You are only a local if you are born here, Bella thinks. Perhaps if he'd married someone from round here it would have turned out differently. She is standing at the large bay window, taking down the last of the Christmas decorations – holly and ivy from the garden, red berries now wrinkled at the end of the season. It's twelfth night, and life in the Cullen household seems especially dreary on this grey Scottish winter morning. It doesn't help that it's been so mild: already the spring bulbs are pushing their noses through the soil in an attempt at early bloom. Poor things. They don't know that worse weather will be on the way before spring comes properly to Endrick Estate.
Bella sighs and thinks about Arizona: pink mottled rocks, heat haze and cactus flowers. It's where she was born. She only has to open her mouth in this small Scottish village for everyone to instantly know she doesn't belong. She's a curiosity here in the rural central Highlands, in a population primarily white and Scottish. The people here can trace their ancestors back to the Jacobites. Most of the villagers have been tied to Endrick Estate for over two centuries, one way or another. At one time, this would have thrilled her: the sense of history, of belonging. It was something that Edward desperately wanted her to be a part of.
Bella walks through the empty rooms of Endrick Hall, a black cat winding its way through her legs. She makes her way to the panelled entrance hall with its gilded mirrors and sumptuous couches, pulls on her Hunter boots from the rack. Vaguely from further rooms above she can hear the noise of Mrs Cope hoovering. Bella imagines the housekeeper intent on her work, red hair neatly in place, glasses pushed firmly back on her nose, huffing and puffing on the stairs so that every speck of dust is lifted in order to ensure the ready praise of Mr Cullen. Bella smiles.
"Mrs Cullen."
"Oh, hello Coleman. Just getting my coat."
James Coleman - part Butler, part administrator - opens a tall cupboard and reaches inside for what he deems the appropriate garment – a Barbour coat lined with checked fleece. He is tall and thin, with an intelligent face and high domed forehead with thinning hair, compensated by his recent growth of a luxurious beard. Bella likes him immensely, although once upon a time his ministrations made her uncomfortable. She had been, at least when she first came to the estate, an independent American woman.
Coleman helps her on with the coat.
"Going anywhere far?"
Bella sighs. She knows he is just trying to plan the morning, be of service, but she wishes for once that she could walk the length of a room without stating her purpose.
"Just going to compost the last of the foliage."
Coleman hesitates, then nods. He know better now than to offer to do it for her. He's at least partly aware of how helpless Bella feels having others do things for her all the time. No real job. No real life. Just a prize ornament rattling around a stone hall. She pushes the familiar litany to the back of her mind and steps through the great oak doors that Coleman holds open for her.
"Jacob Black will be here at ten o'clock." He murmurs at her back.
"I'll be in the garden."
Bella crunches her way across the gravel, past the great stone urns of sculpted yew and through bare tunnel of pleached hornbeams. The grounds are extensive, with wild woods and fields for grazing sheep and cows, but her favourite areas are the vegetable gardens and the lawns far below, hiding from the grounds in a relatively sunny spot, looking out across to Ben Ledi, the hill that marks for her where the Highlands begin, capped with snow today.
It is here that Edward had a treehouse built for their children. High in the arms of an enormous beech tree, spiral staircase snaking its way around the trunk. The exterior is round and clad in green shingles, topped with a cedar roof complete with a chimney for the wood burning stove inside. It was meant as a playroom, but since no children have appeared, has been converted into a hideaway for Bella.
She makes a cup of tea with her small kettle, opens a pack of oatmeal biscuits, and prepares and lights a small fire, which is soon burning merrily. Settles in her red armchair and picks up a gardening book: 'The Country Cottage Garden.' Loses herself for a good half hour in possible designs and planting ideas, then stops, sighs. Looks at the clock on the wall as it slowly tick tick ticks away the morning. It's only a quarter to ten. If she could only do something, it would be so much easier.
When she had met Edward at Glasgow University on her years exchange from the University of Texas, Austin, she had been an English major; he a Management postgraduate. Those had been the best days. In the west end of the city, walking through the park together under a blue dusk, drinking coffee in their favourite coffee shop, Tinderbox, squeezing him into her tiny bed in her tenement flat with her noisy foreign exchange student flatmates. She'd fallen so hard for him that it had seemed like nothing to throw in her degree, uproot from her family and friends back home, move to this beautiful country she'd discovered and marry a Scotsman. Even when he told her about the estate, that he'd be expected to run it with his father, Carlisle, she'd been only overjoyed to find that he could provide a home for them. Back then she'd had dreams about doing a postgraduate herself, in Education. Becoming an English teacher.
Back when she had no idea what it meant to be a Cullen.
"Hello? Bella?"
A cheery voice calls from down below.
He's early.
Bella jumps up from her chair and throws open the door to the treehouse. Down below, Jacob Black is standing, arms folded and looking up at her on the balcony of the treehouse, grinning widely.
"Good morning!" He has a smile that lights up the dull day. Bella knows it's not really for her, especially, he's just like this for everyone. Jacob Black has always had the sunniest of dispositions. It's part of the reason he's built up such a successful landscape gardening business. Everyone likes Jacob: man, woman, cat or dog.
"Well hello. Thank you for coming. I was just looking over some ideas. Would you like to see the area I was telling you about on the phone, or would you rather have a cup of tea?" Bella speaks too fast, bites her lip. For goodness sake, she's a married woman ten year older than him. Surely she should be immune to what the local girls giggle about in the pub: The Jacob Black effect.
He just grins lazily and looks annoyingly comfortable. "Whatever you like, Bella."
Thank goodness he doesn't call me Mrs Cullen.
They walk across to a sunny area of sloping grass. Bella finds herself glancing at Jacob, clocking his moss green fleece and dark denims. It's January and he still has a slight tan, from working year round outside rather than from any sunbed, she thinks.
"Well, this is it. Is it big enough do you think?" For a moment she is anxious, wondering if he'll think her plans stupid, frivolous.
"Sure. Easily. In fact it will be a lot of work to have a garden finished by the summer, if that's when you would like visitors."
"Well, yes, ideally. I'd like to open for the National Garden scheme, and had it in mind that it would be a garden suitable for disabled people. The hospital for ex-servicemen and women doesn't have much of an extensive ground, and I thought about running a bus between here and there a couple of times a week, serving tea and cake…well. Maybe it's a bit of a pipe dream."
Bella stops and laughs nervously. She's said more of her plans than she's even told Edward. Jacob is looking at her intently.
"That sounds great. My friend Jared works at the hospital. He's always complaining about the lack of space…it would need to be wheelchair friendly…right from the gates onwards. It would mean some hard landscaping – wide paths, ramps, and also access to toilet facilities too."
"Yes – I had thought about that. The entrance over there –" Bella gestures to an area at the side of the hall – leads to cloakrooms and two bathrooms. There's even a room to serve tea and coffee in bad weather, but, well – I've not really talked that over with Edward yet." Bella trails off, not wanting to admit how little of these plans she's actually discussed with her husband.
"Shall I measure the garden area, then we can talk a bit more?" Jacob suggests. "I'll just get my bag of tricks from the truck." His smile again, makes Bella want to get her cheque book out straight away. As she watches him saunter away, whistling merrily to himself, she shakes her head. No wonder he's got a booming business in the middle of a recession.
Later, up in the treehouse, Bella puts another log on the fire and fetches a mug for Jacob – one of her favourite Emma Bridgewater bird mugs. He gets the blackbird, she the swan. She frets over biscuits, eventually puts a selection on a plate. Jacob Black is sitting on the rug, watching her with amusement as she flusters about.
"Sorry there's only one chair. I don't often have company," Bella explains. What she doesn't tell him is that the treehouse is her own personal space. Nobody, not even Edward, comes here. But this conversation with Jacob Black is not one she wants to have at the hall, in front of Mrs Cope and Coleman.
"I'm comfortable on the floor." Jacob sits easily. He's taken off his wellingtons and left them on the balcony outside. He looks oddly vulnerable in his socks, like a little boy all of a sudden.
He is a little boy compared to you.
"I remember when I first came to Endrick, you were still at school." Bella blurts out. Oh God. Don't say that to him. You sound ancient. But she's started now, so tries to repair the damage. "You used to do the local community garden in the Reading Room, didn't you, even back then? And now, your own business. It must be great." She rolls her eyes inwardly at herself. Totally lame, Bella.
"Yeah, I wasn't the most academic. School was okay, but I always preferred being outside getting my hands dirty. Even when I was wee my Dad would find me out in the dirt, making mud pies." He smiles at the memory.
"How is Billy?" Bella asks.
Everyone knows the Black family, just as everyone knows everyone else's business in this small village. Billy had run the landscape garden business with his teenage son until a fall from a tree had left him in a wheelchair. Jacob has kept the name on though, on the side of his pale blue truck: Black & Son Gardening Company.
"He's great. Spending a week with relatives near Inverness. Fishing. He's a happy man."
"Has he ever fished in the lake here? Edward tells me that we have trout, but it's so underused, I couldn't tell you what's in there. We'd be glad to have him try and see what he can find."
"I'm sure Billy would love that. And once we've got wheelchair access…"
"Of course." Bella pauses, feels like she's said too much. "Well, would you like to see some ideas for the garden?"
"Please," Jacob sips his tea.
Bella hesitates, then opens her Cottage gardens book and pulls out a sheaf of paper.
"Please don't laugh at me. I wasn't even going to show anyone these. It's just that it might be easier for you to see what I was thinking of, rather than just telling you. I'm not the best at explaining myself sometimes."
Jacob nods, looking over the first page. It's a schematic of the garden, drawn to scale on graph paper in Bella's neat hand, paths outlined and flower beds shaped like petals of a flower around a central circular dais.
"Wow. This is really professional. You did this yourself? I'm impressed." Jacob's enthusiasm is so obviously genuine that Bella flushes.
Jacob looks over the next few pages, the really embarrassing ones, of her drawings, pastels and paintings of ideas for flower planting combinations. He stops at one particular pastel sketch of tulips and euphorbia.
"That's stunning. I love tulips." He says simply.
"Yeah, me too."
Jacob hands the papers back to Bella carefully.
"No, you can keep them if it helps you to plan…I mean, if you are willing to take the job on. I don't mean to assume…I know how busy you are."
"I am busy."
Oh.
"But I think I could manage it, perhaps working here three days a week. I've just taken on Seth Clearwater because we're so swamped. He can manage the smaller jobs, but something like this would be one I'd like to manage myself. Plus, it's close to my heart. I like it, Bella."
For a moment Jacob's dark brown eyes flit onto hers and pause. Bella meets them for perhaps a beat too long, then glances away. Then he's on his feet, papers still in hand, and slipping his boots back on. Before she knows it, he's waving a cheery goodbye. "No, you stay there, I'll see myself out. I'll be in and out of here enough…"
She watches him as he leaves, a dark figure who seems nonetheless to glow brightly in her mind. Bella holds her empty swan mug and leans her cheek on the doorframe of the treehouse. Her stomach is churning and she feels giddy and light all of a sudden.
Ridiculous. This feeling. You are in danger of making a fool of yourself, Bella. It's a garden, nothing more. And he's your new gardener.
Her heart soars involuntarily.
Jacob Black.
Her gardener!