Chapter twenty-seven
Standing smack-bang in the middle of an encircling maelstrom of brawny men and moving machinery, all busily going about their allotted specialities, Darcy was in her element. To the untrained eye, in comparison to the green field it had been three weeks before, the site looked an unsalvageable mess; -the ground was chewed up by heavy machinery, trenches criss-crossed where walls and services were being installed and numerous holes had been dug, pockmarking the field with deep pits and accompanying mounds of fresh earth that made the pasture look as if it had been invaded by giant moles. To anyone who knew better, it was obvious that, whilst still a work in progress, enormous progress had been made.
Though, Darcy thought, compared to other sites she’d worked on the pace was frantic. Len, the construction foreman was juggling multiple trades on site at once -so that by today, the end of week three, the fourth garden wall that would completely enclose the space was half-complete, two thirds of the pergola uprights had been concreted in place, underground services for drainage, power and reticulation were well on their way to completion and the greenhouse foundations dug out, concrete poured and supporting walls begun.
The greenhouse metalwork wall frames and roof trusses were due to be delivered from the factory where they were being prefabricated by the end of the following week after which the glazing could go ahead. Early the following week coils for a ground-coupled heat exchange system would be laid in trenches to be dug in the adjacent field and the retaining walls for the sunken garden would go ahead. Assuming there were no delays, the pace showed no signs of slowing down until works were complete.
Darcy had been working day and night for the last two weeks just to keep ahead of the crew. Right now, she was attempting to hold the plans steady so she could explain a minor revision to the job foreman. An early afternoon breeze that had sprung up out nowhere was buffeting the pages in a way that made the alterations near-impossible to read and seemed determined to rip the drawing from out of her fingers.
“How about we take refuge in the cottage?” Len, the head of Gabriel’s construction crew suggested in a loud voice, speaking over the noise as a concrete truck rumbled close by them, bringing more material for the additional wall footings. The truck driver grinned and flipped a friendly salute as he drove by, a little close for her comfort, Darcy thought, as she took an involuntary step backwards. Sometimes, she did wonder why she ever bothered wearing a brightly coloured hard hat on building sites –it felt, at times, that the yellow hat just marked her as an easier target for the various drivers of heavy machinery to locate.
What Darcy didn’t realise was that a good number of the crew were quite fascinated with the very feminine figure they were seeing daily in their male-dominated workspace and had been running a betting pool on who could get a date with her first. So far, no one had succeeded but in their efforts to get noticed by her there had been one or two close calls. Len, who was happily married and therefore immune to the malaise that had struck his normally stoic work-crew was keeping a close eye on the situation; more interested in maintaining a safe work environment and getting the job done than in the dating habits of his crew. Though even he did admit that today, their resident designer looked particularly pretty and feminine in a bright yellow sunflower-embroidered dress and white cardigan teamed with her trademark poppy-covered boots. Unaware of her effect on the landscape crew Darcy had chosen the dress in hopes of cheering herself up; -Gabriel had been absent now for two full weeks- despite thinking about him constantly she was still unsure of her feelings for him and hadn’t come to any conclusion of what to do when he arrived back. It was getting her down.
‘Get you mind back on the job,’ she chided herself, as she followed Len; stepping up and over planks laid across the central wall footings then around several large piles of neatly stacked bricks to move towards the cottage.
Approaching the small building, Darcy was unsure just how much of a refuge it might be. A steady stream of workmen had been coming and going from the front door all week; as she’d watched them the day before a picture of worker bees entering and exiting a busy beehive had popped into her head. Now, as well as the building labourers, she could see the arborists readying their saws to begin work on pruning the magnolia tree so it did not appear that the cottage would be a quieter option –but at least they would be out of the breeze.
Brightly stranded climbing ropes were hanging from the tall tree where Darcy could see a woman wearing a safety harness dangling high up among the branches, marking a damaged bough with a can of fluoro spray-paint while a man on the ground was preparing to haul a chainsaw tied to another rope upwards to her. Darcy knew them to be a husband and wife team that specialised in this work. They’d come highly recommended and would be here at the chateau with their ropes, ladders, saws and a cherry picker for the next week or so checking all of the trees on the grounds and performing remedial work as required.
Darcy followed the foreman through the front door of the cottage into what would be the kitchen when work was complete. Outside, Peppermint cottage was now sporting a fresh coat of its namesake paint. The tiled roof had been repaired and made watertight once more, timbers had been stripped, filled, sanded, repaired or replaced in a few instances and the bricked-up windows had been unblocked and reglazed. The reinstatement of the windows had made a transformation inside the cottage, with daylight flooding the salon and the stairwell and filtering through into the kitchen area. Work was still going on inside and the bathroom addition wasn’t quite out of the groundwork’s phase but the little cottage looked almost serene in the midst of all the activity –as if it knew this bustle was all for its benefit.
Darcy set the pages she had been clutching down on a dusty folding table that had been set up in the centre of the room. A smattering of assorted chairs sat around –testament to the space’s current use as a smoko room on days when the weather did not invite the workers to take their breaks outside. Today it would make do as a site office. Without the wind playing havoc with her drawings, it took only a few moments to explain the changes she wanted. She had amended the depth at one end of the pool in the sunken garden area to allow for the placement of large rocks that would function both as stepping stones and as refuges for the fish they planned to stock the pond with to hide under. Otherwise, Darcy knew from experience, the local birdlife might get the idea that they’d provided a breakfast banquet of fresh fish just for them.
“That’s no problem at all -I’ll let the boys know about the changes. That all then,” Len inquired politely. Gabriel was using men from his own construction company –one of the many arms of his business empire- and had chosen Len, a native English-speaker, for his lingual skills as well as his vast building experience. Darcy appreciated not having to give instructions in her pigeon-French; it was challenging enough as a designer to not create misunderstandings on a construction site without having the added problem of language to contend with.
“It’s good you got this to me today because I’m bringing in a metal detector on Monday before we complete the excavations for that area and for the heat-exchange trenches. Bertrand tells me that there’re some local stories of old WW2 ordnance being buried in the field outside the walls so I don’t want to take any chances with my machinery or people.”
“Sounds like a very good idea to check first,” Darcy said, not wanting to think of the mess that an unexploded shell might make. As she spoke these words the gritty roar of a chainsaw started up directly outside the kitchen windows, rendering all conversation next to impossible. She mouthed her thanks, waved a brief goodbye to Len and went back outside, keeping her hands over her ears until she was at a distance from the din.
At the original gate to the garden she turner to survey the scene; quite different to the view she had had when she had first walked through this gateway –in the final layout there would be a total of six external gates; two to both the western and eastern walls and one each to the north and south. As w
ell, there would be a rear doorway let through the new wall into the greenhouse, with another two internal gates set in the central spur wall that would divide the garden into unequal halves. At the moment all the vehicles that visited site were coming across a temporarily laid track that ended at the wall behind the cottage. This gate she was standing at was only just big enough to allow entry for the chateau’s small tractor mower but the concrete trucks and delivery vehicles that were needed to bring materials to site were much wider so they would finish the final section of wall behind the cottage once all need for large vehicles was done. It was this section of wall that would require the expertise of a master stonemason -Gabriel had said he had a friend who possessed the necessary skills- but Darcy had yet to meet him.
It was carnage she admitted, as she gazed across the building site, but it was carnage with a purpose. As she studied the work in progress, in her mind’s eye she replaced the carnage with the finished garden. It would be breathtakingly beautiful.
At the pace the crew were setting themselves it wouldn’t be long now til all the walls were built, including the central spine. A columned timber arbour with a gently curving ‘roof’ would run all the way from the gate where she was standing, through the spur-wall, to another gateway in the far eastern wall that would provide a tantalising glimpse of the trees in the woods beyond.
Looking through the first already-constructed sections of the arbour, she could imagine it completely covered in weeping wisteria vines, dripping with pretty fragile flowers in bands of colour from white to blue and pink, sub-dividing the space into four garden rooms with its flowery curtain.
The ‘room’ closest to and directly in front of Peppermint cottage would be predominantly a flower garden with wide perennial beds to either side of a fleur-de-lis based central feature. Across the far side of the wisteria arbour, to Darcy’s immediate right from where she was standing would be the herb garden. There would be ample space in its beds for the cottage’s namesake plant and numerous other useful and beautiful herbs.
Then, she pictured, visitors could walk along the wisteria ‘tunnel’ through the gate in the central wall –here they would find two more garden rooms, to the right would be the sunken garden, designed to provide a space for solace and contemplation with a feature pool with lilies -and fish, Darcy reminded herself, now that the detail of the fish safety-zone was included and with a small sheltering pergola nestled up against the eastern wall. Across the wisteria arbour to the north would be the fourth zone or ‘room’ –the practical part of the garden with the greenhouse and hotframes for growing seedlings and coldframes for hardening off the new plants set against its northern wall. And there would be a potager –with beds of vegetables laid out in sandwich-shaped triangles, upright frames for beans and peas, and, as in all the other ‘rooms’ more perennial borders around the edges to provide all year colour and interest.
Thinking, as Darcy considered further, she supposed there were really five ‘rooms’ –the fifth being an area to the side and rear of the cottage -separated from the rest by a tall hedge jutting from the central spine wall instead of another brick wall and intended to give the residents of Peppermint cottage a small private space that was for them alone with the added bonus of the feature stonework wall. Darcy could envisage a lawn, flower beds and trees for children to play in, a large cherry tree with a swing, perhaps, on one sturdy bough and to possibly provide a home for the red squirrels to scamper up and store food in. They wouldn’t have to wait too long for the tree to grow big enough either –Gabriel had given permission for her to buy mature specimen trees where they were required for instant effect. She almost rubbed her hands in glee at the prospect.
The reminder of Gabriel sobered her gleeful thoughts considerably. She felt she’d been running hot and cold where he was concerned and really wanted to come clean and get things out in the open. She had admitted to herself in these last weeks that Diane’s prediction had not only stunned but frightened her as well, and instead of dealing with in a mature grown-up manner, she’d resorted to scurrying away and hiding. Time to grow a spine, she thought.
She stood straighter and drew her shoulders back, well she’d start on that resolution …first thing Monday.
In the meantime, Gabriel wasn’t home until after the weekend and the children and she were anticipating a long-overdue visit by Halley and Alicia. They were picking them up at the train station in Rouen this evening. The prospect of a whole weekend of girl-time and spoiling her god-daughter stretched enticingly in front of Darcy and she wasn’t about to let a little love-sickness stand in the way of that!