Grace Hardie (3 page)

Whilst well aware of his feelings, Midge saw no reason to let them spoil a friendship. She had told him long ago that she would have to choose between marriage and a teaching career, and the governors who appointed her to her present post had made it clear that a married headmistress would be unacceptable. But in all honesty she had to admit to herself that the choice had not been too difficult. She had liked Will from the moment of their first meeting, enjoying his conversation and his company. But she had never felt for him the kind of overwhelming love which might have tempted her to waste her education and abandon her ambition. Occasionally she wished that he would find someone else to marry, so that she need not feel guilty at depriving him of a family life. At other times she delighted in the warmth of his greeting, and her eyes sparkled with as much pleasure as his own.

‘Mr Hardie has an outside appointment,' Will told her. He would not use his employer's Christian name in the presence of the counter clerks. ‘But he may not have left yet. I'll send someone out to see.'

Midge sat down to wait as the messenger set off at a run
for the warehouse. Within only a few moments her brother burst through the door. ‘Midge!'

‘I couldn't wait,' she told him. ‘It's so good to see you safely back after such a long time. But I won't keep you if you have a meeting arranged.'

‘The appointment is with an architect. I hope to persuade him to design a house for us. We're due to meet at the site.' Gordon looked at her bicycling clothes and sturdy footwear with approval. ‘I propose to go there by bicycle for the exercise. Ever since I returned home I've been sitting at a desk. Would you care to come too?'

‘Certainly I would.' They set off together across Magdalen Bridge and took the old road leading towards London. Although Midge was fit, the steepness of the hill which led up towards Shotover proved too much for her. Gordon dismounted to walk at her side.

‘Did Lucy tell you about the land?' he asked.

‘Lucy had no time to tell me anything. I came straight to see you.'

‘It's a gift from the old marquess. That's to say, he gave the money to buy it.'

‘Lucy told me that they'd been reconciled before he died, and that he'd been very generous.'

‘His generosity was actually directed at Grace. Don't know why. The old man set up a trust fund. All the money has to be spent within three years on buying or building a house which will become Grace's sole property on her twenty-first birthday. Lucy and I and the boys will be graciously allowed to live in it until then!'

His tone of voice was light enough, but Midge could guess that he found it humiliating to have been excluded from managing his daughter's affairs.

‘So you'll have to shoulder all the running costs?'

‘There's no problem there,' said Gordon. ‘The House of Hardie can afford to keep the family in greater style
than any of us has ever bothered about. The only thing that annoyed me was that Lucy wasn't allowed to wait for my return before buying the land. Her grandfather sent his land agent to help her choose, but I'm not sure, all the same, that she's got it right. We'll have to see what the architect says.'

By now they had left behind them the stone walls and cottages of Headington Quarry, and arrived in unspoiled country. The old road continued up to the summit of Shotover Hill, but Gordon indicated that they should turn right along a rough track.

‘This first stretch of woodland belongs to one of the colleges,' he said. ‘But the bridlepath is a public right of way, and leads us to our boundary here.' He leaned his bicycle against a stone wall, next to a five-barred gate.

Midge followed his example and studied the land in front of them with interest. A wide swathe of neglected woodland clothed the lower slope of the hill. So thick was the undergrowth and so rampant the brambles and ivies which clung to every tree that it was impossible to see more than a few yards in that direction. On the other side, looking up the hill, the view was more open. The ground near the gate was overgrown with scrub, but as it rose higher it opened into rough grassland. She had no time, though, to consider the site more carefully, for at that moment she saw someone walking down the hill towards them: a tall, fair-haired man of about thirty, wearing a green tweed knickerbocker suit.

‘Ah, good; you've been having a look round already!' exclaimed Gordon. ‘Midge, this is Mr Patrick Faraday. Mr Faraday, my sister, Miss Hardie. We'll go up to the top.' He opened the gate and strode ahead through a spinney, over the rough scrub and up the slope of the hill. Midge, who could not match his long stride, was unable to keep
up, and grateful for Mr Faraday's politeness in remaining at her side.

‘My brother has only lately returned from an expedition to the Himalayas,' she explained. ‘After surviving landslides and earthquakes, it's not to be expected that he should be held up by mere nettles or brambles. And he's accustomed to lead a caravan of sure-footed mules rather than a townswoman like myself.'

‘This may be tame by Himalayan standards,' commented the architect. ‘But as a site for a house and gardens it must be considered very rough. And steep. There will be problems.'

As though it had occurred to Gordon at the same moment that the unkempt state of the land might give a wrong impression, he came to a halt and waited for the other two to catch up before making an announcement. ‘My wife,' he said to Mr Faraday, ‘is a granddaughter of the late Marquess of Ross. She expects the best.'

Midge, glancing at her companion, saw his eyes flicker with surprise, and was able to read his thoughts. Presumably he already had some idea for the kind of house which would be suitable for a vintner in a prosperous way of business. But a family connection of a marquess …! Any architect would be familiar with at least the outside appearance of the great house at Castlemere. No doubt Mr Faraday's head was now swimming with visions of a masterpiece on a palatial scale. A Palladian villa, a Jacobean manor house, a French château? Terraces, double staircases rising from marble entrance halls, libraries and ballrooms and dining rooms to seat fifty guests. His unconscious sigh gave all his hopes away.

Gordon was as quick as his sister to realize the effect of what he had said. ‘Within reason, of course,' he added.

‘Of course.' Mr Faraday took any disappointment like a man. ‘The slope has a south-west aspect. You'll want to
build well below the brow of the hill, I imagine, to give the house protection from northerly winds.'

Gordon shook his head. ‘Come just a little higher,' he said.

Midge and the architect joined him at a point from which it was possible to survey the whole generous parcel of land. Seen from above, the grassy slope which they had just climbed gave the impression that it had once been terraced, but that over several hundred years the contours of the flat strips had been blunted by rain and wind. For the first time, too, she could see the movement of water running along the valley at the foot of the woodlands. ‘Is the stream yours?' she asked.

‘Yes. And the flatter area on its further side, towards the city. Now then.' Gordon turned towards the architect and pointed down towards a place where the ground appeared to have been scooped away, creating an area of grassland flat enough to suggest that it had provided the base for some earlier habitation, perhaps many centuries ago.

‘I've no doubt you see that as the ideal position for the house,' he said, ‘And so it would be – for any house except the one which is to be built for the benefit of my daughter's health. She is to live not less than three hundred feet above sea level. The terms of the trust are specific on this. So we must build here, above this beech tree.'

‘Are there any other special requirements?' The architect was careful not to sound critical.

‘I suggest that a design to enclose three sides of a courtyard would be particularly suitable. We have five children, and there may be more. They could have a wing to themselves, instead of merely a nursery floor. The little girl, Grace, must have a room of her own facing as nearly south as possible. The entertaining rooms could face west, to catch the evening sun, whilst a north aspect would keep
the kitchen quarters cool and provide the best light for a studio. My wife is a talented painter.'

‘And for yourself, Gordon?' asked Midge, knowing that he devoted all his free time to experiments in plant propagation.

‘I shall require a glasshouse – separate from the ones to be used by the gardeners – and a plant room and study next to it. None of that needs to be part of the main house. They could be lower down the hill.'

‘To keep you away from the hurly-burly!' laughed Midge. Spending all her life surrounded by children, she was well aware of the noise they made. She and her brother watched as the architect studied the sun and the land, seeming almost to sniff the air as he tried to get the feel of the atmosphere before taking out his notebook. He looked up for a moment, indicating that he would like to make one point clear before considering the matter further.

‘It's my preference, wherever possible, to use whatever building material is locally available,' he said. ‘In this case it would be the grey stone from Headington Quarry. The choice of material, of course, affects the nature of the design.'

‘Agreed!' Gordon was a businessman, accustomed to taking prompt decisions. ‘I'll put a point to you in return. Money. I'll tell you the situation straight, Mr Faraday, and then you must decide whether it suits you. I don't want you coming to me in a year's time and saying that you thought this and you didn't realize that. I like people to know where they stand – and where I stand.'

He paused; and the architect nodded his head to indicate that he was waiting.

‘I've got a fixed sum available for this enterprise,' Gordon continued. ‘Twenty-six thousand pounds. Quite enough for a fine house, with the land already purchased.
If you undertake the commission, the whole sum will be at your disposal. But not a penny more than that. Everything's to come out of the twenty-six thousand – clearing the land and landscaping and planting it; building the house and decorating it; your own fees, and the cost of putting right all the things that go wrong. I've had good reports of you as someone who works to an estimate. But this may be larger than anything you've set your hand to before. If you think you can't handle it, this is the time to say so. And if you know for a fact that every new house costs ten per cent more than its owner expected, then allow for that before you start.'

Mr Faraday looked first at Midge and then at his client. ‘When a house turns out to cost more than the owner intended or the architect promised,' he said, ‘it's always for the same reason. Because the owner has had a change of mind.'

‘There's a second half to that reason, I'll be bound. The owner changes his mind and the architect doesn't warn him that the changes will be expensive. I know as well as you do, Faraday, that it's the easiest thing in the world to sell a gentleman something he can't afford, because he doesn't choose to enquire the price – and even if he did, he wouldn't know or care whether he has the money to hand. But you and I, who are in the business of knowing the costs of other people's whims, must understand each other from the beginning.'

For a few seconds, in the silence as the two men stared at each other, Midge held her breath. It was none of her business, but she felt an intense wish for Mr Faraday to accept the commission. He was a stranger, and yet she felt in him an unusual quality of sympathy. Not in the sense of compassion, but of understanding. If he agreed to design the house he would in some way, she felt sure, make himself a part of the family, realizing what was needed and
looking at his own plans from inside rather than outside. It was not a notion which she felt able to express clearly in words – but Mr Faraday himself came near to doing it for her.

‘I would be glad of the opportunity to meet the other members of your family, Mr Hardie,' he said. ‘The little girl whose health is to be considered. And in particular, of course, I ought to discuss the needs of the household with your wife. To learn the number of servants she expects to employ, the rooms she requires for special purposes.'

Midge was tempted to clap her hands in delight at the request. It hardly seemed conceivable that Gordon had proposed to commission a house – to be paid for with money from his wife's family – without inviting Lucy to discuss her requirements in detail. Yet the startled expression on his face suggested that he had expected all the decisions to be his own. The grin which Midge was unable to conceal was so easy to interpret that for a moment Mr Faraday's eyes glinted with a shared amusement. But he was quick to bring it under control.

‘Those are small matters, though,' he said. ‘On the main point … Twenty-six thousand. It's a handsome enough sum. Yes, Mr Hardie, I can build you a house. And we shall both be proud of it.'

The two men shook hands on the commission. Midge moved away as they discussed practical arrangements. Then she walked down the hill at her brother's side to reclaim their bicycles, leaving Mr Faraday to explore the land more thoroughly.

‘Lucky little Grace,' she said. ‘I have the feeling that she's going to be given something magnificent.'

Gordon stopped dead and looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Perhaps I was unwise to be so frank with you,' he said. ‘Grace is only one of our children. Such a gift would be hard to explain to the boys. It will be best, I think, if the
terms of the trust are never mentioned again. It's certainly true that the house will belong to Grace one day. But for the next nineteen years there's no necessity for her to know that.'

‘I believe in telling the truth to children,' said Midge.

‘And I believe in not telling them lies. Grace is only two years old. She couldn't possibly understand the situation.'