‘Diana Graybrook-Moore, your new boss until the new owner of Moongate Manor comes to our shores.’
‘Moongate Manor? Is that the name of the place?’
‘Indeed it us. The house faces the moon when it’s full. It’s quite a view.’
‘When is the new owner coming?’ he asked, curious about who would choose to live so far from anything.
Diana looked up at the house and he saw a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
‘Any day now,’ she said. ‘I just have to pick the winner.’
‘The winner?’ Oh his interest was truly piqued now.
‘Come and see me tomorrow and I can make sure you’re all set up. As I said, I’m at the gatehouse. When you turn left at the driveway, you’ll see it. I’ll leave the gate open for you.’ And then she walked away, leaving Simon standing outside Moongate Manor, mouth agape and with an unfamiliar feeling of things working out for the first time in a very long time.
3
Diana
Diana had seen the man standing in front of Moongate with the familiar body language of awe anyone got when they looked at the house and its enviable position. Of course the passers-by knew nothing of the time and energy it took to run an old home like Moongate Manor.
Diana was older now, ready to live a smaller life, not that her life had been overwhelmingly busy before she decided to move from the manor to the gatehouse. Unmarried women didn’t get invited many places, unless it was to philanthropic events, which she had never been eager to attend. Why let the right hand know what the left hand is doing, she always said when someone invited her to a fundraiser for a hospital or for research into a disease. She didn’t need people to see her in a smart outfit handing over a cheque. Why not just post the money and be done with it? But in truth, Diana’s finances were running low and she didn’t have much left, not enough to hire a full-time gardening team to reinvigorate the garden beds and lawns at Moongate. But she did have enough to pay one gardener to work over the summer, along with offering subsidised rent.
The house needed new blood now, new ideas and someone who would bring the energy she lacked back into the home.
But life has a funny way of catching up with you and recently her local doctor, who she saw in Newcastle once a year, had told her that her arthritis was beyond anything he could help with now and she needed to see a specialist.
The medication the specialist had prescribed made her tired and she was having other health issues from the side effects. The manor with all its stairs and slippery pathways were proving too much to handle, so she used the last of her savings and hired three men to come and paint the inside of gatehouse. Once she had new heating installed and the little kitchen and bathroom were upgraded, she was finally ready to move in.
The single-level house was much easier to manage than Moongate and she could access the garden whenever she liked, which was often and every day.
Choosing what to take from Moongate was harder than she had expected. There was her bed, and her chaise longue and a nice armchair that her mother had sat in to read when she and Diana had watched television, but the other furniture was too big and cumbersome for the pretty gatehouse. She had some movers come and walk it down the driveway using their trolleys and brute strength, but finally she had enough in the gatehouse to call it home.
The pretty Meissen tea set with the black rose pattern had come with her and the portrait of her mother by Leonard John Fuller was now above the fireplace. She had also taken some books of Mother’s and sentimental silver and glass but not much else.
Diana didn’t have time for sentimentality about material objects. If she did, she would have stayed in the house and eventually fallen down the stairs and broken a hip and stayed there for days until Mrs West came up from Foxfield village to clean and drop some groceries off.
It was Diana’s father, Edward Graybrook-Moore, who cared about material items and reputation. Diana didn’t like to reflect on her father if possible but she looked back on her mother with some understanding of how little agency she had in her life, married to a man like Edward.
Lillian Graybrook-Moore was well loved in Foxfield, donating large flower arrangement to the church at Easter and Christmas and always having the village at Moongate for the festival. It was often said by the locals – as Moongate had long been a source of village gossip – that if only Diana had Lillian’s patience and grace then she wouldn’t be a spinster, with no heir for Moongate Manor. Everyone in Foxfield agreed it would be sad that it wouldn’t remain in the family after being passed down through the Graybrook-Moore lineage for hundreds of years.
While she might not have had her mother’s patience or grace for people, Diana did offer both virtues to her garden, which was why, when she saw the man staring at it with such wonder, she had a feeling there was a gardener inside him. Not everyone had one inside them, she would explain if you asked, but Diana knew one when she saw it.
Some people could walk past a garden and not notice it at all, even if it was the most beautiful space in the world. Then there were those who admired the order or commented on the hard work it must take to keep the weeds from the borders. They weren’t gardeners. One pot of pansies does not make someone a true gardener, she always thought. No, a gardener is someone who can see where the colour should be, like an artist.
Was this young man an artist? Perhaps, but the primary decider for Diana was the fact that he seemed to have a sense of wanting to belong somewhere. He seemed lost, out of place, like an outsider at a party, watching all the guests dance and laugh and chat, as though wishing someone would invite him in. Perhaps Moongate could be a place to for him to settle for a while and gather his thoughts, which she was sure she could see tumbling around his head, and she, in turn, could get some of the garden cleared. It was mutually beneficial, which Diana liked.
And she had organised the gardener’s shed at the same time as her house, so there really wasn’t much to do for him to be able to move in for the summer.
All Diana had to do now was send the letter. Typed up by her lawyers and ready to go once she had signed the thick paper.
It was time, she thought as she went back to the gatehouse after meeting Simon. He was the first sign that things where underway, and the added bonus was that her dog Trotsky hadn’t tried to bite his shins. Trotsky had a low tolerance for fakery, so Diana always took his advice on the calibre of other people. He looked like a perfect Highland terrier that you might see in a calendar or on the tin of Scottish shortbreads, but he had the temperament of Leon Trotsky, who made enemies easily and trusted very few. He was a perfect dog in Diana’s eyes.
She remembered the garden when it was beautiful. When it was strung with lanterns, and music filled the night. When the scent of the jasmine promised love and possibilities. Perhaps it could come back to its former glory with some work? With some nurturing of the soil and caring for the existing plants, she didn’t think it would require a huge amount of funds to at least get the garden back to some order.
Diana sat at the small desk in the living room at the gatehouse and took the letter from the manila folder sent by the lawyer.
She ran her eye over it and then picked up her fountain pen and signed her name.