A Winter’s Tale (48 page)

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582

Jack reappeared at breakfast on Christmas morning, chastened, ingratiating and apologetic, though he tended to avoid my eye and I knew he was still feeling furious and aggrieved.

For the sake of Aunt Hebe we all pretended nothing had happened, even though everyone knew by now that he and I had had a row, and about the ring.

Come to that, my finger was still sore and swollen.

Like me, Anya is not a chatty person early in the day and once Jack had got his normal bounce back again and gone all cheery, I could see her wanting to kill him.

Lucy and Guy were the last to come down, and too wrapped up in each other to notice much at all, so I hoped this was True Love. I know Anya felt exactly the same—we just never thought it would happen.

Lucy was wearing a jewelled crown that had been in her Christmas stocking, and Guy a pirate scarf. Aunt Hebe gave them a slightly puzzled look, but said nothing. She probably thought they were the latest fashions.

We indulged in an orgy of unwrapping in the drawing room, while Charlie disembowelled a doggie stocking of treats on the priceless, if threadbare, rug.

The gifts ranged from the mundane (Jack had bought everyone a box of chocolates, though apparently he and Seth exchange a bottle of whisky every year, in some pointless male ritual), through the unusual (Anya’s recycled tin and paper jewellery and my little patchwork lavender hearts), to the bizarre (Ottie gave everyone a decorative hen, made in Africa from strips of old plastic packaging and twisted wire).

Seth’s, which he’d delivered to the house earlier in a trug, were all small potted plants—except mine, which was a single moss rosebud tied up with a sprig of greenery.

‘He’s cut one of his roses—for
me
?’ I said, amazed.

‘Strictly speaking, he’s cut one of
your
roses, for you,’ Ottie said with a grin. ‘One of the old moss roses does sometimes have a flower or two at Christmas, though it’s not like him to sacrifice it.’

‘No, it isn’t!’ I agreed, stroking the closed petals with one finger to check it was real. ‘What’s this green stuff?’

‘Myrtle,’ Aunt Hebe said, giving me a strange look. ‘Moss roses and myrtle…’

I went to fill a bud vase with water for my rose, which I carried up to my bedroom.

Downstairs everyone was still unwrapping and exclaiming, so I took the opportunity to quietly hand the ring back to Jack. ‘I hope you can get a refund. It looks valuable,’ I whispered, embarrassed. ‘I got soap all over it, but I washed it off.’

‘Thanks,’ he said shortly, pocketing it, then noticing Aunt Hebe’s eye upon us, kissed my cheek and said with a falsely bright smile, ‘Happy Christmas, Sophy!’

He adjusted the blue cashmere scarf that Aunt Hebe had
given him around his neck with a flourish and announced, ‘Now I’m going to take my favourite aunt out for a drive! Come on, Hebe—a bit of fresh air will give us an appetite for dinner.’

‘But it’s starting to snow,’ I pointed out, for though the day had started off clear but freezing, leaden clouds had been gathering and the first flakes had begun to fall.

‘Oh, it won’t come to anything,’ he said confidently, ‘the forecast said a light scattering at the most,’ and Aunt Hebe allowed herself to be persuaded.

After they had gone, I slipped away and went out to the camper van, checking no one was watching me. It had occurred to me that now Jack had checked Alys’s coffer, he wouldn’t bother again, so I could safely return her book to its rightful place—which is what I was longing to do. I just felt it was like putting the last piece of the jigsaw together, the vital bit.

And Alys must have felt the same, for as I locked her treasure away I felt her presence and a soft, satisfied sigh echo through the room.

The other book I replaced in the van. It would be a dead giveaway if Jack saw it lying around the house!

Seth arrived with Mike, and I thanked him for his present and said what a lovely gesture I thought it was. ‘But you shouldn’t have cut one of the roses off, just for me.’

‘It was that or dig the whole bush up,’ he said obscurely, then smiled. ‘But I’m glad you like it.’

Lucy and Anya had found some games in the cupboard next to the drawing-room fireplace, and we’d all been happily playing Cluedo for ages when Jack and Hebe came back and put a damper on things. I could see from Hebe’s expression when she saw me that he had been giving her his version of events, but she also looked worried and upset,
so he’d probably spilled the beans about his financial problems too.

Actually, I did feel a little guilty about those, even though it wasn’t my fault he’d got into such difficulties. But certainly not guilty enough to risk losing Winter’s End by bailing him out.

Ottie glanced at her sister with a worried expression and Seth and Jack didn’t look at each other at all: suddenly, there weren’t so much hidden undercurrents in the room as hidden rip tides. It was quite a relief when Jonah came in to say that dinner was ready.

The table in the morning room had been extended and covered with a crimson cloth, and there were crackers and linen napkins folded into crisp stars by every place setting.

Lucy, Guy and Seth helped to bring the food to the table, and then Jonah and Mrs Lark sat down with us to eat it.

It’s amazing how much good humour can be restored with a turkey dinner, a couple of glasses of good wine, crackers and silly hats.

Anya and I offered to clear away the remains afterwards, while the Larks left for their usual visit to relatives, and Mike and Seth gave us a hand.

Afterwards I took coffee and mince pies through to the library, where Hebe and Ottie were watching television in unusual amity and Lucy and Guy had started to lay out the pieces of an enormous jigsaw on the billiard table, but there was no sign of Jack.

‘He’s gone round to visit friends; he thought it would cheer him up,’ Hebe explained, looking at me reproachfully. ‘And luckily he was right about the snow—the merest sprinkling.’

‘But very pretty, and I’m so stuffed with food I think I need a walk,’ I said quickly, before Ottie asked why Jack
should need cheering up. I could see the question was hovering on her lips.

‘Good idea,’ said Anya, and Mike and Seth said they would come too, though I hadn’t the heart to wake Charlie up and drag him out with us, he looked so blissfully rotund and replete.

We started off down the drive together, the crystalline snow squeaking beneath our boots, but had soon split into two pairs, since Anya and Mike lagged behind us.

Seth and I were silent for quite a while, but after a bit we did start to talk. Well, I say
talk
, but in fact we were soon embroiled in one of our more animated discussions over my suggestion that Derek could repair the lime mortar between the stone flags of the Great Hall floor.

‘Isn’t it enough that you keep borrowing two of my gardeners?’ he snapped. ‘Now you want Derek, too! And I suppose you’ll have them doing anything and everything but gardening, when the house opens to the public.’

‘Well, actually, I did think they might take it in turns to check up on the car park and perhaps both go down after everyone’s gone to pick up any litter and empty the bins. And what do you think about having the sole entrance for cars and coaches on the main road, where just the coaches come in now? It seems silly having separate entrances, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘But we’d have to change the access details in the guidebook before it goes to press.’

‘Ottie’s sculpture will be off to be cast soon. We’ll have to make a base for it in the rose garden before it comes back, I suppose.’

‘Yes—another job for Derek,’ he said gloomily, helping me over a stile.

When I turned to see how far back the others were, I noticed that Mike now had his arm around Anya so that looked promising, anyway.

I skidded a bit on a frozen puddle and Seth took hold of my arm. I was starting to feel a bit
Pride and Prejudice
—and just my luck to be stuck with the tall gloomy one, who wasn’t about to declare his passion for anything other than knot gardens and was in love with the female version of Mr Wickham.

Jack left for London early on Boxing Day morning, so I presumed that, in financial straits or not, he still intended to take off for Barbados.

Without him, apart from Ottie and Hebe having one of their spats early in the day on an undisclosed subject, we were all a lot happier, including Alys, who made her presence known more often, in a friendly sort of way.

Lucy went back to Guy’s flat with him for a couple of days and Anya and I threw ourselves into sorting out the tearoom and gift shop before she left for New Year in the Highlands. I missed her, but she would soon be settling down nearby for good, which was a nice thought. Seth was again coming up most evenings, because we were finalising the arrangements for the opening day, but since it appears that Mel flew off to Barbados after all, I suppose he had nothing better to do. But he does seem remarkably cheerful about it. I don’t know if that is a good sign or not?

Jack phoned Hebe up several times from Barbados, and it turned out that he has persuaded her to sell enough of her stocks and shares to get his firm out of trouble. That’s what Ottie suspected and what made her so mad—and me too, when I found out about it, though sort of guilty as well.

How could he do that to her? Hebe said she didn’t need the money and he would pay her back anyway, so I hoped he would.

*  *  *

‘I’m told by an inside source that Jack will be featuring on a popular TV programme tonight,’ Ottie said, popping in as we were finishing breakfast on New Year’s Day. ‘It’s called
Dodgy Dealings
and I think we should all watch it. It’s at seven, Sophy. I’ll come over.’

‘
Dodgy Dealings
?’ I stared at her. ‘You mean, exposing something he’s done, like a rogue traders programme?’

‘Something like that, I think.’ Ottie, standing by the hotplate, helped herself to a roll and filled it with crisp bacon.

‘I’m sure your information is incorrect,’ Hebe said with conviction, ‘dear Jack wouldn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’ said Ottie indistinctly, through a mouthful of food.

‘No—I mean, there may have been one or two little tiny misunderstandings in the past, but that is all.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Ottie.

We all foregathered in the library early that evening, including Seth, whom Ottie had insisted come over.

Lucy—now back from Guy’s—as though we were about to watch some blockbuster film, had made a huge bowl of popcorn in the kitchen and was passing it around and we each had a glass of sherry or whisky.

The programme started by explaining that they were there to expose people who hadn’t, strictly speaking, done anything illegal, but prospered by taking advantage of the elderly and/or desperate.

They had been contacted by someone who had signed over her house to Jack—an elderly lady, frail and pretty in pink cashmere and pearls. Aunt Hebe exchanged a look with her sister.

‘That’s Clara Cathcart!’ she exclaimed.

Clara explained how she had been widowed and found keeping up the family home very difficult on a reduced
income, yet she had hated the thought of leaving it. When Jack Lewis came along, offering to buy the property for a good price and promising that, as part of the deal, she would be able to live out her days there rent free, it had seemed the answer to her prayers. She trusted him because he was the nephew of a friend of her late husband…

Mrs Cathcart had duly signed, but soon discovered that by not reading the small print of the contract, she was powerless to stop what happened next.

‘I was moved into an estate cottage while my house was “repaired”,’ she said. ‘But actually, instead it was divided up into luxury apartments. When I understood what was going on and protested, Mr Lewis explained that I
would
eventually be moving back into the house—into a flat on the ground floor, in what had once been the kitchen quarters,’ she said indignantly.

‘This fulfilled his contract to house me. Most of the contents of the house had gone into storage…I now had to sort and sell most of my belongings, which no longer fitted into my much reduced living space.’

‘What do you think of your current accommodation, Mrs Cathcart?’ asked the interviewer.

‘The flat is quite nice, but it is not at all what I bargained for. It would have been better to sell up in the first place and move away, rather than live in a small part of what was once my home, now full of strangers.’

I think the correct term for what happened next is a sting.

The production team had set up an elderly female actress as the supposed owner of a small stately mansion somewhere in Cheshire, who had answered one of Jack’s carefully worded advertisements.

We watched film clips of his original visit, where he exuded the sort of charm I already knew he possessed. Then it cut to his second visit, during which he clearly
expected to clinch the deal, with the papers all drawn up ready to sign.