A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  Out in the passageway the grandfather clock started to chime and didn’t look like stopping any time soon. The evening had simply flown by and the cake stand was empty, though I had no recollection of eating anything. There wasn’t even a crumb left, except those caught in Charlie’s whiskers.

  The central chandelier was suddenly switched on, flooding the room with dazzlingly bright light.

  ‘Are you still up?’ Hebe said, then she caught sight of Seth sitting next to me on the sofa and looked at us with acute disapproval.

  ‘We were discussing the planting scheme for the Shakespeare garden, Aunt Hebe,’ I explained, feeling like a guilty teenager, ‘and the quotations for the wall. I didn’t realise it was getting late.’

  Seth drained the last of his whisky and got up. ‘Yes, I think we have enough ideas to be going on with, for now at any rate.’

  Aunt Hebe lingered behind in the study while I escorted Seth to the front door and locked it behind him. She re-emerged just as I’d washed up our glasses and the cake stand, and settled Charlie in his basket in the kitchen, then followed me upstairs, as though she suspected I might double back and let Seth in again if she didn’t. She would probably have liked to lock me into my bedroom, but had to content herself with frostily wishing me good night.

  I’d left my mobile phone in my room again, and found I’d missed three calls from Jack, but nothing from Anya or Lucy. I missed another one from Jack while I was in the bathroom, going through the motions of cleaning my teeth in a haze of sudden exhaustion. Then, just as I got into bed, he rang me again.

  ‘Hello? Sophy?’ he said, in a warm, intimate voice. ‘At last—don’t you ever carry your phone around with you?’

  I propped myself up against the pillows sleepily. ‘Yes, but sometimes I forget. But I’ve been in the house most of the day, except for walking Charlie, so you could have got me on the house phone if it was urgent.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got you now, darling. Sorry I had to dash off like that yesterday, but business is business and I’ve got three properties I want to complete on, before Christmas.’

  ‘Oh? I thought you did them up one at a time,’ I said sleepily. ‘You’ve already bought Melinda’s old house, haven’t you? That’ll make four.’

  ‘Mel’s house is so ugly that I bought it just for the land it’s standing on. She gets a percentage when I sell it on for a housing development, but I’m still waiting for permission to knock the main building down. It’s taking ten times longer than I bargained for.’

  ‘So it isn’t a nice house?’

  ‘No, it’s a ghastly sixties concrete monstrosity, by some Dutch architect who only built a couple of them over here. But never mind that. I hope you’ve been thinking about me and what I said to you?’

  The truth was, that apart from that brisk exchange with Seth on the subject, before we settled down to the exciting task of choosing roses, the day had gone by in such a flash that I’d hardly thought of him at all for hours. Before I could stop myself, my blunt tongue had said so.

  There was a hurt pause. ‘You seem to have been making a late night of it. Hebe just called me, quite upset because you spent the evening with Seth. I hope you aren’t harbouring any hopes in that direction, because he’s involved with Mel.’

  That must have been what Hebe was doing while I was letting Seth out. The devious old witch!

  ‘Look, he brought some catalogues up so we could choose roses for the garden,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t even like the man, but he is my head gardener, in case you’d forgotten! And anyway, I’m not accountable for how I spend my time—to you or to anyone else.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘I just wished it was me you’d spent the evening with, that’s all.’

  ‘Jack, you had every opportunity of spending an evening with me when you were here at the weekend,’ I pointed out. ‘You decided to go to the pub instead, to be with your friends.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’ he said, with an air of discovery. ‘This is all still because of Mel. You’re jealous of her, aren’t you? But really, there’s no need to be—she’s very old news as far as I’m concerned—just a friend.’

  ‘I am not in the least jealous of Melinda and I don’t care what sort of news she is,’ I snapped and he laughed infuriatingly.

  ‘Good night, darling, sweet dreams—of me!’

  I said something unprintable but he’d already gone, cocooned in smug delusion. Paradoxically, the more I saw how irresistibly gorgeous he thought he was, the less attractive I seemed to find him.

  And as for Seth, if he was stupid enough to fall for someone like Mel, and let her give him the run-around all over again, then he deserved all he got!

  Chapter Twenty-one: Ghost Lace

  There has been another priest hidden in the house these three days, but he is to leave as soon as it is dark tonight—the house has been searched once and it is feared they mean to search again. Joan says there is a rumour abroad that he is carrying gold from Lord R. back to France with him, but I do not know the truth of this.

  Sir Ralph is much scolded by his wife for putting them in such danger and I overheard him promise that they should no more profess the Catholic faith but instead throw in their lot with the new religion, though he is in fear for his immortal soul.

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582

  Ottie retired to her house and studio in Cornwall until Christmas, though I couldn’t imagine anywhere more inspiring than Winter’s End.

  Each morning the view across the valley from my bedroom window changed quite magically as autumn firmly advanced towards winter, stripping the last of the bronze leaves from the trees and picking out the knots and bushes on the terraces below with frost.

  Indoors, Jonah kept roaring fires going in the Great Hall, helping to dispel the chilly dankness of the rest of the house, and I embarked on an exhausting but enjoyable flurry of frenzied cleaning.

  The days flew by as Winter’s End began to emerge like a butterfly from a rather dingy chrysalis. I was happy as a pig in clover and so, it seemed, was just about everyone else.

  Grace swooped about the house with her new vacuum cleaners, singing shrilly. Whenever I had the gardeners into the house to help, Jonah followed them around, telling them how he would have done everything had he been twenty years younger, which seemed to give him great satisfaction. And as for Mrs Lark, she was so grateful at being allowed to have the kitten that she seemed to feel the need to stuff food into me at every turn.

  ‘If I wasn’t burning off so many calories with the cleaning, I’d simply have burst out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk by now,’ I told Anya on the phone. ‘I might have burst altogether. I wonder if our insides are green?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think they’re a pretty sight, whatever colour they are, so let’s not go there. Tell me everything that’s been happening instead, because it’s like Upstairs, Downstairs from both viewpoints at once.’

  ‘Nothing terribly exciting,’ I said doubtfully. ‘I’ve met my accountant and one or two other people Mr Yatton thought I ought to, and signed loads of papers that gave me acute headaches to get my head around…I’ve removed yards of cobwebs and dispossessed some of the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve polished so much panelling I’m doing it in my sleep.’

  ‘Go on, what else?’ she prompted.

  ‘Two of the gardeners have been helping me to move heavy furniture and roll rugs, and luckily one of them, Hal, is a dab hand with the paste pot and brushes, so I’ve arranged for him to redecorate the Larks’ rooms. The other one, Bob, is concentrating on repainting the front gates.’

  ‘And how is the Gorgeous Gardener taking that?’ she enquired with interest.

  ‘He’s not so much gorgeous as grumpy. He tends to go off the deep end even if I just borrow one of them for an hour and it took me ages to get it through his thick skull that Hal and Bob were going to do most of the extra work as overtime. He’s obsessed with finishing the lower terrace�
�but even when we had a cold snap and the ground was too frozen, he was up in the woodland, chopping down dead trees.’

  ‘So, does your aunt Hebe still think you two have got a thing going on?’

  ‘No, not now she’s seen the way we argue all the time, and I’m sure Jack never believed it at all; he’s too confident of his own attractions. He’s taken to phoning me up late every night, schmoozing me.’ I sighed. ‘You know, it’s only a few weeks since I would have thought that was wonderful, but now I just wish he wouldn’t, because I’m shattered by bedtime. But I have to answer it, in case it’s Lucy.’

  ‘At least you don’t seem to be besotted with him any more, that’s one good thing. You had me quite worried there.’

  ‘I was never besotted,’ I replied with dignity, ‘just dazzled. You wait until you see him, then you’ll understand why I found it hard to think straight when he was there! And I am growing fond of him—just not in any relationship kind of way any more, and certainly not handing over Winter’s End fond!’

  ‘I expect he’ll get the message eventually.’

  ‘I hope so, but Aunt Hebe’s also driving me crackers by constantly telling me how wonderful he is and what a great husband he would make—which perhaps he might, but not mine, even if he asked me—which he hasn’t, directly, just hinted. It’ll be difficult when it does finally dawn on both of them that I really am here to stay, and Winter’s End is going to open to the public with a bang next year, whether Jack likes it or not.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing it, at last,’ Anya said, for now that Guy had got the job near Manchester she was working her way down, via a string of autumn craft fairs, to visit him and then drop in on me.

  I wasn’t sure what Aunt Hebe would make of my best friend, with her red dreadlocks and nose ring…

  ‘How are you and your aunt getting on, apart from the campaigning on Jack’s behalf?’ Anya asked, as if reading my mind.

  ‘Oh, we’re settling down into a routine. She has her own preoccupations and I have mine, so we live pretty separate lives; probably much as she did with Grandfather. Neither of us is a great talker at breakfast, thank God. That was the worst thing about Jack: he was too damned cheerful at dawn! And we aren’t often in the kitchen at the same time for lunch. But we have a genteel chat about our respective days over a glass of sherry every evening, before dining together, followed by coffee in the drawing room while she knits.’

  ‘Very civilised. What’s she knitting?’

  ‘I think it may be some sort of jumper or cardigan,’ I said dubiously. ‘It’s snotty green and quite big, so I hope whatever it is, it’s meant for Jack.’

  ‘And what do you do? You must be tired with all the cleaning by the evening.’

  ‘I sit in the parlour with Charlie, listening to Radio 4 and sewing my cushions.’

  With a glowing wealth of bright silk and satin scraps scattered across the polished top of the needlework table, a fake but cheerful electric coal-effect fire in the grate, and Charlie at my feet (or even on my feet), I was perfectly happy.

  And if sometimes the presence of Alys Blezzard in the room was so real that I spoke aloud to her—well, there was no one else there to hear me and think me mad.

  Apart from Charlie, of course, and he was aware of her too.

  I was still awaiting the return of the parlour curtains (preferably in one piece), and though the windows had wooden shutters, that night I had left them open because the terraces looked so pretty with the knot gardens frosted and palely gleaming under a full moon.

  I was engrossed in embroidering a rose onto an ivory silk patch, when a sudden sharp rapping at the terrace door nearly gave me a heart attack—and all I could see was this hulking great shape lurking outside, a pallid face pressed to the glass.

  But it was the sheer size of the monster that gave its identity away, after one long, ghastly moment when I remembered every horror story I’d ever read—especially one particularly scary one where a drowned man was summoned back from the sea…

  I let my breath out in a great sigh and nudged Charlie off my feet so I could get up. He was still snoring—some guard dog.

  ‘Did you have to knock suddenly like that?’ I demanded, turning the key and letting Seth in, along with a chilly breeze. ‘My heart’s still racing!’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t think. I often walk around this way when I’m going to the pub, then take the short cut through the shrubbery, and I saw you through the window looking very domestic and cosy. In fact, the whole house is starting to look different, and I can see all the hard work you’ve put into it,’ he said, which I think was as close to an apology for his grumpiness as he could get.

  He walked over to the table and examined my sewing. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Crazy patchwork cushions. I used to make them as a little business, but I thought I would get some ready for our gift shop before I advertise again. My friend Anya makes jewellery, and Aunt Hebe is going into production on a line of rose-based creams and lotions, so it’s going to be a very upmarket little shop. But we will still stock all the usual bits and pieces visitors like too—pens, pencils, rubbers, teatowels, mugs…all kinds of things.’

  ‘So you still intend combining it with the teashop?’

  ‘I think so, but I need to give that whole area more thought, because it could be a real moneyspinner.’

  ‘You could stock my book too. It will be out by then,’ he suggested.

  ‘Which book? I mean, I knew you’d written one or two, but no one told me you had a new one coming out.’

  ‘Yes, The Artful Knot. It’s a short history of the knot garden in this country.’

  ‘That sounds perfect for the shop. You’ll have to give me the details so we can order some in—and sign them too.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, and bestowed one of his rare—and, if truth be told, devastating—smiles on me. He wasn’t wearing his layers of jumpers tonight, just one the colour of butterscotch under a soft, natural leather jacket and his shoes were beautiful. His silky black hair was brushed straight back from his forehead…

  I was just thinking that when he scrubbed up he made a very good job of it, when he said, ‘Well, I’d better be off—but why don’t you come with me?’

  ‘To the pub—tonight—me?’ I began, then stopped, because actually, there was no real reason why I shouldn’t, and suddenly I wanted to. ‘I’m a bit tired but it would be lovely to get out,’ I agreed. ‘OK—just let me get a coat and put Charlie in the kitchen. I’ll leave a note on the table for Jonah too, for when he comes downstairs to lock up.’

  *  *  *

  It was so bitterly cold that the breath hung in front of our faces like white clouds and I was glad I’d brought my warm scarf and gloves, but the sky overhead was a magical dark velvety blue sprinkled with stars.

  Seth was silent until we’d crossed the top terrace and rounded the corner of the house, where he switched on a torch to light our way. Then he said:

  ‘The stone mason has started lettering the first stones for the retaining wall. He’s going to bring them back in batches as he does them, so I can start on rebuilding it at the end of this week.’

  ‘That’s fast!’

  ‘Yes, but I suppose it makes a change from gravestones.’

  ‘Is that what he does, memorial carving? I thought he was a sculptor and that’s how Ottie knew him.’

  ‘He’s that too, he just makes his living from doing the other stuff. So,’ Seth added, giving me one of his more minatory sideways glances, ‘we’ll have the wall rebuilt quite quickly—if you leave my gardeners alone.’

  ‘I always leave you Derek,’ I pointed out, ‘your right-hand man.’

  ‘Just as well, since he’s the only one of us with the skills and experience to rebuild the wall and he’ll be in charge of it. But he can’t do it alone.’

  ‘He won’t have to. Bob’s going to finish off the front gates at weekends and Hal’s redecorating the Larks’ apartme
nt as overtime too. So unless I suddenly think of something else they can help me with, you can have them,’ I added provocatively.

  ‘You’re just trying to wind me up,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘and actually, I’m really starting to look forward to seeing the wall finished and a start made on landscaping the terrace, because that wooden shuttering looks really ugly and it’s such a muddy mess down there. Have you decided on the design for the central knot yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but didn’t offer to show it to me, so I assumed he was sulking.

  I’d been half afraid that Jack’s friends would be in the pub, but it was much quieter than last time, with no sign of them or of Mel Christopher, so I expect most of them live in London and only come home for weekends—that, or they usually meet at a more upmarket pub somewhere. I couldn’t tell if Seth was disappointed by Mel’s absence or not, but then, I don’t suppose he would have invited me to go with him if he had had an assignation there with his lady-love.

  Grace waggled her fingers at me from the fireplace corner where she was sitting with the journalist, George. I only hoped she wasn’t telling him any more of my life history—if there was any left to tell—but since nothing about me had appeared in the local paper, not even the photograph, I expect he had given up on me as way too boring.

  I drank Guinness and played darts with Seth, Bob, Hal and the community policeman, Mike, who was a displaced Liverpudlian. After a bit Val came out from behind the bar and took a turn too.

  I felt relaxed and happy when I walked back later with Seth, in companionable silence, our footsteps sounding loud in the cold darkness.

  As we passed the graveyard I could see the glimmering whiteness of my mother’s angel in a swirl of movement—but whether landing or taking off I wasn’t sure.

  Chapter Twenty-two: On the Rails

  Last night my Lady told mee to put on a dark cloak and lead the priest from the house by the woodland path beyond the walled garden, to set him on his way to a safer house. This I did, but I feared for the poor old man, though he was calm and resolute enough. He blessed mee before he left, though he will have heard the rumours of witchcraft that Mary Wynter hath put about so assiduously.