The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  I went and looked in the age-mottled mirror on the far wall and a small creature with a pointed face and mossy grey-green eyes under obliquely slanting dark brows looked back at me, like something slightly feral peeking out of the undergrowth.

  Perhaps something, like Fang, that might suddenly bite.

  On the day Mr Browne was to return, Ralph set out to meet him and was no more seen again that day, presumably dining with his friend. And since we had separate bedchambers at Mossby (something I assumed to be the way of the gentry) I had no idea what time he came home.

  Next day I spent in the workshop. Father having approved a design I had made for a customer, I was engaged in drawing up the cartoon to send down to him, along with some trays of glass ready for painting and firing.

  I was quite occupied and happy, so that I entirely forgot the time until Honoria sent a servant down to remind me to return for lunch. Ralph very often called in so that we could walk back to the house together, but today he had not done so and Honoria told me he and his friend had gone off somewhere, but would both be back in time to dine that evening.

  Rosslyn Browne came to dinner and somehow the whole atmosphere changed, though I couldn’t understand why. He was an elegant, slender, bearded man with eloquent dark eyes and of middle height. He and my husband seemed to share many interests and indeed engaged in similar conversations to those we had shared. But when I joined in, both looked at me as if surprised that I had interrupted them.

  It quickly became clear that Mr Browne resented my presence: he was of the jealous variety of friends and wanted to be the centre of Ralph’s attention.

  I did not like his dismissive – almost sarcastic – attitude towards Honoria either and she, unsurprisingly, was very cold towards him.

  I hoped Mr Browne’s work kept him frequently away from home.

  23

  The Vital Spark

  We spent practically every waking moment of the entire weekend exhaustively going over the interior of the house, making not only a complete inventory of what was there, but a list of what needed repainting, renovating, renewing or restoring. Carey took a million photographs and made notes, too.

  Only one of us really enjoyed this experience. I was limp as a wet rag by Sunday evening, but though Carey was hobbling like an actor auditioning for a bad spy film, his enthusiasm and energy were undiminished. After dinner, he downloaded all the pics he’d taken on to his big laptop and could hardly wait to input the reams of notes, and various lists, not to mention email his many useful contacts.

  Even running on about seventy per cent of his normal self, Carey had twice as much vitality as most people. That black and silver stick would soon be worn down to a nub, at that rate.

  Fang had shadowed us throughout the weekend, though he tended to lie down and sigh a lot, and also inadvertently get shut into rooms and have to be released after a lot of highly aggrieved barking.

  On these occasions, Carey would mutter something about re-homing the daft creature, but we both knew he didn’t mean it because we’d grown fond of Fang.

  Of course, his antisocial tendencies where ankles were concerned made life a bit difficult, and if the internet wasn’t taking all year to connect, I’d have already looked online for miniature dog muzzles.

  Nick and the rest of the film crew were due to arrive on Monday morning. They were setting out from London before dawn, intending to shoot loads of film before leaving some time on Tuesday, but even so, we were surprised to see the big white van with ‘Raising Crane Productions’ along the side pulling into the courtyard just after ten.

  They all piled out, stretching in the chilly sunlight. Nick enveloped me in a big hug, followed by tall, red-headed Sukes, who for once was not trying to ram something that looked like a muff on a stick under my nose.

  Jorge, the cameraman – though Nick also could double up in this capacity – shuffled his large feet shyly and gave me a smile from somewhere between his beard and fringe, while Nelson, who had black dreadlocks all the way down to the tattered jeans that hung off his almost non-existent hips, said in a deep, plummy Oxford accent, ‘Hello, darling!’

  You could make a documentary about the documentary makers! They had worked as a team for so long that they tended to act like a flock of Midwich Cuckoos: if one knew something, then they all did. Sukes, Nick and Nelson had once shared the student house with me and Carey, while Jorge had joined them soon afterwards and was now living with Sukes.

  Nelson smelled of full cooked English breakfast when he kissed me on the cheek: but come to that, they all did.

  ‘Carey said you’d turned vegetarian, so we thought we’d better get some protein while we could,’ Nick explained. ‘If you only eat beans, it’s going to be like a re-cast of Gone with the Wind by the time we leave.’

  ‘You’re thinking of vegans, but we’re not even totally vegetarian, because we’re still eating fish and eggs and dairy stuff,’ I said. ‘There was no need to clog your arteries up with saturated fats, because we wouldn’t have let you starve.’

  I made a big pot of coffee and they sat down to discuss what they were going to do and look at some footage Nick had taken of Carey leaving the physiotherapy unit, with a flotilla of nurses in attendance.

  Of course, they’d already had a flying trip up to Mossby the day after Carey moved in, so they had some preliminary shots of it.

  ‘The last time we were here, the weather wasn’t so bright,’ Nelson said, dunking an iced ring biscuit into his coffee, so that the topping bubbled slightly. ‘We still got some good shots of Carey stopping at the bottom of the drive to look at Mossby for the first time and then the sun suddenly coming out just as he reached the courtyard. Couldn’t have staged it better.’

  ‘Jorge wants to take some more footage from the bottom of the drive and try a few outside angles with Carey wandering round the place,’ said Nick. ‘Then we’ll move on to Angel seeing the workshop for the first time and talking a bit about what it’ll mean to her to be working there.’

  ‘Carey told you it was where one of my greatest heroines, Jessie Kaye, worked at the end of the nineteenth century? She was one of the leading female glass craftswomen of her day.’

  ‘Yes, he updated me, though anyone who’d lived with you while you were writing that dissertation knew all about Jessie Kaye and the Arts and Crafts movement, whether they liked it or not!’

  ‘I must have been a monumental bore,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘I expect we all were, on our favourite subjects,’ Sukes said, pouring herself another mug of coffee.

  ‘I’ll go down to the workshop and pretend to see it for the first time whenever you want me to,’ I promised, because at least Nick hadn’t asked me to talk about Julian’s illness and death, and how and why I’d moved to Mossby, even though it would make just the sort of angle he’d have liked to introduce.

  They fell into a discussion about the various strands that were going to be important when they’d sold the pilot, which they seemed convinced would happen very quickly. On the list of topics that could be woven into the series, along with that of the restoration itself and my setting up the workshop, was the family history, ghosts, legends and secrets, and Carey’s determination to make Mossby pay its way.

  ‘And Fang, the little werewolf of Mossby, will be your co-star, Carey,’ Nick added.

  Unfortunately, all those male legs had been just too tempting for Fang, who was in disgrace again. He was now tied by a longish lead to a hook in the wall by the stove, which was probably once part of some kind of archaic spit – maybe even the sort powered by a little dog. He should thank his lucky stars he wasn’t born in an age when they used those.

  When the light had gone, the crew and Carey went down to the cellars and amused themselves by pretending they were shooting a horror film. Strange screams and moans floated up through the open door at the top of the stairs as I got out a couple of giant pasta dishes from the freezer. Fortunately, Molly had dropped off the first ba
tch of new food very early that morning before dashing off to do the rest of her round.

  Once the pasta was cooked and the wine opened, I called them back up and we all retired to the small sitting room with our plates and glasses, to watch the first of the new Complete Country Cottage series without Carey starring in it.

  I wasn’t sure how good an idea this was, but they all seemed hellbent on it and booed loudly when the new presenter, Seamus Banyan, appeared, as if he was a pantomime villain. He proved to be polished, charming and enthusiastic, but not remotely hands-on. It just wasn’t the same – how could it be? Carey was knowledgeable about so many skills that craftsmen loved to talk to him and help out, and he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty by mucking in and working with them, either.

  ‘It’s a bit … dead,’ Jorge said finally, and we all agreed.

  ‘They’ve got the shape of the old programme, but there’s no heart to it any more,’ said Sukes.

  ‘I didn’t know any of the people working on the cottage,’ Carey said. ‘And what they did to that wattle-and-daub wall was criminal! Having uncovered that section, they should have put glass over it and kept it as a major talking point in the new scheme.’

  ‘It’s so unfair. The whole thing was your baby, yet the only mention of you was that bit in the credits,’ I said angrily.

  ‘Serves me right for not reading the small print in the contract – and my agent should have noticed, too.’

  ‘It was an Immaculate Concept,’ sighed Sukes. ‘The new series is just a bastardized production.’

  ‘Never mind, it’ll be how it should be in the Mansion Makeover series,’ Nick reminded us.

  ‘Well, where’s this pub you mentioned?’ Nelson said briskly, changing the subject. ‘Let’s all go and have a drink.’

  Jorge drove us – he always drew the short straw, being teetotal – and we had a convivial evening in the public bar, playing darts with some of the locals. Due to a slight underestimation of the strength of the local beer, things got a bit fuzzy, but I do recall Lulu and Cam joining us for a drink later, together with some friends called Izzy and Rufus. By then, though, the bar was so full and noisy we could hardly hear ourselves speak.

  If you want to know why the countryside in west Lancashire is deserted on dark winter evenings, it’s because the entire population is in the Screaming Skull.

  Under the influence of several pints of Old Spoggit Brown, Nelson got into a rather one-sided conversation across the bar with Howling Hetty, just as we were leaving, and he wanted to take her back with us, but we managed to drag him away.

  When we got home, I took Fang out into the courtyard on his lead, since Nick was still out there leaning against the fountain, having a sneaky fag.

  ‘You’ve got dark sky and stars here,’ he said, gazing upwards through circling smoke.

  ‘No streetlights to pollute the night sky, that’s why. I expect I’ll appreciate it all more when Carey stops running me ragged and calmes down to his ordinary semi-manic mode.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Julian, you know,’ Nick said awkwardly. ‘We all are. We just don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I know. It’s all right.’

  ‘We heard what a bastard Julian’s son turned out to be, but you’ll be OK with Carey. And I’m not worried about him, either, now you’re here. You’re like twins, always happier together.’

  Then he flicked his stub into the bowl of the fountain and went off to bed.

  What he’d said was insightful for Nick: it must have been the booze talking!

  The fountain wasn’t on, so I could see the faint last glow of the cigarette stub in the bowl and fished it out. I wasn’t having my sea monster poisoned by nicotine.

  Not usually the earliest of risers, the crew all found their way down to the kitchen eventually, even if one or two looked just slightly the worse for wear.

  I cooked up a big breakfast which, though it might have been lacking in the bacon and black pudding department, had some delicious vegetarian sausages and free-range eggs, guaranteed to be from happy hens.

  After following that with an acre of buttered toast and jam and gallons of tea and coffee, they were ready for action.

  We went down to the workshop so they could film me seeing it for the first time … again. Then it was Carey’s turn.

  After that, they decided to take some arty shots of the rusted entrance gates and views of the house looking up at the terraces from the lake. Carey not being required for those, he went off in the buggy to look at his uncle’s car in the stables, while I walked back to the house and spent a quiet couple of hours in the studio next to the kitchen, sorting out my stuff and starting my list of things I’d need for my new workshop. Since I was beginning almost from scratch, it grew longer and longer.

  Carey was in by the time the crew straggled back for lunch and Jorge said that a nosy blonde had suddenly appeared and kept getting in the way of the filming.

  ‘She said you’d told her we were coming, Carey, and since she was an actress she’d be happy to help if we wanted her in some of the shots,’ Sukes added.

  ‘Yeah, so I said we weren’t making a bloody film so we didn’t need extras,’ Nick said. ‘She was gardening outside the Lodge when we drove past … in full makeup and stilettos. I didn’t think people gardened in January. Isn’t everything dead?’

  ‘Not dead, only resting,’ said Carey, sounding a bit Monty Python.

  ‘That was Vicky Parry and she’s staying with her parents at the lodge,’ I explained. ‘But we certainly didn’t suggest she should help, or appear on film.’

  ‘No, we didn’t think you had,’ Nelson said. ‘She seemed to be irrelevant.’

  Call me mean, but I quite liked hearing the lovely Vicky described as irrelevant!

  ‘That’s right. Unless she’s got hidden talents in roofing, plumbing, plastering or anything else useful to the programme, I can’t see that we’d want her wandering around in the background,’ said Sukes.

  ‘She was only a lodge keeper’s daughter …’ murmured Jorge, then got stuck for a second line until, by concerted effort, the crew came up with something amazingly filthy.

  ‘Doesn’t quite scan,’ Carey said critically, lobbing more rounds of his standby – cheese on toast – on to a plate in the centre of the table.

  After lunch, Jorge gave Carey a crash course in the finer arts of filming, since they were loaning him a camera so that he could shoot anything interesting between their visits. Now I’d never know when he was going to suddenly pop up and immortalize me in glorious Technicolor …

  Then they quickly packed up and we followed them down to the gates in the buggy, where we stood waving them off.

  They weren’t going straight back, but detouring to Liverpool to shoot some tall ship that was moored there. We could hear them getting in the right mood by discordantly belting out, ‘Yo, ho and up she rises!’ as they vanished round the bend.

  ‘It was fun, all the old gang together, wasn’t it?’ Carey said, draping one long arm across my shoulders.

  I turned to look up at him, smiling, and that was when I suddenly noticed the stone ball on the top of the tall gatepost next to us move.

  Without conscious thought, but with a strength I didn’t realize I possessed, I gave him an almighty shove, pushing him backwards and then, overbalancing, falling on top of him.

  The stone ball missed us by about a foot, landing with a soggy thud that shook the ground, and then rolling into the ditch.

  Carey clasped me to his chest and then planted a decidedly un-platonic kiss on my lips.

  ‘Did the earth move for you, too, darling?’ he said finally, sounding shaken.

  ‘Oh God, you could have been killed!’ I exclaimed, staring down at him. My heart was still racing.

  ‘We both could,’ he said, then scrambled up, pulling me with him. Then he stooped with a grimace to rub his bad leg.

  I picked his stick up and handed it to him. ‘Did I hurt your leg? I’m sure I la
nded on it.’

  ‘A bit, but it was certainly better than a stone ball landing on my head – and I’m sure you just saved my life, Shrimp.’

  ‘It was instinctive. I just happened to catch sight of the movement out of the corner of my eye.’ I felt a bit shaky suddenly at the thought of what might have happened.

  Carey peered down at the stone ball in the ditch. ‘That’ll take a bit of getting out.’

  ‘I could have sworn I heard something crashing about in the shrubbery afterwards, while we were lying there,’ I said. ‘Did you hear anything?’

  ‘No, I was too stunned, though birds and squirrels can make a surprising amount of noise if they’re startled. Let’s go round and have a look.’

  A small path came out of the shrubbery by the gate and the ground was hard under its covering of dead leaves. Despite my protests, Carey climbed far enough up the open rusted gate to examine the top of the column.

  ‘It looks as if the cement holding it on had loosened over the years … though why it should suddenly roll off just at that moment, when there wasn’t a breeze, or even the vibration of a heavy lorry passing to cause it to, is anyone’s guess. Unless the squirrels are conspiring to kill me and got together to push it?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said.

  Carey checked the other column, which seemed firm enough, before we got back in the buggy and headed towards the house. It struggled a bit up the steep part, but my legs were feeling jellified and there was no way I was walking.

  The Lodge curtains didn’t even twitch as we passed, and the only sign of life was Clem, doing something horticultural with a spade on the lower terrace.

  The house seemed empty and quiet without the others, just Fang dozing by the stove. Carey made us both coffee and spiked it with the remains of a bottle of dark rum.

  ‘I think you just lost another of your nine lives – how many does that make?’ I asked.

  ‘Three used, six to go,’ he said. ‘Cheers!’

  But I wasn’t entirely cheered, even after the rum, because I suddenly remembered that when he was a little boy he’d fallen out of a tree and the back of his jumper had caught on a branch, slowly throttling him.