Picture Perfect

Grant soon realised that he and Daisy had a part to play in village life. . .

DAD, I need to take some flowers into school. Lots of them. Is it OK if I pick some from the garden?” Grant smiled at eightyear-old Daisy as he prepared a stir-fry.

“What’s the occasion? Some flower festival?”

They had only moved into the Derbyshire village a few weeks before, but it seemed there was always something going on, from cream teas to church fêtes to teddy bears’ picnics.

“It’s a lovely place to live,” his sister, Penny, had enthused when he’d considered moving to the area. She had lived there for almost 20 years after marrying a local lad.

“It’ll be good for you to be near family, especially with the hours you work. Daisy can come to us after school. If I’m not at home, my lot will enjoy spoiling their little cousin.”

“The flowers are for the well-dressing,” Daisy told Grant now. “They’re huge pictures made out of petals and leaves pressed into clay. Lots of villages have them in May and June. It’s tradition, teacher says.” She took a breath. “We have a lot of flowers in our garden, because the old lady who used to live here grew so many.”

“Well, Daisy, strictly speaking it’s not our garden. We’re only renting,” Grant pointed out. “I’m not sure what the gardener would say about our picking the flowers after all his hard work looking after them.”

He stopped as he noticed her sniggering. “What’s so funny?” “You said ‘well’, and I was talking about well-dressing. Well, well, well!”

“Well, I never. We’ll have to get to the bottom of this,” Grant said, joining in with the joke. “OK, you can pick a few flowers after we’ve eaten, but not too many. I don’t want to get into the gardener’s bad books. Or the owner’s.”

“I know. Miss Hopkins told us to be careful. It’s important to leave plenty for the bees, or they won’t have enough to eat.”

Daisy seemed to have become a mine of information since they’d moved, Grant mused as he turned up the heat under the wok before tipping in the vegetables. In fact, she’d blossomed into a happier child overall.

The transformation had started from the moment she’d stepped into her little bedroom in the terraced limestone cottage.

She declared herself in love with its sloping ceiling and thick window seat under the eaves, perfect for curling up with a book and looking out towards the hills of the Peak District rising up in the distance.

Grant loved the cottage, too, even if some of the doorways were on the low side for his tall frame and the pipes clanked noisily when the taps were turned on. The place hadn’t been modernised for a few years.

That had worked in his favour, making the rent more affordable and giving him some breathing space to look for somewhere to buy now their old house had been sold.

All the signs were promising for a fresh start, but Grant still felt as detached from the world as he had over the two and a half years since a van had ploughed into the back of the car his wife, Rachel, had

been driving, leaving Daisy without a mother and Grant feeling like an empty shell.

Never the most outgoing individual, it had taken someone like Rachel to melt his reserve. Now she was gone, it had been second nature for him to close back in on himself.

Apart from where Daisy was involved. When it became clear she wasn’t happy at her school, and a chance came up to move nearer his sister, he took it, despite it meaning a longer commute to his job as a physiotherapist.

Yet, while Daisy settled into village life, Grant found excuses to keep his distance, like shifts at work or chores at the cottage.

Thanks to the owner’s stipulation, gardening wasn’t among the latter.

“The lady who lived here was a keen gardener. Her daughter, the current owner, is keen that the old-style cottage garden should remain,” the letting agents had explained. “She lives too far away to see to it herself, but hopes to move back eventually. She’s got a local gardener to look after it.”

Grant was more than happy with the arrangement. The garden was attractive and restful.

If someone else could keep it that way without him having to so much as lift a finger, so much the better!

Daisy had pondered the gardener’s possible identity more than a few times.

“It’ll be someone like Mr Mcgregor from ‘Peter Rabbit’,” was her conclusion. “Only nicer, because they won’t try to catch rabbits and put them in a pie. I bet a robin even perches on the spade!”

Grant couldn’t see any robins today as he took his mug of coffee outside.

Blackbirds, chaffinches and blue-tits clustered round the bird table, replenished daily with the supply of bird food that the gardener brought.

Bumblebees drowsed among the foxgloves and some purple-blue flowers beneath the shrubs. They wouldn’t appreciate having the garden raided, never mind the redoubtable Mr Mcgregor.

“I’m sure we’d be allowed to take a few,” Daisy said, as she joined him on the wooden bench. “School needs lots of blue flowers, for the sky, but not all quite the same colour, because then it looks odd.”

They agreed that she could take a small bunch of the purple-blue flowers to school the next day, Friday, while Grant would ask the letting agents whether they could pick any more.

“The gardener is called Maude Bentham,” the agent told him when she phoned him back. “She looks after a few gardens in the area. She says you’re welcome to pick a few flowers for the welldressing.

“Apparently work on it is starting tomorrow at a farm just down the lane from you. She suggested you could trim back a few of the shrubs and take the clippings along, if you like.”

“I bet she’s old and wrinkled and wears a long black dress and a shawl, and uses herbs,” Daisy said when Grant passed on the information that evening. Grant laughed.

“I doubt it, even if that would suit the old-fashioned name.”

A murmur of activity greeted them when they walked into one of the outhouses at the farm the next morning.

One end of the room was dominated by a large rectangle of clay within a wooden frame, propped against a solid-looking support set above the ground.

The outline of a church and several trees had been etched into the surface, while smaller drawings and photographs of the same subject were pinned to an adjacent cork board.

The rest of the room was taken up by trestle tables arranged to form the four sides of a square, with clay strips laid out on each surface.

Cartons contained flower petals, seeds and grasses, which about a dozen people, of varying ages, were pressing into the different sections, pausing to consult nearby diagrams every so often. At a separate table, two ladies snipped petals into neat squares.

A slightly built lady in her fifties stepped forward from her position by the main picture.

“Hello, there. I’m Marian. Have you brought us some flowers?”

“It’s leaves,” Daisy replied. “Is that all right?”

“Perfect. Just what we need for the trees and grassy bits.”

“How do you make the pictures?” Daisy asked after Grant had introduced them. “It looks hard.”

“It’s not so bad if you know what you’re doing.” Marian seemed pleased that a child was so interested. “A local artist has already prepared the sketches and drawn the outlines, as you can see.

“This year the scene is of our local church, as it’s celebrating its threehundredth anniversary.

“We may not be able to boast the grandeur of the Peak District, but we have a few jewels of our own, as well as fewer traffic jams.

“The clay comes from the Chatsworth Estate, so you can say we have a bit of the National Park here, even though we’re a few miles outside the boundary.” She chuckled. “We’re always looking for more volunteers. You’re welcome to help out. Even just a few hours, here and there, will be appreciated.”

Grant hesitated, his usual reluctance to get involved digging in its heels.

“I’m afraid we haven’t any experience.”

“No-one has when they first start. We put beginners on the easiest parts of the border sections, where the patterns are straightforward.”

Daisy tugged at his arm.

“Can we help, Dad? Please?”

One look at his daughter’s eager expression made up his mind.

“OK.” “Excellent!” Marian beamed. “I’ll get someone to show you the ropes. Now, let’s see who would be best.” She contemplated the tables before calling out.

“Maude, do you think you could show Grant and Daisy the ropes? They’ve only recently moved into the village, though I think you already know them, in a way. They’re in Virginia’s old cottage.”

They followed her gaze to where a cheerful-looking young woman in a darkblue rugby shirt and with shoulder-length fair hair tied back in a ponytail nodded and smiled.

“Of course I can,” their mystery gardener said. “The more, the merrier.”

The local gardener was not what Grant had expected

They got to know Maude well over the next couple of days, along with other locals who were helping out.

Being pleasantly occupied seemed to help rather than hinder conversation, but Grant found Maude’s company particularly restful.

Daisy chatted with her as if they’d know each other for years.

“I’m glad you’re not Mr Mcgregor,” she confided. Maude laughed.

“As in ‘Peter Rabbit’? So am I.”

Daisy told her all about her little room with its window seat, and how she loved being in the garden.

“The old lady who used to live there would be so pleased if she knew that someone like you was there now,” Maude replied. “I get as much enjoyment looking after that garden as I do from some of the bigger places I’m lucky enough to care for.”

She explained to them how different flowers were used for different colours.

“We try to get most of them locally, but we do struggle, sometimes. We need blue hydrangeas for the sky, for instance, but they’re not yet flowering fully here. Marian’s put in an order with a florist, who gets them in from Holland.

“Luckily we seem to be making good progress. If all goes well, we should be finished comfortably by Friday evening, ready to set up the display by the old spring near the church first thing on Saturday morning.”

Grant and Daisy enjoyed themselves so much they turned up again on Monday evening, only to find that there were more volunteers than needed.

“Why not go for a walk?” Maude suggested as she pressed in “tiles” of leaves to depict the foliage of trees in the main picture. “It’s a fine evening, and your necks and shoulders could probably do with a rest. Marian will want all hands to the pump tomorrow, after the delivery from the florist has arrived.”

They followed her suggestion and set out on a path over the fields, passing a flock of sheep and crossing a stream before coming to a sizeable pond. Damselflies darted about, while moorhens scuttled across the surface in between water lilies.

Daisy pointed to some large clumps at the edge of the bank.

“What are those tall yellow flowers?”

“Irises, I think,” Grant replied. “And those are bulrushes among the reeds.”

An adjacent lane led to an old stone manor house with a high wall around the garden. The long row of chimney-pots on the roof hinted at the number of rooms inside, as well as the place’s former grandeur.

Daisy ran ahead and peered through a wroughtiron gate in the wall, curling her fingers round the scrolls.

“It’s like an enchanted garden!” she whispered.

“I don’t think the owners will be enchanted to see us staring. Mind you, it doesn’t look lived-in.”

“It is. Look.” Daisy pointed to a black cat curled up on a stone ledge in the late evening sunshine.

“All the more reason not to make a nuisance of ourselves,” Grant said. “Come on, it’s time we were heading home.”

On Tuesday evening, Marian was looking worried.

“The florist managed to get plenty of cream and orange gerbera, which I can use for the bricks of the church bathed in sunlight, but she couldn’t get hold of enough blue hydrangeas.

“We’re also short of yellow flowers that we need for parts of the perimeter. Time for some inventive thinking, folks. The pride of the village is at stake.”

Everyone responded to the challenge, gathering flowers from their gardens and even from some hedgerows and roadside verges.

Grant and Daisy brought in more of the purple-blue flowers, which Maude had told them were hardy geraniums and which would bloom even more profusely for being cut.

Although the “flower picture”, as Daisy liked to call it, was gradually coming to life, by Thursday it was clear that there was still a long way to go.

“Something will turn up, don’t worry.” Marian tried to sound reassuring. “It always does.”

After a busy week, Grant struggled to wake up on Friday morning, even with the early daylight. Daisy must be tired, too. Normally he could hear her moving about in her room by now.

Pulling on his dressinggown, he padded across the tiny landing to wake her up for the start of a new day, only to find that her bed was empty and the covers pushed back.

She wasn’t anywhere in the cottage, either.

Grant’s heart thudded as he remembered the little girl’s eagerness to collect more flowers, her interest in the yellow irises by the pond . . . and how steep the pond’s banks were.

He dressed hurriedly and headed out, also managing to phone Maude, who immediately promised to get others to join in the search.

When he reached the pond, out of breath, a few minutes later, there was no sign of Daisy. The flowers were still intact.

Grant tried to stay calm as he kept calling out her name. Daisy was a sensible girl. Surely she wouldn’t do anything dangerous?

But she could also be single-minded. And he had good cause to know how one second of carelessness could lead to tragedy.

He was about to look for signs of disturbance among the reeds down the bank when his phone buzzed.

“Mr Roberts?” The voice that addressed him was quavery and well-spoken. “This is Gregory Walters, up at the manor house. I have a young lady here who I believe belongs to you.”

Daisy had decided that the enchanted garden that had fascinated her on their earlier walk would be a perfect place to find extra flowers.

“You were still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you if you were tired,” she told Grant tearfully, after he gave her a telling-off which was all the sterner because he’d been so frightened. “I wasn’t going to pick them without asking so I went to the door and rang the doorbell.”

Gregory Walters had already been up and about. He was among Maude’s clients and had already given his permission to pick a variety of geraniums, delphiniums and Canterbury bells.

“I hope Mr Walters manages to come and see the well-dressing,” Daisy said as their group of volunteers gathered that Saturday morning. “He really is very nice. He said we’re welcome to go round for tea any time, so long as we phone first to check he’s not having a nap.

“Do you know he’s lived in that big old house all his life, and his dad and grandad both lived there, as well?”

Marian, overseeing the proceedings, smiled at the little girl’s enthusiasm.

“I remember when I was a young girl, he used to be around the village quite a lot. The family was always well regarded.

“I’m sure you’ll find he has lots of interesting stories to tell. That will be nice for Daisy, won’t it, Grant?” she added.

Grant nodded, saving his breath to help hoist the now completed welldressing on to its display plinth. Six well-built men were involved in the task, and every one of them was needed.

Everyone applauded as the well-dressing was set in place and the sunshine lit up its vibrant colours.

Grant surveyed their combined handiwork with a sense of satisfaction as he took in the cast of new friends he had made over the past few days.

That cast included Maude, of course, listening good-naturedly as Daisy described Mr Walters’s lovely soppy cat, Midnight. His daughter and the gardener were firm friends by now.

As Maude looked over to him, amusement in her eyes, he had the feeling that she might become more – in time.

Not yet, though. This past week, they had all put the well-dressing together piece by piece, petal by petal, to get to the whole picture.

It struck Grant that that was often the best way in life, too.

Some of the pieces of his and Daisy’s new life were already in place, enough for him to be able look forward to getting on with his life instead of feeling detached from it.

If the other pieces needed time to come together gradually, he was content with that. n