Winter Solstice (49 page)

“Next, we come to another fork and we go left again and we see BilliclifFe’s house.”

“And who is Billicliffe?”

“He used to be the factor here. Elfhda and Oscar had.1 go and call on him to get their key. Elfrida told me he was a bit of an old bore, and the house was a tip, and they were both a little unkind about him. And then he confounded everybody by becoming extremely ill, and Oscar had to drive him to hospital. Where he is now … here’s the fork ia the road. So we go left….”

The tyre tracks continued. Clearly a well-used access. There then was revealed, set back from the verge, the first of the estate workers’ cottages.

“Here,” said Carrie, “is where Major Billicliffe lives.”

Sam, curious, slowed down to take a look at it. A small, stone-built house, soundly constructed, with a rural porch and two dormer windows set in the slated roof. A short driveway led from gate to door, where stood parked, and wearing at least ten inches of snow, an elderly Vauxhal, rusted, sad, and abandoned. The windows of the house were tightly closed, no light showed, and no smoke rose from the chimney.

“What a gloomy little place,” Carrie remarked.

“Nothing’s at its best when it’s desolate.”

They moved on, slowly, tyres crunching in icy ruts; exploring. The road twisted and turned in charmingly random fashion. Another corner, and now Rose Miller’s cottage was there, a different kettle of fish altogether; snug and trim, with lace curtains at the windows, and a few cheerful hens clucking around the small garden. She had lighted her fire, and peat-smoke filled the air with its delicious smell.

They meandered on. Past the farmhouse, and a farmyard reeking with the good smell of manure, was a field of sheep, and then another little cottage, the gamekeeper’s, with kennels, and a run at the back of the house from which two spaniels appeared, barking their heads off.

“Good thing,” said Carrie, “we didn’t bring Horace with us. He’d have a heart attack and die.”

By now the loch was in view again, with fields running down to the water. More trees, another cottage, and then the north wall of the enclosed garden, a handsome stone edifice wrought-iron gates set in the middle. The big tractor shed stood at the back of this, with wide I standing open, and alongside it stood parked a venerable mud-spattered Land Rover. Sam drew up alongside I they climbed out of the car. As they did so, a young man from the shed with an old yellow Labrador at his heels. The young man wore a boiler suit and rubber boots, and on his head a deerstalker, the peak tipped forwards, over his nose.

“Charlie Miller?”

“Yes, that is me. Now, stay down, Brandy, and don’t jump up on the lady. You’re a stupid old bitch with no manners.”

“I don’t mind,” Carrie smiled.

“You would if she covered you with paw marks.” He turned to Sam.

“You’ll be Sam Howard.”

“That’s right. And this is Carrie Sutton.” Charlie Miller said, “Pleased to meet you,” and he and Carrie shook hands.

“Oscar phoned me. You’ve come for the tree. It’s in the shed, if you’d like to come away in.” He led the way, and they followed into the dim interior of the shed, which clearly accommodated a number of functions. Sam saw a pile of potato pallets, a stack of sawn logs, a number of old fruit boxes, turnips bagged in netted sacks. There was a good smell of earth, sawdust, and engine oil. Leaning against an aged Ferguson tractor was their cut tree. “… Oscar said six-foot would be tall enough, so I picked this one out. It’s a good shape, and no broken branches.”

“Looks fine to me.”

“Two pounds a foot. Twelve pounds. Have you got a stand for it?”

“I really wouldn’t know. Oscar didn’t say.”

“I’ve this.” Charlie produced, from some corner, a rough wooden contraption knocked together with masonry nails.

“The farmer’s boy made them, selling at two-fifty each.”

Sam eyed it doubtfully.

“Is it going to work?”

“Oh, yes, it’ll work all right.”

“Right.” Charlie set it down by the tree.

“So that’s fourteen-fifty you owe me.” He was obviously not a man to beat about the bush.

Sam dug out his wallet and handed over fifteen pounds. “Tell the farmer’s son to keep the change. He deserves it, if only for enterprise.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Charlie, and the notes disappeared into the pocket of the boiler suit.

“Will I load the tree for you?”

“If you would. I’ve put the back seats down; there should be enough space….”

“No problem.”

Carrie now spoke. “Charlie, do you think it would be all right if we went for a walk? We’ve never been to Corrydale before, and we wanted to look around, see the house. But if it’s private, or we’re not allowed….”

“You’re allowed, all right. Go anywhere you please. The hotel is closed anyway. And there’s not much to look at in the gardens.”

“We don’t mind. Which is the best way to go?”

“Back the road you came, and then, at Major Billicliffe’s house, take the left fork, and that will bring you to the gardens and the house. There’s a path from there down through the trees to the water, and a track leads back to here, along the shore. While you’re walking I’ll net the tree and load it, and if I’m not here when you’re back, I’ll be away for my dinner.”

“Thank you.”

“No trouble. Have a good walk, now.”

They set off, footsteps scrunching on frozen ruts, the air sweet as chilled wine, the thin sunshine warming their backs and causing flurries of melted snow to drift down from the upper branches of trees. These, leafless, made patterns like black lace against the brilliant blue of the sky. They went by the farm, the gamekeeper’s house, and by the garden gate of Rose Miller’s delectable dwelling.

“It’s the sort of place,” Carrie observed, “where you feel you could happily snug up and spend the rest of your life.”

After Major Billicliffe’s deserted cottage they left the road and took the path that led towards the main house. It was heavy walking, because now the snow was virgin and untouched, and quite deep.

Carrie said, “There must, once, have been a lot of money. This is a huge establishment, with all those estate cottages, the farm, and the walled garden and everything. I wonder where it all came from? The wealth, I mean.”

“Industry, probably. Shipbuilding, steel, that sort of thing. Or Far Eastern connections. Shipping, tea, teak. I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Oscar.”

“Oscar doesn’t seem to have anything”

“No. I don’t think he does have much.”

“What’s happened to it all? The money, I mean.”

“What’s happened everywhere. Old people died, and death duties claimed enormous chunks of the estate. The cost of living soared. The war changed everything. After the war, there was a gradual decline. Then chaps like Hughie McLennan took possession, squandered the last of the capital, and finally sold up. In the south of England, all this land would probably be littered with bijou bungalows and private building estates. But here, because of its remoteness, and the fact that the hotel chain took over the house, it’s managed to stay looking-at least-the way it always has done.”

“Why didn’t Oscar inherit? He would have made a lovely laird.”

“I suppose he didn’t qualify. Hughie was the son of the eldest son. Primogeniture. Just bad luck on everyone he proved to be such a little shit.”

“It seems unfair, doesn’t it?”

“Carrie. Life is unfair.”

“I’m so sorry for Oscar. He deserves better. He and Elfrida. They deserve some place to live together that they can call their own and know that they don’t have to leave. I would like to be rich so that I could take care of them both … buy them a desirable residence and settle them for life. I wish we hadn’t been there when they were told that the David Wilkie was a fake and worth so little. Elfrida was so filled with hope. And so certain that she owned a little treasure that would get them through and give them security. It was painful to see her so destroyed and downcast. Embarrassing. I was embarrassed.”

“I was the same,” Sam reminded her.

“But it’s different for you.”

“Why different?”

“Because if they have no money, Oscar will be forced to sell you his half of the Estate House, and then you will have what you came for.”

“Do you think I am that sort of a monster?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you well enough. I don’t know how you think.”

He let this pass. There was no point in precipitating a row so early on their expedition. Instead, “Will they stay together, do you think?” he asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I think they probably will. Neither of them has anybody else. But where will they stay?”

“Where they are. If Oscar doesn’t want to sell, then Hughie can’t.”

“So what will you do?”

“Look for someplace else.”

“In Buckly?”

“I don’t know. So far, I’ve hardly seen the neighborhood in daylight, let alone investigated property for sale.”

For a bit Carrie said nothing to this. They were walking at a brisk pace, her long legs keeping pace with his own as they trudged through the snow. To their left, the snow-fields swept down to the water of the loch; on their right a small wood of ancient beeches revealed dells and paths between the massive tree-trunks, and the snow was patterned with the tracks of rabbits and birds. Overhead, rooks cawed, and from the empty shores came the long bubbling cry of a curlew.

She said abruptly, “I would like to see your mill.”

Sam had never imagined her being remotely interested, and found himself taken aback by this suggestion.

“Would you?”

“You sound disbelieving.”

“It’s just that there’s not much to see. Large, empty, damp spaces, some dye vats, and a few bits of salvaged machinery.”

“But you told me it was a listed building. That, in itself, would be interesting. Can you get access? Have you got a key?” She was serious.

“Of course.”

“Shall we go one day?”

“If you want.”

“I like seeing buildings and houses stripped down. Empty places, bare walls. I like imagining how they were, and trying to visualize what they could become. You must feel rather excited about it all, longing to get your teeth into the challenge. Putting it together, and getting it going again.”

“Yes.” He thought about it, and the seemingly insurmountable problems which had yet to be addressed.

“I am. But at the same time it’s a fairly daunting prospect. Every now and then I shall doubtless become frustrated, impatient, and even violently angry, but difficulties can be stimulating, particularly if some other person believes you can solve them. And in Buckly, I have a good man, Fergus Skinner, on my side. I’ve a lot of faith in him.”

“It’s still a long stride from working in New York.”

“If I were a much younger man, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job on. But I’m thirty-nine now. Been there, done that. And for me this is exactly the right time to change course. For all the high finance in the world, nothing is so satisfactory as going back to the grass roots of the business.”

“Downgrading.”

“In a sense, yes. But, you see, I was born and bred into the woollen trade, and I secretly believe that there is nothing so good-looking, so comfortable, so exactly right, as a familiar, well-tailored tweed jacket. It’ll stand up to anything the elements choose to hurl at it, and by evening be perfectly acceptable at anybody’s dinner table. I love the smell and the if feel of tweed. I love the sound of well-tuned cog-wheels, the clack of looms, the monstrous pistons of the carding machines. And I like the people who work them, the men and women who have spinning and weaving and dyeing in their blood, going back two or three generations. So I am in my own world.”

“I think you’re fortunate.”

“Because of my job?”

“Not just.” Carrie stopped, her head thrown back, to watch a buzzard floating high in the sky.

“Because of coming to live up here. In this enormous, clean, unsullied place.” She went on walking.

“Just think, you can play golf, shoot grouse and pheasants, and fish in one of those salmon rivers you told me about.” She thought about this.

“You do fish?”

“Yes. I used to fish with my father in Yorkshire when I was a boy. But for trout, not salmon. And I’m not over keen on shooting.”

“Nor me. Darling little wild birds tumbling out of the sky. And then you eat them at the Savoy, and they look about the size of canaries.”

By now, ahead, could be seen the wall of the formal garden, topped by an ornate wroughtiron fence. The path led to a wroughtiron gate flanked by gate posts bearing stone armorial lions, and entwined by thorny roses, blackened now by winter.

They reached the gate and there paused, gazing through the lattice of intricate curlicues at the garden which lay beyond; lawns climbing in stepped terraces, and drawing their eyes to the first sighting of Corrydale House. A Victorian mansion, gabled and turreted, built of red stone, some of which was smothered in Virginia creeper. It was large and perhaps a little pretentious, but attractive in a prosperous and settled sort of way. The windows were all shuttered from the inside, but facing south, glass panes flashed and shone with reflected sunshine. There was a tall white flag-pole at one side of the top terrace, but no flag flew from its masthead.

“Nice,” said Carrie, after a bit.

“What good times Oscar must have had.”

Sam said, “Would you like to live here?”

“Do you mean in this house? In this place?”

“No. I just mean here. In Creagan. In Sutherland.”

“I have a job. In London. I have to have a job. I have to earn my living.”

“Supposing you didn’t? Would you be content? Could you bury yourself in such an environment?”

“I don’t know. I think I’d need notice. To weigh up all the pros and cons. And to leave London, I’d need to be free. No commitments. No responsibilities.”

“Aren’t you free?”

“There’s Lucy.”

“Lucy?”

“Yes, Lucy.” She unlatched the gate and opened it, and beyond was a wide path, straight as a rule, leading across the garden towards a distant stand of beech trees. In the middle of this path, in line with the flights of steps which climbed the terraces to the house, stood a stone sundial and a curved wooden seat. Another flight of steps led down to a parterre garden, sheltered by shrubberies of rhododendron and azalea. Its formal structure, radiating from a stone statue of some mythical goddess, was composed of curves, circles, ellipses, all edged in box, and, buried in snow, resembled nothing so much as an artist’s design drawn on thick white paper with a stump of charcoal.