The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘I know he had that series on the telly doing up cottages, because our Vicky told me.’

  ‘That’s right, and he actually did a lot of the work involved himself. But the new series is being presented by someone else.’

  ‘If that’s his bent, there’s plenty for him to do here at Mossby.’

  ‘There certainly is,’ I agreed. ‘Well, I’d better get going – and thank you for taking my luggage in for me. That was kind.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said, and started scooping slimy brown leaves out of the bottom of the fountain again, so I left him to it and joined Carey, who had appeared round the corner of the house.

  ‘Would madam care to enter for a spot of lunch?’ he suggested when I was within earshot.

  ‘What’s on offer?’ I asked, suddenly hungry. I’d tended to forget about eating regularly lately, and I suspected by his gaunt aspect that Carey had been just the same.

  ‘Dish du jour is cheese on toast – and come on round this way to the kitchen door, because I’m not letting you near any windows until we’ve eaten.’

  I’d been casting lingering glances at the leaded windows in the façade but capitulated. ‘Sounds good to me … and Molly sent an apple tart up – I’d forgotten. It must still be on the back seat of the car.’

  ‘No, Clem left it on the kitchen table with your car keys. Come on!’

  Next morning, as soon as we had breakfasted, Mr Revell took us all over the house. Father’s windows looked very fine, with central large octagons and squares in clear glass and borders in a woven strap effect, which I knew he had copied from some old heraldic windows in the Elizabethan wing. Looking out, I thought the view over the lake and woodland was perfectly delightful.

  It was a bright day and the house was now quite flooded with light, so that I could imagine how my windows would look in the inner hall. When he conducted us up the wide, curving staircase, I longed to design something to replace the tall, narrow, plainly glazed window on the landing, too.

  Father had not seen the finished house, so he was just as interested as I in all the details of furnishings and fittings that had been so carefully designed for their situation. We saw one or two of the principal bedrooms, which were very fine, and then passed through a dark wooden door of some age into the old tower.

  I observed that glass had been inserted in the narrow window to keep out the weather, and a seat built into the embrasure underneath, but otherwise the walls of roughly dressed stone, the large hearth and wooden floor must surely be original to the building.

  Our host did not pause here, but led us through another door into the Elizabethan wing. I was hard on his heels, because now I knew that it contained a window designed by a woman of a bygone age, I was quite agog to see it! First, though, we must tour the upper part of the house. Mr Revell played the guide very well, telling us that this first bedchamber was that supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Anne Revell and had been kept locked up during her lifetime … and unused since.

  Mr Revell’s new gas lighting obviously had not yet reached this far, so it was very gloomy, not helped by all the old linenfold panelling. There was another of those vast hearths and a massive and ornately carved bed of wood so dark it seemed black.

  ‘The old house has many ghosts besides Lady Anne, who commissioned the stained-glass window I know you are so eager to see, Miss Kaye,’ our guide said with a smile.

  ‘I have no patience with such imaginings – old tales told round a fire to frighten children!’ said Father.

  ‘I admit, I have never seen any ghostly apparitions myself, so I expect you are quite right,’ Mr Revell admitted.

  But I did not feel the same, for there seemed a dark, brooding atmosphere in the chamber, as though something bad had once happened there and it would not have surprised me if someone – or something – had stepped out of the deepest shadows …

  With a shiver, I hurried after the others.

  17

  Let the Revells Commence

  ‘It’s surprising how parts of the old house have been joined into one fairly harmonious whole with the new,’ Carey said, as we drank our coffee after lunch and prepared for what he kept referring to as ‘The Grand Tour’.

  ‘You seem to have picked up an awful lot of information about it already, considering you’ve only been here a couple of days.’

  ‘That was Mr Wilmslow’s crash course in Revellry, the day I arrived,’ he said. ‘He seems especially interested in how the building evolved through the centuries. Then Ella insisted on showing me over the house again the next day, but her conversation was confined to terse statements like, “Here’s the linen cupboard,” and, “That stair goes up to the attic.” She only waxed lyrical about the Elizabethan part, in a strangely proprietorial way.’

  ‘And now you’re going to give me the quick guided tour … followed, if I know you as well as I think I do, by an in-depth inspection lasting a couple of days, where I follow you round with a notebook, tape measure and camera.’

  ‘Yes, I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in properly,’ he agreed happily. ‘The best way of discovering the secrets of an old house is to restore it.’

  ‘Then film the whole ongoing restoration and write a book about it, like the previous series.’

  ‘There’s so much more to do here than I expected that I’m starting to think this might be the basis of several TV series.’

  ‘I suspect you might be quite right, and there’ll probably be all kinds of spin-off magazine articles and that kind of thing,’ I said, then got up determinedly. ‘Come on, I want the tour now. Where shall we start? With the servants’ wing as the aperitif, the Arts and Crafts part as the main course and the Elizabethan wing as dessert?’

  ‘If you like, but the attics and cellars are a bit too substantial to be an amuse-bouche between courses, so we might have to snack on them tomorrow, instead.’

  ‘Amuse-bouche? That’s right posh,’ I said, in my grandmother’s Lancashire accent, and then followed Carey as he picked up his stick and headed for the first of the small rooms off the passage outside.

  ‘“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop,” as the King said to Alice,’ he said, throwing open the door. ‘These steps lead down to the cellars. I’ve only really looked at the first, which has the central heating boiler in it, but the rest of them seem to go on and on.’

  He moved along the passage, opening each door briefly. ‘These next three were sculleries and larders and that kind of thing. Here’s the one with the giant freezer.’

  ‘I’ll get Molly round soon to empty that,’ I said, and told him about her brilliant idea for disposing of the contents to some of her more hard-up clients, which he thought an excellent scheme.

  Next came a utility room with an old-fashioned drying rack hanging from the ceiling, but also a large washing machine and tumble dryer lined up along one wall. There was a heap of bags stamped with a laundry logo, too.

  ‘Snowball Laundry – that’s original,’ I said.

  We moved on to a small spartan cloakroom and a few random hidey-holes little bigger than cupboards, before returning to the kitchen by way of the housekeeper’s parlour.

  ‘This is where the information leaflets and postcard stock for the coach parties visiting the Elizabethan wing are currently stored and arrangements made. Not that it’s exactly a money-spinner at the moment, but we can think about that one later.’

  It was a tiny, slightly gloomy room, with a soupy brown chenille tablecloth over a claw-footed pedestal table, some deal shelves laden with small cardboard boxes, a tin cashbox and a ledger.

  ‘If you expand that side of things, you could turn this into a proper office, with a computer and desk and so on,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’ve got another room earmarked as an office-cum-studio,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you in a minute.’

  The kitchen by now felt like my second home, especially with Fang snoring like a miniature buzz saw in hi
s basket, but I hadn’t yet been in the servants’ hall that led out of it. It had a window to the front of the house, as well as one at the side, so was quite light and airy … or it would be, if the shrubbery was pruned back a bit.

  ‘It isn’t used because there haven’t been any servants living in for years, and of course it’s quite plain – none of the Arts and Crafts touches in here!’ he said. ‘Perfect for making a studio/office once the table and random chairs are taken away.’

  ‘If you can get that big table out!’

  ‘Easily, because it’s in sections. You can remove leaves till you end up with something really small, that’s no problem. We could share this space, if you like, unless you’d prefer a room of your own to work in?’

  ‘No, a corner in here would be fine, because I’ll have a studio area in the workshop, too: that big back room with the sink that looks as if someone has used it as a tool shed.’

  ‘I thought I’d have a door knocked through into the main part of the house – the formal family dining room is next door – then if we want to, we can always expand into there, or have a room each. There’s enough space to get at least twelve people round the kitchen table, so I don’t need a separate dining room.’

  ‘But it might be nice for Christmas dinner, or celebrations,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. There’s no rush to make any major changes anyway … and your eyes have glazed over,’ he added. ‘I didn’t think I’d have bored you already.’

  ‘No, I’ve just had a brainwave: you know I ended with tons of material about female glass craftswomen of the Victorian era when I was writing my dissertation? Well, I’m going to turn it into a book, with an expanded new section about Jessie Kaye.’

  ‘That’s a great idea, Shrimp!’ he enthused. ‘And being at Mossby is bound to inspire you.’

  ‘I’d be even more inspired if you finally let me see some of her windows!’ I said, and he laughed.

  ‘OK, come on!’ He headed back out to the kitchen. ‘Until I get that door knocked through into the dining room, we have to go this way and up the passage through the baize door …’

  But he’d lost my attention the moment the door swung closed behind us, for I was gazing, entranced, at the half-glazed inner walls of the long narrow entrance hall. Light filtered in from the room beyond, enough to make out the shapes of bending leaves and rippling grass, enhanced by the clever use of reamy and seedy glass, while the rich amber roses on tall stems swayed against the palest of blue skies. The effect was like a bright garden under water …

  ‘Wow!’ I whispered finally. ‘These are so beautiful – and technically really clever.’

  ‘They’d look much better if all the woodwork in here was repainted white, instead of this dark green. You can see the original colour where it’s chipped at the corner.’

  ‘Yes, that would make it much lighter in here,’ I agreed, running a finger lovingly over a piece of seedy ochre glass, feeling the tiny bubbles nearest the surface. You have to be so careful not to break into them when you’re cutting and leading-up, or the cement seeps into the bubbles and it doesn’t look good.

  ‘If you could possibly bear to tear yourself away, there’s more house to be seen – and after all, now you’re living here, you can come and gloat over them any time you like,’ he said finally.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘Where next?’

  ‘This way, madam,’ he said, back to his tour guide role. ‘On your right is the cloakroom I mentioned, with the picture of Windsor Castle in the toilet bowl.’

  ‘Every home should have one.’

  ‘The porch has the same plain octagonal and square patterned windows as the rest of the house, though the ones in the bays also have quite intricate borders – as you can see,’ he added, throwing open a door in the half-glazed wall, revealing a vast room with two curved bay windows looking out on to the front, with a door to the veranda between them.

  ‘Ella calls this the drawing room, though it seems to have been intended to be multi-purpose, what with the billiard table and the veranda.’

  The billiard table was at the far end of the room, across an acre of original carpet, but round the hearth was an arrangement of slightly faded and shabby period seating. A grand staircase vanished upwards and the whole effect was a bit like a stage set for an Agatha Christie play.

  ‘It wouldn’t be exactly cosy, unless you’d got lots of people staying, but it has a sort of charm to it,’ I commented.

  ‘If you want cosy, have a look in here,’ he said, opening the door to a small sitting room with a TV, bookshelves and rubbed, squishy velvet sofas and armchairs.

  ‘That’s more like it. You could relax in here,’ I approved. ‘What’s through the teeny-tiny door?’

  ‘The ancient tower that links the two parts of the house,’ he said, opening it. He had to duck his head to avoid knocking it as he went through, but it was just the right height for Hobbit-sized me.

  ‘My uncle had a lift put in, as you can see, and though the cage looks a bit antique, the workings have been modernized and regularly serviced.’

  The tower’s narrow window had been glazed and the large stone fireplace was obviously original, but probably not the plastering and panelling on the walls, or the polished wooden floor.

  ‘The bookshelves in the sitting room are sort of an overflow from the library, which is in the muniment room next door, the only part of the old wing the family regularly used. But we’ll go upstairs first and work our way down to it.’

  With some trepidation, I let him take me up in the lift and I could tell from the way he operated it that it was a new toy, though at least that meant he would sometimes use it while his leg was mending.

  ‘You can explore the bedrooms in the new part on your own later,’ he said as we stepped out into a room that was a replica of the one below, except that the stone fireplace was carved with a battered coat of arms and there was a glass-lidded curio cabinet.

  It was lined in dark velvet, so it was hard to see what was inside. I’d just begun to lift the lid when Carey said, impatiently, ‘Never mind that! This is supposed to be a quick overview of the whole place, so you can get your bearings: we haven’t got time to faff about with curios. Aren’t you dying to see Lady Anne’s bedchamber?’

  I reluctantly lowered the lid and followed him through another Hobbit-sized door … and stopped just inside the bedchamber, shivering.

  In the ancient tower I’d had no sense of the pressing presence of past centuries, yet as the chilly darkness of this room heavily enfolded me, it felt as though I was stepping back into another age.

  Politeness made me hide my impatience while we admired the paintings of Revell ancestors in the Long Gallery, but it was soon rewarded when we descended the stairs, for on the half-landing were five narrow rectangular windows.

  The two on either side of the central one were of great antiquity and consisted of diamond panes in uneven greenish glass, inset with brightly coloured heraldic devices. They were bordered with the woven strap pattern Father had copied in his own work.

  The middle window was constructed in a similar style, with the woven border and quarry panes, but the central device in this case was a painted and silver-stained depiction of the old house, with two women standing on one side, and a girl kneeling in prayer on the other. Below, a Cavalier seemed to be striding through a cornfield, while high above, a spiked sun shone down on all.

  The diamond panes of clear glass surrounding these figures each contained a central circle or square painted with a different and seemingly random motif. At the bottom had been lettered:

  Lady Anne Revell caused me to be made: let no man remove me.

  To God, all things are clear.

  ‘You seem quite dumbstruck, Miss Kaye!’ said Mr Revell, amused.

  ‘I told you it was remarkable, Jessie,’ Father said. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Why, it reminds me of nothing so much as a sampler,�
�� I said. ‘You know, where one sews little bits of pattern or flowers and other motifs to see the effect.’

  ‘I had not thought of that before, but you are quite right,’ Father agreed.

  ‘There are samplers hung in the muniment room below, some of them of great age, so perhaps she drew inspiration from those,’ Mr Revell suggested.

  He led the way downstairs, through a huge and impressive hall, hung with pikes and halberds and mutely attended by empty suits of armour, then along a short passage to the muniment room.

  I would have liked to have lingered to examine the samplers there, though they hung on a dark wall and were difficult to make out – but time had scurried by on silent mouse feet and as we returned to the light and airy new house, the gong sounded for luncheon.

  18

  Dimly Illuminated

  Carey switched on wall lights, which had been made to look like candle sconces, but the bulbs were dim and only faintly illuminated the room.

  ‘The blinds are usually kept down in here to stop the sun fading the seventeenth-century bed hangings,’ he said. ‘You can date when the electricity was put in by the fact that all the sockets are two-pin brown Bakelite ones. If those coach parties ever visited on dark days, it must have been like playing blind man’s bluff.’

  ‘I seem to recall it was quite gloomy upstairs, though we weren’t shown this room.’

  I’d have remembered the large stone fireplace, which must back on to the one in the tower, the dark linenfold half-panelling and the intricately moulded white ceiling. The bed was vast, with a heavily carved headboard.

  ‘What are those figures carved into the bedhead?’ I asked, peering more closely.

  ‘Hard to say, though it looks like a man and a woman. But presumably this was the nuptial bed of the Revells. I’ll open the blinds and bring a torch next time we visit and you can have a better look. Not all the soft furnishings in this wing are as old as these, though there are a couple of really ancient tapestries in the Great Hall and a collection of framed samplers in the muniment room.’