by Anna Martin
Which was how he ended up with several hundred villagers tromping up the long drive that led to Stretton House.
All Henry’s protestations that it wasn’t ready for visitors yet had fallen on deaf ears. It didn’t matter that there weren’t enough chairs to go around, or that he couldn’t properly cater the event, or that there was still some scaffolding up outside the east wing. People wanted to see inside, to see what he’d been doing all these months.
And, to be fair, the majority of the work had been done. The new round tables that would be used for functions in the dining room had been delivered, but the chairs hadn’t been sent yet, which was how so many people ended up sitting on plastic lawn furniture. His cry for help with the chairs was responded to by a great many women offering their plastic garden table set, so many that he’d developed a system of labelling the damn things so he knew who to return them to.
Stella had catered, a great many fiddly little things on sticks and sandwiches and pasties and crisps. It was, Henry mused, a pretty good first rehearsal on how a party in the house would run.
He considered the pièce de résistance to be the image he’d hung in the ladies’ parlour room, above the fireplace, an echo of where Nell’s Manet hung in the men’s smoking room. It was much smaller, though, a photograph that had been re-created by a local artist. The picture was one he’d found of Nell in the attic. He’d judged her to be about fourteen or fifteen. She was wearing a dress, wellington boots, and a large, chunky knitted sweater. There was a smudge of dirt on her nose, and she leaned on a spade that was shoved securely into the ground, one elbow resting on the handle and the other hand bunched on her hip.
In those days, her hair was a golden brown and worn in tight curls. Despite her privileged start to life, it was a moment of joyous normalcy. She could have been any girl, anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. He’d never found the courage to show her his find or to tell her that he’d asked for the image to be enlarged and hung, pride of place, in the room she once presided over.
She would preside over the ladies’ room always, now. That was the way he wanted it.
“Lovely spread,” Ryan said as he slipped up behind Henry with a paper plate loaded with food. Henry pinched a sausage roll and popped it into his mouth.
“Your sister is an excellent cook.”
“She is. Here, try one of these. It’s like a miniature roast beef sandwich.”
Henry obliged and leaned back into Ryan’s reassuring weight. Most of the people who had wanted to shake his hand (which had been everyone) or ask for a tour (nearly everyone) had come and gone, giving Henry his first few moments alone with Ryan since they left their house that morning. All that was needed, once they arrived at Stretton House, was to fling the front doors wide open to welcome the local people in and put a small rope across the top of the stairs to stop people wandering up there.
The plan was to do more restoration work on the upper level over the winter, but it was mostly being used for storage. The staircase itself was far too beautiful to not be admired, so Henry didn’t want to stop people admiring or sitting on the staircase. Many seemed to have taken the opportunity to do just that.
For an event he’d never wanted to host, it wasn’t bad. And for Stretton House’s first day with visitors, the first time it had been full of people since the Second World War, it had coped rather admirably.
Chapter Twenty
Ryan had hung back slightly during the day, being a supportive presence when Henry needed him and blending into the background when things were going well. When the last of his visitors had moved on, either to their own homes or to the pub, where Stella had left Andy in charge for the evening, Ryan seemed to kick into action.
For someone who claimed all his best work was done in the morning, he proved to be rather good at organising the chairs to be delivered back to the right people in the village, collecting bags of rubbish and recycling, and sweeping the dining room floor clean of dirt and crumbs. Henry was, admittedly, still in a bit of a daze, the highs and lows of emotion from the day having already taken their toll.
When Stella met him outside and pressed a mug of tea into his hands, he immediately set it aside and pulled her into a fierce hug.
“You were amazing today,” he murmured into her shoulder. “Really amazing. Thank you.”
“Oh, any time, sweetie,” she said, rocking their bodies gently from side to side.
After pulling away, Henry retrieved his mug of tea and sat down on the kitchen step. It was his favourite place to sit and watch the sun set, as it was doing now. The warmth of the day had translated into a rich pink and red and orange glow that seemed to spread all across the sky, only broken up by the wispiest of white clouds. Stella dropped her head to his shoulder, leaning into his side as they sat.
“I think I’m in love with him, Stella.”
She waited a few beats before replying. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
Henry shrugged. “I don’t know. Love him?”
“Is it as easy as that?”
“Yeah,” Henry said with a smile. “Yeah, it is.”
“You could try telling him,” she said, playing with the hem of the black pencil skirt she’d been wearing all day.
“I don’t think either of us is ready for that just yet.”
She waited another few seconds, apparently turning over his confession in her mind. “Why the fuck did you tell me?”
Henry blew on his tea to cool it and sipped contemplatively. “I don’t know. It just came out.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”
Laughing, Henry pulled her back into a hug. “I never had a sister, you know. I think I love you too.”
“God, Henry, you’re killing me here,” Stella said. “Ryan doesn’t deserve you.”
“I don’t think I deserve him, to be honest.”
“Things between you won’t always be easy,” she warned him. “People are starting to notice that you two are more than friends, and even though you seem pretty solid to me, it could get ugly, and I’m not sure how he’d handle that.”
“Coming out is never easy,” Henry said. “But there’s a reason why most of us do it as teenagers—we’re in the stage of developing our identities as adults. It’s a time when the adults around us are still figuring out who we are as people, and you give them that extra layer, and it means that most people, not all of them, but most, realise that being gay is just another part of who you are.”
“I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“Yeah. The fact that he’s thirty, that he was married to a woman and has been acting straight for the past fifteen years, all of that actually works against him. The people here, they think they know all they need to know about Ryan. Trying to change people’s opinion is harder the older you get.”
“And it’s not going to happen overnight.”
“No.”
Stella sighed again. “He was a fat kid.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Ryan. He was a fat kid.”
Henry laughed, bewildered, then drank more of his tea. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I was overprotective of him. My dad pushed him into sports, which made him popular, which meant he ended up with Sarah.”
“None of that made him gay, Stell.”
“I know. But it probably led to him being in the closet all these years.”
“You can’t know that,” he said, gently extracting her fingers from the skirt before she started ripping it to shreds. “Maybe, yes. Or maybe not. You know something, though? It really doesn’t matter. If he’d figured out he was gay sooner or felt he could admit it to himself sooner, he might not have been single when I met him. He might have married Steve instead of Sarah, and I wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
“I know,” Henry s
aid, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “This has been… fuck… the most crazy few months of my life. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
The back door clicked, and Ryan sat down on Stella’s other side. He’d lost the jacket somewhere and undone the top few buttons on his shirt and had rolled up the sleeves “He’s not your type, Stell,” he said, nodding at their joined fingers. “Or you’re not his, I should say.”
“Shut up.”
“Is this what you two have been doing while I’ve been busting my ass in there? Holding hands and making mushy faces at each other?”
“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I didn’t mean to leave you to do it all.”
“Henry. Chill. It’s fine.”
“Okay.”
They watched as the sun finally slipped over the horizon, giving way to the darkness that signalled the end of the day.
“Do you want to go to the pub?” Ryan asked.
Henry shook his head. “No. Let’s just go home.”
Losing Nell hit Henry hard. Even as his self-imposed deadline loomed, he avoided the house, finding echoes and shadows of his great-grandmother in every room. There was no point in trying to avoid the fact that restoration work was complete. He had opened the doors to most of the village for Nell’s funeral, and he’d had nothing but positive feedback from the local people who had taken the opportunity to look around.
There was a very real possibility of losing the momentum he’d built up around the grand opening. If he didn’t get on with it soon, interest would wane. Something new would come along to steal people’s attention away.
It was Ryan, maybe unsurprisingly, who dragged him out of the farmhouse and down to the old manor.
“I don’t want to be here,” Henry said, his voice not petulant but exhausted.
“I know,” Ryan said as he pulled his car up in front of the imposing oak doors. “You’ve worked too hard to throw it all away now, Henry. Nell left you this place so you could save it, not give up on it.”
Henry sighed heavily, knowing Ryan was right, not that it was helping. Silently, Henry opened his door and got out of the car, carefully closed it, and looked up at the house.
He’d not really done this since the first time he’d arrived in Cheddar. Sure, he’d seen the house every day, looked over the work Scott’s team had done in restoring the exterior brickwork to its former glory.
To stand back now and compare what was in front of him to what the house looked like five months ago…. It was strange, like going back in time a hundred years. This sort of grandeur didn’t exist anymore, except in these places where someone had gone to the effort to preserve it.
He’d wanted to save it, and now it was saved. Almost.
“Look,” Ryan said, coming to stand behind Henry and linking their hands together. “Look what you did.”
Henry huffed a laugh. “With a lot of help.”
“Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for you.”
The first step toward the door was the hardest; the rest came easier. He unlocked and pushed both doors wide open, taking a deep breath of lemon-scented furniture polish and wood and slightly stale air.
It was still as imposing as it had ever been, the grand entrance hall having been designed to impress. Any broken black or terracotta tiles had been replaced, the replacements having been carefully worn to match those already set in the floor. The stairs had been heavily polished until they shined, the balustrades taken out, restored, and replaced, the furniture and paintings carefully selected and placed.
Henry reached for Ryan’s hand and held it tightly as they walked through to the kitchen. It was now both fully functional and beautiful, with a long island down the middle of the room, shiny copper pots and pans hanging above it, and a wide sink that looked out over Henry’s kitchen garden.
He automatically went to the sink, filled a kettle to make tea for them both, and leaned on one of his smooth oak countertops while he waited for it to boil. Henry traced the faint grain in the wood and wondered when he’d adapted to drinking tea rather than coffee. He even had a preferred brand: PG Tips.
Ryan silently hopped up to sit on one of the counters and waited while Henry went through the tea-making ritual, accepted his mug, then followed Henry as he continued his wandering through the house.
There was a short passage that led from the kitchen to the dining room, which was now full of round tables and elegant chairs. A set of folding doors connected the dining room to the ballroom, which now opened up to the conservatory with a much safer archway.
“Will this be where Stella gets married?” Ryan asked.
“Mm,” Henry agreed. “We’re going to build an arch of flowers in the conservatory, and she’ll walk through from the double doors at the back. Some people have already enquired about using the library to get married in, though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You can’t blame them. It’s gorgeous in there.”
They crossed back through the entrance hall to the other side of the house, where the library had been painstakingly put back together. Some of the books weren’t salvageable, others were, yet more Henry had bought from an antique book dealer from Weston. He’d replaced the carpet and found three large leather wing chairs that currently faced the fireplace, with its antique clock sat on the mantel.
Sipping contemplatively at his tea, Henry left Ryan looking at the books and moved to the next room, Nell’s parlour. A smile tugged at his lips as he looked at her portrait, and he cradled his mug to his chest, leeching the warmth from the ceramic.
“I hope you approve,” he whispered softly. “I hope you like it. I wish you were here to see the next bit….”
Ten days later, a camera crew from BBC Points West were trampling all over his carefully laid turf with their heavy equipment. He’d finally got round to responding to their e-mail asking for an exclusive first look inside the house, and things had moved from his acceptance with surprising speed. The camera team had already done shots of the grounds and the exterior of the house while Henry had watched with nervous excitement. He’d agreed to a short interview to supplement the clip that would be shown on the evening news the following night.
“Are you okay?” the director asked, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Henry said with a smile. “I’m just mentally berating your crew for trampling my grass.”
He laughed. “Sorry about that. We’ll fix any damage. I promise.”
“It’s fine. I’m just a bit nervous.”
“You’ll be fine.”
Henry had been waiting for Ryan to show up, even though he knew there was a possibility he wasn’t going to be able to make it before the interview started. With a business of his own to run, Ryan was busy with deliveries that had to be made, and he couldn’t take the whole afternoon off. It was okay. Henry understood and decided Stella’s presence went some of the way to making it up to him.
She was wearing an elegant dark blue dress, her hair carefully curled and diamond studs decorating her ears. It was classy, yet understated, fitting in with her surroundings perfectly. She was also taking over most of the hostessing duties while Henry panicked in the background, making drinks and snacks for the crew and the nice presenter who had come down to do the interview.
“We’re just setting up in the parlour now,” someone called to him, and Henry fought down a shiver of nerves.
The bell that Henry had selected for the front door was heavy, old, and loud. The noise it made was somewhat amplified by the house’s high ceilings and the vast, echoing entrance hall, which carried the noise to nearly all corners of the house.
That was, of course, the point. However, if one was descending the staircase when the bell was rung, one was likely to jump out of one’s fucking skin.
Henry jogged down the last few steps, relieved that no one had seen his reaction to the bell, especially considering the shit they had all given him for in
stalling it in the first place.
When he pulled the door open, he allowed the little ball of tension to dissolve completely, pulling Ryan inside and into a hard kiss.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” Ryan said, laughing as they pulled apart. “You look good.”
“Thanks,” Henry said. After fretting over his wardrobe for far too long that morning, he’d eventually settled on a charcoal grey suit and a crisp white shirt, left unbuttoned at the throat. It was Hugo Boss, and he knew he looked good in it. More than that, he liked knowing it was designer and very expensive.
“Mr. Richardson?” an assistant called, sticking her head out from the parlour doorway. “We’re ready for you now.”
“Good timing,” Ryan said with a smile and kissed the tip of Henry’s nose. “Go. Go and be fabulous.”
It was only a short interview, and even then they cut it up in the final segment, but Henry was pleased with how it turned out. The woman had an adorable accent, and she put him immediately at ease, asking more questions about Nell and the house than his own personal background, to Henry’s immense relief.
They gathered at Stella’s house for the grand showing of the clip on the evening news. She made a huge dinner, which the two couples ate from the coffee table while glued to the TV, waiting for the first shot of Stretton House.
“Shh!” Stella commanded as a wide shot of the house appeared on the screen.
“Stretton House is a grand manor located just outside of Cheddar,” the announcer read, “which has been recently restored by the previous owner’s great-grandson.”
Henry watched with interest until his own interview came on, at which point he covered his face with his hands and groaned in embarrassment.
“I sound so stupid,” he said.
“Shh,” Ryan hushed. “You sound adorable.”
“Henry Richardson, who was born in New York, never knew he was the descendant of one of Somerset’s oldest families until his great-grandmother, Annabell, contacted him.”
