in bloom if he could help it—otherwise, they would need to shear the flowers off. It wouldn’t do to have Titania’s bower swarming with bees.

  In the kitchen at Greenoak, she packed an almond poppy-seed cake into her bag—Evelyn had insisted she take it along to share with the cast—and checked the time. Hal was already on the road. She’d better hop to it.

  At the end of the dinner party the evening before, when Pru had asked Penelope how early the gates would be open at Coeur-de-la-Mer, the stage manager had handed over the key code. “We’ll arrive at ten, but you go ahead and get busy.”

  And so she did. Security code keyed in, the gates had barely started to creep open before Pru slipped through and closed them, making a beeline to the shed. She retrieved the cart, wheeled it back to the gate to be ready for Hal, and checked her watch to find she had time on her hands. She retraced her steps, stopping in the gardener’s cottage.

  All was quiet. Sun poured through the window above the kitchen sink, throwing a square of light onto the floor while the rest of the kitchen and sitting room remained in shadows. She stuck her head in the small study with its empty shelves and cleared-off desk. A tiny window let in only broken light, obscured as it was by the espaliered pyracantha just outside. Pru could hear the hum of the bees and it made her sleepy. She yawned, then shook herself awake. Leaving the poppy-seed cake on the counter, she headed through the bedroom to the loo—noting that Jeremy the hermit gardener had stripped the bed and left the folded duvet and two fluffy pillows in the enormous wardrobe. He kept his living quarters the same as his garden—neat as a pin.

  Out in the yard, she could see the path to the rock garden just ahead of her. Here was her chance to have a nose round, and so she walked up and into the rugged landscape of scree and lichen-covered stones, mossy saxifrages, and dozens of grassy clumps of Rhodohypoxis with its starry red, pink, or white flowers. She took her phone out and snapped a few photos. Wouldn’t Simon be pleased?

  After that it was a pleasant stroll up the beech walk, which had been underplanted with martagon lilies, now in bloom. Stunning. She saw a double border in the distance, but instead of continuing, she turned left into the theater lawn and crept out until she stood center stage. She hesitated, taking in the vast empty space.

  “Over hill, over dale,” she whispered, and then imagined she heard Max saying, “Project, Prunella, speak to the back row.”

  “Over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier—” Her voice rang out to her imaginary full house.

  She squealed when her phone pinged.

  It was Hal. At gate. Where r u?

  Where, indeed. Her face ablaze, Pru exited, stage right.

  Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it be,

  give it me; for I am slow of study.

  1.2.62–63

  Chapter 8

  The borrowed bread van—1970s vintage by the look of it, with faded letters that read BRENNAN’S FINEST on the side—was chockablock with flats of all manner of thyme—creeping, woolly, elfin—as well as substantial pots of shrubs and perennials.

  “Hostas?” Pru asked.

  “In the back there.”

  “The Italian cypresses? The brunnera?”

  “Tomorrow—but that’s two different nurseries. Cypresses early in the morning, brunnera later.”

  They loaded the cart, and Pru led Hal off.

  She’d sussed out an ideal spot for a holding area—a secluded, small maintenance yard beyond the dahlia courtyard that contained the compost bins and was boxed in by a high, dense hedge, disguising its mundane inner workings.

  “It’ll be our plant corral,” she said.

  “Corral?” Hal grinned. “Will we lasso the hostas?”

  “And hold them in jail,” she said, going along with the joke. Her brother, Simon, had made the same sort of comment when she’d mentioned her name for the holding area—it was her Texas roots showing, he said
, and dubbed the place Pru’s Plant Corral.

  “They’ve piles of burlap we can use,” Pru said on their way back to the gate. “It’s in the stables. We’ll set the plants on it and keep Jeremy’s chippings clean that way.”

  “I thought he’d scarpered,” Hal said.

  “Yes, well, still—I feel like I owe it to him.”

  * * *

  —

  As the company arrived, Pru attempted to introduce Hal—it was, after all, the polite thing to do. But she was hindered on two fronts. First, when they encountered an actor, she nearly would have to tackle her young assistant to get him to hold up long enough, and second, Pru couldn’t remember anyone’s actual name. Ambrose, yes, Max and Penelope, but she could hardly say, “Hal, this is Lysander.”

  So when she spotted Lysander himself just offstage, his script stuck under an arm and hands in his pockets, she readied to admit her ignorance.

  “Morning,” she said.

  Lysander let his eyes settle on Pru. “Morning,” the actor replied. Hal had paused for this introduction, and so she rushed on. “I’d like you to meet Hal Noakes, my assistant—”

  “Yeah, hi,” Lysander said, his eyes flicking to her companion for an instant before returning to Pru. Hal turned and walked off, and the actor took a step closer to Pru. So much for his standards, she thought.

  “You’d be wise to actually read that script, not just carry it round with you,” Puck said as he passed them.

  Introductions went slightly better later, when she and Hal turned the corner into the green corridor. Hermia came hurtling out of the orchard and missed colliding with the cart by an inch.

  “Sorry!” the actor said.

  “No, it’s us—we’re sorry,” Pru said and, seizing the opportunity, added, “This is Hal, he’s helping me with the plants. Hal…Hermia—that is, you play Hermia. That’s your character, not your name, of course.” Pru floundered, but neither Hal nor the actor appeared to notice.

  Hermia’s eyes rested on Hal, and she offered a sweet smile. “Yeah, sure, of course. I’m Nell, pleased to meet you.”

  Hal bobbed his head as they heard Max bellow.

  “Hermia!”

  Hermia hurried on her way.

  * * *

  —

  Max called morning break, and as the cast drifted toward the cottage, Penelope asked, “All right there, Pru?”

  “I think I’ll go check on Hal—he’s out in the garden somewhere—said he’d be along the archery walk and that it was on the far side of the nuttery. I’m not quite sure where those are.”

  “He’s just there on the other side of the hedge.” Penelope nodded to the theater lawn’s wall of yew hedge.

  And so he was, standing under the shade of the beeches that were pruned yearly into a rectangular shape—pleaching. Martagon lilies grew in the dappled shade beneath, on tall stems with nodding flowers, their petals curved back.

  “Here you are now,” she said. “I thought you were off in the far reaches. I can’t go home and tell Evelyn that you missed elevenses. Don’t you want to come for coffee and cake?”

  “Nah. I’ll lay that burlap and after that, I’ll bring in the flats of thyme.”

  Pru did take her break and then returned to unloading plants. During one of Pru’s journeys back and forth from the gate, Penelope waylaid her, breaking away from the rehearsal, and leaving Lysander and Helena to fend for themselves.

  “Don’t you need to follow the script in case he—I mean, someone—needs a line?” Pru asked.

  Penelope threw a look over her shoulder. “Says he’s played this part before—you’d never know it, would you? Well, it’s time he learned his lines—or suffer the consequences. Look, tomorrow we’ll need the Athenian court. Can you have your Hal bring out those urns?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She looked round, thinking to catch him as he passed by with a handcart full of plants, but instead, he stood only a few feet behind her. Cradling a flat of woolly thyme, he watched, entranced, as Lysander professed his love to Helena, who thought he was having her on.

  “Line!” Lysander called when he stumbled on his words. Penelope looked disinclined to rush back to her script. “Line!” Lysander called again.

  “Look when I vow, I weep…”

  The clear voice carried across the open space, but instead of picking up his line, Lysander—along with everyone else—turned to find out who had spoken.

  It was Hal. The young man’s mouth dropped open, and his face turned scarlet.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, and began backing away. “I’m sorry…”

  He disappeared behind the hedge as Max called to Lysander. “Well? Do you need the line again?”

  * * *

  —

  By the time Pru caught up with Hal at the gates, he’d emptied the bread van and held the last two plants—large black nursery pots of acanthus—one in each arm.

  “Are you finished with me, Pru? I’ll leave these and be off.”

  “Stay for lunch; I’m sure there’s enough. In the meantime, after you drop those, go into the dahlia courtyard and write down the names of all the cultivars. Make a note of color and type if it’s early in bloom.” She heard her own instructions and, realizing the enormousness of the assignment, added, “It’s all right if you don’t finish today, but when you’ve got the list, hand it over to Simon.”

  “Right.”

  They walked up the green corridor, circling round each cone of ivy. “How is it that you knew those lines?” Pru asked casually.

  Hal shrugged, and the plants bobbed up and down. “We did A Midsummer Night’s Dream in school. Funny how the words can come back to you.”

  That must’ve been secondary school, not his horticultural program. Hal had come from outside London, a place called Two Mile Ash, but that’s as much as Pru and Simon could get out of him about where he’d grown up. Perhaps that was enough.

  When Pru and Hal reached the opening to the orchard with its thick border of bee plant, Lysander came flying out. He crashed into Hal, and Pru grabbed her assistant’s arm to keep him upright.

  “I won’t have any voice lessons in there!” Lysander shouted. “I don’t care what Max told you!”

  Ambrose burst out of the orchard, pointed a finger, and growled, “That’s just the sort of voice that will get you into trouble. If you would support yourself from the diaphragm, you could be heard without damaging your vocal cords.”

  “And I won’t be tortured with ridiculous instruction by someone whose career is long over!” Lysander shot back.

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you,” Ambrose snarled, advancing on him. “Don’t think you can’t be replaced. You must be disciplined to be an actor.”

  “I have a natural talent.” Lysander drew himself up. “ ‘A rising star,’ one reviewer said.”

  “And what was that for—your portrayal of Mother Goose in last year’s panto at Little Cheating?”

  Lysander flinched. He took three steps back, turned, and fled.

  Hermia peeked out of the orchard opening and watched her lover’s retreating figure with a smirk.

  * * *

  —

  Pru delivered Hal’s sandwich to the dahlia courtyard, where he continued to work on the first of the twelve beds. “You can finish tomorrow, but I also need you to move a couple of urns out to the stage.”

  Hal gave her a look bordering on the rebellious. “What about the garden? There’s Verbascum that needs staking—you know how it can crash to the ground if it’s in rich soil. And a load of spring-flowering shrubs—kerria and almond and others—they need to be pruned before they put on any more new growth.”

  “Yes, all right—you carry on with all of that. As you can see, there’s work for you here all week. Also, you can deadhead the roses.”


  “I’m already on it.”

  “And clean up the double borders on the other side of the beech walk.”

  “Everything’s under control.” Hal grinned. “There we are now, that’s what I’m meant to be doing, working in a garden.”

  Pru walked with him to the gate, and as they passed the stables, Ambrose called from the door.

  “Hello, Pru. Cuppa? You, too, Hal.”

  “Yes, please,” she replied, but Hal waved, shook his head, and kept walking. “Thanks, Hal,” she said to his retreating figure. “See you in the morning.”

  As Pru walked across the yard, she pulled her phone out. Evelyn had sent a text earlier—a photo of a large vase overflowing with dusty pink, voluptuous peonies. Pru enlarged the image to read the card nestled in the midst of the petals: For you, Evelyn—fantastic cook and delightful company. oxox Ambrose and Max.

  Pru held her phone out to him as she settled on the sofa. “That was a lovely gesture.”

  “The least we could do,” Ambrose replied as he handed her a mug, moved a chair closer, and sat. “It was a fine evening.”

  “We enjoyed it, too.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying, I admire you and Christopher. You seem not to have lost any of the romance in your marriage.”

  “I don’t mind a bit,” Pru said, but turned pink, anyway. “Of course we’ve only been married two years, but I hope we never do lose it.”

  “Listen, Pru”—Ambrose leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees—“there’s something I want to speak with you about.”

  Miriam appeared in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the bright sky.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb the two of you”—she put her chin in the air—“but I have a fitting scheduled.”

  “Right.” Pru jumped up. “I’m just off to check our supply of—”

  “Miriam.” Ambrose rose, his face red. “We were just talking about—”

  “It’s none of my concern what you were talking about.”