The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  He’d brought with him Liz, the dog whisperer’s daughter, having picked her up in the car that Ivan had bought him when he passed his test – some quite ordinary little hatchback, which he’d tarted up with bold stripes up the side and an oddly large and protruding exhaust.

  It was a day for brief visitations, for soon after they’d gone, Molly dropped Grant off so he could admire the finished Lady Anne windows too, while she was stocking up Carey’s freezer after the film crew’s latest depredations.

  Grant slid each panel cautiously out of the rack, holding them to the light. ‘You’ve made a good job of this, Angel – but the design is even odder when you look at it closely, isn’t it? I wonder what the significance of all those little pictures and bits of pattern in the centres of the quarries are … if there is any.’

  ‘I know. The more I worked on it, the odder it seemed. Most of the motifs seem entirely random, but in places they’re repeated in sequence. See here, where there’s what looks like the top point of a linenfold panel three times in a row, followed by one of those flat Tudor roses.’

  ‘It’s hard to see any meaning in that, so perhaps your sampler idea was right and she just drew whatever came into her head to make a pretty pattern.’

  ‘It’s a mystery,’ I said, then showed him the fragment of the Pre-Raphaelite angel that Carey had given me, which I’d begun taking apart.

  ‘That’s really fine painting,’ he said appreciatively. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Oh, lead it up into another roundel, I think. I won’t attempt to replicate any of the missing original pieces, other than letting the lead calme outline where the wings and robe would have continued.’

  Then I asked him how he was getting on with Nat, now that the dust had settled slightly.

  ‘I think he’s realized he’s shot himself in the foot, getting rid of you and Ivan, because I’m not busting a gut to do all the work, even if he is paying me more. And he’s very much the boss and I’m the employee. It’s not the same as when we all worked together as a team: you, me, Julian and Ivan.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I miss that, too, though at least now I’ve got Ivan during the week. And of course, Carey’s often in his workshop next door and comes through for a chat, or a cup of tea, so I’m not isolated.’

  ‘Willow’s come up with a couple of weird-ass designs for windows, but she won’t try her hand at cutting, or leading-up. She says she’s not getting her hands cut and filthy on glass and lead, so she’s not really got a feel for what is and isn’t possible.’

  I looked down at my hands, which are small, long fingered and not at all smooth and ladylike. ‘You have to suffer for your art. But someone might like her designs, Grant, you never know.’

  ‘Nat’s still got a grudge against you for taking those cartoons, but at least he seems to have accepted he’s not going to get them back.’

  ‘Yes, Julian’s solicitor said it had all been dropped now and I could forget about it.’

  Molly beeped her horn and I went out to talk to her through the car window while Grant got in.

  ‘Everything fine?’ she asked, with a searching look.

  ‘Great,’ I said brightly. ‘Now I’ve mended the window, I’ll finish the Brisbane cartoon off and get that away. Then I’ve had a couple of enquiries about possible commissions that I’m working on.’

  ‘Well, that’s not quite what I meant,’ she said, ‘but I’ve just seen Carey scraping down the paint in the inner hall as if it was something he’d been looking forward to for ages, so you’re obviously both happy in your own way.’

  Then she passed me a large chocolate chip muffin in a cellophane bag, saying it would sweeten me up a bit, and drove off.

  Left to myself, I finished unleading and cleaning up the bits of angel, before I laid the pieces on a sheet of white cartridge paper and set about incorporating them into a roundel. Then I spent a happy hour choosing and cutting glass for it, before being summoned for a soup-and-sandwich lunch with Carey, Louis and Liz.

  I decided I’d finish cutting the glass that afternoon and then leave it for Ivan to lead up on Monday while I was putting the finishing touches to the Brisbane cartoon.

  After dinner that evening, while I was sitting at my worktable in the studio absently staring at the colour cartoon of the Lady Anne window, instead of getting on with the design for a half-finished fishy roundel, Carey came in.

  ‘Interesting …’ he said looking over my shoulder. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to translate the translucent rainbow effect of the jellyfish into glass, though.’

  ‘Easily. I found a random sheet of clear Antique glass streaked with several colours in one of those tea chests. It must be an old bit of Hartley Wood glass; they made the occasional curious sheet.’

  ‘So the glass inspired the jellyfish, not the other way round?’ he said, then asked me what I had planned for next day. ‘Only Louis and his girlfriend are doing something else, so I wouldn’t mind a hand sandpapering the panelling in the hall, ready to paint.’

  ‘No chance,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m going to the workshop in the morning, then spending the rest of the day getting those designs for the two possible commissions ready to go. In fact, I meant to do that this evening, but I got sidetracked by my jellyfish idea.’

  ‘Oh, well, the Benbow twins said they might come down – it’s quiet at the Summit Alpine Nursery at this time of year,’ he said resignedly.

  On Monday, when Carey appeared with a booted Fang under his arm, I was halfway up the ladder in front of the corkboard, contemplating the Big Wave cartoon. Ivan, who had just leaded up the Burne-Jones angel, was about to carry it through to be cemented.

  Carey admired what we’d done with the angel and then said, ‘I’ve just been in the old wing, looking at those suits of armour. My ancestors must have been midgets!’

  ‘I think people have just grown taller over the centuries,’ I suggested.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Ivan said.

  ‘You don’t seem to have, either, Shrimp,’ agreed Carey. ‘Perhaps you’re both throwbacks to some ancient hobbit-like race.’

  ‘Why were you looking at the armour, particularly?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I’ve been searching online to see how you should look after it properly. I’ve been resisting the urge to spray the moveable parts with general-purpose oil. I thought they might need something a little more specialized.’

  ‘You’re not going to take those apart on the kitchen table, are you?’ I asked in some alarm.

  ‘No, I need more space and it’ll take quite some time, so I’ll do them on the big bench in my workshop next door,’ he assured me. ‘It was while I was examining the visor on the suit of armour at the bottom of the stairs, that I felt someone was watching me.’

  ‘A ghost?’ asked Ivan eagerly.

  ‘No, it was Ella. She was sitting in one of the carved chairs in the dark corner by the fireplace and I’ve no idea how long she’d been there.’

  ‘Did she say anything when you spotted her?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, quite a lot for Ella: she gave me to understand that removing the window from the house was a bad idea and we were all doomed – or something like that.’

  ‘Cheerful as always! What did you say?’

  ‘That it would be back before long … and also that I’d rather she confined her cleaning activities in the old wing to set days and times. But she didn’t reply, just got up and went. I’m going to have to talk to Clem yet again, though that hasn’t had much effect so far,’ he said gloomily. ‘By the way, when can we put the Lady Anne window back? It looks odd without it.’

  ‘The glazing cement needs to totally harden and then the first weekend that Grant and Ivan are free, they’ll replace it. Long before the wing is opened to the public at Easter, at any rate,’ I added. ‘And nothing dreadful has happened since we took it out, so if that’s a curse, then mending it in the workshop didn’t count.’

  ‘I thought we’d deci
ded that wasn’t a curse anyway, it was only that she wanted it to stay at Mossby for ever?’

  ‘I know, but I was talking to Grant on Saturday about the odd way some of the motifs in the quarries are repeated, and it got me thinking again. Perhaps it does mean something, and if I could find the same sequences in the old wing …’

  ‘Then you might also discover hidden treasure behind the panelling?’ he finished, looking amused.

  ‘Well, it’s worth a try,’ I said defensively. ‘And I don’t think that is a sun at the top of the window now, after all, but a representation of the Jewel of Mossby.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said disbelievingly. ‘The Mossby Jewel being this huge baroque pearl and enamel thing on a ruby necklace and the picture in the window showing a spiky sort of star shape?’

  ‘I said it represented it. She wouldn’t want to have given the secret away that easily.’

  ‘If there was anything to give away in the first place, Angel, but it’s all too Enid Blyton for me.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s Enid Blyton at all! I’m convinced that Lady Anne is trying to tell us that after her husband’s death she hid the Jewel away. Maybe it was for safekeeping, or just that she thought it had brought bad luck – and if she did, it’s probably still here.’

  ‘Eh, it’s just like that Dan Brown book with the weird clues that Grant lent me,’ Ivan said, enthralled. I’d forgotten he was still there.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ Carey agreed. ‘You know, Angel, you’ve got a much more romantic imagination than I’d thought!’

  ‘I’m not romantic at all!’ I protested indignantly.

  ‘Well, if you think you really do have a clue to finding the Jewel, help yourself to the spare keys to the old wing and go right ahead and search. I’m sure you’ll have hours of harmless fun even if—’

  He broke off abruptly as a sharp rap sounded on the door and it swung open. He mustn’t have shut it quite to when he came in.

  Clem popped his head round. ‘I thought you might be here, Carey. There’s a man come to collect some wood – the sycamore put aside for a sculptor? He’s parked down by the Lodge.’

  ‘I’ll be right down, thanks, Clem.’

  ‘You don’t think he overheard what we were saying, do you?’ I whispered, as soon as the door had closed behind him.

  ‘I expect he’d only just got here. But it’s a pity he didn’t hear the bit about Ella because it would have saved me another awkward interview with him,’ he said, then added, ‘What I really came down to ask was whether Fang could stay with you for a bit.’

  ‘OK, but if he gets underfoot, I’ll banish him to his basket in the back room.’

  This wasn’t much of a banishment, because it was Fang’s favourite position anyway. He could comfortably keep the biscuit tin in direct view and, since Ivan was addicted to digestive biscuits and generous enough to share, make his move as soon as Ivan appeared.

  Despite throwing myself into my work during the next few days and producing several more free-hanging pieces of stained glass, which would find a ready market online or in galleries, Treasure Fever had me in its grip.

  I drew the two frequently repeated sequences from the window and was sure I was right in thinking one of them was the pointed top of a linenfold panel repeated three times, followed by some kind of Tudor rose.

  The other sequence was more baffling, being a circle filled with what looked like basket-weave, followed by an apple. It was always preceded by an open eye, but whether that just meant the onlooker should open their own eyes and see the message, or was simply the all-seeing eye of God, I had no idea.

  I popped into the old wing on my way back to the house one late afternoon, wandering about in the dim light – the electrician hadn’t got that far yet. It was a bit spooky, especially upstairs, where I felt I was being watched, even though whenever I turned there was nothing and no one there.

  I wondered if Ella had sneaked in to see what I was up to, which wasn’t a very comfortable thought. Ghosts would be preferable.

  I narrowed the linenfold and rose sequence down to the muniment room and Lady Anne’s bedchamber. The roses were actually carved bosses on a horizontal board above the panelling. But I was totally stumped about the apples and basket-weave.

  And even though I’d narrowed the search area down to two rooms, if there was a secret chamber, then discovering the right method of twisting, pulling, turning or pressing whatever it needed in the right order, could take a long time …

  Then I suddenly remembered we’d been told that when Ella was a small child, the old family nanny had filled her head with stories of ghosts, secret chambers and lost jewels. Could it be that she was also convinced there was another secret chamber and her obsessive polishing of the panelling had a slightly more rational explanation?

  But if so, and she hadn’t discovered it after all these years, what hope had I?

  I felt disheartened: maybe Carey was right and I – and possibly Ella – were engaged on a wild-goose chase. But I wasn’t prepared to give up quite yet.

  I thought about it overnight and then went back to the old wing the following afternoon to have another look in the muniment room. I didn’t really think they’d have put the entrance to two secret chambers in there and also, I wanted to compare the rose bosses to my drawing again, because I thought they might be a little different. If so, I’d be able to eliminate that room and concentrate on the bedchamber.

  I went in by way of the Great Hall and unlocked the door to the muniment room, which was only opened on that side when the cleaners were in.

  The roses weren’t quite the same, but I thought I’d have a little search anyway, and had just started fingering the top of the third panel of linenfold carving to the right of the fireplace, while simultaneously trying to turn or push the boss above it, when I felt, more than heard, a movement behind me.

  Turning quickly, I found Ella in the doorway, watching me intently.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here at this time, Ella?’ I demanded, my heart thumping. ‘You gave me such a shock, creeping in like that!’

  ‘I might say the same thing about you, sneaking about and poking around where you’ve got no business to be,’ she said insolently.

  ‘I was not sneaking about. Why should I, when Carey is happy for me to go anywhere I want to and has given me a complete set of keys?’ I said.

  ‘I suppose you’re looking for the secret hiding place in here, though I’d have thought Carey would have shown it to you, if you asked him nicely,’ she said, with a wealth of unpleasant innuendo. ‘I know there is one – not a room, just a space. But I don’t know where it is. They give the secret to the boys of the family, not the girls.’

  I relaxed slightly: she meant the window seat opening with the chest inside, and I didn’t point out that since Carey’s uncle hadn’t considered her to be a member of the family at all, he wouldn’t have told her the secret anyway, female or not.

  ‘I wasn’t actually looking for anything, I’m just interested in the different kinds of panelling,’ I said lamely, and she gave me a contemptuous look.

  ‘But you must know they often hid the way of opening priest-holes in the panelling,’ she said, watching me closely from eyes as dark and flat as a snake’s.

  ‘Of course – and perhaps there are others still to be found, who knows?’ I said, as casually as I could.

  ‘If there were, I’d have come across them by now, including the one in here, if the room hadn’t been kept locked up all the time. And you needn’t carry on pretending that isn’t what you’re looking for, because Clem overheard you talking to Carey about it.’

  Actually, the mechanism for opening the hidey-hole under the window seat was so ingenious she might not have found it, even if she’d had the run of this room. And if the same master craftsman had designed another chamber elsewhere, then she could well have missed that one, too, even if she had polished every inch of the panelling for the last fifteen years!

&
nbsp; Of course, she hadn’t had the advantage of the clues from the window – if they were clues – and I hoped she hadn’t got them now. I couldn’t exactly remember what I’d said to Carey, but even if I’d mentioned them, since the window was currently in the workshop, they were out of her reach.

  But now my overwhelming urge was to get rid of her unwelcome presence, so I said casually, ‘I expect you’re right and it would be pointless even looking.’ Then, since she still didn’t show any signs of moving, I added, ‘What are you doing here at this time anyway, Ella?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be? It’s not late, just dark. When I saw the lights on, I came to see who it was.’

  The only place she could have seen the lights was from the courtyard … unless she’d already been in here. I said firmly, ‘Well, I’m going to go through this way to the house to change and have dinner – but I’ll just see you out first.’

  ‘I can find my own way out,’ she snapped, but to my relief turned and strode away down the passage, clicking off the wall lights as she went, until the distant narrow view of the Great Hall also vanished into darkness. I heard the bang of the big oak front door and the heavy rattle of the lock and knew I really was alone at last.

  I locked the muniment-room door after her and went through the tower into the house, which seemed a haven of light, warmth and normality after the old wing, even without the added advantage of not being infested by madwomen.

  Of course, when I went downstairs I poured the whole tale into Carey’s ears and he had to admit that Ella and I seemed to be on the same treasure hunt, though that still didn’t mean the treasure actually existed.

  He can be so stubborn sometimes!

  ‘But I’m getting really worried about Ella and this is the last straw,’ he said. ‘I’ll give Clem an ultimatum tomorrow. She needs to see her doctor and get some professional help, because her behaviour just isn’t normal. And until she does, I’d like back her key to the old wing.’

  I shivered, remembering her expression when I’d turned and seen her watching me.