Netherwood (31 page)

But then the earl said, ‘Do you have half an hour to come with me and look at something?’

Eve hadn’t expected anything other than a kind but firm dismissal. She stared at him, uncomprehending.

‘I have an idea, you see.’ He stood and, walking around the table, took hold of the back of Eve’s chair for her to stand,
just as if she were a guest at one of his famous dinner parties. ‘A solution that might serve us both equally.’

They walked to the door. Eve hoped they might catch the housemaid in the act, but she was gone, although she glimpsed Maudie Staniforth crossing an upstairs landing with an armful of dresses; she would have waved, but it seemed that different rules applied here. No eye contact, let alone anything so bold as a greeting. Apart from that brief encounter, she saw no one else as they made their way through the great house, and Eve was observed only by the grave and disapproving subjects of countless ancestral portraits as she walked with Lord Hoyland – at his shoulder, not a few steps behind – out of the morning room, down the plushly carpeted corridors, through the cavernous marble hall – she was glad then that her clogs were at home and not showing her up with the racket they’d make on this unforgiving floor – and back into the outside world. Two footmen attended them as they descended the steps and settled back into the handsome leather seats of the waiting Daimler. Oh, Arthur. If you could see me now, thought Eve.

The motion of the car, the smell of petrol and the bitter, unfamiliar taste of coffee all combined to make Eve feel sick on the journey through Netherwood. She preferred Sol Windross’s cart as a means of transport; even taking into account the swaying and the old man’s stink, it was still preferable to this unnatural, hemmed-in feeling and the violent lurch every time they had to stop. Lord Hoyland had taken the wheel and Atkins was in the front passenger seat, which seemed an odd business; perhaps the chauffeur’s function, she thought, would be to wait with the car when they reached their destination, keep the urchins off the bonnet.

The earl had a lot to say, shouting at her over his shoulder
but fairly comprehensively thwarted by the noise of the engine. Eve strained to listen. She only picked up about one word in four, but what she heard made her worried that he had the wrong idea entirely; they were heading for Mitchell’s Flour Mill, he said. She knew it was a grand old building but it was far too big for her purposes. What Eve had had in mind, if anything, was one of the pit workshops down near New Mill Colliery. One of those, kitted out with a couple of stoves, would do the job. She held her peace, though, partly out of sheer nerves at the situation she found herself in, but mostly because she feared that if she opened her mouth she’d vomit all over the Daimler’s immaculate interior.

In King Street she perked up, adjusting to the novelty and enjoying the attention the motor car attracted. Lilly Pickering was drifting down the street with a line of little children following her like unkempt ducklings. She looked stick-thin and almost weightless, as if the only thing tethering her to the pavement were the bags of shopping she carried in each hand. Eve gave her a cheery wave and had the very great pleasure of seeing her neighbour drop both bags in disbelief as Eve Williams sailed on by in a fancy car, driven by the Earl of Netherwood.

‘You see,’ she thought she heard the earl shout, ‘it’s a damnable shame to have it go to rack and ruin.’

Eve nodded, hoping she was picking up the gist. They turned left into Mill Street, startling the baker’s old horse with an unexpected explosion from the rear end of the vehicle. Atkins and the earl didn’t bat an eyelid, so Eve presumed it was perfectly normal, but she and the horse exchanged looks of sympathy as they passed. At the corner with Mitchell’s Snicket the earl slowed to a crawl to negotiate the turn, then approached the flour mill at the same snail’s pace. They gazed at the building, and it gazed back at them, with sad sash windows
that were either smashed or spotted with bird muck – the pigeons had moved in when the humans had moved out.

They drove right under the arched entrance at its centre and into a cobbled yard at the back, where the earl made some adjustment and the motor car spluttered and wheezed to a halt, though the engine continued to tick over.

‘Splendid!’ he said, clapping his gloved hands together. He jumped out of the car and sprinted round to Eve’s side to hand her out. I could get used to this, she thought, a hand every time I step up or down.

‘Very good, Atkins, take her back,’ he said.

For an awkward moment, Eve thought he meant her to leave, but it turned out he meant the car because the driver simply slid over into the seat vacated by the earl and drove it – her – out of the courtyard.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ the earl said, turning to Eve. ‘I like to walk home, work up an appetite for luncheon, what!’

‘No, sir, not at all,’ she said. ‘It’s nobbut five minutes for me.’ She flushed a little, remembering she was speaking to an earl, not to a nobody like herself. ‘I mean, it’s no distance,’ she said. It still seemed all wrong, speaking to Lord Hoyland in this familiar way, but by his expression, his tone of voice and everything he did, he positively encouraged it.

‘Quite, quite. Now. Look,’ he said, turning to face the rear of the building. Eve turned too, seeing it from this angle for the first time.

‘Oh,’ she said.

Even accounting for the effects of neglect, it was an extraordinary sight, so different to the front of the building that Eve felt disorientated, as though she was suddenly somewhere other than Netherwood. Its principal charm, and what had temporarily taken Eve’s breath away, was a pretty colonnade which ran the length of the ground floor. Above it was a double row of arched windows, each decorated by ornate pediments, and
the whole was topped off by an elaborate cornice. Wisteria, still in bloom thanks to the late summer, dripped languidly from the columns of the colonnade, and had begun to climb above it on to the mellow stone wall.

Eve sighed. She wondered why she’d never seen it before. This lovely place, sitting here in Netherwood, churning out flour.

‘It’s grand is that,’ she said.

The earl laughed. ‘Couldn’t agree more. My old father knew what he was at when it came to buildings. This place is, what, seventy years old? But it could be much earlier, don’t you think? Italian influence you see – all the rage at the time. Harking back to the Renaissance.’

He might have been speaking Swahili for all Eve understood, but she recognised a lovely building when she saw one.

‘I thought it was nice from t’front,’ she said. ‘But this is – well it’s beautiful. It doesn’t look English.’

‘Exactly!’ said Lord Hoyland. ‘My father wanted to create the same Italianate feel that Nash was producing, you see. Couldn’t do it at the front, with the gantry and what-not. But the back of the building’ – he swept his arm in an arc – ‘was another matter.’

‘But it was just a flour mill,’ she said.

‘Yes, well, he was a whimsical fellow. Shall we look inside?’

The brief lecture on architecture over, the earl strode purposefully forwards, looking back at her with a boyish grin to bid her follow. She saw Tobias in him at that moment, and briefly but earnestly thanked God she was at this abandoned building with the father not the son, before trotting along after him.

Together they toured the three floors, sending indignant birds flapping out into the sky and leaving footprints in the carpet
of dust. There were very few rooms considering the size of the building, but they were lofty and wide and full of light. The workings were still in place of course: the massive gristmill, great discs of stone laid one on top of the other, pulleys and hoists to lift the grain, hoppers and chutes to send the ground flour to the sack floor – it was all still there, redolent of another more productive era in the building’s recent past. The earl talked as they walked and his plan, still very much in its formative stages, was that the building should be completely stripped of the trappings of its milling days and be fully refurbished at his expense. Then, when restoration was complete, it would be equipped with ranges, work surfaces and sinks with running cold water. These latter items would also be paid for by the estate, on the understanding that 50 per cent of Eve’s business would then be owned by the earl. She would pay a weekly rental for the premises, the amount yet to be settled by Mr Blandford – who of course was ignorant of any of this, but would be apprised of the situation as soon as he – the earl – got home. He rattled all this off nineteen to the dozen and she followed him, listening, although his ambitious scheme combined with the dusty half-light of the interior enhanced her increasing conviction that she must be asleep, and none of this was really happening. Except she was hot in her red jacket and the new boots were chafing at each heel – she’d rubbed blisters there, she was sure – and these uncomfortable, human details were not the stuff of dreams.

‘What do you think?’ he was saying now, looking almost anxious, as if everything hinged on her good opinion.

‘It’s big,’ she said stupidly.

‘Yes, yes,’ he waved her words away like so much chaff. ‘Bigger than you had in mind, doubtless. But let’s say you only use the ground floor for now? The upper floors might be let to other businesses, perhaps. Or they could be converted to dwellings, you know, apartments – very continental, what!’

His ‘what!’ came out like a little bark, and she wished he wouldn’t do it. It reminded her of the little Jack Russell that Stanley Eccles went about with. Plus, she didn’t know the correct response to it, though it seemed to be an exclamation rather than a question, because he was off again.

‘I see this as an opportunity, not a favour, you see. This lovely old place, restored to glory.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise glory. Only pies.’

He grinned his Tobias grin. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Williams, but glorious is the only adjective for your raised pies – no, no,’ he held up a hand to stop her modest protestations, ‘credit where it’s due. You have reinvented the product, my dear. And imagine what else you might do, with the space and the facilities to achieve it, what!’

There it was again, but she was ready for it this time and took it in her stride.

‘Lord ’oyland, you’re a very, very generous man, and I would be honoured to move my business ’ere’ – his face was alight with pleasure, and even with the gulf of class and wealth between them, she felt excessively fond of him – ‘and thank you.’ Her words seemed inadequate; a hug and a kiss would be going too far, but it’s what she felt like doing.

‘Marvellous, marvellous,’ he said. ‘Do you know, I feel rather invigorated myself at the prospect.’ He held out a hand which she took, and they shook. ‘I shall return to the estate office now, have a chat with Absalom’ – I wish I could be a fly on the wall, she thought – ‘and then we’ll draw something up in writing. It’ll be a few weeks, of course, before the building is habitable, but time flies, you’ll be in before you know it. I’ll leave you here, let you have a wander on your own. Watch these floorboards,’ he stamped one foot by way of illustration. ‘Some of them feel a trifle shaky.’

And he marched off and out, all purpose and energy. She waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps outside,
and then she hugged herself tight and spun wildly so her skirts flew out around her, whipping up the dust from the floor and sending it dancing in the shafts of light and she laughed for the sheer joy of it all. Then steadying herself and taking deep, calming breaths, she did as he’d suggested and walked solemnly around the ground floor, trying – and failing – to see herself there. She stood at one of the front windows, looking out over Mitchell’s Snicket. There were shoppers to-ing and fro-ing in Mill Street, going about their workaday business. Eve wanted to climb the stairs to the gantry and stop them in their tracks, shouting out her good fortune. Instead she chose the more sober option of walking back outside into the courtyard to sit on a step, where she unlaced and removed her boots and massaged her damaged heels for two minutes before walking home to Beaumont Lane in her stockinged feet.