Night Music (41 page)

He followed her downstairs and out into the sunshine. The sun was hot and he regretted wearing a jacket almost as soon as they set foot outside. He followed her to the scaffolding, swatting vainly at flies.

‘That chimney is going to be capped,’ she said, pointing. ‘At least, I think it’s that one. And there’s a new drainage pipe under here . . . or it might be there . . .’ She listed some other works, most of which were impossible to quantify.

He felt sudden pity for her. Her house was being brought down around her ears, and she was sitting in the midst of it all, apparently unaware of what was going on.

‘So, what do you think?’ she said, perhaps catching his solemn expression.

‘Mrs Delancey,’ he began, ‘I . . .’ He was lost for words.

They stared at the cracked brickwork, the piles of rubble and bags of cement.

She regarded him carefully. ‘You think it’s awful, don’t you?’ She didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘Oh, God, I do know it’s a mess. I suppose . . . I suppose when you live with it you stop seeing quite what a disaster it all is.’

She looked crushed, and Nicholas fought the urge to comfort her. He could see in her then what had captivated Laura’s husband. She was a girl-woman, whose air of vulnerability demanded that he protect her. Inadvertently she would bestow on any man the sheen of a suit of armour.

‘So, what should I do?’ She had painted on a brave smile.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it might be helpful if I outlined what I thought was wrong. If you really want me to.’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I need to know.’

‘Okay. Let’s start with the roof . . .’

Matt watched through his windscreen as the man showed Isabel his notebook, then pointed past the scaffolding at the back of the house to the point where the ridge tiles met the chimney stack. At first he had thought he might be a musician, then perhaps a teacher – there were so few men round here who wore suits – but now he was apparently discussing Matt’s house, Matt’s work. And from the shaking of his head, and Isabel’s tense expression, what he was saying was not complimentary.

Matt placed the little jewel box in his pocket and climbed out of the van. He closed the door quietly and walked closer, taking care to remain partially hidden by the trees. It was no one from the council. He knew almost everyone in the building regulations department. This man was well spoken, unfamiliar. A touch of bookishness about him, like a professor.

‘Structurally, something has become weakened here,’ the man was saying, gesturing at the wall. ‘We haven’t had a particularly dry summer, or a wet winter, and the crack looks fairly new so I assume that it was caused by the building work.’

‘The building work?’ Isabel’s voice was shocked.

‘I’m afraid so. Has there been much knocking around inside? It looks like it’s taken a bashing.’

She half laughed, a mirthless sound. ‘Well, you’ve seen it all. So much has gone on inside, and I wasn’t always keeping track.’

Matt’s heart beat an uncomfortably vigorous tattoo. What the hell was the man trying to do?

‘I can’t say much about the drainage and sewage, but obviously the bathroom’s unfinished. The kitchen is completely unmodernised. But these are cosmetic. The master bedroom is the only room that appears to have been renovated to any kind of standard, but there you have the damaged wall . . . There’s evidence of damp, and possibly dry rot in the east wing. I took the liberty of removing a piece of skirting-board and I’m afraid it warrants further investigation. I suspect death-watch beetle under the stairs. And you only seem to have half of a hot-water system – some of the pipework is incomprehensible in its layout.’

‘Are you saying all this is because of our builder?’

The man in the suit seemed to consider his response. He tucked his notepad under his arm. ‘No. I think the house was in a terrible state to begin with. But it’s still in a terrible state, and your builder may, purposely or otherwise, have worsened that.’

Isabel’s eyes widened. ‘Purposely?’ she repeated.

Matt could take no more. He burst out of the woods and strode towards the man. ‘What the hell are you telling her? Who the hell are you?’ he shouted. ‘What lies are you telling her?’

He felt Isabel’s hand on his arm. ‘Matt, please—’ She grimaced at the tall man, who didn’t notice.

He was looking at Matt as though he was sizing him up. As though he were superior to him. ‘You’re Matt McCarthy?’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

The man didn’t answer, just stared at him, which enraged Matt even more. ‘What do you think you’re doing coming here and telling Isabel lies? Eh? I heard you! I heard every bloody lie! You don’t know anything about this house or what I’ve done here! Anything!’

The man didn’t seem frightened of him. Instead he looked at Matt with unmistakable contempt. ‘I’ve been telling Mrs Delancey the truth about what has been done to this house. And I can tell you, Mr McCarthy, that I heard tales of what you’d done here long before I saw it.’

‘Tales of what he’d done here?’ Isabel echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

A mist descended and Matt was yelling now, roaring. He flailed, preparing to take a swing at the pompous, besuited intruder. ‘You think you know, do you? You think you know about this house?’

Isabel was pleading with him to calm down, he could smell her faint perfume as she tried to pull him back – but even that could not stop him.

Laura was in the garden, deadheading roses, when she heard Matt raging, a harsh, ugly sound. Then another man’s voice, calmer. And a woman’s cry, tinged with fear. Laura’s stomach churned. Nicholas had told him.

‘Mum?’ Anthony’s face, still bleary with sleep, appeared at the window. ‘What’s going on?’

Laura looked blankly at him. Then she dropped her secateurs and, with the dog following her, walked and then began to run towards the Spanish House.

The Delancey woman was standing between them, braced, as if waiting for another blow. Nicholas’s handkerchief was pressed to his nose. Blood was trickling down his face and spattering his pale blue shirt. Matt was bellowing at him, his mouth almost frothing, his speech all but incomprehensible. Around them, the bucolic scenery threw the ugliness of their actions, their voices, into sharp relief. Oh, Lord, Laura thought. What have I done?

‘You’re not wanted here!’ Matt howled. ‘Now, go away before I really hurt you!’

‘Matt?’

He stepped back as Laura approached, turned to face her.

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you to find out like this.’

Her husband was unrecognisable as the cool, distant figure of this morning: he was wild-eyed and radiated a kind of loose energy. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said.

‘Laura, don’t—’ Nicholas began.

But Isabel Delancey interrupted. ‘Is this true? What he said?’ she asked Matt. ‘That all this time you wanted the house for yourself? Is that why you’ve been purposely damaging it?’

It was the first time Laura had ever seen Matt look truly shaken.

‘No,’ he protested. ‘No – it wasn’t like that. I wanted the house to be beautiful.’

‘Huh! You’ve knocked it to pieces,’ said Nicholas, indignantly. ‘You’ve made a complete dog’s dinner of it.’

‘I was renovating it!’

‘There’s virtually nothing left to renovate! I don’t know how the ruddy place is still standing!’

‘All this time?’ Isabel’s voice resonated with shock. ‘Your jokes and your advice and your help and your bags of croissants . . . and all the time you just wanted us gone?’

Matt had paled. ‘No, Isabel.’ Laura flinched as her husband stepped towards the woman. ‘No . . . it wasn’t like that. Not by the end.’ He cast around, as if seeking evidence. ‘The master bedroom was a labour of love. There is truth, beauty in that room. You saw the effort I put into it.’

‘How can you say that? You knocked a great hole in it! Like a madman!’ She mimed it for them. ‘I couldn’t stop you.’

‘But that was because of Byron,’ he yelled. ‘Byron shouldn’t be in that room.’

Laura struggled to understand. None of this made any sense.

‘Okay,’ Nicholas interrupted. ‘Let’s move this on.’ He had recovered his composure. He mopped his lip with the bloodied handkerchief. ‘This is obviously an unusual situation. I would suggest, Mrs Delancey, that you work out what you’re going to do about the house as a matter of urgency.’

‘But we have nothing left. He’s taken all our money.’

‘It wasn’t just me,’ Matt pleaded. ‘I wasn’t straight with you at the beginning, but I did my best to put it right.’

‘Mrs Delancey, I suggest—’

‘Don’t listen to him, Isabel. Everything I’ve done wrong I’ll put right. Haven’t I always looked after you?’

There was a long silence. Laura was staring at Isabel, whose expression was of despair.

‘You have ruined us,’ she said quietly. ‘I trusted you and you have ruined this house.’

Almost before she knew what she was doing Laura stepped forward. ‘I will sort it out.’ Her voice cut into the air. ‘I will pay for whatever damage Matt has done. I will personally cover whatever it takes to put it right.’ She could not bring herself to apologise to the woman, but she would not be indebted to her either.

‘There is an alternative,’ Nicholas interrupted. ‘You might consider selling it to me. The condition of the house, such as it is, is not an issue for me.’

‘Selling it?’ Isabel Delancey frowned.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d be glad of the chance to talk to you about it.’

‘But why would the council want to buy this house?’ She seemed nonplussed.

‘The council?’

Nobody spoke. Then she said, ‘You mean Byron didn’t ring you?’

‘Who is Byron?’ Nicholas asked blankly. ‘My name is Nicholas Trent. I’m a property developer.’

Isabel Delancey stared at him. ‘A property developer? So you came here today because you wanted this house.’ Suddenly realisation dawned. ‘Oh, my God – you
all
want this house.’ She backed away from them, her hands over her mouth. ‘All this time . . .’ she said, almost laughing now. ‘Is there anybody else? Someone in the village, perhaps? The Cousins? The milkman? All this time you all wanted the house!’

‘Actually, no,’ Laura said slowly, looking at Matt. And then, with certainty, ‘I don’t want it any more.’

Matt spun round. She saw him take in what she had said, saw his frown of incomprehension as Nicholas smiled at her, a smile filled with history. She saw Matt recall her apology, Nicholas’s use of her name. Her husband looked at her and, unable to meet the intensity of his gaze, she turned away. Anthony, behind her, was staring at Nicholas, his face unreadable.

This is it, thought Laura. There is no going back.

‘Here is my card,’ said Nicholas, urbanely, pulling one from his inside pocket and handing it to Isabel Delancey as he moved closer to Laura. ‘I appreciate that this has been an odd morning. But have a think about what I’ve said, Mrs Delancey. I’m sure we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.’

Twenty-three

The slender hazel switches were no more than seven years old – you could use them as hurdles or thatching spars; he would save the older, sturdier ones for walking-sticks or hedge stakes. He had gathered a small pile of sweet chestnut, for cleft rails and stakes, but the returns on hazel coppicing were higher, and Byron had agreed to restore this ancient woodland almost entirely to hazel. He trod carefully, examining young shoots for signs of vermin. People thought all he was doing was cutting things down, destroying them, but native hardwood trees and shrubs that were cut in this way could produce shoots that grew over a foot in a week. A coppiced tree would live many times longer than one that hadn’t been cut back. Byron was sure there was a life lesson in that, but he was damned if he could see it.

He moved, surefooted, through the trees with another armful, to where the woodland opened on to the road. People often went back to the old ways, and it was no different with coppicing. Big money in garden furniture, Frank had said earlier that morning, observing Byron working. Or rustic fencing. They loved that in the garden centres now. Any leftovers you could use for charcoal. There were grants available to pay for restoring coppice woodland. All the wildlife trusts were pushing landowners to do it.

Occasionally, he thought of Matt, and tension crept into his neck and shoulders, his jaw clenched, and he would have to breathe deeply. Matt McCarthy had almost driven him away from his home, almost driven Isabel from hers. He had wondered several times whether to tell her about the rat, about Matt’s ruthlessness when it came to getting what he wanted. But she had been so happy the previous day, as if she were finally daring to believe in something good. He hadn’t wanted to spoil it for her. His mobile rang.

‘It’s Isabel.’

‘Hi,’ he said, unable to disguise his pleasure at hearing her voice. And then again, trying to moderate it, ‘Hi.’

‘I wondered how it was going. Your work, I mean.’ She paused. ‘Thierry asked me to ring.’

‘Doing well.’ He glanced at the area of brambles he had cleared. ‘Hard work, but . . . good.’ His hands were criss-crossed with scratches.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s nice up here. Near the sea. Feels more like a holiday than work.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘And Frank, the owner, he’s been great. He’s offered me more work.’

‘Oh . . . Wonderful.’

‘Yeah. I was pleased. How’s it going with you?’

It was then that he realised she sounded strained. He had watched three cars go by before she spoke again.

‘I didn’t know whether to tell you this but we – we’ve had a bit of a scene. A man came, some kind of property developer, who wants to buy the house. Matt turned up unexpectedly and picked a fight with him.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, we’re fine. The developer man took a punch, but then Laura turned up and it cooled down.’ Then she added quietly, ‘Byron, I think Matt’s having some kind of breakdown.’

‘Matt
McCarthy
?’

‘He – he’s not himself.’

Byron said nothing.

‘In fact, he seems almost . . . disturbed.’

I bet he does, thought Byron, bitterly. The idea of someone else taking that house from him. ‘Don’t worry about him,’ he said, more harshly than he intended. ‘He’ll always look after himself.’