Rumours (33 page)

What was that?

Over there – just flitting out of sight behind the summer house at the edge of the pond? Was someone there? Stella thought she heard a peel of laughter – but it could well have been skylarks or something rusty moving in the stables courtyard.

No! There!

Stella stared. Who
is
that? It was a woman skipping across the lawn like a child. Stella frowned, peered hard after her. Was she seeing things? Who gambols around in full-length peasanty kaftans anywhere – let alone Longbridge? The person had darted out of sight again, off in the direction of the tennis court. Stella looked around her – no sight or sound of the consortium honchos. No Mrs Biggins bashing mats on the lower steps. No Lydia peering haughtily from upper windows like an eagle in an eyrie. No sound of the creak and wince of Art's old wheelbarrow. No one around at all. Stella looked over her shoulder at Lord Freddie who was gazing intently in the very direction that the stranger had just headed.

‘Do you know something I don't know?' Stella asked him.

‘I know everything about this place,' he seemed to reply.

Stella came out from behind the gazebo, leaving her clipboard and mobile phone on the seat within it. She crossed the lawns, calling out a friendly but insistent hullo? every few strides. Something broke the surface of the pond as she walked past and she glanced at the concentric circles but saw only a fat frog sitting on a lily pad; so still, so glossy, so perfect, he looked as if he was made of the same plastic as a garden gnome.

That
was
laughter.

But there was nobody on the tennis courts.

‘Hullo?' Stella called. She could hear something from beyond the yew hedge, over in the little orchard with the short, wizened old apple trees rising up from the ground like gnarled claws. It was laughter, unmistakably. She went through the arch, hewn from the hedge, and then she simply stood and gawped. There, with gay abandon, a woman not much older than Stella was swinging on the old tyre swing. Her hair was long, hitting against her back like a thick bead curtain as she swung to and from. Her long dress was tie-dyed in every imaginable shade of blue – bursts of purple and explosions of indigo, blooms of lilac, spatters of sapphire, a sprinkling of aqua. She looked as though she'd been dipped in the clearest sea and the brightest sky. Barefoot. She was barefoot. And she was calling to Stella.

‘Heidi! Heidi Girl!'

Stella automatically raised a hand in a bewildered wave.

‘Come here, Heidi Girl!'

You look more like Heidi than me, thought Stella as, tentatively, she walked over. You with your twinkle toes and your peasanty frock.

‘Heidi Girl – hullo.'

‘Hullo,' said Stella who could see, close up, that the woman's hair was a mat of long golden dreadlocks varying in girth from snake skinny to great cords like those scooping away the curtains in Lydia's bedroom. ‘I'm not Heidi,' said Stella. ‘I'm Stella.'

Still the woman swung, quite vigorously, laughing – her head tipped back, legs extended, toes pointed, arms outstretched, body practically horizontal. Oh God – I know you're in a tyre, but don't let go. The woman soared back and forth like a benevolent angel. She let the tyre slow itself down and then, with a slither and a leap, she was standing on the grass next to Stella.

‘Heidi Girl!' Her eyes danced. She was breathless.

‘No,' said Stella. ‘Stella.'

‘I saw you!' her voice was sing-song. ‘Behind the gazebo. Hiding. Hidey hidey girl!'

Stella thought, this woman is quite mad. But then she thought, who the Dickens
is
she?

‘Love this swing! Haven't done that in
so
long.' She looked Stella up and down, then came in close and whispered. ‘Used to hide, myself. Badly as you!' Why wasn't she speaking in full sentences? ‘Sneaked away to the greenhouse to smoke.' She giggled and ducked down behind Stella's shoulder as if someone had seen her. ‘Very silly place to hide! Thought no one knew where I was or what I was doing. Till one day my mother offered me a cigarette.' She peered at Stella. She was standing very close, right up in Stella's personal space but oddly, it didn't feel as though she was encroaching. It felt to Stella as though she was in the presence of some life-size Longbridge sprite. Up close, she was older than Stella first thought – perhaps ten years older than Stella. Her skin was softly tanned, lines around her eyes from laughter and outdoors. Her eyebrows and the tips of her eyelashes were the colour of flax. In her nostril, a thin gold loop. ‘Stella!' she said.

‘Yes,' said Stella. ‘But who are you?'

The woman tipped her head, as if surprised that Stella shouldn't know, as if this place was hers and it was peculiar that Stella hadn't come across her until now.

‘Verity,' she said.

Not one single penny had dropped for Stella until then, because she would never have imagined that Lydia Fortescue's daughter would look or sound or act anything like the woman beside her.

‘You're
Verity
?'

‘Yes!'

‘Of
Longbridge
,' Stella gesticulated in the air as if the estate might have disappeared.

‘Yes! Verity Fortescue!' Her eyes were still glinting and flitting but her breathing was more even. ‘But I haven't been Verity of Longbridge for a long, long time.'

‘You're Lydia's
daughter
?'

‘Yes,' she laughed. ‘Lydia's daughter!'

‘
The one who lives with the Welsh
,' said Stella. Suddenly, the woman backed a step away and appeared timid, as though Stella's word had knocked her a little. After a moment, she nodded shyly before her beatific smile returned.

‘It's so lovely to meet you,' Stella said, with genuine warmth and not a little curiosity.

‘You too,' said Verity. ‘Mother told me to look out for you. Told me not to scare you. Told me you are helping her to sell Longbridge.'

Stella nodded, wondering how Verity felt about it. Wondering too, when she'd arrived, how long she'd be here, what she was even doing here, and whether any of this would have any effect on anything else. Verity looked, to Stella, nothing like a Fortescue should – or was expected – to look. Instead, it was as if she'd walked barefoot all the way from the meadows of the first Woodstock festival, or had stepped off a Jimi Hendrix album cover, or had climbed through the bars of an Arlo Guthrie song and was totally unaware of the current year. Stella had an overriding urge to protect her from the navy suits and sharp talk of the consortium swaggering around Longbridge as though they owned it already.

‘There are people looking around today,' Stella told Verity. ‘That's why I'm here. They didn't want me, though.'

‘Suity Sods!' said Verity. Then she thought about it. ‘Not suited.' She shook her head vigorously.

‘I know,' Stella said. ‘But I had to show them around. They have money.'

Verity shrugged and nodded.

‘Do you mind?' Stella asked tentatively. Verity tilted her head like a bird trying to locate a single seed. ‘About your home being sold?'

Verity thought about it, tipping her head one way then the other and when she smiled at Stella she changed from artless and childlike, to sage and worldly. She shook her head whilst regarding Stella benevolently. ‘Not a bit,' she smiled. ‘Mother's decision and the right one for her. Haven't lived here for many many years – not my home. Lived With The Welsh – as Mother puts it – for longer than ever I lived here. That's my true home. I'll never leave.'

‘Oh,' said Stella, panicking for a suitable response. ‘I like the Welsh. My cousins used to live outside Crickhowell.'

Verity nodded then shook her head. ‘Laugharne. Dylan Thomas country for me,' she said. ‘So beautiful. Very peaceful.'

‘Did you marry a Welshman, then?'

Verity giggled. Looked at Stella. Giggled again. ‘You're funny and kind, aren't you, Stells Bells. No – not a Welshman. I don't even Live With The Welsh. I do live in Wales. But with other folk. My man is Brazilian.' Then she put her finger to her lips. ‘Shh!' Stella was wide-eyed. ‘He used to be French. Mother didn't mind him so much. But the Brazilian'll finish her off. So – shh!'

All Stella could do was nod earnestly because actually, she hadn't the faintest idea what any of it meant – living in Wales but not with the Welsh, a Frenchman who'd become Brazilian. How long had it taken for Verity's hair to do that? Had she not brushed it since she'd left Longbridge which, Stella estimated, was two-thirds of her life ago? All she wanted to do was tuck down in the summer house with this woman and just listen to it all, ask her in what language were the tattoos on her foot and around both wrists, what they meant. Why had she left, why was she back? Her accent – a strange and seductive hybrid of upper-crust roundness enlivened by flourishes of South American, purrs of French and a twang that was transatlantic. And the chirruping staccato sentences. And Heidi Girl and Suity Sods and Stells Bells.

‘I should go,' Stella said. She paused. ‘I'd much rather stay and chat to you – but I'm meant to be working. I have to find the Suity Sods and wave my clipboard at them.'

‘Peace, love and unity be yours,' said Verity, pressing her thumb gently on Stella's forehead.

Stella must have appeared alarmed by this because Verity instantly looked a little hurt.

‘That's – very kind,' Stella rushed and smiled and squeezed her arm. ‘Thank you. And peace, love and unity for you too, dear Verity.'

‘Stells Bells,' Verity whispered.

‘Are you staying for a while? How long will you be here?'

‘Time!' Verity laughed, as if it was such a preposterous concept.

‘Well, perhaps I'll see you again,' Stella said. And Verity nodded and smiled and pirouetted on the grass before walking away, the skirts of her dress all in a sway, like marsh grasses wafting in the breeze. As she made her way back to the gazebo, Stella looked over her shoulder but she saw no more of Verity. She could see the men standing on the gravel by their flash cars and she knew they wouldn't care if she went up to them or not but she would go over because it was her job to do so. She gathered her clipboard and mobile phone and walked towards them. Passing by the statue of Lord Frederick, there was just time for a quiet moment.

‘You like her, your great-great-great – I don't know-how many greats – granddaughter, don't you.'

‘She's one in a million and she's a dear,' he appeared to reply. ‘Typical Fortescue,' he said, ‘because a true Fortescue doesn't give a hoot what anyone thinks.'

Will was confused and bad-tempered.

‘I don't see why you can't clean and tidy up once I've actually
gone
to Jo's,' he said, observing his mother balancing on the table dusting absolutely nothing off the light fitting.

‘Because.'

He hated that answer. It wasn't an answer. It was a rubbish sentence and he did not like the way that grown-ups were allowed to use it just because they were grown-ups.

‘Cos what?'

‘Will, don't wind me up. Please just help Mummy – OK?'

‘I don't want to clean and tidy.'

‘OK – so watch telly.'

‘I thought I wasn't allowed to watch telly in the mornings.'

‘Well, today's your lucky day because today you can!'

He switched on the TV but soon enough switched it off again because it was impossible to hear above the thrum of the Hoover. He watched his mother – she was hot and bothered and he just couldn't work out why she would choose to do something that put her in a bad mood and made her face red and her hair thatchy. Their home was always clean and tidy – all she was doing, as far as he could see, was making herself all messy.

‘Mummy –
no
!' He leapt up from being the sorry lump in the corner of the sofa, becoming a small fireball of indignation. ‘You've
broken
it!'

Stella turned off the Hoover and sat down heavily on the chair, hating herself for feeling cross with Will that his Lego space battle plane (his own design) had got under her feet – but hating herself more for wishing that Will had gone to Jo's already.

‘Sorry, Will,' she said, genuinely contrite as she watched how tenderly he was examining the ruined model, as if it was a bird whose wing was broken. ‘I'm really sorry.' She held her arms open and, a little begrudgingly, he shuffled towards her. ‘Can you fix it? Can I help?'

‘Of course I can fix it but it took me ages to make in the first place.'

‘Does this bit go there?'

‘No, that's the supercharge defender prong. It goes here.'

‘And that bit?'

‘That's not a
bit
– that's the turbo space-raid spear-shafter.'

‘You could work for Lego when you grow up. You could invent amazing models.'

‘I'd rather work in the Lego shop,' he said, brightening. ‘Can we go to Legoland?'

‘Definitely.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Not tomorrow – another time.'

That was another bad thing about grown-ups, Will thought. They say definitely when actually they mean maybe. So then you ask them again and they end up telling you off for nagging.

‘Jo's going to take you all to the cinema this afternoon – then for a pizza. Yum! Lucky things!'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Oh, nothing really.'

‘So why don't you come too?'

‘Because I'm busy.'

There – yet another annoying thing that grown-ups do. Say one thing one second and then the complete opposite a millisecond later and expect you, all the time, to accept that it makes perfect sense when, quite plainly, it doesn't. Will sighed and gave his mother a look of patient pity.