What a shame she wasn’t a man. She could have stepped into the vacuum left by her father and continued the family business. Instead, Uxbridge’s Bookkeeping closed its doors, and the men who had maintained the ledgers were in her position – seeking employment elsewhere. Dawn envied their desirable skills and experience that would make the process easier.
After a week of silence, the slim replies began to trickle through the slot in the front door. On reading the first rejection, she told herself the next one would be the offer of a job. Or perhaps the third. By the fourth letter declining her application, she was becoming an expert in how many ways an employer could say no.
Unfortunately I cannot…
It is with deepest regrets…
I am sorry to inform you…
The few bleak lines telling her she was unsuitable resembled the letters of condolence that arrived after her parents’ deaths.
Dawn sat at the dining table with a heart that had turned to stone and weighed heavy in her chest. It all seemed so pointless. She had no skills to offer an employer. Her only chance would be to find someone in a situation as desperate as her own.
She opened the paper and turned to the employment section. The pen and paper sat at her elbow, ready for another letter detailing her pathetic worth that would be summarily spurned. Dawn ran a fingertip down bolded headlines until her hand stopped of its own accord on one.
Green fingers needed. Neglected estate needs a gardener to breathe new life into the grounds. Applicants to submit a plan for a new ornamental plot. The successful applicant will be selected on merit. Apply to Lord Seton, Ravenswing Manor, Alysblud, Cumberland.
Her dead heart jumped in her chest. Surely her mind played tricks on her and she merely imagined that at long last a gardening position was advertised. She read the few lines five times before she believed they were actually printed on the page and not a figment of her desperation.
Success will be judged on merit. Here at long last was the opportunity she dreamed of, but was she brave enough to grasp it? Her attention kept wandering back to the little advertisement. Even the name of the estate – Ravenswing Manor – seemed an omen. Her wee garden had its own raven who watched her movements; perhaps his stone masters had seen her plight and sought to remedy the situation.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered and closed the newspaper.
The letter slot rattled and Dawn rose to collect the mail. She returned to the dining room as she read aloud the response to her application to be a companion.
“While we sympathise with your circumstances, we require a robust girl to support our daughter—” Another rejection.
She looked up to find one of the birds on the fiery wallpaper staring at her, and it saw through to her unworthy soul. Dawn snatched a pencil off the table and crossed to the bird. With a few quick strokes, she closed its eye so it no longer watched her shame. Yet still she felt the weight of her failings.
She dropped the pencil to the table and returned her attention to the paper. What did she have to lose by applying for the gardener position? In a few more weeks she would be homeless anyway, and she was now accustomed to receiving letters telling her she was eminently unsuitable for employment.
Dawn drew a deep breath and opened the newspaper again. Picking up a pencil, she circled the advertised gardening position. She would not be the frightened woodlice that scuttled into a dark spot when it encountered a setback. She would be the brave ladybird who headed off into the wilds of the undergrowth. She would challenge life to throw her only dream back in her face.
If her constitution were unable to cope with labour, she would rather grab what moments remained doing something she loved than hoard long seconds shut in another parlour. She would rather expire with dirt under her fingers than covered in sticky muck from children or with her arms full of someone else’s parcels.
Before allowing herself to dream a little, she would be practical first. The paper contained advertisements for two positions more suitable for a well-bred woman with no skills. Dawn wrote letters outlining her education, background, and unfortunate circumstances. Then the missives were sealed and addressed, waiting to be dispatched with the outward mail.
Having applied for the more realistic positions, she fetched a blank sheet of paper and her pencils. What would she design as a new area for a grand estate? Allowing herself a few moments of freedom from grief and despair, her mind took off on flights of fancy. She envisioned enormous avenues of pleached elms, their branches intertwined to form a living wall. Or a rill of rushing water that ran for over a hundred feet and reflected the sky above. Or perhaps ornate rose gardens laid out in a pattern that rambled over an acre.
No. None of it felt right. A big estate needed small spaces. Private places for quiet contemplation, away from the busy life of managing a large house.
The garden needed a secret.
By the end of the day, the dining room floor was deep in a paper ocean. The obsidian paperweight had been relocated from her bedroom to assist, but it kept rolling to one side, unable to contain the drawings. Dawn had to right the object and place it on a bare spot of table, where it wobbled back and forth like a metronome, reminding her of time slipping past.
Dawn started and abandoned ideas. A quiet, private space was harder to design than a grand expanse. Plants had to be carefully chosen for their harmonious relationship with each other. The dimensions had to speak of seclusion without feeling cramped. She paced the hallway, imagining she walked a shaded avenue. When her body said she had reached the perfect length, she retraced her steps and calculated the distance in feet.
Every day she rose with a new sense of purpose, and each letter declining an application became an impetus to pour her hopes into the garden design. Dawn lectured her unreliable heart to either adapt to the new regime or to end her efforts now. This shilly-shallying around and being endlessly sick would no longer be tolerated. She had a purpose, and only death would deter her.
It took one week and four more refused job requests before she was happy with the design and declared it done. Meanwhile, the house’s new owner quietly exerted their presence around her as furniture was removed and sold. Dawn shut herself in her bedroom when her parents’ bed was dismantled and carried down the stairs. Bangs, thuds, and muttered curses accompanied the large armoire being manoeuvred down the hallway.
They emptied the parlour next. All the sofas and armchairs were carried away by discreet workmen, leaving her just one chair by the window. At that point the emptying of the house paused, as though they had realised she still rattled around in the rooms and wasn’t a ghost. Real people need furniture to sit upon and a bed to lay down their heads. Spectral occupants did not.
Finally, she could delay no more, and the day came for her to seal the plan and commit it to the postal system. But how to sign her letter? If she wrote Miss Dawn Uxbridge on her application, it would be thrown upon the fire before her design was even considered. But she couldn’t bring herself to be deceptive and write Mister.
She decided to lie by omission and simply signed her name as D. Uxbridge, without any prefix or form of address. Let this Lord Seton think her a common working type unused to salutations. Satisfied, she sealed the letter and donned her bonnet and coat. She braved the streets of Whetstone to purchase a penny stamp and hand the slim package to the postal worker herself.
Now there was nothing to do but wait as her life was drained around her. Paintings were removed from the walls, exposing ghostly rectangles. Rugs and carpets were rolled up and tied. They made a pile on the front step before a cart drawn by solid-looking draught horses carried them away.