The House On Willow Street

by Cathy Kelly

  “Come on, darling,” said Tess, getting to her knees and burying her head in the dog’s silken coat the way she had with her animals as a child, “let’s go home.”

  She’d had enough.

  But the wheels of business move on and the next day, Tess knew she couldn’t miss the year’s biggest antiques auction. She had to find some fresh stock—as cheaply as possible.

  In the past few years, Tess had got used to closing early when she needed to go out to an auction because she could no longer afford to hire anyone. But with Christmas only a month away and the books looking so bad, she was nervous of losing a day’s trading. Danae’s gorgeous niece, Mara, whom she’d loved on their night out, seemed like the perfect stopgap: she was looking for work, and she was happy to fill in for one day.

  Mara said she had worked in property, and Tess prayed she’d be okay holding the fort for a small, unusual antique business. Though it helped enormously if the person had even a vague knowledge of antiques, Tess had descriptions of everything in the shop on the tiny luggage labels she used for the prices.

  She was due at nine. Bang on time, there was a knock on the door.

  Tess looked up to find a vision in the shop doorway.

  For the occasion, Mara had dressed in an exquisite arrangement of vintage, figuring that this was one job where old clothes would be an advantage. She wore a 1950s butter-yellow dress with a Peter Pan collar, a tiny waist and whirling skirts. She had a fluffy white mohair cardigan draped over her shoulders and carried a white hard-frame handbag.

  “Mara, you look wonderful!” she said.

  “Thank you, Tess,” said Mara, and stepped into Something Old.

  That night in the restaurant, Tess had decided that Mara had a glow about her, like she was lit up inside. Tess couldn’t quite put her finger on the exact cause, whether it was Mara’s rippling mane of auburn hair or the huge green eyes that looked at everything with such interest. Today, she was the same: glowing and smiling, looking as delighted at the possibility of a day’s work as she might have been over being headhunted for some glamorous corporation.

  “You’re wildly overqualified for the job,” Tess said. She knew of Mara’s career history but looking over her CV now, she could see that was definitely the case.

  “Oh, you must read my reference,” Mara said cheerfully. “The ex-boyfriend I was telling you about: he wrote it. They were all terrified I’d sue them or him, so from the reference, you’d think I’d personally run the entire office single-handedly for three years.”

  She paused thoughtfully. “I could have too—run the office, that is. But property is not the job to be in right now. Too many people selling their beloved homes in misery for half of what they’d bought the place for, and you still have to demand commission. Horrible. I’d probably have been made redundant soon anyhow.”

  “I’m not sure the antique business is much better,” Tess said. “A lot of my current stock is from people who’ve been forced to part with pieces they’ve had in their families for decades and they’ve looked as if they wanted to cry as it went out the door.”

  “So kindness is a necessity if anyone comes in with something to sell,” Mara said quickly. “Trust me, I can do kind.” A wistfulness crept into her voice. “I’d have gone mad if not for other people’s kindness over the past couple of months. Henry James said kindness was the most important word in the English language. He was right.”

  “Do you know anything about antiques?” asked Tess briskly. She didn’t want to talk about people’s kindness or how she melted into a puddle of tears when she experienced it. It was easy being strong as long as nobody said anything gentle to you: that was when the floodgates opened. There was definitely something magical about Mara: she made people open up. Tess hadn’t been crying much at all these past few days: she’d trained herself not to.

  “Oh look!” in an instant, Mara had swooped on one of the rosewood jewelry cabinets (a stunning piece for displaying jewelry, but for sale if the correct price was reached), and pointed to a dainty Art Nouveau brooch displayed on a velvet choker on an old gold papier-mâché bust.

  The brooch was so tiny that it would get lost worn any other way, but the sinuous silver lines made a perfect adornment to a choker, exactly like the one in the old oil painting of Great-great-great- (Tess forgot how many greats were involved) aunt Tatiana from Avalon House, although in the painting, Tatiana was wearing a vast diamond choker which had come from the Tsar’s court in the 1800s. Pity they’d never been able to find that necklace in Avalon House when they had to sell everything, Tess thought wistfully. It was one of those priceless pieces, with a maharajah’s diamond in the center of it and a whole history surrounding the necklace. It would be worth hundreds of thousands. But even though she and Suki had searched for it, they’d never found it or Great-great-great . . . aunt Tatiana’s alleged hiding place for her gems.

  As soon as she’d seen the lovely brooch, part of a job lot, Tess had known how beautiful it would look worn as a choker and set against black velvet.

  “That is so beautiful,” Mara breathed. “And where you have it is perfect. I feel like it’s on a lady’s dressing table and she’s about to cast off a silky robe so she can dress for a fabulous party, cover herself in Chanel No. 5 and . . . oh, I don’t know—what would she be wearing for something of this period?”

  Tess grinned. “I take it all back,” she said. “You don’t need to know anything about antiques if you can make them come alive like that.”

  “It’s not me!” exclaimed Mara. “It’s you, the way you display everything. It all looks like a room in a beautiful house where you want to wander into each corner and discover . . .”

  Seeing it through someone else’s eyes, Tess looked around at her little kingdom.

  Without her realizing it, she had created a microcosm of Avalon House in the two rooms of Something Old. There was the gentleman’s library section where the hunting prints, the wine-drinking paraphernalia and the old leather-bound books lay, the way they had in her father’s library, even though the valuable books had all been sold. There was the ladies’ boudoir area where silver-backed brushes and jewelry sat alongside glass bottles from every perfume era, and where beautifully speckled foxed antique mirrors made everyone’s reflection look hazily lovely. Even Tess, who didn’t have much time for admiring herself in mirrors, looked twice when she caught sight of her reflection in them.

  And the larger pieces of furniture at the back of the shop: the bookcases, portraits, giant Victorian vases, old traveling steam trunks, ornate chairs. Every piece could have fitted into her old home and looked as though it belonged.

  Tess felt her eyes brim. She thought she’d left Avalon House and all its memories behind, when what she’d done was re-create it in her shop.

  She shook herself and got on with explaining the till to Mara.

  The next day, Mara walked up the last bit of Willow Street and in through the rusting but imposing gates till she was on the avenue leading to Avalon House. Danae had said it was like walking under a canopy of shimmering greens in the summer, as the branches from each side met in the middle. In winter, the bare branches reached out to their friends, as if waiting patiently for the first acid-green bud to appear. Mara knew nothing about gardening apart from admiring whatever it was that Danae did with her garden, but even she could see that the vast acres Avalon House sat on hadn’t seen a lawnmower or a leaf blower for many years. It was a wild place, with tangled bushes and great clumps of ivy climbing the trees, strangling them.

  What would it be like to live here? Would life be infinitely better if you were born master or mistress of this place instead of being the ordinary girl from Furlong Hill? A girl who lived here probably wouldn’t have to try too hard to forge a life. Someone like that would have instantly divined that Jack wasn’t serious. And then again, she knew Tess, knew a little of her history. It seemed as if being born into such a noble family with noble bricks and battlements around you meant
nothing. People were still people, whatever their birthright.

  Cashel Reilly stood by the entrance wearing a cashmere navy coat. He was very tall and good looking, if you liked that dark, brooding type of thing. Mara once had, but she was over it. Besides, he was too old.

  “Hello, I’m Mara Wilson, I’m here for the interview,” she said.

  “You walked?” said Cashel in surprise.

  Mara’s very-professional-person-looking-for-a-job look was immediately replaced by a wry smile.

  “My aunt lives outside your gate,” she said. “Hers is the last house on Willow Street. This is the country, not LA: people walk here.”

  “True,” said Cashel, recovering. “In fact, that’s what we’re going to do now: walk around the place.”

  He set off at a brisk pace, despite the Wellington boots he was wearing. Mara, who was wearing flat boots herself, struggled to keep up.

  “I liked your CV and your application letter,” he said.

  There hadn’t been many suitable applications. If he’d chosen a big city firm to find someone for him, he’d have been inundated, but he wanted to keep this local. It felt right doing it that way, and Mara Wilson had been the only local applicant.

  “Can you take decent notes?” he asked, beginning to speed up, opening the door into the house.

  “Yes, if I’m not running like a hare after you,” Mara said. “Would I have to follow you around?”

  “I usually pace in an office,” Cashel admitted. “We’d need to find an office in town.”

  “We’d need an office full stop,” Mara said. “I can’t operate out of here.”

  They’d reached the old hall, which Cashel scanned rapidly. He couldn’t imagine that broadband had ever been installed in Avalon House.

  “Good point. Look into it. Something in town, big enough for both of us. I won’t be there much, but I’ll need my own office.”

  “Any special chair or desk requirements?” Mara asked. “Does your chair have to be some wildly expensive leather gizmo in the ten grand range?”

  Cashel looked at her suspiciously. Was she being funny?

  “People can be very specific about what they like,” Mara said, as if she had read his thoughts.

  “Surprise me,” Cashel said—a statement that surprised him. Normally, he assumed total control. Most of the staff in his various offices had been with him long enough to develop a sense of his preferences and knew better than to bother him with the details, but he hated it when they got it wrong.

  “Does that mean I’ve got the job?”

  Cashel looked at his new executive assistant in charge of Avalon House. She looked smart, streetwise, and she said what she thought, a quality he liked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me. I like you on instinct, and I’m rarely wrong. See that I’m not.”

  “Okeydoke,” said Mara cheerfully. “I’ll get working on an office, architects—unless you have someone in mind—and builders. The best, I’m guessing?”

  He nodded. “I don’t like being ripped off, though,” Cashel said grimly.

  “Understood, loud and clear,” said Mara.

  They walked around the ground floor and Cashel found himself speaking slowly so Mara could take notes, rather than rattling off instructions in his normal shotgun manner. He didn’t know if it was this spiky, unusual girl who was having that effect on him or the fact that he was in Avalon House—the house he now owned.

  Here, in the town where he’d grown up, he felt different, less like the captain of industry who expected minions to jump when he said so. If he sent Mara off scared, doubtless he’d get a reputation in the town for being a rich bastard, one of those people who’d let wealth change them beyond recognition. And he didn’t want anyone to think that, because it wasn’t true.

  Money had changed him, to a degree. The absence of it was a nightmare, and he knew that, because he’d grown up that way. But having money didn’t necessarily change the person you had been from the start.

  A billionaire Swiss friend had put it wonderfully when he said that having money merely emphasized what you were all along. If you were a poor son of a bitch, you’d turn into an even worse son of a bitch with money. But if you were fundamentally decent, then you’d stay that way—simply with a nicer bank balance.

  “One question,” Mara asked, when they’d spent an hour walking around the house, talking, with her taking copious notes all the while. “Is this to be your home, or are you doing it up to sell?”

  Cashel didn’t look at her.

  He seemed a million miles away, in fact. It was as if he had to drag himself back to the present when he finally answered her: “I don’t know. Yet.”

  When Mara had left, Cashel walked around the house and looked at it. It didn’t matter how much money you had if you weren’t happy, he knew that all too well.

  And he knew that the Power family had loved each other, even though there wasn’t any money to go around. They were never too proud to be friends with the locals. Well, maybe Suki wasn’t friends with all and sundry, but that was because Suki had always been wild. Even so, the wildness didn’t come from her thinking she was a cut above anyone else. If anything, it was a fierce desire to do better that made her wild. To get herself out of Avalon. To be rich and famous.

  But old Mr. Power and Tess—even thinking of her name upset him—those two never thought they were better than anyone else. Maybe their ancestors would have thought so. It would have been bred into the De Paors: You are better than all the townsfolk. They are there to do your bidding. But old Mr. Power and Tess weren’t like that.

  He remembered Tess, years ago, getting angry with him as they passed through the gallery where all the portraits were. She had noticed that he was walking cautiously, as though he might get into trouble for being in this part of the house.

  “Would you stop comparing our backgrounds, Cashel, please,” she’d said. “You know, your mother knows, we have nothing. We’ve barely been able to pay for electricity for the past three years. There’s no money in this house. Stop looking at it like it’s something different. It’s a big house, nothing more. So what if my father can trace his ancestors back for decades? What does that mean in real terms, exactly? You’re the one who’s making it different.”

  These days he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her—not surprising, given that he was buying the house she used to live in. The house she’d lived in when he first kissed her. The house she’d lived in when she betrayed him.

  He made a note to himself to talk to Mara in the morning. Not a penny was to be spared when it came to Avalon House. It was to be the best of everything. The very best.

  Within weeks, Cashel found a strange peace in walking around the grounds of Avalon House. Mara had sourced a company of local tree surgeons, who were diligently examining the trees in the avenue. Some of the beautiful magnolias would have to come down, they’d told Cashel, because they were diseased.

  Mara had also found a landscape gardener who specialized in the restoration of old gardens, and even though Cashel had meant to be in a meeting in London the morning she arrived, he’d found himself canceling so he could join in on the walk around the grounds.

  The gardener, a formidable lady named Judy, was in her sixties and wore sensible tweeds and a waxed jacket that looked at least as old as the house. She had a brusque manner and a small dog snapping at her heels, and Cashel found he was delighted to lope along behind her and Mara, wearing wellington boots and a heavy coat.

  “There’s a lot of work to be done here,” Judy said. “Really serious work. It looks as though none of this has been touched for nigh on thirty years.” Her tone conveyed the disgust she felt for those responsible.

  “It’s true that the place has been neglected,” said Mara, who’d begun to research the history of the estate diligently and had learned how, thanks to her feckless ancestors, Tess had lost her home. And now the poor woman was struggling to hang on to her shop, as well as
having to cope with her husband leaving. Though Judy was clearly the sort of woman who brooked no opposition to her views, Mara felt she owed it to her new friend to provide a more sympathetic account of Avalon House’s recent history:

  “For the past eighteen years, the house has been empty. The previous owners—the Powers, who’d owned Avalon House since its inception—lost all their money, so they hadn’t the resources to do anything to stop it becoming more and more decrepit.”

  Cashel found himself compelled to intervene, although he didn’t know why he was sticking up for Tess’s family. “These huge houses are a nightmare to run,” he said. “It’s the same story all over the country: grand old houses that were once the envy of everyone, handed down the generations until there wasn’t a ha’penny left to maintain them, for all that they could trace their ancestors back to the year dot and had the portraits in the hall to prove it. Not that it matters who your ancestors are, or anything,” he trailed off.

  “Yes,” said Judy, maintaining her brisk pace. “I can see that. I’ve come across many similar cases in my work. I take it you want to make sure this garden is restored in keeping with the property?”

  “Absolutely,” said Cashel, and he found himself wondering why he’d said anything positive at all about landowners in trouble.

  It was as if he was standing up for Tess, Suki and their father, and the fact that they hadn’t a ha’penny. Bizarre. He kept pace with Mara and Judy, shortening his long strides so the other pair could keep up. Mara shot him a couple of interesting glances but he ignored them. There could be something on her mind, he decided. Mara was not like any other assistant he’d ever had before. In fact, he’d probably have fired any assistant who behaved as Mara did toward him. Not for any insubordination or lack of ability—far from it, she was marvelously efficient, clever, capable of thinking on her feet and coming up with fantastic ideas—but she didn’t kowtow to him at all. Of late, however, Cashel had changed; he found Mara’s attitude refreshing. It was as if she was saying, You may have lots of money and be my boss, but you’re no better than me, sweetie.