A Winter’s Tale (18 page)

I lifted the chest onto the bergère sofa and managed to undo the lock and hasp. Inside, it was as Aunt Hebe had described, completely carved with flowers and foliage and smelling faintly spicy, fitted out with little drawers and compartments. There seemed to be nothing in there, apart from the powdery residue of what might once have been dried herbs until, in a space behind a false drawer front, I discovered a strange polished stone with a hole in it and a rotting velvet bag full of small yellowed bits of bone or ivory scratched with symbols that I thought might be runes. Whatever they were, clearly they had once held some kind of magical significance.

There was a rectangular central compartment that had room and to spare for the little book of bible stories I placed in it—one of my childhood treasures safely returned, at least, even if not the one the box was intended for…

‘
Alys?
’ I looked up, searching the dark corners but seeing nothing, and it occurred to me that perhaps, now I was an adult, I never would. For a moment I wondered if she ever
really existed, except in my imagination…until, as I locked the chest away behind the glazed cupboard doors, I caught sight of her dim reflection in the dingy glass before she slowly dissolved into the shadows. I could have
sworn
she winked at me.

I left the little room guarding its secrets and went up the stairs that wound round the solar tower. The upper storey had once been a bedchamber, with the ex-priest’s hole converted to a powdering closet, but it was now an empty and long-neglected schoolroom. I suppose my aunts must have been taught there, but I went to the village infants’ school.

I took a quick, guilty look into Aunt Hebe’s bedroom, which was cluttered and cosy, with a sort of kitchen corner by the sink where she could brew cocoa or whatever her favoured bedtime drink was, a La-Z-Boy chair and a giant TV screen. I didn’t linger there but wandered through the rest of the bedrooms, including the one where the cleaned pictures were stacked, finding little that a good clean wouldn’t fix.

I came at last to more familiar territory—the bedroom that had once been my mother’s. I remembered the wallpaper with its plethora of pink roses and the brass four-poster bed, fit for a princess. The frilled muslin curtains were pulled back to reveal a French poodle nightdress case, its topknot tied with red satin ribbon, reclining on the glazed pink chintz eiderdown. It was all the same—and yet, in the cruel light of day, a faded and dusty travesty of how I remembered it.

In one corner of the room lay a battered suitcase, the one we had bought specially for her trip to America. The locks were broken and it had been tied up with twine, which now lay loosened and unknotted around it, and a trapped and limp cotton flounce stuck out of the side of the case like a dead thing.

Suddenly I felt angry: whoever had searched my mother’s possessions should have put it all back again neatly. Who could it have been? Grandfather, searching for traces of his lost daughter? Hebe, perhaps, or even Jack, looking for the book?

A handbag rested against the case, but there wasn’t much in there, except a wallet containing a picture of me as an awkward teenager with an unfortunate hairstyle, a few dollars, and a dried-out rose-pink lipstick.

In the wardrobe, long cheesecloth dresses swayed like old ghosts and the familiar disturbing scent of patchouli still lingered, reaching out to invade the room.

I hastily closed the door and left. It might be touching that my grandfather had ordered that my mother’s room should remain as it was when she ran away, but this was
not
how I wanted to remember her. The room needed exorcising of the past, but for now it could wait.

And so could visiting her grave. She wasn’t in either of those places, but with me. For, oddly enough, I had begun to feel closer to my strangely elusive mother once she was dead than I had ever been when she was alive.

Chapter Twelve: Foxed

I have taken over the preparation of household remedies and simples and of the making of preserves, fruits and sweetmeats, Lady Wynter having little interest in such things, other than the lotion of roses that I made to clear her complexion. Sir Ralph is in thrall to his young wife, despite her barrenness, yet he continues in gratitude to mee that his only son and heir still lives.

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1581

Upstairs, under the eaves, the old nursery lay cold and neglected and the narrow sleigh bed was stripped and dustsheeted. I stood looking down at it, remembering the last time I had slept there…

It had been the night we left Winter’s End, and Alys had woken me in the small hours, shaking her head sorrowfully before fading away at the first faint sound of my mother’s tiptoeing steps.

I’d had time to snatch the book of bible stories from under my pillow, but very little else before I was whisked away…

All the familiar playthings and books had been put away in the cupboards, along with some I didn’t recognise, which must have been Jack’s. He seemed to have had a penchant for weapons of mass destruction.

I unlocked the door to the rest of the attic space and found a light switch, but the warren of disused rooms stretching ahead was only patchily lit, a depressingly cluttered vista of anonymous shrouded shapes. I could see why they kept the door locked, though, because if Grace did smoke up there, it would be a major fire hazard.

My own and Lucy’s belongings were stacked in one corner of the first room. A quick look through the others didn’t reveal anything terribly ominous, like daylight shining through missing tiles, or pools of water on the floorboards, which was a relief. But a better examination would have to wait for when someone (probably me) had swept away all the hanging cobwebs and their occupants. I was sure there would be woodworm, too—what old house doesn’t have woodworm?—though I knew that few actually fall down from it.

Sorting the attics would be a huge task, but also a sort of treasure hunt too, for goodness knows what I might find! I would save it as a treat for when I had the rest of the house clean and tidy.

Locking the attic door behind me, I went back down and took a look at the minor family portraits hanging in the gloom of the minstrels’ gallery, including that supposed to be Alys, then checked out the Long Room. You could see the light patches on the wall where the paintings that were stacked in the Blue Bedroom and the Stubbs had once hung, but I didn’t think any of the other pictures and engravings that were left looked to be of any great value—though if they were, at least the very dirty windows had served to keep most of the sunlight out of the room. I added blinds to my list, but until that could be managed the shutters ought to be completely closed in here when the light was full on the back of the house to prevent any further fading. The furnishings were a mix of chairs in various periods, a
love seat and two glass-topped curio tables, containing an assortment of items, including a couple of rather amateur miniatures, a porcelain snuffbox, three carved whale teeth, a bit of netsuke carving and a glass perfume bottle shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

Flanking the door at the far end were two horrid plinths of reddish mottled stone, looking like cheap salami. On one was a marble bust of a hawk-nosed man wearing a lace collar and with his hair in a shoulder-length bob, and on the other reposed a gruesomely detailed small hand carved in alabaster, probably Victorian. I had watched an old black-and-white horror film in the servants’ sitting room at Blackwalls once, about someone’s chopped-off hand that had run about strangling people, all on its own. I wished now that I hadn’t, and I was just wondering which dark corner of the house I could banish the hand to, when Mrs Lark suddenly popped her curly grey head out of the door to the East Wing.

‘Thought I heard you! Do you want to come through now and take a peek at our rooms?’

The Larks’ suite was immaculately clean, but very shabby, and seemed to have been furnished with old cast-offs from the main house, though a personal touch was supplied by hundreds of cat figurines in every possible pose, and an awful lot of crocheted tablemats.

‘Are you a cat lover, Mrs Lark? I don’t remember seeing one in the house.’

‘I am that! But Sir William couldn’t stand them, so we’ve never had one at Winter’s End,’ she said sadly.

‘Really? Well,
I’ve
no objection, except that I’m not keen on them in kitchens, walking around on the worktops and table. Would you like to get one?’ I asked, and her face lit up.

‘Oh, I’d
love
to, Sophy, if you’re sure you don’t mind? I’ll make sure it doesn’t go anywhere it shouldn’t.’

‘That’s OK then. I like cats, I’m just more of a dog person, myself.’

‘I’ll get Jonah to take me to the animal rescue centre and pick out a nice kitten as soon as I’ve got a minute,’ she said happily, and then showed me through the rest of their little flatlet, which included a rather Spartan bathroom.

‘So, is there anything that you would like that you haven’t got?’ I asked.

‘A shower over the bath and one of them heated towel rails,’ she suggested hopefully.

I made a note of it. ‘I’ll have them installed as soon as I can afford it. Anything else? Painting and decorating, perhaps?’

‘That would be lovely. Jonah put all the wallpaper up himself, but that’s years ago now.’

‘If you’d like to choose the paint and paper, and let me know, we should be able to get on and have that done quite quickly.’

‘I’ll do that. I’ve seen some nice wallpaper in
Good Housekeeping
magazine that would look lovely in the bedroom—big pink chrysanthemums. I’ll go and see if I can find it.’

‘It sounds lovely,’ I said, though to be honest, while I could picture rosy, freckled Mrs Lark in such a flowery bower of a bedroom, Jonah, who resembled nothing so much as an amiable rodent, would look quite incongruous. Leaving her searching, I went down the backstairs, meeting Grace on her way up again.

‘We’re nearly out of Harpic,’ she said, by way of greeting. ‘I’ll be making Mr Jack’s bed up now, ready for Saturday.’

‘Thanks, Grace,’ I said and, feeling the now-familiar
frisson
of nerves, guilt and excitement run through me at the thought of seeing Jack again, carried on down the stairs.

At the bottom I paused, then decided to leave the teashop area for another day. Nor did I need to bother much at this
point with the rest of the rooms downstairs in the East Wing, though I did glance in the cellars. They were dry and whitewashed (though in need of a new coat), with the boiler ticking away in one, and another filled with half-empty wine racks and shelves of dusty bottles.

In the kitchen Aunt Hebe had just come in and was washing her earthy hands at the sink, and she asked me, slightly acidly, how my inventory was progressing.

‘Fine. Mostly the place is just in need of a really good clean through,’ I replied, adding Harpic to the huge list in the notebook while I remembered. ‘I can’t wait to start!’

‘Then your zeal is admirable and should be encouraged, to which end I will give you a big jar of my own beeswax polish. A little goes a long way, with a bit of elbow grease. I’ll put some out on the cleaning-room table. Oh, and I’ve just seen Seth,’ she added, in tones that led me to believe she had not enjoyed the encounter. ‘He says he is coming at two to show you round the garden.’

I wiped a grubby hand across my face and glanced at the clock, amazed at the time. ‘I’d better have a quick wash, then, and have something to eat before he does.’

But just as I reached my room Anya phoned, and by the time I’d updated her on what was happening, washed off the outer layer of filth and returned to the kitchen, Seth was already sitting there, wolfing down ham sandwiches from a platter in the middle of the table.

He seemed to be arguing with Aunt Hebe, for she was saying tartly, ‘
William
never minded if I took one of the gardeners off for a couple of hours to clean out the hens or do some heavy lifting and digging, and I’m sure dear Jack would have no objection.’

Mrs Lark smiled at me and placed an empty plate opposite Seth, so I sat and helped myself to a sandwich. It was
good thick ham, with English mustard that made my eyes water slightly, just the way I like it.

‘I wouldn’t mind either, if you told me
when
you wanted them and didn’t just hijack them when they are doing something else!’ Seth snapped. ‘We’re in the middle of filling in the lily pond on the bottom terrace and Derek’s about to start rebuilding the collapsed retaining wall, and we need to get on with it while the weather is good.’

I put in my four penn’orth. ‘Losing one of the gardeners for an hour or so occasionally isn’t going to cause the whole thing to grind to a halt, is it?’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ Aunt Hebe said, looking at me with approval.

‘In fact…’ I took another bite, chewed and swallowed, feeling Seth’s green eyes resting on me coldly, ‘in fact, we are all going to have to work as one team from now on, and multitask—as you will find out if you come to the meeting in the Great Hall the day after tomorrow.’

He pushed his plate away and leaned back, folding his arms. ‘I see. The old order changeth…’