Chapter 77

Chapter 77

Emma

Lotus Flowers

The Seville sunshine glows with a warmth and intensity that reminds Emma of rich food. She remembers Roberto and thinks how good it would be to drink chilled Manzanilla and eat tapas with him here.

After booking into her hotel, she sets out for the Reales Alcázares . There have been gardens in the palace grounds since it was built by Moorish, Muslim kings in the eleventh century. She has no clear idea of what she will do there, but she has a longing to be on her own and think about her father in a beautiful Spanish garden.

She steps from the coolness of the sumptuous palace into the shaded calm of the formal gardens. There are green, tranquil pools set in courtyards tiled with intricate patterns of emerald, ochre and indigo. The water is flecked with fallen petals of pink and purple, with an occasional liquid tangerine flash of a fish. Sunken gardens are planted with symmetrical lines of trees, and purple sky flower and powder blue plumbago cascade over terracotta walls.

As she walks on, sandy paths lead her further from the backdrop of the magnificent palace into gardens bordered by hedges interspersed with scarlet roses and wilder, looser greenery she can't identify. Above her, the tallest palm trees Emma has ever seen reach up into an azure-blue sky.

After an hour of walking, Emma pauses by a bank of deep orange canna lilies. The opulent flowers are now beginning to fade, the petals turning from burnt orange to a deep brown that is almost maroon. For a moment it depresses her that deathis reaching into this garden, too, and then she sees above the flowers the canopy of green formed by a line of orange trees. The oranges are there, hidden in the leaves; in this season, they are solid green spheres, but come the winter they will ripen to a glorious orange. So life goes on. As one thing fades, another blooms.

Then it comes to her, a thread of sweetness mixing with the verdant greenness.

Jasmine.

She follows the scent to a small courtyard banked on all sides by walls of greenery– clusters of delicate white flowers scattered among the dark leaves. She finds a bench tucked away by a low wall, looking out onto a shallow, circular pool with a fountain. Around it, on the tiled floor, stand large pale terracotta pots planted with rosemary– rosemary for remembrance.

The still, warm air is heavy with the mingled scent of herbs and Jasmine. Emma breathes in the fragrance and, very quietly– which feels appropriate for the humble man she loved so much– she says goodbye to her father.

People drift past her– families laughing, some arguing, an elderly couple strolling hand in hand. That is how she had envisaged herself and Will growing old together– still wanting to touch and hold each other.

The courtyard clears again, the only person left is a gardener working his way up one of the flowerbeds. He is working in the shade and she cannot see his face.

When he comes closer, moving through the bed, weeding and raking, with a practised rhythm, she sees he is much older than she initially thought– a man nearing fifty. He looks up and seeing her watching him, smiles.

‘It's a hot day for work,' she starts, but is caught by a half-laugh before she has finished the words.

He looks enquiringly at her.

‘I'm sorry– it's just that I was congratulating myself on speaking in Spanish and then realised I was being typically English and talking about the weather.'

He straightens up. ‘It is an international trait, especially among gardeners.'

She smiles. ‘Have you worked here long?'

‘About six years now.'

‘My father's family was originally from Seville, and his grandfather was a gardener here.'

‘Here in the palace?'

‘No, I'm not sure exactly where but somewhere in the city. I wanted to come– I've read so much about the gardens. And, well, my father died a few years ago, but I wanted to…' She isn't quite sure how to explain it.

He pauses by the low wall next to her. ‘A pilgrimage?'

‘Yes,' she says, gratefully, ‘I suppose you could call it that.'

‘Has it helped?'

‘Yes, yes it has.'

For a moment, the gardener stands staring at his feet. ‘My own father died last year,' he says. ‘I garden in his shoes. That is how I remember my father. Everyday.'

She glances down at his ancient boots and smiles. The first thing she is going to do when she gets home is to dig out her father's old secateurs, their handles worn where his fingers had held them.

‘You like this courtyard?' the gardener asks.

‘It's perfect,' she says, her eyes settling on the jasmine.

‘Ah, not perfect.' When she looks confused, he goes on, nodding towards the tiles on the floor: ‘You have to look at the flowers.'

She looks down at the faded tiles surrounding the fountain. Each has a dusty pink and green lotus flower in the centre. Each tile is a pattern in its own right, and together they form a much larger pattern.

‘Do you know why those are flowers but not flowers?' he asks her.

She shakes her head.

‘Because only Allah can create living things,' he says, ‘in each tile you will find a tiny flaw.'

Emma remembers something that her brother, Guy, once told her about Islamic art as he took her around his gallery. Each artist had to include one mistake in their work. ‘So, only God can create perfection?'

The gardener nods and bends to collect his tools.

She doesn't see him leave as she sits staring down at the tiles. She kicks off her sandals so she can feel the tiles and brickwork of the courtyard beneath the soles of her feet. So, only God could ever hope to create perfection. The rest of us are imperfect– we are only human.

She looks out across the sunny courtyard to the banks of perfect, white Jasmine flowers and at the pots of rosemary that stand on the beautiful but imperfect, tiled floor.

Emma is not sure whether she believes in God, but she hears the message from the garden, loud and clear: we are only human.

‘Everyone makes mistakes,' she says aloud.

She stretches out her legs, feeling the sun warm her skin as she thinks about the man she loved most in the world. She remembers her first meeting with Will, the way he looked and smelt and laughed.

And she knows she will always remember this moment in a Spanish courtyard as the time she says goodbye, and the moment she finally forgives him.

Later that evening, Emma sits alone in a rooftop bar, gazing across the city to the ancient and ornate cathedral. She holds her chilled glass of Aperol spritz up to the light and sips it. She feels that she is marking the end of something. Or maybe it's a beginning.

She looks back on the journey she has been on since starting work in the garden centre, and thinks again of gathering all the people who have helped her together in her garden, serving lunch on a table covered in flowers. She would put Philippe to her right, Clem at his side. She can imagine them discussing the meaning of flowers and fragrances. On Clem's other side, Tamas. She is sure they would get on. She would put Betty next to Tamas, and then Mrs Pepperpot– comfortable in Betty's company. Next, Les and Alistair, sharing their love of history, and finally, Roberto and herself. She wonders for a moment if she could find the smiley friendly girl from the library.

Emma doesn't think she believes in ghosts, but maybe in the long grass where the willow tree roots curl into the stone wall, she could put a second, smaller table, with four chairs around it. The Purser's table. A place for him and for three guests: Will, her father and of course, Violet. There would be flowers on this table, too. A jam jar filled with roses, lily of the valley, jasmine and peonies.

Emma looks up into the golden sky and watches a swift soaring high above her. The truth is she will never really know exactly who it was who arranged and rearranged all the flowers on the Titanic . And that, she thinks, is the point: understanding there are some things in life that you will never truly know– and being at peace with that.

She loved her husband very much, and she knows Will loved her. But he still had an affair. After a journey that has taken her from Oxfordshire to Paris to Seville, she realises that she will never truly understand why Will was unfaithful– and she accepts this, too.

Emma looks around at the flowers intertwined with the rooftop and thinks of all the flowers she has seen over the past few weeks: in her garden, the garden centre, in Clem's shop, on the riverbanks in Cambridge, in the flowerbeds of Paris and Seville. The cosmos that smell of chocolate, the sunny-faced gerberas, the feathery lavender and velvety lupins, the bold, happy sunflowers and the old English roses scented with summer.

As the flowers bloom and fade they speak to her of the fragility of life– there one moment and gone the next. But each delicate petal, each fragrant flower has also reminded her of something else, something she has been in danger of forgetting.

That life is beautiful.

Emma takes one last look across the glowing city and calls for the bill. It is time to go home.

She has a book to write, a garden to tend and a lunch to host.

Nine months later, Emma will have achieved one of these three things.