A Winter’s Tale (31 page)

‘So I can have them back again tomorrow, then?’

‘Well, yes…though I do want the front gates rubbed down and repainted while the weather is dry. But I suppose they could do that as overtime,’ I conceded.

‘That would be much better, because this mild weather is good for working on the lower terrace too.’

‘I
have
asked Bob to come tomorrow morning and help Jonah to clean all the inside windows,’ I confessed quickly, feeling strangely guilty. ‘It’ll be much quicker than doing the outside, so you should have him back by afternoon. I don’t want Jonah climbing any ladders, at his age.’

Seeing his expression grow a little thunderous, I suggested hastily, ‘Let’s move into the drawing room—there’s a fire there, and we can have a drink.’

He gloomily and silently followed me, but mellowed once he had a glass of good single-malt whisky in his hands and we were poring over the lovely catalogues and deciding what roses to order.

Charlie sat between us on the sofa, and nudged the catalogues from underneath from time to time whenever I stopped stroking him to write something down. This was quite often, actually, because I’d never seen so many lovely roses. It would have been so easy to get carried away, except that I knew my budget would only stretch so far.

After a while Mrs Lark sent Jonah in with a three-tiered orange Bakelite cake stand laden with cheese puffs and ratafia biscuits, plus news of what the kitten was up to. I could see that the Adventures of Gingernut were likely to become hourly bulletins.

‘She’s taken it upstairs now and she’s going to pop a hot-water bottle wrapped in a blanket in the basket with it, in case it’s missing its mother.’

‘Mrs Lark’s got a kitten,’ I explained, handing the cake stand to Seth. ‘Have a ratafia biscuit? They were my last employer’s favourites. I took her some last time I saw her.’

‘You were fond of her?’ he asked, taking one.

‘Yes, Lady Betty was always very kind. In fact, she gave me this little brooch that I always wear, when she was in hospital after a fall. She had a premonition she would never see her home again, though I told her she was wrong, and I’d give the brooch back the day she returned to Blackwalls…Only she never did, she went to a nursing home instead. I’ve rung to see how she is a couple of times, but they won’t tell me.’

‘Couldn’t you phone up the family?’

‘No, there’s only the nephew, and he’s a toad,’ I said shortly. ‘But I’ve written to the cook, so I should get some news soon, I hope.’

I brought my mind back to the present. ‘Well, I think those are all the roses we can afford at the moment, Seth.’

‘There will be enough to make a difference, and we can list the varieties in the Winter’s End guidebook, which I suppose you will want to update anyway?’

‘Yes…I’ve been thinking about that, and I’d like it to be more a glossy brochure than a pamphlet, and with more emphasis on Alys the witch and the Shakespeare-was-here angle.’

‘Ottie seems to be having second thoughts about using Shakespeare to reel in the tourists, for some reason,’ Seth
commented, ‘maybe because it’s so apocryphal? Mind you, we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence about Alys the supposed witch, either.’

‘But that’s why she was imprisoned, wasn’t it? And she was born, got married and died, so those dates must be recorded.’

‘Oh, yes, I made a few discoveries when I was researching for the pamphlet. That’s how we came to find the original plan for the planting on the terraces, while Sir William and I were turning out the Spanish chest in the estate office in search of Alys’s records. Alys Blezzard’s maternal grandmother was quite lowborn, from a family that became notorious a century or two later for witchcraft, the Nutters. But her grandfather was a scholar, so she married above her station. And then Alys’s mother married a Blezzard, who were minor gentry.’

‘I’d heard about the Nutter connection. And I suppose when Alys married Thomas Winter, that was a step up again?’

‘Yes, though she seems to have come here in the first place because she had been well versed in healing by her mother. She nursed the heir to Winter’s End back to health, then he insisted on marrying her. She had one child, a daughter, was arrested for witchcraft fairly soon after that and died while in custody.’

‘That’s all so terribly sad!’

‘It’s even sadder when you think that she was only about seventeen when she died.’

‘Good heavens! How old can she have been when she married?’

‘Perhaps fifteen—it wasn’t unusual then.’

‘So young? Poor Alys…and no wonder she’s still here!’

He gave me an odd look and I said hastily, ‘I didn’t see her grave in the churchyard—where is she buried?’

‘Since they thought she was a witch and her mysteriously
sudden death might be suicide, they wouldn’t have put her in hallowed ground. Legend has it she’s buried somewhere on the estate—and when I was cutting back some of the undergrowth last year, not far from the pets’ graveyard, I found a large plain slab of dressed local stone. I
suspect
that might be it, but I’m not going to disturb it and find out.’

‘Definitely not! But I know she loved Winter’s End, so she will be happy to be buried in the grounds.’

He didn’t ask me
how
I knew.

‘I’d better have another look at the pamphlet, Seth. I haven’t really read it properly yet.’

‘You won’t find anything very sensational in there—more facts than legend.’

‘We’ll have to change that—spice it up! Then it’ll sell like hot cakes.’

‘You seem very mercenary and cynical for the child of a hippie,’ he said, looking at me curiously.

‘
Because
I’m the child of a hippie—one of us had to be practical. But I’m prepared to do anything to keep Winter’s End going—
anything
!’

‘Then marrying Jack might be counterproductive,’ he commented drily. ‘At best you’d find yourself living in one wing, with the rest of the estate divided up and sold off piecemeal as swanky country homes.’

‘Who’s cynical now?’ I said tartly. ‘Couldn’t he just love the place like I do, and only want it so that he can preserve it? And anyway, as I said earlier, I have absolutely no intention of marrying him, whatever wishful thinking Hebe’s indulging in.’

‘From what she was saying at dinner, Jack’s indulging in it too—but then, he’s always been prepared to go the extra mile to get his way.’

‘So, you’re implying that he would only want to marry
me to get Winter’s End?’ I said indignantly. ‘Thanks a bunch!’

I don’t know why it made me so cross, since the same suspicious thought had already entered my own head. That Jack was falling for me was something that seemed believable only when he was there in person, telling me so…

‘Look, that’s not what I meant,’ Seth began to protest. ‘I just wanted to warn you that—’

‘Yes it was,’ I broke in hotly, ‘but whatever his reasons were, it wouldn’t work out anyway. I’ve already told him how I feel.’

I suppose, since he had seen Jack kiss me before he drove off, I couldn’t blame Seth for looking sceptical—or for abruptly changing the subject to something less fraught with pitfalls.

‘Ottie and I found a few good Shakespeare quotes that seemed relevant when we had our brainstorming session,’ he said, handing me a list, ‘or relevant to gardening, anyway.’

‘“This knot intrinsicate of life…”
Antony and Cleopatra
,’ I read out. ‘That’s good.’

‘“And Adam was a gardener”, from
Henry VI
—we must have that,’ he said. ‘And I like the
Othello
one: “O thou weed!”’

‘I raided the book of quotations in the library before dinner myself, and found one or two of my own. A bit more general than yours, like “Alas! poor ghost.”’

He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. ‘Any particular ghost?’

‘Yes, Alys, of course. Aunt Hebe was right about her walking,’ I confessed. ‘Though so far she’s proved more of a guardian angel than a ghost.’

He seemed unsurprised by my revelation. ‘In what way?’

‘Oh, just turning up and…well, never mind, you’ll think I’m mad—which brings me nicely to my next quote, also from
Hamlet
, “O my prophetic soul!”’

‘Well, I suppose they don’t all have to be about gardening. Would your ghost approve of “What’s past is prologue”?’

‘Probably. Where’s it from?’

‘
The Tempest
. That’s my favourite Shakespeare play, because, as it says in
Macbeth
, it’s like much of life, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.’

I think he must have meant his love-life.

I went and fetched the book of quotations from the library and we added a few more, then we started discussing what plants to have in the Shakespeare garden on the lower terrace, and turned to the ‘I know a bank’ speech from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

‘Musk roses again, of course,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, and for the rest, we have lots of shrubs and plants to choose from: the list is endless, from thyme, balm and bay, to carnations, columbine, daisies and daffodils.’

‘And bilberries, burdock, bay and burnet,’ I said, throwing in a few I remembered from my research. ‘I Googled it.’

Seth looked unimpressed. ‘Shakespeare mentions so many plants that he must have been interested in gardening.’

‘Maybe that’s what he was doing in Lancashire during the Lost Years, working as a gardener,’ I said flippantly, and he gave me a withering look.

Out in the passageway the grandfather clock started to chime and didn’t look like stopping any time soon. The evening had simply flown by and the cake stand was empty, though I had no recollection of eating anything. There wasn’t even a crumb left, except those caught in Charlie’s whiskers.

The central chandelier was suddenly switched on, flooding the room with dazzlingly bright light.

‘Are you still up?’ Hebe said, then she caught sight of Seth sitting next to me on the sofa and looked at us with acute disapproval.

‘We were discussing the planting scheme for the Shakespeare garden, Aunt Hebe,’ I explained, feeling like a guilty teenager, ‘and the quotations for the wall. I didn’t realise it was getting late.’

Seth drained the last of his whisky and got up. ‘Yes, I think we have enough ideas to be going on with, for now at any rate.’

Aunt Hebe lingered behind in the study while I escorted Seth to the front door and locked it behind him. She re-emerged just as I’d washed up our glasses and the cake stand, and settled Charlie in his basket in the kitchen, then followed me upstairs, as though she suspected I might double back and let Seth in again if she didn’t. She would probably have liked to lock me into my bedroom, but had to content herself with frostily wishing me good night.

I’d left my mobile phone in my room again, and found I’d missed three calls from Jack, but nothing from Anya or Lucy. I missed another one from Jack while I was in the bathroom, going through the motions of cleaning my teeth in a haze of sudden exhaustion. Then, just as I got into bed, he rang me
again
.

‘Hello? Sophy?’ he said, in a warm, intimate voice. ‘At last—don’t you
ever
carry your phone around with you?’

I propped myself up against the pillows sleepily. ‘Yes, but sometimes I forget. But I’ve been in the house most of the day, except for walking Charlie, so you could have got me on the house phone if it was urgent.’

‘Well, I’ve got you now, darling. Sorry I had to dash off like that yesterday, but business is business and I’ve got three properties I want to complete on, before Christmas.’

‘Oh? I thought you did them up one at a time,’ I said sleepily. ‘You’ve already bought Melinda’s old house, haven’t you? That’ll make four.’

‘Mel’s house is so ugly that I bought it just for the land
it’s standing on. She gets a percentage when I sell it on for a housing development, but I’m still waiting for permission to knock the main building down. It’s taking ten times longer than I bargained for.’

‘So it isn’t a nice house?’

‘No, it’s a ghastly sixties concrete monstrosity, by some Dutch architect who only built a couple of them over here. But never mind that. I hope you’ve been thinking about me and what I said to you?’

The truth was, that apart from that brisk exchange with Seth on the subject, before we settled down to the exciting task of choosing roses, the day had gone by in such a flash that I’d hardly thought of him at all for hours. Before I could stop myself, my blunt tongue had said so.

There was a hurt pause. ‘You seem to have been making a late night of it. Hebe just called me, quite upset because you spent the evening with Seth. I hope you aren’t harbouring any hopes in that direction, because he’s involved with Mel.’

That must have been what Hebe was doing while I was letting Seth out. The devious old witch!