Rumours

by Freya North

  * * *

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Did she say where she was?’

  ‘Did she say where the hell she’s been?’

  ‘She said,’ said Geoff, ‘that she’s following a lead.’

  ‘A lead? I don’t think so – I think she’s up to something.’

  ‘Yeah – funny how she scarpers as soon as she knows her uncle isn’t about.’

  ‘I think we should let him know she’s not been in.’

  ‘Me too. She can’t hide behind the family shield for ever, you know.’

  ‘You Three!’

  Everyone looked at Geoff as if realizing for the first time that he was there, sitting at the desk they were crowding around. He didn’t want to hear it and he didn’t want to doubt Stella. He just wanted to do his job. Gossip was one thing – it was idle and it irritated him – but rumours were different. Rumours threatened to contain a modicum of truth and were unnerving.

  * * *

  Stella could hear her name being called. Leaving the kitchen, having attempted to bury the leftovers under a pile of other stuff in the bin and then washed and dried her plate and cutlery, she went through to the hall where Lady Lydia was standing as though she’d been waiting for ages. She’d changed. She was now in a pair of navy trousers and a sugar-pink cashmere pullover over a high-necked blouse. She had sensible navy shoes with a little heel and her hair had been redone – no strands escaping. She also wore lipstick. If she’d been Stella’s mum or someone Stella simply liked, she’d have told Lady Fortescue that it was a little smudged and offered her a tissue. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she didn’t dare or because it actually made her feel a little empowered, that she said nothing.

  ‘Would you come on! I haven’t all day, you know.’

  ‘Perfect lunch,’ Stella said, ‘thank you very much. It was very thoughtful of you. I rarely have more than a snatched sandwich.’ Her mother had taught her to bat away hostility with grace, thereby giving only softness for the aggressor to fruitlessly hit against. Those who hit at foam balls as hard as they can will never hurt their opponent – they just squander their energy. Stella often thought of her mother’s cod psychology. In her family, though decibel levels were invariably high in whosever household they all gathered and discussions were frequently lively, arguments never raged because they were always deflected, like gunshot dampened by a silencer. She’d tried to employ the method in her marriage but found it to be the only exception to the rule. So she’d tried the opposite – but that hadn’t worked either.

  ‘My dear – are you OK?’

  Stella brought herself back to the present with a shudder. ‘Sorry – I was miles away.’ She called me ‘my dear’, Stella thought and a gentle triumph coursed through her.

  ‘Thank you, Lady Lydia.’

  ‘I think we shall take your car,’ Lydia said. ‘I’ve phoned ahead.’ She paused, not looking at Stella. ‘You may call me Lydia.’

  Lime Grove Cottages, on Tramfield Lane, were in a little terrace of three. Each had window frames and doors painted in French grey which Stella now knew to be the estate colour. The woodwork in the stable block had been painted the same, as had the door in the kitchen garden wall, the glassless window frames in the boiler building and all the barn doors, whether the buildings were derelict or now rented as workshops. Longbridge Hall, however, had its woodwork painted white, its doors in the natural rich mahogany. It gave the impression that all the other buildings were in uniform, beholden and in servitude to the Fortescues.

  In number one lived Peg Gilbey, a small woman, perhaps Lydia’s age but appearing more elderly She welcomed them in as if they were guests of honour and the highlight of her day. The cottage was a hotchpotch of minute rooms, furnished to the nines and with trinkets adorning every available surface.

  ‘Your hem’s down, Lydia,’ she said and Stella’s blood ran cold, anticipating the short shrift this might be met with. But Lydia surprised her.

  ‘Is it? Gracious me – would you look at that!’

  ‘Shall I see to it now?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have Mrs Biggins bring you to the house. There are a couple of other things needing you, Peggy. Buttons and a tricksy zip.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  ‘Seen enough?’ Lydia asked Stella.

  ‘Thank you,’ Stella said to Miss Gilbey. She looked around the sitting room again and nodded warmly. The curtains caught her eye – and she realized they were the same fabric, heavy silk with an embroidered floral design, as those in Lydia’s bedroom.

  ‘Miss Hutton – please!’ Lydia tusked as if Stella had been loitering. Stella shook Miss Gilbey’s hand and told her it had been a pleasure.

  Outside, on the way to number two, Stella felt compelled to remark on the curtains. Lydia stopped in her tracks and cocked her head to hasten a memory.

  ‘Peg’s mother was maid to my mother. She was a lovely woman – she’d have me and Peg on each knee, storytelling. Mother,’ Lydia said, ‘sent Peg to London at the age of fourteen, to learn to be a seamstress. She was her benefactor, I suppose – but she got her money’s worth.’

  ‘Curtains and hems?’

  Lydia actually smiled. ‘And the rest – Peg is a magician with needle and thread. Even now. She made Mother’s last bed jacket – worked on it day and night so she could have it for her last few days. It was the softest, lightest velvet in powder blue.’

  Stella didn’t know what overcame her, but she reached out and gave Lydia’s forearm a little squeeze. Lydia appeared not to feel it. ‘Number two,’ she announced, ‘rented to one of the teachers at the primary school. Nice woman – husband’s a twit. Mrs George.’

  ‘Won’t she be teaching?’ Stella looked at her watch.

  ‘She’s part-time,’ Lydia said witheringly.

  The cottage was the same size as Peg’s, but seemed larger on account of the downstairs rooms being knocked through and everything Farrow & Ball neutral with no knick-knacks on show, just soberly framed black-and-white landscape photographs.

  ‘The upstairs lights keep flickering,’ Mrs George told Lydia, apologetically. Lydia nodded. ‘And the downstairs radiator makes the strangest noises.’ Lydia nodded again but Stella noted a twitch to her jaw which suggested she was clenching her teeth.

  ‘I’ll have someone come by the end of the week.’

  They’d barely left before Lydia hissed, ‘Always complaining about something. It’s a cottage! It’s old! Of course lights and radiators are dicky! For the rent she pays, she should put up or shut up.’

  Lydia stopped by the gate to number three.

  ‘I don’t think he’s home,’ she said but before Stella could beg to differ – on account of smoke being visible from the chimney – Lydia had turned and was walking back towards Stella’s car where she waited for the passenger door to be opened.

  ‘You’ll have to go back there on your own. I’ll phone Mr Fletcher and tell him to expect you. How about Saturday afternoon?’

  Saturday afternoon – Will had a football match.

  ‘I have another viewing Saturday afternoon,’ Stella said. It was only a white lie – she always viewed Will playing.

  ‘Morning, then,’ Lydia said in such a tone that there was to be no further discussion.

  Just before Stella started the engine, she turned to Lydia. ‘How long has Miss Gilbey lived there?’

  ‘She was born there. We were born in the same year. It’s a grace-and-favour cottage – not that numbers two and three bring in much rent in the light of all the repairs I have to fork out for.’

  ‘And if the cottage is sold, where will she go?’

  Lydia didn’t answer. She had heard, Stella could see that, but she looked out of the window as if disturbed by the notion that she hadn’t thought about that.

  * * *

  Was that Lydia? Xander wondered, coming into his sitting room. He thought, I must go and see her. He thought, I need to find out what’s going on. If those es
tate agents have hooked their claws into her, I need to know.

  Chapter Twelve

  Xander broke with tradition and ignored etiquette. At the risk of incurring short shrift from Lydia – which could be icy at best, humiliating at worst – he simply turned up at Longbridge with no prior warning, never mind an invitation. Hitherto, he’d always sent a letter, resorting to the telephone only if it was urgent. Not today. There was no time for phone calls. The working day was coming to a close and, after confronting that estate agent woman in the garden at Longbridge and then thinking he’d seen Lydia outside his cottage an hour ago, he decided he had to act now.

  Mrs Biggins opened the door to him.

  ‘Xander!’ Then she looked confused. ‘Are we expecting you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but is Lady Lydia home? Might I pay a quick visit?’

  ‘Hold on a mo’, duck. Come on in.’ She left him in the hall and went into the drawing room. Lydia was dozing in the wingback chair, head back and at an angle, mouth slackened, the Telegraph folded on the half-completed crossword, half fallen off her lap, her hands curled on top of the paper, not unlike like the claws of a dead bird.

  That’s how you’ll look when you’ve snuffed it, Mrs Biggins thought.

  It wasn’t a malicious or irreverent thought, it was almost in preparation. She walked over, making a little unnecessary noise as she went, clearing her throat, speaking to herself, lifting a pile of magazines just to plonk them down on the coffee table. It all combined to enable Lydia to wake without being woken. With a little snort, which Mrs Biggins feigned not to notice, Lydia woke and was relieved to see her housekeeper busy plumping a cushion, seemingly unaware that she’d been anything other than wide awake and engrossed in her crossword.

  ‘Would you like tea here or in the library?’ Mrs Biggins asked.

  ‘Here, thank you.’

  ‘Xander is here.’

  ‘Xander? Here? Was he invited?’ Lydia paused, affronted more by her confusion than by the fact that he might simply have turned up uninvited.

  ‘That’s what I asked him. He said it was impromptu – if you weren’t otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Did he now!’ Lydia’s tone changed.

  And Mrs Biggins noted a very strange expression on Lydia’s face – as if a prior spell she’d woven had worked, or quarry had walked straight into a trap carefully set. It was glee, mischief, and she looked altogether self-satisfied and bright.

  ‘Send him in, then,’ she said with a little clap, ‘and ask if he’d like tea too.’

  Mrs Biggins went back out to the hall. ‘She says you’re to go on through and would you like tea?’ Xander noted that Mrs Biggins looked confused so he said yes please to tea, put his hand briefly on her shoulder and went across to the drawing room where he knocked and poked his head around the door with a big cheery smile before Lydia could say, ‘Enter.’

  She was sitting poker straight on one of the sofas, looking very stern.

  ‘Xander,’ she said, not in welcome, not as a question, but as a statement underscored with consternation that demanded he qualify his presence immediately.

  ‘I was working from home today – I thought I’d pop by.’ He paused. ‘I hope that’s OK?’ It didn’t look as though it was OK at all. Lydia’s lips were pursed as if invisible running thread had been sewn across and then pulled tight.

  ‘Did you not think to phone ahead – if you profess not to have had time to drop me a note?’

  This was his ticking-off, what his mother would call being royally scolded – when Lydia took much pleasure in wearing her airs and graces around her like an ermine cape borrowed from the Queen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Xander said. ‘But actually, I really needed to see you, Lydia. It’s just that – well, there’s a crazy rumour circulating in the village that you’re thinking of selling Longbridge.’ There. That’s what he’d come to say – and he’d made it sound suitably risible.

  He waited. There was a long silence, during which he glanced at her to find her still sitting poker straight and seemingly emotionless.

  ‘Rumours, eh!’ Finally, she laughed – a little acidly – as if Xander was an idiot to have been seduced by them and a bore for bothering her with them.

  ‘I rubbished it,’ Xander qualified. ‘I didn’t trouble you with it – and it’s been doing the rounds for a week or so. Apparently.’ He was still standing and Lydia had made no gesture for him to sit. ‘But today, I came across this woman with a clipboard, teetering around the gardens here in high heels, with some hideously emblazoned car parked on your drive.’

  ‘Miss Hutton,’ Lydia corrected. ‘And you didn’t come across her, Xander – you trespassed at a gallop and frightened the poor thing witless.’

  He bowed his head because that part was true.

  ‘I was concerned,’ he told Lydia quietly.

  ‘Oh, do sit down – standing there like a naughty schoolboy does not become you.’

  Xander sat opposite Lydia, grateful for Mrs Biggins’ appearance with the tea tray. Shortbread, dusted with icing sugar when still warm so that it formed a delicate, sparkling crust. When he was a child, Mrs Biggins had facilitated Verity and him by leaving the biscuits in an empty kitchen, cooling on a rack with a linen napkin folded helpfully into an envelope to one side. Even now, Xander wondered if Lydia knew about that, and felt a surge of nostalgic gratitude towards the housekeeper – not so much for her baking skills, but for being a conspirator back then. Maybe that’s why there was shortbread today – maybe Mrs Biggins wanted Xander to have something sweet to soften the dressing-down. Only she didn’t know he was coming, did she, because he’d made no prior arrangement. It could be just coincidence, but as he bit gently into the biscuit and the buttery crumble of sweetness filled his mouth, he saw it as a good omen.

  Unbeknownst to Lydia and Xander, Mrs Biggins had been listening at the door. She was never in the dark about anything. It was her, after all, who’d told Lydia about Mercy Benton’s to-do with John Denby & Co. And it was she who’d told Mercy about Elmfield Estates in the first place. And then kept Lady Lydia abreast with the sale of Mercy’s cottage.

  Lydia watched Xander. He hadn’t changed all that much over the years, really – look at the boy! Waiting on tenterhooks for her say-so to take another biscuit. Not too dissimilar from the spaniels they used to keep. She let him eat, she sipped her tea and then she waited for him to speak, enjoying his awkwardness when returning to the contentious subject.

  ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘For sale? Longbridge?’

  She stirred thoughtfully at the long-dissolved sugar in her cup and then placed it down carefully onto the table. ‘Yes, Xander, it is.’ Her spikiness had gone: her tone was still grave but softened now by a slight tilt of her head which Xander knew to look for.

  ‘But why?’ Xander’s response surprised neither of them.

  ‘Because I can’t afford to run the place.’

  He looked at her – it was the kind of statement that stood alone and one really couldn’t question it further without sounding impolite, nosey, or, worse, uncouth. ‘Is there no alternative?’ he asked tactfully.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s ridiculous, me rattling around the place simply because my forebears lived here.’

  ‘What about a grant or something? National Trust, English Heritage, the Lottery – I don’t know? Longbridge is listed – doesn’t that help?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Lydia said.

  ‘How about fund-raising? You could open the house, charge an entrance fee, perhaps. Open the kitchen garden, sell produce.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less,’ Lydia said with utter disdain.

  ‘Weddings?’ Xander ventured. ‘You can apply for a licence these days. Hold them out in the folly – or just erect a marquee.’ This suggestion warranted only a look from Lydia, but Xander knew that look well enough. ‘You could put our rent up? I’m sure we’d all rather pay more than find we had nowhere to live.’

&
nbsp; Privately, Lydia was touched by Xander’s response; his passion for the place, his yearning to find a solution, to save it. She drifted away for a moment, remembering too how she’d reacted when she was told little Edward’s condition was terminal. The hopeful yet futile straw-clutching, the questions and ideas she bombarded the physicians with, the energy and hope that underscored each flailing suggestion; but all the while receiving only the same calm, benevolent response which was essentially negative – much as she was now giving to Xander. But this was just a rotten old house, not a child. It didn’t compare. An inanimate block of brickwork and a lead roof that would take a king’s fortune to repair.

  ‘It’s the end of an era, I know,’ she said and he saw that she didn’t dare look around her, instead locking eyes fixedly with him. ‘But it’s not happy – this silly old house. It needs an obscene amount spending on it just to keep it going, never mind restoring it to its former glory.’

  ‘Could you not sell off all the other bits – the farmland, the barns, the other houses?’

  ‘And stay here? Good God, can you imagine how distasteful, how depressing, that would be? Longbridge would be surrounded – besieged. A fine old house tottering atop a shrinking island. The house needs its land, in the same way that the land and cottages need the house – it gives order, hierarchy, balance. Control is in the right place, proportions and harmony are maintained.’

  She spoke eloquently with no concession to theatre and Xander had to nod. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’ He had half a shortbread left. He couldn’t touch it. He’d had half a shortbread left the day Verity told him she was being sent away and he’d scoffed at her words and scoffed at the biscuit and it had lodged in his throat, curdling with the stuck tears until he threw it up later that night back at home. He shrugged. ‘It’s such a shame,’ he said to Lydia. ‘It’s a worry,’ he said. ‘Say it falls into the wrong hands?’