‘But you said –’
‘I couldn’t resist teasing you. Let’s talk it out. No need for any polite hypocrisies any more. I’ve had to give proper thought to making a will, and I don’t see any point in using legacies to pay off old scores. If I try to imagine the future at all, I want to see it as a time in which everyone’s happy. And a house is always a special case when it comes to inheritances. I could have forced it on you, I suppose, as a token of affection, but then I’d have had to live with the thought of you selling it to strangers. That was the reason why I’m not leaving it to Rupert either.’
‘Rupert!’ For a second time Trish’s voice expressed astonishment, but on this occasion the element of disapproval was absent. No doubt she merely thought it extraordinary that there could have been any idea of bequeathing Greystones to someone who had such a grand home of his own already.
‘He’s terribly short of money, poor fellow. And all because of Castlemere. If he sold it, he could become a rich man overnight. Buy a house in Mayfair, make a political career for himself in the House of Lords, live in style. Castlemere is his millstone. Another case of a ruling passion.’
‘Which for that reason you think should be indulged?’
Grace did not answer the question directly.
‘When I think how happy my mother was at Castlemere as a child,’ she said, ‘– and when I remember how she was expelled from the family for marrying a Hardie – it amuses me to think that a Hardie might help to keep the Beverleys afloat. He and I talked about it a few days ago.’
‘He told me. The conversation seems to have jerked him into action. As though he’d be ashamed to take your money without doing something positive at last to make Castlemere pay its own way.’
‘He’s going to have the residue of my estate; the cash. And all the sculptures still in my possession, except for the ones in the serpentine garden; they ought to stay. I suggested he might start an open-air sculpture park around the moat at Castlemere, so that the house would act as a background without necessarily having to be open to the public. If he wanted to go commercial, he could sell other people’s work from there. But certainly he could sell out the editions of my bronzes. That should bring him in quite a bit. Greystones would be no use to him, though, except to raise more cash by putting it on the market. So as far as the house was concerned, I had to sit down and think who might wish actually to live in it.’
‘You don’t have to tell me now.’
‘I’d like to. I don’t want there to be any unpleasant surprises. David will be surprised – pleasantly – but that’s all. And as I just said, I’m not giving the house directly to him. He’s to have a life interest, so he can move in and give himself the airs of an owner. But after he dies or whenever he renounces it, it will go to Max.’
‘Max.’ This time Trish’s comment was neither amazed nor disapproving.
‘Max loves the house. In a very peculiar manner, I must say. He wanders all round it when he’s here, in the same way that I used to as a child. Letting the atmosphere soak in. He adored showing it off to all his friends in the ballet company. He seems to see it in terms of music. I confidently expect that in twenty or thirty years’ time there will be a Greystones ballet choreographed by Max Hardie. But there’s no point in saddling him with it straightaway. He couldn’t afford to maintain it and while he still has his stage career he wouldn’t be free to live in it anyway. But he’ll be glad to know that he has a home waiting for later in his life – and one in which he can live in some style, if he chooses.’
She stood up, staggering slightly. It was always at such moments that she felt weakest, and she was grateful for Trish’s grip on her arm as well as the nods of assent which indicated approval of her decision.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think that it was the house or nothing for you, and that you’re not getting anything,’ Grace continued, steadying her balance before setting off again.
‘I don’t –’
‘I know you don’t. But I do. Let’s go on down.’ They began to walk very slowly. ‘Andy will get the lodge and the freehold of the land that he’s leasing at present. As for your father, he won’t be mentioned in my will, Trish, but he knows why. He got himself into a scrape years ago, and I had to make a rather peculiar bargain to get him out of it. So he’s not going to make a fuss or be hurt by being ignored. Now then, stop here a moment.’
They had reached the near edge of the wood. Grace looked round for something on which she could sit and found the stump of a tree.
‘I don’t feel quite up to stepping over brambles,’ she said, ‘but if you carry on down the side of the wood a little way you should come across a red pole, and then a T-shaped marker further on.’
Trish explored as instructed, returning to report success.
‘I told you about the plan for the road, didn’t I?’ asked Grace. ‘I made the council surveyor mark out the area they’re asking for. The red pole is one of my own markers. Andy put in a dozen of them for me, along the boundaries of the land I’m giving to you. Not as a legacy. The deed of gift has been signed already. There’ll be getting on for thirty acres to do what you like with after you’ve lost whatever they take for the road. It would be too complicated for Max to be faced with all the negotiations with the council. Much better for you to take possession straightaway and fight your own corner.’
‘You think I’m just the person to cope with that kind of complication, do you?’ Trish’s voice was teasing, but Grace could tell that beneath it she was close to tears again. She kept her own voice businesslike.
‘I’m confident that Terry can. When are you going to marry him, Trish?’
‘Well –’
‘I know you’re a great one for throwing things away, but you oughtn’t to leave a man who loves you wondering whether you’ll discard him one day. It’s not very kind to leave him in purgatory. Not that I’m a good one to preach about marriage, but what I’d really like is for this to be a wedding present. A kind of dowry. Let me spell out just what it is that I’m making over.’
She felt in her pocket for a piece of paper on which she had already sketched a plan.
‘We’re here,’ she said, pointing, as Trish came to stand behind her and look over her shoulder. ‘This nearest strip of woodland would stay with the house, to screen off the traffic and act as a sound baffle. The next strip would be yours, running alongside what’s going to be the ring road. You might be able to build on it one of these days, but there’s no permission for that at the moment. Then there’s the strip which the council needs.’
‘It seems very wide, just for a road.’
‘They’re talking about having two lanes for each direction, divided by a wide area of grass and with more grass on either side of the road. My lawyer has been negotiating a sale. He’s got all the papers; everything’s pretty well settled, except that the council doesn’t want to pay until it’s got all the land along the route tied up and is ready to start work. In return for our co-operation, we’ve got a declaration that the meadows on the far side of the road can be developed – because of course they’ll be completely cut off from the house. That’s where you’re going to make your fortune.’
She tried to raise a hand to feel in her pocket again and found that she lacked the necessary strength. ‘Fish out the city map for me, will you?’
Trish opened it and found the section which showed Shot-over, Headington and Cowley.
‘Now then, just look at this. There’s this huge area of the car factories: Morris Motors and Pressed Steel. They keep expanding and they want more workers. There’s this other area which has been filled in by houses for the factory hands. But there’s no more room there, and not enough homes. Put a new housing estate on the meadows and you’d be doing other people a service, as well as yourself.’
‘But I don’t know anything about housing.’
‘Terry does – or could soon learn. Anyway, you could always sell it straight on to a speculative builder.
Land with building permission is a gold mine. But if you do that, I suggest you keep a site in the centre and build one of these big new shops that Terry’s always talking about.’
‘A self-service one, you mean?’
‘That’s right.’ Grace circled the area with a finger. ‘All the people who live here already are miles from any decent shops and there’d be a captive market in the new community. Another public service.’
‘You’ve really been thinking about this, haven’t you, Grace?’
‘I have to do something to pass the time, and it’s a challenge. Even when you know that you haven’t got long, thinking about what will happen when you’re not here is a bit of an effort. Satisfying when it works, though.’
With a different sort of effort Grace stood up, exhausted.
‘You stay here,’ Trish ordered. ‘I’ll bring the car down the drive to take you back. You mustn’t try to walk up the hill.’
‘In a moment. There’s something I want to look at first, while I’m here. In case it’s the last time I manage to get down.’ She took Trish’s arm for support again and leaned on the walking stick too as she indicated that she wished after all to plunge into the wood. ‘Stupid to be so wobbly, isn’t it? Something to do with these pills I have to take, I suppose. It should be somewhere about here.’
‘What should?’
‘Two pieces of slate.’ Grace pointed to an area beneath a large beech tree where the ground was covered with leaves and brambles. ‘Have a look round there for me, would you? They’re pointed, the shape of a cat’s ears, stuck into the ground.’
Trish picked up a fallen branch and used it to lift the brambles and probe the area beneath. ‘Got them!’ she called at last. ‘Shall I bring them over to you?’
‘No. Leave them where they are,’ Grace made her way slowly across the rough ground until she was able to look down at the two black triangles – much smaller than she had remembered them. ‘They were put there as a headstone. The dearest friend of my childhood is buried there. My cat.’ She had to search her memory for a moment before coming up with the name. ‘Pepper, he was called, because his fur made me sneeze. David shot him with a bow and arrow.’
‘Is that why you’ve never got on with David? Did it begin that day?’
‘Yes. It was the day I discovered how to hate and how to mourn. A six-year-old body bursting with misery and fury.’ With her stick she touched each of the two slates in turn. ‘And yet I ought to be grateful to David, I suppose, because something began for me that day. That was when I first found out that shapes could be used to express emotions – the biggest discovery of my life, though it was a good many years before I realized it.’ Her expression suddenly lightened. ‘So perhaps it’s fair after all that David should be rewarded with Greystones. If it hadn’t been for him, I might never have found my vocation.’
‘You’re a Pollyanna,’ said Trish.
‘What’s that?’
‘You gave me the book yourself, don’t you remember, when I was about ten. Pollyanna was so determined to see the good side of everything that when she was given a pair of crutches for Christmas out of the charity box, she didn’t cry at getting something so useless. She was just happy that she didn’t need to use them.’
They laughed together. Then Grace buried the past by prodding the dead leaves of many winters back to conceal the pieces of slate.
‘I’ll accept your offer of a drive back up the hill,’ she said. ‘Come and find me by the boulders.’
Walking even more cautiously without Trish’s helping hand, she made her way alongside the stream before lowering herself gratefully to the mossy ground of the clearing. There she leaned back against one of the huge boulders and stared at the other. Short though it was, this excursion had been too much for her. It was almost impossible to recall the feeling of strength which she had taken for granted until a year or two ago – striding out on walks, hammering for hours at her carvings.
The boulders brought other memories, and these were what she had come to indulge. By these great rocks, rubbed smooth during the millennia of glacial movement, she had first fallen in love with Andy and later wept for the loss of him. Here, many years later, their love had been consummated. Here too she had brought her aunt to mourn a dead lover.
More importantly, it was here that, while searching for some way in which to express her grief after the death of her eldest brother, she found consolation in carving a memorial to him from the fallen branch of a tree. The two pieces of slate on Pepper’s grave represented the instinctive reaction of a six-year-old to death, but it was within the atmosphere created by these ancient boulders that as an adult she had begun her life’s work.
How peaceful the clearing was. Soon, if the council had its way, traffic would be thundering only a few yards away, but for the moment there was no sound to be heard except the thudding of her own heart. No birds sang and even the nearby stream moved in silence. So quiet was it that she could hear Trish starting the engine of her car at the top of the hill.
Grace lay back, waiting. She stretched her arms backwards, attempting to encircle the boulders; but they were too large. She had to be content with the feel of the stone – smooth in shape but rough in texture – beneath her fingers. Sighing with satisfaction, she pressed harder, as though pulling herself backwards into the centre of the stone.
The dull ache inside her body which nowadays never left her was sharpened by the effort into pain; but this was almost at once washed away by a more sinister sensation. She had suffered haemorrhages before and so was able to recognize that this was another; but for the first time Mercy was not on hand with the necessary medication to check the flow. There was a pill in her pocket now, if she could reach it: she was never without one. Instinctively she brought her arms forward, preparing to search her pockets for the tiny pill box. Then, restraining herself, she sat still.
What was the point? By quick action she might secure for herself another few weeks of life. But the sculpture which she had always known would be her last work was finished. More importantly, she had had the necessary chat with Trish, bringing to a satisfactory end the relationship which had brought her so much happiness. Trish would be all right. Greystones would be all right. Grace leaned back peacefully, listening to the sound of the car as it wound its way down the drive. Then the engine stopped.
A Note on the Author
Anne Melville is a pseudonym of Margaret Potter (1926–1998), a daughter of the author and lecturer Bernard Newman. She read Modern History at Oxford as a scholar of St Hugh’s College, and after graduating she taught and travelled in the Middle East. On returning to England, she edited a children’s magazine for a few years, but later devoted all her working time to writing.
Discover books by Anne Melville published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/AnneMelville
Lorimers at War
Lorimers in Love
Lorimer Loyalties
The Last of the Lorimers
The Lorimer Legacy
The Lorimer Line
The House of Hardie
Grace Hardie
The Hardie Inheritance
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Grafton Books
Copyright © 1990 Anne Melville
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any
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eISBN: 9781448214396
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