Only a few close friends knew that she was Penelope Summers the writer of a myriad of light romances in paperback. To everyone else she was Edith Martin Economic Consultant and the respected author of several books on economic history. She had the happy knack of making that otherwise dry subject understandable and even interesting to general readers without writing down to them.
The other writing, the romances, had begun at high school. Like many another school girl she had imagined herself as a latter-day Austen or Bronte and had diligently scribbled what she believed to be the definitive English romantic novel. She cringed now to think of her naivety. She had sent her manuscript single spaced (she knew no better) to the local representatives of an English publishing house whose address she had garnered from ‘Mill on the Floss’ in the school library.
On the surface, it was the worst of choices. Anyone with the least knowledge of the book trade would have known that the firm specialised in histories and biography with its only fiction being a long-established series which reprinted the classics. But luck had been with her. The firm had taken note of the Mills and Boone phenomenon and, hoping to enter this lucrative market, were in the process of organising a stand-alone offshoot. Stand-alone in order that the illustrious name of an ancient publishing house be not sullied. They were in desperate need of authors since their previous writers of romance were long dead and a kindly editor ,Jane Bassett, ploughing her way through Edith’s turgid school-girl prose, had seen something that was worth encouraging. That this first opus was eventually published owed a great deal more to Jane’s own-time re-working than to Edith herself and Edith, a quick study at any time, had learned a great deal in the process. Over the years, the pair had developed a permanent friendship and a strong working relationship.
Penelope’s typewriter had paid for Edith’s university studies. She was, at that time, still full of romantic fantasies and found the romance genre easy to emulate. Take a heroine to whom the female reader could relate and easily imagine herself as being, and have her meet the man of every woman’s dreams. A man at once handsome, charming, and successful. Stir in continued misunderstandings, rivals for his affection, underhand dealings by those who had reason to keep them apart, and build up to a final triumphant reconciliation in each others arms.
Where Penelope had come to gradually stand out from the pack was in her ability to make her backgrounds vivid in the reader’s mind, her characters memorable, and it was this ability that was threatening to remove her anonymity. Her publishers passed on large amounts of mail and fielded constant enquiries as to the release date of the next Penelope Summers’ with the question asked over and over of ‘who is she anyway?’ It was only too clear that she would sell in hard-cover.
To have ‘Penelope’ publicly identified was something for which Edith had no desire particularly since her view of romance had become entirely cynical. If anything, she felt a little sorry for her women readers. Women whose dreams had foundered on cruel reality and who needed the soothing balm of imagined love. Edith’s personal dictum now was that charming men are least to be trusted. Her father had been such a charming man and ever so believable. Loving men like that inevitably led to hurt.
She had seen her parents as the ideal couple; lovers after twenty years of marriage; her father an incurable romantic; the florist’s favourite customer. It had seemed a pity that his firm sent him away so often. It had come as a shock to discover that he had successfully concealed a second wife and family for more than a decade which explained at once why he had been away, why money had always been tight in the household, and why she had had to pay for her own higher education.
Her cynicism had grown from this disillusion although, strangely, it had not affected her writing. But she would never allow herself to get too close to any man and had never been courted though she assured herself that this was to her advantage. She might have said ‘yes’ and given up her career and her freedom. As it was, she had reached the top of her chosen profession, a respected economist, free to travel, free to meet top people. Penelope had, to a large extent, painted her backgrounds from experience and modelled characters from real life. If Penelope and Edith were ever linked, some people must surely recognise themselves.
Just why she had bought this house in this out-lying town was something that Edith could not really answer. It had been a whim. Her inner-city apartment had been much more convenient, close to everything, fully serviced. Now, she had to rise earlier and commute. At the same time though, she was enjoying the greenery, the space, the greater sense of belonging in a small community. But the house was from the early nineteen hundreds and foolishly large for one person. A local woman came in in the afternoon to clean and prepare an evening meal. The woman’s son kept the lawns trimmed. At the weekends, Edith did for herself.
The big problem was the garden. The grounds were extensive and had obviously once been a showplace though for years past they had been turning into a wilderness. Pathways were overgrown and the once-fine old trees were in urgent need of surgery. Edith had tried her best to be the complete country dweller and regenerate it herself but she was forced to face the fact that this was impossible. Her full-time acknowledged career and her secondary covert one left her with little time and gardens were a subject about which she knew almost nothing.
Her advertisement for a gardener had drawn just the one response and not from a working gardener but from Geoff Carol the principal of the local high school. He insisted that he was prepared to work in her garden, as time allowed, for nothing. He liked gardening and had longed for years to get his hands on her garden. She had turned him down flat. No-one ever really worked for nothing. There was always a hidden motive although it was difficult to think what his might be, and anyway, he admitted that he had no actual expertise in gardening. From curiosity she had passed his house a day or two later and found that skillful use had been made of the rather small section. He was apparently being modest.
Fortunately, he had come back in spite of her rebuff and this time with photographs and an explanation. He had lived his young life in the district until his family had moved away when he was twelve. The Bagnalls who had owned Edith’s house in those days had been well-to-do and were the nearest thing that the then-small township had to gentry. They had owned a clothing factory somewhere in the big city with nationally-known brands and had employed a housekeeper, a cook, a young skivvy, and a gardener. The Bagnalls had entertained extensively and were involved in a number of charities, in particular the Red Cross, and the immaculate grounds had been used once a year for a fete cum garden-party. He had been to several. He had had photographs taken with his sister at one of these which would give Edith some idea of how the garden had looked at that time. Somehow she had found herself more interested in the ramrod-stiff little boy who stared out at her than in the background.
Sometime after his family had moved away, Geoff had been introduced to the William books and had read every one of them. By then the English countryside of the nineteen- twenties was long gone and was something that he could not directly relate to. The Brown family, and, it seemed, every other household in the stories, had maids and cooks and gardeners. Edith’s house, the only house in his experience to have had servants, had become in his imagination the Brown’s house. His mind’s eye had seen the adventures of William, Ginger, Henry, and Douglas, ’the outlaws’, as happening in that immediate area. In a way, he still saw William as living there.
It may have been the fact that Edith herself was once an avid William fan that allowed them to reach an agreement although she would not let him work for nothing. She had no wish to be beholden to anyone, and certainly not to a man, while he for his part had refused to accept payment. A compromise was reached. Payment would go to The Heart Foundation in which they both had an interest. He would spend as much time as possible in the coming summer holidays to whip the garden into some sort of shape after which, hopefully, one or two afternoons at the weekends would suffice. And what was his wife going to think of him spending all this time? Apparently, she had died some years previously. His daughter looked after the housekeeping and there was a possibility that that would not be for too much longer. There was a young man.
It had quickly become ’their’ garden rather than just hers and Edith had discovered a new outlet for her talents. Together, they scanned the seedsmen’s catalogues, planned layouts, and shared the actual physical work. What had started as a necessity became an obsession. Penelope found herself neglected in spite of screams from her publisher in the person of Jane Bassett. Edith would visit the local garden centres of a Saturday morning, impulse buying and throwing previous planning out of the window, then call at the school playing fields to give advance warning of the afternoon’s work. Cricket was a stupid game and rugby when its season came was worse but she usually stayed on to watch the home team’s efforts.
They worked together well though not without problems. Edith twice slipped her feet into gardening boots to find that they held a small amount of water. Sprinklers mysteriously turned themselves on when she was in their vicinity and whenever she thoughtlessly bent over, a piece of gravel, apparently from nowhere, would strike her rear. It was no good glaring at Geoff.
“It’s that bloody William,” he would say with the most innocent of straight faces. “But you can hardly blame him. He must have found it almost irresistible.”
Because they were so much together, people began to draw quite the wrong conclusions despite her continually making it clear that it was strictly a business arrangement. And close friends, who should have known better, kept suggesting slyly that Penelope was doing some in-depth research at long last: getting herself some personal experience.
These suggestions angered her as rightly they should. The idea was entirely laughable! The man was infuriating! Full of stupid, childish tricks, and, what tended to make it worse, always managing to side-step her reprisals. And they were always arguing. Mainly because HE would never admit to being wrong. A typical male!
If it wasn’t for the garden not being finished she’d have sent him packing long ago and would any day soon. If ever there was to be a man in her life, and there wouldn’t be if she could help it, it certainly wouldn’t be him.
So early on a Saturday afternoon when she heard the gate click and turned automatically to the mirror to pat her hair into place, she was appalled at what this action signified. “You’re going to have to watch yourself girl,” she told herself and wagged her finger sternly at the mirror image.
But the warning was already months too late.