The steward nodded. ‘When you get to heaven you will see him there,’ he said with simple faith. ‘Outshining the angels.’

The will was signed and sealed and posted with the clerk, the executors in agreement, but Hester thought that John would not go until he could see his tulips one last time. There is no gardener in the world who does not worship spring like a pagan. Every day John would take a seat at the window of his bedroom and peer outward and down to try to see the tiny spears of green springtime bulbs piercing the cold earth.

Every day Frances came to his room with her hands filled with new buds. ‘Look, Grandfather, the lenten lilies are out, and the little white daffodils.’

She would spread them on the coverlet wrapped around his knees, both of them careless of the sticky juice from the cut stems. ‘A feast,’ John said, his eyes on them. ‘And they smell?’

‘Like heaven,’ Frances replied ecstatically. ‘Yellow, they smell like sunshine and lemons and honey.’

John chuckled. ‘Tulips coming?’

‘You’ll have to wait,’ she said. ‘They’re still in bud.’

The old man smiled at her. ‘I should have learned patience by now, my Frances,’ he said gently, his breath coming short. ‘But don’t forget to look tomorrow.’

Hester thought that John’s stubborn will would not let him die in early spring. He wanted to see his tulips before he died, he wanted to see the blossom on his cherry trees. She thought his soul could not leave his weary body until he had some warm summer flowers in his arms once more. As the cold winds died down and the light at the window of his bedroom grew brighter and warmer, his breath slowly slipped away, but still he hung on – waiting for the summer, waiting for the return of his son.

At the end of March he turned his head to her as she sat at his bedside. ‘Tell the gardener to send me in some flowers,’ he said softly. He was breathless. ‘Everything we have. I may not be able to wait for them to bloom. Tell him to pot me up some tulips. I want to see them. They must be nearly showing by now.’

Hester nodded and went out to find the gardener. He was weeding in the seed beds, preparing them for the great rush of planting out which would come when the danger of night frosts was over.

‘He wants his tulips,’ she told him. ‘You’re to pot them up and take them in. And cut some daffodils, armfuls of them. But I want us to do more for him. What are the best plants he has made? The rarest, most special plants? Can we not put them all in a pot and take them in so that he can see them from his bed?’

The gardener smiled at her ignorance. ‘It’d be a big pot.’