A Winter’s Tale (17 page)

‘You leave it to me—and do you want me to make sure everyone knows? The Friends too, they had better be there.’

‘Friends?’ I said, absently.

‘Friends of Winter’s End.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten all about them and they are going to be a really important part of my plans!’

‘There are about a dozen Friends, but I only need to tell one and then it’s like in that film
Village of the Damned
.’

‘Film?’ I said, baffled.

‘Yes, you tell one of them and then they
all
know. Faster than the speed of gossip—uncanny it is, sometimes. Mr Yatton’s sister, Effie’s, one.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mrs Lark.’

‘All the gardeners pop into my kitchen during the day for a bite of cake to have with their tea, so I can spread the word then. Grace’s here now. She’s just washed all Charlie’s bedding—said since he was so clean, his blankets ought to be too.’

‘That was kind of her.’

‘Loves dogs, does Grace. Charlie’s in the laundry room with her now; he took his bone.’

So that accounted for his vanishing act after breakfast.

‘This meeting…some of the gardeners said Mr Jack seemed to assume he would still be running the place, the last time he was down,’ she suggested. ‘He told them Winter’s End would be too much for you to run, so you’d sell the place to him. But I said, “No, that can’t be right—Miss Sophy’s here to stay.”’

‘Yes I am, and I want Winter’s End to be clean, beautiful and whole again, just the way I remember it. It seems to have gone to the dogs since Mum and I left.’

‘Sir William threw himself into his plans for the garden even more when your mother took you away,’ she agreed, ‘to distract himself, I suppose, until you came back—which he was convinced you would, at first.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and now we will all have to pull together to save Winter’s End, which will mean some big changes. That can be hard when people are set in their ways.’

I took the notebook and a pen out of my bag. ‘I might as well start making my list of things to make, mend and order. I’ll do the rest of the house first and then come back to this wing. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind just giving me a glimpse of your rooms then?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And if there’s anything, either in the kitchens or your rooms, that you’d like changing or replacing, note it down for me, would you?’

‘I’ll do that,’ she agreed. ‘The weekly shopping list is pinned to the inside of that cupboard door there, and Grace puts any cleaning stuff that we’re running out of on it.’

‘Good. I did an inventory of the cleaning room last night, so I’ll add a few everyday things to that, but I’ll also have to order some specialist products. Luckily I know a good supplier. Stately Solutions will have everything that I need.’

The entertainment of watching his bedding go round must have palled, for Charlie nudged open the door and came in carrying the remains of a large bone, which he tenderly deposited in his basket. From the smell that wafted in with him, Jonah was boiling up pigswill out at the back somewhere.

‘I think we’ll have a nice jam roly-poly pudding to follow the salmon and Duchesse potatoes tonight,’ Mrs Lark said, absently thumbing through a battered notebook—she appeared to have her own household book. ‘Cream or custard?’

‘Custard,’ I said decidedly, and went out with Charlie at my heels.

All this comforting stodge was lovely in the winter, but I had a feeling that by spring I’d have started to long for a good salad and a big bowl of fresh fruit—and goodness knew what would have happened to my figure by then!

*  *  *

I’d written three pages of notes before I even got out of the Great Hall.

It had always been the heart of the house, the room where everyone’s paths crossed repeatedly in a complex minuet of daily living, and now the fire once again glowed in the vast hearth it was much more welcoming.

It was also the place where Alys Blezzard seemed to be most with me—and where I felt positively wired in to Winter’s End itself. Standing in the middle of the Great Hall was like recharging my batteries, and filled me with energy and the unfounded golden glow of optimism that reassured me that everything would turn out all right…in the end.

There
were
a few shadows drifting like dark smoke in the corners of my consciousness—but then, what life doesn’t have its share of shadows?

I looked around me, noticing for the first time that the lime mortar between the stones of the hall floor needed attention and the old rag rug in front of the fire was now so grey and stiff with dirt that it blended into the colour of the floor. I would bet good money on Grace mopping it over every time she washed the floor in here—probably with bleach in her bucket too! But we could try soaking it in mild soap and warm water and see what happened.

The stuffed stag’s head on the wall looked ghastly. It was not only balding, but had lost an eye. I guiltily remembered the last time I slid down the banisters and knocked it off—perhaps that had loosened it?

Jonah, coming through the West Wing door with a tray of crockery, said, ‘Your grandfather got that head at a sale. A great one for buying junk at auctions, he used to be, before he got so caught up in the gardening. The eye’s in that bowl of potpourri on the mantelpiece.’

‘Thanks, Jonah,’ I said, glad he’d told me before I’d looked
in the pot. An eye staring back at me from the dried rose petals would have been a bit of a shock.

‘If you like, I can Superglue it back in.’

‘Yes, please—and give the head a good brushing while you’re at it, will you? I’ll try and find something nicer to replace it with later on, when I’ve got time.’

‘I’ll do that,’ he said, going off whistling.

Half the candle light bulbs in the wheel-shaped holder suspended from the ceiling were dead when I flicked the switch, as were those in the wall lights—muscular naked bronze arms holding out what looked like frosted glass whirly ice-cream cornets.

Humming the tune to the Cornetto ice-cream advert, I slowly turned, taking everything in. The tops of the windows were draped with spider-spun silk, and most of the assorted chairs, settles and benches that furnished the room looked dull and unpolished, except for the tops, where the application of countless bottoms over the centuries had rubbed them up to a fine gloss.

Grace must have gone up the backstairs, because there was a zooming noise from the dimly lit minstrels’ gallery way above me, and I could just see the top of her head as she pushed the Hoover to and fro. Then it stopped, and she started working backwards down the stairs with a dustpan and brush.

A hand-held vacuum cleaner would be easier for that, and I made a memo to unpack mine from its box in the attic—if I could remember which one I’d put it in. On the end of the growing list at the back of the notebook I added foam tubing to pad the end of the vacuum cleaner hose, which would stop any more chips being knocked out of the furniture.

Going into the family wing, I popped my head in the steward’s office to say good morning to Mr Yatton and tell
him what I was up to today, and where he could find me if he wanted me.

‘Very good—and Lucy and I have made contact already,’ he said. ‘I emailed some figures, and she sent me a list of very pertinent questions right back.’

I could imagine—she would shortly be running his affairs much as she tries to do mine. A mobile phone like a thin silvery clam played a snatch of waltz music and, as he picked it up, I smiled at him and returned to my inventory.

In the passage abutting the solar tower a cupboard had been cut into the wall, which was now filled with dull silver and the sad, cracked relics of several valuable tea services. Mum had told me that there had once been an emergency trapdoor exit down into it from the priest’s hole above, but after Alys Blezzard’s death the family had forsworn the Catholic faith and the priest’s hole had fallen into disuse. I couldn’t see any trace of it in the cupboard ceiling, but it was pretty dark in there.

The library was quite cosy and, since presumably William had used it a lot, relatively clean and tidy. Even the books, including many very ancient gardening tomes behind glass, looked as if they had been dusted within living memory, and all the lights worked. There was a billiard table at one end, a small TV and video, and a wind-up gramophone with a stack of old 78s in cardboard covers next to it, all humorous monologues.

The top one was ‘Albert and the Lion’. I put it on and wound the handle and, as the crackling monologue played, I tried to square this evidence of my grandfather’s sense of humour with what I remembered of him. It wasn’t easy. After a while I gave up and carried on with my survey.

Like the library, the drawing room was in reasonably good order, though the chairs and sofas were still wearing grubby summer chintz covers, which should have long since
been taken off and washed. I wondered if there was a winter set, too? Grace or Mrs Lark would probably know.

Aunt Hebe had staked a claim to a comfortable chair and Berlin-work footstool, next to a table loaded with gardening magazines and catalogues, plus an overflowing bundle of knitting that was the rather snotty green of mushy peas. I sincerely hoped it was intended as a gift for Jack and not some kind of welcome-home present for me.

Not, so far, that there had been much evidence from Aunt Hebe of any real pleasure in my return…

The dining room was grandly dingy, with a splendid chandelier that tinkled in the draught from the door, and I noted the threadbare but rather beautiful rug that would have to be professionally cleaned, if I could ever afford it. Goodness knows what state the tapestries hanging in the corridors were in. It was probably just as well that it was too dark to see, and at least the gloom meant they had been protected from much light damage.

I’d left the room I most longed to look at, Lady Anne’s parlour, until last…and strictly speaking, of course, that should be Lady Winter’s parlour, though it doesn’t sound quite so cosy.

It was strange that although it was a lovely light room with a door on to the terrace, if felt unused, unloved and neglected.

The dark, dull panelling that covered the lower half of the walls looked seventeenth century, but at some point the plaster above had been painted a deep, coral colour. The shade was echoed in the pattern of the curtains that hung at the windows and over the door to the terrace, and though they were a little faded they had been well lined.

‘
Alys Blezzard scratched her initials on the windowpane in the little parlour at the back of the house, in the left-hand corner, and so did her daughter
,’ I could hear my mother’s
voice saying in my head. And when I pulled aside the drapes and looked, there they were, a tangible link to the past—the faint spidery tracery of ‘
AB
’ and ‘
A W
’.

Maybe I would add ‘
SW
’, for this would now be Sophy’s parlour, somewhere I could sit and sew my crazy patchwork and dream. There was even a needlework table, a Victorian pedestal affair with clawed feet like a lion…which for some odd reason made me think of the head gardener. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had big clawed feet inside those sturdy boots and maybe he even turned into a big black cat—something pantherish—when the moon was full?

I shook off this rather disturbing image and turned to the alcove where the ancient wooden coffer in which Alys had kept her secrets stood. I had got over my first disappointment at its outward plainness now and could see that it was a thing of beauty in itself—as was the key, which Mum gave to me as a gift on my fourteenth birthday, just before she made her final, fatal trip. Why hadn’t I known the dark omens were gathering for her, not me? And, even if I had warned her, would she have listened?

Shaking off old memories I looked thoughtfully at the box and then at a substantial cupboard built into one corner of the room, with glazed upper doors. If I moved a rather funereal arrangement of wax flowers under a dome of glass and some dubious Egyptian funerary ushabti up a shelf, I thought the box would fit on the lower one. An extra line of defence for Alys’s secrets—if they were returned home.

Did they really need defending? Was Jack that keen to find clues to some treasure that, if it ever existed, would have been long discovered and gone? But even if he was, I was certain he wouldn’t go to such extreme lengths as breaking open an antique and valuable box to get at the book…or would he? I had now heard so many opinions
of Jack, his character and intentions that I wasn’t sure what to believe any more.

But then, how could I possibly doubt the sincerity I’d heard in his voice when he told me how much he loved Winter’s End and how pleased he was to meet me at last? I wasn’t looking forward in the least to telling him that I wasn’t going to sell the place to him, after all, and dashing all his hopes.

I couldn’t find a key that fitted the cupboard on my ring, until I thought to open the door below and discovered it hanging inside on a small brass cup hook. I moved everything up a shelf, then slipped out of the door to the terrace (locked, but this time there was a key on the ring) and round the house to my secret cache in the van, returning with the weight of the fabric bag dragging at my shoulder.