Tulips In Amsterdam

I’d been looking forward to this trip, but I wished the atmosphere was a little warmer . . .

IDON’T know much about flowers and plants, but I’m surrounded by people who do. Gardening is not only my husband’s job, it’s his passion, too – and it’s one my mother shares.

The gardening greenfingered genes have passed me by, but I get to enjoy the fruits – and veg – of their labours.

When I was growing up, we always had a flower-filled back garden. I remember Mum giving talks to local women’s groups, sharing gardening advice.

Whenever we’d go shopping she would buy packets of seeds and string bags of bulbs mixed in with the weekly supermarket shop.

Having a beautiful garden was something I took for granted. It was something that was always there, something Mum looked after.

When I first met Bob and told Mum he ran a plant nursery, she was over the moon. She thought they’d have a lot to talk about. She was wrong.

Bob was an only child, and his parents had passed away long before I met him. He’s a bit of an introvert, and has always got on better with plants than people.

I fancied him when we first met at college, but it took ages to get to know him properly. He was always reserved, as if he had a barrier around him.

I persevered, and I love him to bits, but there are times when I wish he would stop retreating into his shell, because he and my mum have never really got along.

They’re polite to each other, even nice, but it seems a forced friendship. Bob is only ever in Mum’s company if I’m there to act as a go-between.

Mum has resigned herself to thinking of Bob as part of my life, but not part of hers.

“As long as he makes you happy, that’s all I care about.”

And he does make me happy. I just wish he’d relax when he’s with her, instead of clamming up.

When they’re in the same room, he’s like one of those plants that close up their leaves on an evening when the sun’s gone in.

“How do you fancy a trip to Holland?” Bob asked me when he came in from work one day. “I’ve been given some tickets from a supplier. Airfare, hotel, guided tour of the tulip fields and a trip to a flower festival all thrown in for free! What do you say?”

“I say thank you, lovely husband!”

I kissed him on the cheek. “When do we go?” “Next weekend,” he said. “I might ask Stuart at work if he wants to come with us.”

“Stuart?” I asked, shocked. “But he’s only started working with you in the last week and he’s not even a gardener, is he? I thought he was just at the nursery helping out on work experience from the local college?”

“But they’ve given me three tickets,” Bob said. “It would be a shame not to use them all.”

I looked at him sideways. “I know someone passionate about gardening who’d give their right arm to come with us.”

Bob didn’t ask who I had in mind. He just raised his eyebrows and sighed.

That’s how the three of us ended up sitting together on a plane headed to Amsterdam. Well, when I say “together”, Mum and I were sitting next to each other while Bob managed to get an aisle seat in the row behind.

I was reading the guidebook I’d bought and turned round to ask Bob a question.

“How do you pronounce this flower festival place?”

I’d tried to read the name from the guidebook once or twice, trying the vowel sounds in different ways.

The man sitting next to Bob answered. He was from Amsterdam and said that the first word I’d tried was the closest to the way it should be pronounced.

“But when you get there,” he promised, “all you’ll say is, ‘Wow!’”

I thanked him and

told Mum what the Dutchman had said. I was excited about getting there and exploring fields and parks full of flowers.

If only Mum and Bob would get along when we were there . . .

After we’d landed and unpacked at the hotel, Bob had to meet the supplier who’d gifted us this minibreak. Mum and I did some sight-seeing and had dinner in a restaurant across the road from our hotel.

We were to be picked up by coach from the hotel the next morning for our visit to the tulip fields and the flower festival with the unpronounceable name.

Mum and I kissed goodnight and arranged to meet up for breakfast nice and early the next day.

By the time Bob came back from his meeting with the bulb supplier, who had wined and dined him in true Dutch hospitality style, I was in bed half-asleep.

I was feeling slightly queasy but didn’t say anything to Bob, thinking I’d be fine in the morning. The next day, I woke with one of the worst migraines I had ever suffered and I still felt very queasy.

Mum said she felt fine, so I ruled out a reaction from the food from the night before, as we’d eaten the same chicken casserole.

The fact remained that there was no way I’d be able to enjoy the day ahead. I insisted that Bob and Mum went on the coach trip without me.

“I’m not leaving you in this state,” Bob said. “We’ll cancel. We can come back another time.”

“Go, Bob. Please. I think I just need to sleep this off and have some peace and quiet. I don’t think I’m up to walking around all day. And Mum’s been looking forward to it so much.”

Bob groaned.

“You don’t have to entertain her, just talk to her, for heaven’s sake!” I said, exasperated. “Just keep an eye on her. Now, go!”

Left alone in my hotel room, I switched on the television and propped myself up in the bed against one of the deep, plump pillows. From the room I could hear the coach pull up outside the hotel to collect Mum and Bob.

I peeked out of the window and watched as they both boarded the coach, and a smile spread over my face as I watched the tour guide position them in seats next to each other. There was no way Bob could sit in the row behind Mum today!

I glanced at the room service menu and picked out a light lunch I would treat myself to if I kept on feeling better during the day.

I thought about Bob and Mum travelling together, in silence – once their concern for me had been discussed, I hoped.

As I kept on feeling brighter I ran a deep bath in the en-suite bathroom. This would have been about the time the coach arrived at the tulip fields.

Bob would be making notes of the locations and suppliers, and Mum would be photographing windmills in fields striped with reds, yellows and whites.

By the time my bath bubbled up with some of the hotel’s luxury toiletries I’d thrown in, the two of them would be getting treated to Dutch cheese and wine at one of the stops the coach made that day.

It was as I eased myself out of the scented water and was relaxing on the bed in a white fluffy gown, that Bob and Mum had their first proper conversation.

They had arrived at the flower festival and both had been stunned by its beauty. The park was a showcase of more than seven million bulbs, all in bloom at the very same time.

“It says here on this leaflet there are over eight hundred varieties of tulips!” Bob exclaimed as they walked into the park. “And thirty-two hectares of flowers!”

“Well, let’s not waste any time. We’ve got a lot to see.”

Mum smiled, and with that the two of them were off on a mission to photograph and catalogue as many as they possibly could.

They pointed out tulips to each other that they both admired, and read up about rare specimens neither had ever seen before.

The whole park was a kaleidoscope of colour of every kind of tulip, daffodil and hyacinth, some they never knew existed. They drank it all in for the remainder of the morning.

By the time they had paused for lunch in the park I was up and dressed and walking out of the hotel to the pharmacy that I’d spotted the night before.

Fortunately the shop assistant spoke perfect English and she helped me find what I needed, making sure that the instructions inside were printed in English, too.

I had a feeling I knew what was making me so queasy, and back in the hotel room, the pregnancy test confirmed it.

When Mum and Bob returned from their day out, Bob’s face was flushed from the soft spring sunshine. He talked nonstop about their visit, calling it the ultimate theme park for gardeners.

When he took a shower before dinner, he sang, something I’d not heard him do for a very long time.

After he’d freshened up and had found his own white fluffy gown that the hotel had provided, he walked back into the bedroom, still full of news about his day at the park.

I could hardly get a word in, but if I didn’t tell him our baby news soon I knew I would burst.

Later, I suggested to Bob that we ring Mum to tell her that we’d join her in the hotel restaurant for dinner. “I’ll do it,” he said. I watched, openmouthed, as Bob rang Mum from his phone. I couldn’t have been happier.

Bob winked at me as he talked to Mum on the phone.

“We’ve got some news to share with you, too,” he said at the end of the call. “OK, then, we’ll see you about seven.”

As we were leaving the room to head downstairs to eat, Bob hesitated.

“Hold on a minute. There’s something I want to give to your mum.”

He opened the backpack that he’d taken with him on the coach and pulled out a small blue plastic bag covered with the logo of the park that they’d been to that day.

“Tulip bulbs,” he told me. “It’s a variety called ‘Friendship’. Your mum admired them today in the park so I thought I’d buy some for her. Do you think she’d mind if I offered to plant them for her at home?”

I don’t know much about flowers and plants, but this is one variety that I hope will take root, grow strongly and flower beautifully. n