A Winter’s Tale (14 page)

‘Well, bear in mind that now Winter’s End is mine I can invite
hordes
of New-Age travellers to camp here any time I want to,’ I said nastily and out I marched, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that Seth was going to move aside and let me through until the very last minute.

He towered over me and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that his mouth was twitching, which was probably either temper or a nervous tic. After his remarks earlier in the day I sincerely hoped he hadn’t got religious mania too.

Mrs Lark consoled me in the kitchen with tea and very gingery parkin. She also confirmed my suspicion that my aunts had immediately divided into two opposing camps once Jack had arrived and then Ottie married Seth’s father, the new head gardener.

‘Jack looked like an angel, but he was mischievous, and Seth always ended up getting the blame for his pranks until Ottie stepped in. He was a stoical little boy and I don’t suppose
he would have said anything, but she said she wouldn’t stand by and see him being punished for things he hadn’t done.’

‘No, I don’t suppose she would,’ I agreed, digesting this new insight into what had gone on during my absence from Winter’s End. Maybe if I had remained there it would have been
me
who would have got all the blame, bottom of the pecking order?

Mrs Lark suggested I should go and change for dinner, but she didn’t say into what—a giant moth, maybe? If I carried on eating at the current rate I’d certainly be changing into something bigger, but not necessarily better, though I did take the hint and put on a long plum-coloured crinkle-cotton skirt and flat Chinese silk slippers.

When I went down I found Ottie and Hebe studiously ignoring each other in the drawing room, both looking defensive and sheepish. Ottie was still in clay-smeared jeans, though she had removed the outsize man’s plaid lumberjack shirt she had been wearing in the studio as an overall. Hebe, abandoning her whites, was arrayed in a long, dark green velvet dress that was bald on both elbows and the seat.

‘There you are,’ Aunt Hebe said. ‘I’ve poured you a glass of sherry. My sister seemed to think you wouldn’t like it, but then, she has very depraved tastes. It comes of living as a bohemian for most of her life and only pleasing herself.’

I took the glass, though actually Ottie was right and I don’t really like it much.

‘In fact, I don’t know why my sister is here at all,’ Hebe added. ‘Perhaps you ought to ask her.’

‘William liked the family together for dinner,’ Ottie said. ‘I always come over when I’m home, unless I’m working late. Then Mrs Lark sends it over. Saves cooking for just me too. Do you mind, Sophy?’

‘Not at all. In fact, I like it, but I’d like it even more if you two would speak to each other! I’ll find it very wearing
being a sort of conversational conduit, and so far as I can see, you have both betrayed a trust, so the honours—or dishonours—are even.’

‘Huh!’ said Ottie, and she and Hebe exchanged wary sideways glances from identical bright blue eyes.

Then Jonah beat the gong and we trooped into the breakfast parlour. Dinner was the split pea and ham soup that Mrs Lark had mentioned earlier, giant Yorkshire puddings filled with roast beef, carrots, peas and gravy, and apple tart and cream, washed down with a glass of red wine from a dusty bottle. The room began to slowly waver like something seen through bull’s-eye glass: it had been a very long and tiring day.

We had coffee in the library, and then Ottie left for the coach house and Hebe vanished upstairs. Jonah, when he came in for the tray, said she was addicted to soaps, which she recorded on video and watched in the privacy of her own room, my grandfather having been scathing about them.

By then I was really fit for nothing except the long, satiated sleep of the python that ate the goat—and if this sort of food appeared in front of me every day, I thought, my waist would vanish and my figure would not even resemble an extreme hour glass, but a fishing float.

‘I’m going to my room too, Jonah,’ I said, yawning hugely. ‘I’m so tired I’m starting to feel as if I’m underwater with my ears about to pop. It’s been a long and eventful day.’

‘If you want a nightcap, it’s in the drinks cabinet over there,’ he offered.

‘That
would
finish me off!’

‘Breakfast’s at eight, Miss Sophy.’

‘Just call me Sophy,’ I said, getting up wearily. I’d noticed that Mrs Lark, as befitted her important position as cook, was always addressed as such, and everyone called my aunt Miss Hebe, but other than that there was precious little formality between the family and staff, which suited me.

‘I’m more used to being the hired help than the lady of the manor, Jonah, and, goodness knows, you’ve known me since I was a little girl. I remember you leading me round on one of Grandfather’s hunters!’

‘Kingpin, that was—a gentle giant. It was a sad day when Sir William sold up the horses, but there, his hip was giving him the gyp, so he had to do it.’

His words were starting to come and go…as was the room. ‘Well, good night, Jonah,’ I managed, then added, remembering, ‘Oh, and could you light the fire in the Great Hall tomorrow morning and every morning after that?’

‘Yes, Mrs Lark’s already said you wanted it lit. The logs are ready and I’ll put a match to it first thing tomorrow. And she says to tell you Milly from the dog parlour will be here right after breakfast to sort Charlie out.’

‘Oh, good,’ I said, thinking that it was odd, but strangely pleasant, to have people do things for me for a change, rather than the other way round! Charlie, his days of looking and smelling like a small unwashed rag rug so nearly at an end, heaved himself up from in front of the fire and followed me out, but showed no signs of coming upstairs. ‘Where does Charlie usually sleep?’

‘In the kitchen. The Aga stays warm all night and Mrs Lark’s got a nice bone for him, she’s that pleased to see him eating again. I’ll let him out first, though, before I lock up.’

I think even Charlie’s limited vocabulary included the word ‘bone’—or maybe he just felt that everything was back to normal again, for he followed Jonah off across the hall without another glance back, tail waving hopefully.

I have vague recollections of shedding my clothes, dragging on a nightdress and climbing into the big mahogany bed, where I sank deep into feathers and unconsciousness.

I didn’t need to dream about Winter’s End any more—I was there.

Chapter Ten: Clipped Edges

Lady Wynter taunts mee much, saying how is it that I can read and write so well, yet it is well known that my mother’s family was lowborn and tainted with rumours of witchcraft? I return soft answers—that my mother’s father was a scholar and she in turn taught mee everything she knows—such cures and salves as anyone versed in such things might know. She is curious about this little book, but I keep it about my person.

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1581

There was a chill in my bedroom next morning that the small gas fire and one lukewarm radiator did little to dispel. I showered hastily under an antique contraption over the claw-footed bath and then went downstairs to the Great Hall—to find it quite transformed!

My instructions to Jonah had been obeyed and now a log fire blazed and crackled on the wide hearth, throwing out a fierce heat that made the huge, dark and dusty chamber almost cosy. Heat rises, so over the next few days my arctic bedroom and the upper regions of the house might, with a bit of luck, begin to thaw out.

Reluctantly tearing myself away from the fire I headed for the breakfast parlour, where I half-expected what I found—a lavish spread of cooked dishes on hotplates, including
(as though Mrs Lark had purposely chosen all the foods starting with ‘k’) kippers, kidneys and kedgeree, plus a line of Tupperware boxes of cereals, a bowl of prunes and a jug of orange juice.

I don’t usually eat a cooked breakfast, but of course any resistance was useless once I’d smelled the bacon.

‘That’s the way,’ Jonah said approvingly, coming in with a fresh pot of coffee while I was demolishing an indecently large plateful. ‘You’re a grand, strapping lass, not one of these skinny Minnies with stick arms and bosoms like two fried—’

‘
Thank
you, Jonah,’ Aunt Hebe said firmly, looking up from a well-thumbed garden catalogue, ‘we have got everything we want now.’

She was dressed today in workman-like brown corduroy trousers and a green-patterned Liberty lawn shirt under a quilted gilet, and was breakfasting frugally on toast and a poached egg.

‘I normally just have porridge or cereal,’ I said, ‘but it was too tempting to resist, all laid out there.’

‘Yes, you must watch your figure,’ she said, looking at me thoughtfully. ‘Most men these days, Jack included, seem to prefer the svelte woman, like Melinda Christopher.’

‘I’ve seen bigger stick insects than Melinda Christopher,’ I retorted, hurt. ‘I’m not overweight, I just naturally have big boobs and wide hips. My waist measurement is quite small.’

‘You are not at all a typical Winter—it is such a pity.’

‘Neither was Alys Blezzard, if that painting upstairs is a true portrait. But I would much rather not have so much temptation at breakfast. I’m sure there’s enough food here for at least ten hearty eaters—and I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t eat kidneys any time of day, and though I love both kedgeree and kippers,
not
first thing in the morning.’

‘William liked a good choice—and anyway, Jack is partial to a full English breakfast. Men are, aren’t they?’

‘I can’t remember, it’s too long since I lived with one. But Jack’s not here all the time and when he is, I don’t suppose he would find having just bacon and eggs too much of a hardship, would he? Do we really need all the rest of it?’

‘Perhaps you had better discuss it with him when he comes down at the weekend?’

‘Perhaps,’ I agreed, refraining from saying that it wasn’t actually going to be any of his business now. I
must
stop being such a coward and break the news to him that I’m not going to sell Winter’s End (even if I still have only the vaguest of ideas on how to generate enough income to keep it), or Hebe will get in first. In any case, since I hoped he would still consider Winter’s End his home and help me to get it back on its feet again, it might be tactful at least to make a show of asking his advice occasionally!

But I made a mental note to do something about the lavish catering because there must be such a lot of waste, though I expect some of it goes into Charlie, now he is eating again. He had greeted me effusively when I came downstairs, but was currently shadowing Jonah, who now popped his head through the door to tell me that Milly had arrived and wanted to know what she was to do with Charlie.

‘And Mr Yatton is in the office,’ he said, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the solar tower, ‘but no hurry, Mrs Lark always gives him a bacon and egg bap and a cup of coffee to keep his strength up. His sister, Effie, does for him at home, and she doesn’t let him have anything like that—rabbit food he gets, there.’

Milly, a fresh-faced girl in jeans and jumper, was waiting in the Great Hall with an unsuspecting Charlie, who looked like a giant, unappetising furball. ‘What,’ she said,
looking at him slightly despairingly, ‘would you like me to do with him?’

‘I think the only thing you
can
do is clip his coat short, then give him a bath. And I’m sure his toenails are too long, because he hasn’t been having walks, so could you do those, too?’

‘OK—and had you better buy him a coat until his fur gets longer again? Only he’ll be cold when he’s out, otherwise.’

‘Yes, I suppose I had, you’re right.’

‘I’ve got some in the van, nice red tartan ones, with matching leads and doggy-doo holders.’

‘Er—lovely,’ I said weakly, ‘could you put it on the bill?’

She took the unsuspecting victim out to her van while I went off to the estate office.

Mr Yatton, my steward, was small, slight and handsome, with silvery hair and a finely lined face—and, at a guess, the wrong side of seventy. To my huge relief he seemed to handle all the financial side of running the house and estate, right down to paying the staff wages, balancing the books and sorting out the accountant. He had the whole thing literally at his fingertips for, apart from the office desktop computer, he had a laptop of his own and a plethora of electronic gadgets, and so was not so much a silver surfer as a silver technobabe.

‘I am here weekday mornings and Sir William used to come in at some point every day to discuss matters, give any orders, sign cheques…that sort of thing. That is his desk,’ he indicated an oak roll-top, ‘now yours. Though you may, of course, prefer the computer desk?’

‘No—I mean, I do email and so on, but I don’t use the computer much.’

Mr Yatton, looking quite as shocked as if I’d admitted to being illiterate, discoursed enthusiastically about the advantages of the computing age for fully ten minutes,
before recalling the true reason for our meeting and proceeding to outline for me the complicated financial affairs of Winter’s End.