‘Like a treasure hunt?’ Betty suggests.
‘Yes, just like that, and it’s led me far and wide, discovering the history of markets and nurseries all over the country.’ Mrs Pepperpot pulls a sepia photograph from the envelope.
‘And this, is F.G. Bealing,’ she says, laying the photograph in front of them. ‘Francis George Bealing.’
Emma and Betty simultaneously let out a long breath.
The young man staring back at them has a narrow neck and broad forehead. His ears stand out slightly from his head and he has a serious look on his face.
Betty glances briefly at Emma.
‘Francis, or Frank Senior, as he became known, was born in Gillingham in Dorset in 1865. By the 1890s, Frank Senior and his wife Harriet had moved from Dorset to Southampton, where they had started a plant nursery. Business was going well and they provided many of the ocean liners that docked there with plants and flowers, and as you know they supplied theTitanic. It was very much a family business– their son, Frank Junior, worked alongside his father.’
Mrs Pepperpot reaches into the envelope and pulls out another black and white photograph showing two men standing alongside a cold frame of carnations.
‘F.G. Bealing & Son,’ Emma remarks.
Mrs Pepperpot just stares at her. Emma can’t think for the life of her what she has done to upset the tiny woman opposite her. Surely it can’t be that she is simply too big?
‘By what has been written about the family I gather that Frank Senior was bit of a tough taskmaster. A driving force.’ Mrs Pepperpot looks up, and says with meaning, ‘Men like that aren’t always easy to be with.’
Emma wonders what Mr Pepperpot had been like. Had he been a driving force? Was he a man who overruled his wife– cut across her when she was speaking? She thinks of their conversation when she sat down. She barely said hello and then interrupted Mrs Pepperpot to speak to Betty. She feels dismayed and exhausted by her continued ineptitude.
She tries to make amends. She phrases the words in Spanish in her head, then speaks in English. ‘This research is so thorough, Jane. It must have taken you a lot of work and it’s extremely kind of you to take the time to share everything you’ve learnt with us, isn’t it, Betty?’
Betty joins in the praise. ‘It certainly is. A real professional job– you can tell you’re an old hand at this. We would never have been able to find out all of this on our own, would we, love?’
‘No, never.’
Emma has the satisfaction of seeing Mrs Pepperpot’s back straighten slightly. She doesn’t exactly smile at Emma, but her look loses some of its frost as she says, ‘Now, as I said, Frank Senior seemed very much to be the boss, but it was his grandson who recorded what went on the night before theTitanicsailed. He was the third generation to run the business, until Bealing’s ceased trading in the 1960s. I guess they went out of business.’
‘That’s why you couldn’t find them, Emma,’ Betty comments.
Mrs Pepperpot continues. ‘When theTitanicset off from Southampton on its maiden voyage, Frank Senior would have been forty-seven, Frank Junior twenty-two. Together they drove the cart of plants and flowers to the ship the evening before it sailed.’
‘The night of the ninth of April 1912,’ Emma murmurs, imagining the scrape of metal wheels over stone and the bulk of theTitaniclooming out of the darkness.
‘They took tarpaulins into the foyer and spread them out there. Then they unloaded the plants– about three to four hundred of them– plus all the flowers they would need for the journey. Then they started the job of arranging the plants around the ship. I get the feeling that theTitanicstewards had a say in where they went but Frank Senior was very much to the fore.’
‘A driving force,’ Betty mutters.
‘Then they put the cut flowers into storage for later,’ Mrs Pepperpot adds.
Emma pictures the father and son trundling away on the empty cart.
It seems Mrs Pepperpot is following her train of thought. ‘I wonder who arranged them, then?’ she says. By now she is leaning forward, a gleam in her eye.
‘I’ve been researching stewardesses who might have had a background in floristry,’ Emma tells her, ‘but I haven’t found anyone yet.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Pepperpot says slowly, ‘you might want to look for anyone with a background in gardening as well. The first florists were gardeners, after all.’ She looks from Betty to Emma. ‘They were the ones who learnt the trade from working in the big houses, making up bouquets, buttonholes, corsages and arranging the house flowers. When the railways spread, it was gardeners who started the nurseries and provided their floristry skills as a service.’ She looks intently at Emma. ‘I see now what you’re saying– those flowers needed arranging, and you’re wondering who was the floriston board?’
Emma smiles to herself. Maybe a recruit to the Recently Obsessed?
The small woman sits back in her chair. ‘Well, that really is fascinating. A proper mystery.’ She glances at Emma, who smiles encouragingly, feeling there is more Mrs Pepperpot wants to say. She is right.
‘There is one thing I found out that might interest you. The Bealings were famous for their floral buttonholes. They provided them for the first-class male passengers. They were known as “Bealing Buttonholes”.’
Emma wants to say,I know, they made them from clove carnations, but she isn’t surewhatshe thinks anymore. So much of what she has been dwelling on has been in her imagination.
