A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  I stared at the phone, feeling aggrieved. Lucy had managed to get rid of the few boyfriends I had acquired while she was growing up, and by the time she left for university the pool of available men in my age group had shrunk to a very dubious puddle. I washed and changed, then flaked out on the bed until Jonah beat the gong for another gargantuan dinner, which Hebe, after her day spent in the garden and stillroom, fell on with huge gusto. She ate Ottie’s share too, since she was in Manchester at the opening of someone’s exhibition. How can she put away so much food and stay so thin?

  She was wearing a forties-style dance dress and her hair in a roll with a butterfly hairpin, and after dinner left me to my solitary coffee and went off to the dance.

  I spent a happy and productive couple of hours in the cleaning room, checking off and reorganising the supplies, and adding to my shopping list.

  I had a feeling that it might take some time to teach Grace new ways of doing things—if it was possible at all. But then, I could just confine her activities to the floors, the bathrooms, changing the beds and doing the laundry, where she couldn’t really do that much more damage.

  Charlie got bored watching me after a while and vanished, and on my way to bed I found him fast asleep and blissfully snoring in his basket next to the Aga.

  Chapter Eleven: O Mother,

  Where Art Thou?

  Thomas in his great kindness has given mee a wooden coffer such as I have never seen before, carved prettily inside and out, and fitted with ingenious drawers and compartments. There is a sturdy lock—he says he fears for mee, and I should keep my secrets therein and the key close.

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1581

  Breakfast was, if possible, even more indecently lavish than the day before. Recalling Mr Yatton’s final words of advice, which had been to the effect that I should take control straight away and start as I meant to go on, I decided to make my very first economy. It might save my figure, as well as some money.

  ‘Aunt Hebe, you know when I said yesterday that cooking this much food was such a huge waste?’ I began cautiously, gesturing to the hotplates groaning under the weight of enough calories to keep an entire rugby team happy. ‘Well, I’ve decided to ask Mrs Lark not to do it any more.’

  She looked up from her toast, which she was consuming while reading a new gardening magazine that had been left by her plate, presumably by Jonah. ‘But I always eat a full cooked breakfast on Sundays, Sophy, and I like a poached egg most days too—and occasionally a bit of bacon.’

  ‘That’s fine, then—we can still have bacon and eggs every day, but the full monty just on Sundays, as a special treat.’

  ‘Jack won’t like that in the least,’ she protested, shaking her head. ‘He often brings friends for the weekend too, and they all have good appetites.’

  ‘I’m quite sure Jack will have the good manners to be happy with whatever he’s offered—as will his friends. We simply can’t afford to go on wasting food on this scale, and it would make less work for Mrs Lark.’

  ‘But she’s the cook—that’s what she does.’ Aunt Hebe looked at me blankly.

  ‘Yes, and she does it very well too,’ I said patiently, ‘but she’s no spring chicken, is she? Cutting down her workload wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘I suppose you will make what changes you like, Sophy, but I think you are unwise to start without consulting Jack, for you may well find yourself having to put things right back again to how they were before.’

  I mentally counted up to ten. ‘Of course, I’ll always be glad to hear any of Jack’s suggestions, Aunt Hebe, and I will always value his advice. But this is only the first of many economies and changes I’ll have to make if I’m to turn Winter’s End back into the beautiful place it used to be, rather than the shabby, neglected creature it is now.’

  ‘That is a very odd way of putting it! You make it sound as though the house were alive.’

  ‘It is, to me.’

  She looked at me strangely, then put down the magazine, drained her cup of tea, and rose to her feet. ‘Well, I must get off to feed the hens—but I warn you, any changes to my walled garden will be done over my dead body!’

  ‘Of course, Aunt Hebe—I wouldn’t dream of it. But I’m going to tour the grounds later and I hope you’ll at least show me the walled garden and the hens?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said grandly. ‘What are you going to do this morning?’

  I indicated the embroidered fabric bag slung over the back of my chair. ‘Mr Yatton gave me a big notebook and I’m going to go round the house again, this time writing down what needs to be done in order of urgency, and adding to my shopping list. I did a stock-check of the cleaning room last night, while you were out.’

  ‘Oh? Perhaps you should just get the agency in for a sort of late spring clean,’ she suggested vaguely. ‘What were they called? Ah, yes—Dolly Mops.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ I said tactfully, because I hated to think of the damage a domestic cleaning agency had already unwittingly wreaked on Winter’s End, not to mention Grace’s casual attentions over the years.

  ‘Jonah,’ I said, as he came into the room and started loading a vast brass tray with crockery and unused dishes of hot food, ‘I’m going around the gardens this afternoon—could you send word to Seth Greenwood? Tell him he can come with me himself if he wants to, or delegate it to one of the other gardeners. About two o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, and I followed him back into the kitchen, where I proposed the revolutionary idea of reducing the number and style of breakfast dishes to Mrs Lark.

  She looked even more incredulous than Aunt Hebe. ‘But we’ve always done it like that!’

  ‘I know, but times change and no one is eating most of it, so it’s such a waste.’

  ‘As to that, I make sure Mr Yatton has something in his stomach to start the day with, other than the rabbit food his sister gives him, and then what’s not eaten in the kitchen, Jonah makes into swill for the pigs out at the back of the courtyard. All our bacon and ham comes from pigs reared at Winter’s End.’

  I resolved to avoid the pigsty since I didn’t want to meet my future breakfasts face to face. ‘It’s a pity to cook lovely food just for the pigs, Mrs Lark, but of course you can still cook bacon and eggs every day—just not the kippers, kedgeree, kidneys and all the rest of it.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she reluctantly conceded, ‘and you’ll still want all the trimmings, of course, like tomatoes and mushrooms. Then, on Sundays, you can have a proper breakfast.’ The thought of pulling out the culinary stops at least once a week seemed to cheer her. ‘We could have an extra high tea every day too, to make up!’

  ‘I’m trying to make less work for you, not more,’ I protested.

  ‘Now, Sophy love, you’ve got to keep your strength up—and so has Miss Hebe, what with all the work she does in her garden.’

  We seemed to have reached an impasse, so I gave up the battle at this point and changed the subject. ‘Mrs Lark, I wanted to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘I thought I’d invite all the indoor and outdoor staff—that sounds terribly grand, but you know what I mean—to a meeting in the Great Hall on Saturday morning at about ten, to tell them my plans for the future of Winter’s End. I should think everyone has been in limbo long enough, wondering what’s going to happen. I wondered if you could provide refreshments? Tea and coffee and biscuits, or something?’

  ‘You leave it to me—and do you want me to make sure everyone knows? The Friends too, they had better be there.’

  ‘Friends?’ I said, absently.

  ‘Friends of Winter’s End.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten all about them and they are going to be a really important part of my plans!’

  ‘There are about a dozen Friends, but I only need to tell one and then it’s like in that film Village of the Damned.’

  ‘Film?’ I said, baffled.

  ‘Yes, you tell one of them and
then they all know. Faster than the speed of gossip—uncanny it is, sometimes. Mr Yatton’s sister, Effie’s, one.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mrs Lark.’

  ‘All the gardeners pop into my kitchen during the day for a bite of cake to have with their tea, so I can spread the word then. Grace’s here now. She’s just washed all Charlie’s bedding—said since he was so clean, his blankets ought to be too.’

  ‘That was kind of her.’

  ‘Loves dogs, does Grace. Charlie’s in the laundry room with her now; he took his bone.’

  So that accounted for his vanishing act after breakfast.

  ‘This meeting…some of the gardeners said Mr Jack seemed to assume he would still be running the place, the last time he was down,’ she suggested. ‘He told them Winter’s End would be too much for you to run, so you’d sell the place to him. But I said, “No, that can’t be right—Miss Sophy’s here to stay.”’

  ‘Yes I am, and I want Winter’s End to be clean, beautiful and whole again, just the way I remember it. It seems to have gone to the dogs since Mum and I left.’

  ‘Sir William threw himself into his plans for the garden even more when your mother took you away,’ she agreed, ‘to distract himself, I suppose, until you came back—which he was convinced you would, at first.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and now we will all have to pull together to save Winter’s End, which will mean some big changes. That can be hard when people are set in their ways.’

  I took the notebook and a pen out of my bag. ‘I might as well start making my list of things to make, mend and order. I’ll do the rest of the house first and then come back to this wing. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind just giving me a glimpse of your rooms then?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And if there’s anything, either in the kitchens or your rooms, that you’d like changing or replacing, note it down for me, would you?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she agreed. ‘The weekly shopping list is pinned to the inside of that cupboard door there, and Grace puts any cleaning stuff that we’re running out of on it.’

  ‘Good. I did an inventory of the cleaning room last night, so I’ll add a few everyday things to that, but I’ll also have to order some specialist products. Luckily I know a good supplier. Stately Solutions will have everything that I need.’

  The entertainment of watching his bedding go round must have palled, for Charlie nudged open the door and came in carrying the remains of a large bone, which he tenderly deposited in his basket. From the smell that wafted in with him, Jonah was boiling up pigswill out at the back somewhere.

  ‘I think we’ll have a nice jam roly-poly pudding to follow the salmon and Duchesse potatoes tonight,’ Mrs Lark said, absently thumbing through a battered notebook—she appeared to have her own household book. ‘Cream or custard?’

  ‘Custard,’ I said decidedly, and went out with Charlie at my heels.

  All this comforting stodge was lovely in the winter, but I had a feeling that by spring I’d have started to long for a good salad and a big bowl of fresh fruit—and goodness knew what would have happened to my figure by then!

  *  *  *

  I’d written three pages of notes before I even got out of the Great Hall.

  It had always been the heart of the house, the room where everyone’s paths crossed repeatedly in a complex minuet of daily living, and now the fire once again glowed in the vast hearth it was much more welcoming.

  It was also the place where Alys Blezzard seemed to be most with me—and where I felt positively wired in to Winter’s End itself. Standing in the middle of the Great Hall was like recharging my batteries, and filled me with energy and the unfounded golden glow of optimism that reassured me that everything would turn out all right…in the end.

  There were a few shadows drifting like dark smoke in the corners of my consciousness—but then, what life doesn’t have its share of shadows?

  I looked around me, noticing for the first time that the lime mortar between the stones of the hall floor needed attention and the old rag rug in front of the fire was now so grey and stiff with dirt that it blended into the colour of the floor. I would bet good money on Grace mopping it over every time she washed the floor in here—probably with bleach in her bucket too! But we could try soaking it in mild soap and warm water and see what happened.

  The stuffed stag’s head on the wall looked ghastly. It was not only balding, but had lost an eye. I guiltily remembered the last time I slid down the banisters and knocked it off—perhaps that had loosened it?

  Jonah, coming through the West Wing door with a tray of crockery, said, ‘Your grandfather got that head at a sale. A great one for buying junk at auctions, he used to be, before he got so caught up in the gardening. The eye’s in that bowl of potpourri on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘Thanks, Jonah,’ I said, glad he’d told me before I’d looked in the pot. An eye staring back at me from the dried rose petals would have been a bit of a shock.

  ‘If you like, I can Superglue it back in.’

  ‘Yes, please—and give the head a good brushing while you’re at it, will you? I’ll try and find something nicer to replace it with later on, when I’ve got time.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, going off whistling.

  Half the candle light bulbs in the wheel-shaped holder suspended from the ceiling were dead when I flicked the switch, as were those in the wall lights—muscular naked bronze arms holding out what looked like frosted glass whirly ice-cream cornets.

  Humming the tune to the Cornetto ice-cream advert, I slowly turned, taking everything in. The tops of the windows were draped with spider-spun silk, and most of the assorted chairs, settles and benches that furnished the room looked dull and unpolished, except for the tops, where the application of countless bottoms over the centuries had rubbed them up to a fine gloss.

  Grace must have gone up the backstairs, because there was a zooming noise from the dimly lit minstrels’ gallery way above me, and I could just see the top of her head as she pushed the Hoover to and fro. Then it stopped, and she started working backwards down the stairs with a dustpan and brush.

  A hand-held vacuum cleaner would be easier for that, and I made a memo to unpack mine from its box in the attic—if I could remember which one I’d put it in. On the end of the growing list at the back of the notebook I added foam tubing to pad the end of the vacuum cleaner hose, which would stop any more chips being knocked out of the furniture.

  Going into the family wing, I popped my head in the steward’s office to say good morning to Mr Yatton and tell him what I was up to today, and where he could find me if he wanted me.

  ‘Very good—and Lucy and I have made contact already,’ he said. ‘I emailed some figures, and she sent me a list of very pertinent questions right back.’

  I could imagine—she would shortly be running his affairs much as she tries to do mine. A mobile phone like a thin silvery clam played a snatch of waltz music and, as he picked it up, I smiled at him and returned to my inventory.

  In the passage abutting the solar tower a cupboard had been cut into the wall, which was now filled with dull silver and the sad, cracked relics of several valuable tea services. Mum had told me that there had once been an emergency trapdoor exit down into it from the priest’s hole above, but after Alys Blezzard’s death the family had forsworn the Catholic faith and the priest’s hole had fallen into disuse. I couldn’t see any trace of it in the cupboard ceiling, but it was pretty dark in there.

  The library was quite cosy and, since presumably William had used it a lot, relatively clean and tidy. Even the books, including many very ancient gardening tomes behind glass, looked as if they had been dusted within living memory, and all the lights worked. There was a billiard table at one end, a small TV and video, and a wind-up gramophone with a stack of old 78s in cardboard covers next to it, all humorous monologues.

  The top one w
as ‘Albert and the Lion’. I put it on and wound the handle and, as the crackling monologue played, I tried to square this evidence of my grandfather’s sense of humour with what I remembered of him. It wasn’t easy. After a while I gave up and carried on with my survey.

  Like the library, the drawing room was in reasonably good order, though the chairs and sofas were still wearing grubby summer chintz covers, which should have long since been taken off and washed. I wondered if there was a winter set, too? Grace or Mrs Lark would probably know.

  Aunt Hebe had staked a claim to a comfortable chair and Berlin-work footstool, next to a table loaded with gardening magazines and catalogues, plus an overflowing bundle of knitting that was the rather snotty green of mushy peas. I sincerely hoped it was intended as a gift for Jack and not some kind of welcome-home present for me.

  Not, so far, that there had been much evidence from Aunt Hebe of any real pleasure in my return…

  The dining room was grandly dingy, with a splendid chandelier that tinkled in the draught from the door, and I noted the threadbare but rather beautiful rug that would have to be professionally cleaned, if I could ever afford it. Goodness knows what state the tapestries hanging in the corridors were in. It was probably just as well that it was too dark to see, and at least the gloom meant they had been protected from much light damage.

  I’d left the room I most longed to look at, Lady Anne’s parlour, until last…and strictly speaking, of course, that should be Lady Winter’s parlour, though it doesn’t sound quite so cosy.

  It was strange that although it was a lovely light room with a door on to the terrace, if felt unused, unloved and neglected.

  The dark, dull panelling that covered the lower half of the walls looked seventeenth century, but at some point the plaster above had been painted a deep, coral colour. The shade was echoed in the pattern of the curtains that hung at the windows and over the door to the terrace, and though they were a little faded they had been well lined.