The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor (2 page)

I grimaced. “Good riddance to him and that stripper girlfriend of his. Her name is Jilly, but I call her Jiggly. Not to Brad's face, of course.

“Can you believe he said I wasn't spontaneous enough? I guess if ‘spontaneous' means leaving your family behind for someone you barely know, then he was right.

“When he first left, I was heartbroken. And furious with him and Jiggly. I felt like a failure. I was always exhausted, but I couldn't sleep at night. I cried a lot. It took me a long time to realize that the anger and hate were hurting me and Lucy much more than them. I had to let it all go for my own sanity. So I've moved on; I've stopped being so angry and now all I feel is relief. Not that I would ever want to go through it again, but it made me finally face the fact that he wasn't the one for me.”

She put her hand on mine. “I'm so sorry for everything you had to go through. How'd he meet Jiggly, anyway?” I smiled at her use of my name for Jilly.

“At a bachelor party for his brother.”

“You know, I never liked Brad, even in college,” she revealed in a conspiratorial tone.

“Why not?” I asked in surprise.

“He was a control freak. He always had to be part of everything you did. We could never do anything alone, just us girls.”

“I never noticed.”

“Love is blind, Carleigh.”

“I guess. But if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have Lucy. So I'm at least grateful to him for her.”

“That's true,” she conceded, then changed the subject.

“Are you dating? You look fabulous. I've always been jealous of that long red hair of yours,” she sighed.

I laughed at her. “I'm through with men for a while. I'm just concentrating on Lucy and my work. Speaking of men, how's Boone?” Evie and Boone, a banker, had been together for years, but neither was ready to get married. Both of them always joked that they were already married to their jobs.

“Oh, he's the same,” she answered breezily. “Works all the time, travels a lot. The bank sent him to Singapore this time. That's why I came back here for a while. It's lonely in Atlanta without him. All I need is a computer and I can work from anywhere.”

“I'm glad you can be here while I'm here,” I told her. “It'll be fun. And besides, I'm sure you'll want to see the house as the work progresses.”

“I'm excited to see how it goes,” she agreed. “Mother and Daddy were hoping they'd be home by tonight to see you and Lucy, but they're visiting friends and they won't be here until tomorrow.”

“It'll be nice to see them,” I said.

Lucy appeared in the doorway to the drawing room just then, rubbing her eyes and dragging Cottontail.

“I'm hungry,” she announced.

Evie stood up. “Dinner should be ready by now. I'll go check.”

She left and Lucy climbed up into my lap. I nuzzled my face in her soft curls. We sat quietly like that until Evie poked her head in the room a few moments later to announce that dinner was ready.

The dining room was toward the back of the house, next to the drawing room. It was a long rectangular room with drab, fraying antique wallpaper and a threadbare rug that must once have been beautiful. Heavy cherry furniture gleamed in the sunlight still streaming through the windows.
This screams old money,
I thought. I assumed this space was one that I would be working on very soon.

Cora-Camille confirmed that the moment she sat down for dinner. “Carleigh, I'm not sure how much you remember of this house, but it's probably gotten even worse since you were here last. This dining room, for instance, is downright ugly. This old place has such a rich history; I hate to see it in decline. I didn't even realize how bad it had gotten until I saw a book of beautiful old photographs of the manor taken when photography was new, and then it hit me. You see, I tend to concentrate more on the farm than the house. And I just couldn't decide what to do with it until Evie reminded me that restoring old buildings is your specialty. I can't wait to see it the way it was always meant to be.”

“It will be beautiful when it's done,” I assured her. “After dinner I'd like to take a look around and get an idea of what I need to do.”

“Wonderful. I can go with you, or Evie can.”

“I'll go, Gran,” Evie offered.

“Then I'll play with Lucy,” Cora-Camille replied happily.

A woman came into the dining room just then and placed dinner plates in front of Lucy and me.

“Phyllis, I'd like you to meet Carleigh and Lucy Warner,” Cora-Camille stated.

“Nice to know you, Phyllis,” I said, smiling.

“My pleasure,” she replied in a soft, cultured tone.

Phyllis was a thin woman, probably in her fifties, with flawless mocha skin and large, expressive black eyes. She had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Her hands moved gracefully as she served the food.

“I don't know what we'd do without Phyllis. She is the best house manager we could ask for,” Cora-Camille said. “And she's a great cook, too.” Phyllis smiled at her in reply, then went back into the kitchen.

“Phyllis wasn't here when you visited, but you might remember her mom,” Evie told me. “Phyllis lived here a long time ago when her mother was the house manager, then she left for college and worked in Charleston for years. When her mom passed away, we were lucky to have Phyllis come back to take her place to help manage the property. Her degree is in hospitality.”

Ruby, who had been sitting silently all through dinner, nodded. “Phyllis is nice. I do the baking, but she does the rest of the cooking.” She lapsed back into silence.

“And Ruby's baking is delicious, too,” Cora-Camille acknowledged with a smile.

When dinner was over, Lucy called Brad and told him all about the manor. Then she and Ruby and Cora-Camille went into the drawing room. Lucy had brought three dolls downstairs and the six of them were planning a tea party.

Evie and I walked slowly through the rooms downstairs. I had already had a look at the drawing room earlier in the day. It needed painting, of course, and the plaster ceiling medallions and cornices needed attention. They appeared to be peeling, but I would have to examine them more closely from the top of a ladder or scaffold. The hardwood floors were scuffed and worn, so those might need to be completely replaced, or at the very least sanded and refinished. The withdrawing room, which was a small room accessed only through the drawing room, needed work, too. The walls, entirely paneled, were in need of refinishing. Many decades ago, the withdrawing room was a private space where gentlemen would gather after a dinner party to smoke, play cards, and imbibe fine spirits while the ladies stayed in the drawing room. Years of cigar and pipe smoke were visible on the withdrawing room walls.

On the other side of the entry hall were a ballroom and a small sitting room, with the kitchen toward the back of the house. Though the ballroom and sitting room had obviously been magnificent at one time, age and climate conditions had taken their toll. It was hard to identify the true colors of the wallpaper in the ballroom because it had become so dingy and gray. And in the sitting room, the tattered wall coverings even appeared to harbor some mildew. The room smelled musty and unused. Evie confirmed this. “We only use these rooms about once a year,” she said sadly.

“Give me some time, and people will want to use these rooms again,” I told her, smiling.

Luckily, I found that I had little work to do in the kitchen. Since kitchens were not my specialty, I was glad to learn that the large, open space had recently been updated to make life easier for Phyllis and Ruby. Evie said I might be called upon to add a few cosmetic enhancements in the kitchen, but that was all.

After we had completed our circuit through the rooms downstairs and I had taken notes on my highest priorities, we went back into the drawing room where Lucy was obviously enjoying being the center of attention.

“Time for bed, sweetie,” I told her.

“I want to play more.”

“Not tonight. You've had a long day,” I told her.

She sighed. “Time for bed, sweeties,” she told her dolls.

Cora-Camille smiled at her. “We'll play again tomorrow, okay?”

Lucy yawned and nodded.

I realized how tired I was as I was putting Lucy to bed. I returned downstairs, bid everyone good night, and went to sleep early.

Lucy and I woke at the same time the next morning to the sight of sunshine streaming through the tall windows and the sounds of songbirds chirping loudly outside. At our home in Chicago we rarely heard birds singing, so their presence outside the windows was quite a treat for both of us.

We went downstairs and greeted Phyllis in the kitchen. We sat at a long table and had a hearty breakfast of grits, eggs, and fruit. I hadn't eaten grits in years and this was Lucy's first experience eating them. They were delicious.

Evie came in while we were eating and suggested that we take a look at the outbuildings of Peppernell Manor before going into Charleston to visit some of the textile and paint shops that I would be using for the restoration. I eagerly agreed and she and I set out with Lucy in tow.

We went outdoors where the moist, sticky heat, even this early in the day, was oppressive. We strolled slowly down the driveway to a turnoff that led toward the outbuildings, also called dependencies. We walked through a wide grove of thickly planted trees that separated the buildings from the manor. I remembered that I had loved exploring the dependencies on my previous visit. As I recalled, there had been a barn, a carriage house, a kitchen, and a privy. The barn was still in use, though a much larger and more modern barn stood down the road.

We hadn't gone far into the grove of trees before we saw four very small, very old, decrepit buildings. I couldn't remember having seen them before.

“What are those?” I asked Evie.

“Slave cabins.”

I was struck by her words. Although I knew Peppernell Manor had been home to slaves before the Civil War, the sight of those cabins made the slaves' existence somehow more tangible to me.

“They're not in great shape,” I noted.

Evie nodded. “They probably should have been torn down years ago just for the sake of safety, but they're part of Peppernell Manor's history. I would hate to see them disappear.”

We walked along in the silence of the trees for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. Lucy remained quiet, seeming to sense our pensiveness.

When we emerged on the far side of the wood, green leafy fields stretched out before us under the morning sun. In the distance, several men and women walked slowly among the field rows, hauling large baskets and picking late summer vegetables. Two tractors stood between the rows, ready to haul away the harvest.

“How many people work on the farm?”

“It depends on the time of year. Right now we have about fifteen men and women working. They're all migrant workers from Florida; they move around the South all year long to plant and harvest different types of crops.”

We continued walking along the edge of the wood until we came to a large stone building.

“You remember the old barn,” Evie said. “We keep some farm equipment in there and Gran's office is in there—she runs the farm—but mostly the barn is still there just because it's part of the property's past.”

I walked into the barn through the enormous open double doors. Sure enough, there was a hayloft above me, complete with pitchfork. Antique saddles and harnesses hung from iron hooks on the walls. The barn was dilapidated; I could see from the large cracks and crevices that the foundation would need work. I peeked into a room that had been built onto the side of the barn. Though it was a newer addition, it had a vintage look to it that matched the rest of the building. A desk, filing cabinets, and an old table that held a large basket of fresh produce were the only furnishings. Cora-Camille's office, I supposed.

We left the barn and continued our walk between the fields and the woods. Soon we came to another stone building, this one round and somewhat smaller than the barn. I remembered this as the carriage house. A wide pathway, probably a century and a half old, led from the front of the carriage house into the woods.

“Lucy, the people at Peppernell Manor used to keep their carriages in this building,” Evie stated. “Do you know what a carriage is?”

“Yes. My doll has one,” Lucy answered proudly. “But we had to leave it in Chicago.”

“The horses would be led from the barn to this building and attached to the carriages and then the carriages would go through the woods to the long drive in front of the house. The woods aren't very wide here.”

“Is the carriage house used for anything now?” I asked.

“My brother Heath lives here. Did you ever meet him? When he's not working in Charleston he helps Gran run the farm, even though she likes people to think she still does it all herself.” Evie laughed.

I vaguely recalled having met one of Evie's brothers on my previous visit to Peppernell Manor. She had two brothers, twins, and she was the baby of the family.

“You'll see Heath and Harlan at some point. They're both really busy,” Evie noted.

We followed the old carriage pathway through the woods, which were quite narrow at this point, and emerged a short distance from the main house. The woods curved around the back of the manor toward the banks of the Ashley River. At the edge of the woods stood a small building. Lucy pointed to it.

“How come there's a moon on the door?”

Evie smiled at her. “That's where the people in Peppernell Manor used to go when they had to use the bathroom. It's called a privy.”