‘The boys?’
‘All gone.’
‘Killed?’
He nodded, his eyes on the glint of water just visible through the thickly tangled trees.
‘Yes. In the first year of the war, so the housekeeper tells me. Three telegrams in the same month. Julian would have been about nineteen, which would have made the twins twenty-one. Nice lads.’
‘That’s why the house is up for sale?’
‘Yes. Nobody to inherit it. I reckon there are a lot of houses like this, up and down the country, right now, in the same position. Nobody left. Madam’s living in London – thank God. I’m not sure I could face her. Not as a prospective buyer, at any rate. She’d be very gracious about it, of course, and wish me well. But it would be bound to hurt. All the housekeeper said when she recognized me was “I see you’ve come through it all right, Christopher Hardie”.’
‘You’re not ashamed of that are you?’
‘No – damned glad.’
‘Me too.’
The house had been left fully furnished with old, comfortable sofas and chairs made for the sprawling of growing boys and heavy-weight hound puppies, massive sideboards scarred by time and the whittling of a careless penknife, venerable carpets cheerfully threadbare, a great deal of blue and white china which had been meticulously glued together, a library with leather armchairs and oak tables from which only the books had been taken, the bare shelves as shockingly bereft as the house without its children.
‘I do the best I can, Christopher Hardie,’ said the stiff-backed, pinch-lipped housekeeper, ‘but the dust settles. Madam said you’d be staying overnight. Will it be one room for me to get ready or two?’
There was a short pause.
‘One room will do nicely,’ Claire said.
‘Very good.’ She was far too accustomed to the promiscuous habits of under-footmen to be in any way offended. ‘And dinner at seven o’clock. Does that suit?’
‘Yes,’ said Kit easily. ‘I’ve brought some wine in the trap. Would you put it to cool?’
He had spoken with cheerful authority and for a moment her obedience hung in the balance, promiscuity being one thing, the order of command quite another. And she had commanded Christopher Hardie often enough, and sharply enough too, impervious to that charm of his that had wheedled the virtue out of more than one of the parlourmaids and always kept him on the right side of the mistress. Master Julian had always liked him too, the young scamp – the young hero. Master Julian shot through his fair curly head. And Master Stephen, ‘missing believed killed’the telegram had said, blown to pieces by a shell more like with not enough of him left to identify. Master Granville. What had happened to him? There’d been a letter from his company commander saying he’d died instantly and felt no pain and nobody had ever been able to find out anything more than that. His father had tried, gone to Whitehall and waited about in draughty passages, and then he’d given up. He’d spent his time sitting in the over-grown garden after that watching the boat-house, that the boys had started painting in June 1914 and never finished, fall into decay. She knew he’d been glad to die. And now here was Hardie and this pretty, clear-eyed, cropped-haired young woman. The survivors.
‘The wine, Mrs Roe.’
‘Certainly,’ she said.
For the purposes of an hotel the house was big enough, two spacious drawing rooms overlooking the level stretch of Wansfell Water and the bare slopes beyond, the library with long windows leading to a covered verandah and descending in their wild tangle to the lake. The kitchens were old-fashioned but ample, the dining room conveniently placed and, close beside it, a billiard room which could be converted with ease to accommodate forty or so extra diners. There was a sufficiency of bedrooms on two floors requiring a great deal of taste and a certain amount of careful planning. The views, in every direction, took the breath away. The gardens, as Kit well remembered, had once been something of a horticulturist’s paradise. The village of Wansfell was charming. The surrounding countryside was probably the most spectacular in the land. There was exercise to be had, climbing the fells or strolling the relatively gentle path around Wansfell Water, and culture – the poet Wordsworth and his sweet sister having lived the most intense idyll of their lives in a cottage not many miles away.
‘Can people get here?’ Claire wanted to know.
‘Yes. If they know where to come. I haven’t committed myself yet. I just think it could be right. For me – and for you. What do you think? Or would you rather wait and tell me in the morning? I didn’t bring you here you know for that …’
‘Oh dear.’ She laughed and tucked her arm through his. ‘Have I been too forward? I wouldn’t want to seduce you, Major, against your will.’
‘I expect I’ll give in gracefully.’
‘I expect so.’
They walked down to the village, still arm-in-arm, a fresh breeze ruffling the surface of the water, just tossing the heads of the clustering daffodils, and bought newly-baked gingerbread at a cottage doorway, old companions chatting easily together as they strolled the single, winding street and the ancient mossy churchyard, none of the villagers who nodded to them with incurious courtesy recognizing in this soldierly, affable gentleman, the young under-footman from Wansfell Howe.
‘How would they take to an hotel on their doorstep, Kit?’
‘Badly,’ he said, ‘at least to begin with. Not even the village shopkeeper would like it, since I’d hardly be getting my foie gras from him. But when the old boy retires he might sell the business to a younger man who’d start selling things I might find handy – or my guests would. Picture postcards, cigars and cigarettes, the old lady’s gingerbread nicely packaged – and they do a very decent rum butter hereabouts. Pack it in fancy jars and I believe you’d be on to a winner. I might even buy the shop myself. And I’d give employment, of course, up at the hotel to all the young girls who have to leave home now, when they turn fifteen, because there’s no work for them in Wansfell. Most of them never come back. So if I’d be changing the village, I’d also be keeping it alive.’
‘And you’d be the new Lord of the Manor wouldn’t you.’ She gave his arm a tolerant, affectionate squeeze and laughing he dropped a kiss on her forehead.
‘I saw Mrs Roe thinking just the same and hating me for it.’
‘Don’t let that worry you.’
‘It doesn’t. If she can bring herself to realize that she’s never going to see Julian and Stephen and Granville running down the hill at teatime shouting for her muffins and her oatcake, then I might offer her a job. She’s got nowhere else to go. Neither has Wansfell Howe. And better common young Christopher Hardie than genteel woodworm and dry rot. I’d like her to see that.’
They walked back up the hill, through the towering rhododendrons, sombre now but soon to be glorious, widespread masses of pink and purple, white and red, and through the crumbling stone gateway of Wansfell Howe, Kit’s eyes busy now on the structural details, on how much was wrong and how much it would cost to put it right. The building itself was gratifyingly sound and the interior not much shabbier than he remembered it. Take out all the old furniture, strip all the walls, give some thought to the plasterwork and it wouldn’t be too bad. The end product – and there was no doubt he saw it very clearly – would be a country house as one had always imagined country houses ought to be and never really were; traditional comfort far better maintained than any earl’s daughter he’d ever come across ever managed to do it; the plumbing in first-rate order which was not always the case, he’d found, among the gentry; boilers and stoves that worked, so that his guests would never be exposed to those public school hazards of eating cold food and washing in cold water. Local labour would be cheap and convenient, local tradesmen reliable. The area was no longer so remote as it had been, and all he really needed was a reputation for good food and gracious living in a world growing every day plainer, sparser, meaner of spirit. And those who could afford it – and, however bad the times, they wo
uld remain numerous – would come not only from nearby Lancaster and Carlisle but from Edinburgh, Manchester, London, every city and country in the land. Naturally he would be risking his own money and the bank’s money this time, not the Croziers’. But already he wanted to do it.
‘Then do it,’ said Claire.
They went over the house again, taking each room at a time, planning it, seeing it. No cocktail bar, of course, although cocktails would be served in profusion, deferentially and individually, on silver trays at the touch of a button. No, he was not thinking of asking MacAllister to join him, nor Mr Clarence, two city-bred types who would only upset the locals. But he would bring John David who could blend very well into all this green solitude and whose creative flair would be wasted, Kit thought, on the sirloin steak and dover sole future he envisaged, in the long run, for the Crown. He might ask Mrs Tarrant, but he’d see what he could do first with Mrs Roe, one of the dragons of his young manhood that it would give him satisfaction to tame. He would have no use for Adela Adair but Gerard, the Crown’s head waiter, was a competent fellow who could be trusted to knock the local girls into shape if it turned out they’d have to use waitresses, rather than waiters, as they probably would. No harm in that, since the gentry were accustomed to being waited on by parlourmaids. If he could get Amandine Keller he would be well-pleased although, with the opening of Chez Aristide, it seemed unlikely. But by the time the place was ready for opening he’d have found somebody else.
‘What about you, Claire?’
His enthusiasm reached out to her, easily kindling her own.
‘I’m asking for a commitment,’ he said. ‘It’s lonely up here. We’d be close together.’
‘Yes.’
‘”Yes” you will or “yes” you’ll think it over?’
‘I can’t make decisions easily, Kit – I never learned how. During the war there seemed no point to it and before that I suppose I was too young.’
‘Too sheltered?’
‘Too smothered.’
‘You need a good man to look after you.’
Euan had said the same and now, smiling, she made the same reply.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I’m here, Claire,’ he said.
Mrs Roe, correctly interpreting the requirements of her former under-footman, had given them a room with a balcony which seemed to hang, in the twilight, above the still surface of the lake, the high, old-fashioned bed smelling of old-fashioned flowers, honeysuckle and lavender and clove pinks from the sachets of pot-pourri underneath the mattress and the bolsters, the hand-embroidered counterpane a little worn in patches so that Claire folded it carefully, recognizing it as someone’s labour of love, a personal treasure.
She was not in any way shy with him. She had consented to this, in her own mind, months ago. He had needed simply to choose the moment. He had chosen it now and she was ready – just that – not eager nor inflamed but deeply, gladly prepared; her body too well acquainted with his for reticence, her mind reading between the lines of his too well for fears. They were friends who were about to be lovers. Perhaps that was the right order, the way it should be done. Opening her arms to him, allowing him, with none of the awkwardness she had felt with other lovers, to remove her stockings and to kiss her ankles and her knees, she hoped so, smiling with comfortable ease, with sheer cosiness, as he undid, one by one, the tiny pearl buttons of her blouse, in no hurry himself, taking time and thought over each one – a hundred would not have been too many – until the garment parted and he removed it carefully, his fingertips caressing with delicate, infinite leisure every inch of skin as it was revealed to him. He had wanted her for a long, patient, wary time and now he rewarded his patience minutely, tenderly, turning her body around in his arms and back again, exploring the whole of it with unhurried hands and mouth and eyes, not once only but again, as often as he chose, the whole night before him, a whole new day in which to possess and re-possess her tomorrow. He had had sex with more women than he could remember. He had never made love before and recognized it, like the natural gourmet he was, as being far too rare and precious for haste. It was to be tasted drop by drop, held on the edge of every appetite, absorbed, luxuriously and totally enjoyed. And when he had done all that so often, so thoroughly that he could hear her very bones purring, he entered her still very slowly and gently, with no thought of all the sexual techniques, the prowess, the erotic games of skill and stamina which had made his reputation with other women, seeking only – with this woman – to join his body to hers, feeling her pleasure grow beneath him with triumph and with gratitude, nurturing it, coaxing it to its conclusion and then releasing his own pleasure into it, through it, with an urge to possess and protect her, to enslave and enthrone her which he knew to be wholly primitive.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Kit.’ She was laughing, but so was he. ‘You don’t have to say that-really?’
‘I know.’
Was it even true? He rather hoped so. He would like it to be.
‘I don’t suppose you’d marry me would you, Claire?’
‘I – I hadn’t thought of it. Is it necessary?’
‘If you come up here with me the locals might prefer it. So would I.’
Lying on her back among the fragrant pillows, shafts of moonlight drifting like pale feathers through the open windows and across his handsome, easy, familiar face, she raised her hand and trailed lazy fingers along his cheek.
‘You’d be unfaithful, Kit – you know you would. From habit. All those pretty barmaids and voracious opera singers and adoring mayoresses. You couldn’t resist.’
He thought she was probably right. Perhaps not.
‘I’d try,’ he said, kissing her hand.
‘That’s honest.’
‘Of course. I can promise to be that. Perhaps it’s better that way, Claire. Honesty rather than the crazy promises youngsters make, which nearly always get broken. You’re right about me, of course. I’ve been a faithless man with women all my life. I never promised to be otherwise. It was just part of the life below stairs. The wages were poor but the living was good. A magnum of Moe:/t & Chandon here, a parlourmaid there, and move on. The army was the same, except that the parlourmaids got to be stockbrokers’wives. You know how it was. And so I’m not by nature or by training a marrying man. I don’t want a wife to cook for me and keep my house clean. I can make other arrangements for all that. I’ve no particular opinion either way about children. If they come I reckon I can cope with it. If they don’t I wouldn’t fret. I’m not on the lookout for somebody – wife or child – to prop me up when I’m old. If I ever get that far I’ll see to it myself. No child of mine would stay at home so long anyway. But I’d like to be with you, Claire. I’m not saying I need you in the sense that I couldn’t manage without you. But I don’t want to be without you. If I can have you and keep you then I’d be a fool to throw it away for a night at the Viennese Opera, wouldn’t I? And I’m nobody’s fool. We could have a good life together, Claire.’
‘I think you’re right.’
In the feathery moonlight, lulled by the fresh breeze from the fell and the nearby lapping of clear water, she was sure of it.
‘But you can’t decide.’
She smiled, sighing and snuggling against him ready for sleep.
‘Perhaps you should drag me off by the hair – except that I suppose it’s not long enough.’
‘Don’t let that worry you,’ he said, folding warm, firm arms around her, ‘there’s enough to get hold of. And I won’t let go.’
They made love again in a fragile daybreak, pale-grey light falling in patches across the counterpane, another leisurely exploration leading to a slow building, deep-rooted joy.
‘Shall we stay another night?’
‘Won’t the Crown fall down, Kit, without you?’
‘I’d like to think so. Probably not.’
They stayed, looking over the house again as a token gesture to Mrs Roe’s conscience, w
alked the lake path and spent an hour throwing pebbles in the water, Kit’s skimming boldly half way across, Claire’s sinking fast. They had a ham and pickles and gingerbread lunch and spent the afternoon in bed, Mrs Roe’s grim smile when they appeared for dinner indicating that the lecherous inclinations of her under-footman had not, in her view, improved one bit.
‘She knew my mother,’ he said, when she had set plates of roast duckling before them and gone off to serve their bread and butter pudding. ‘That’s how I came to work here. My mother and Emma Roe came from the same village in Northumberland. There was never a Mr Roe, of course. Mrs is just the courtesy title they give to housekeepers. There was never a Mr Hardie either. My mother had to go home in disgrace for a while to have me. But Emma Roe didn’t go in for that sort of thing and so she got on quicker and better. My mother brought me here when I was sixteen with everything I owned in a carpet bag. She’d come down in the world by then, poor old girl. She’d worked in some big houses, cooked quality for the quality all right, but her health had started to let her down and she was cook-daily to a clergyman, while Emma Roe was housekeeper at Wansfell Howe. My mother was nervous. Emma was patronizing. Couldn’t resist it, I suppose, since my mother had always been the best-looking girl in the village and even if she’d got into trouble – well, let’s hope she had fun doing it. So Emma looked down her nose and my mother let her do it. She wanted to see me in a good place and she needed Emma to put in a word for me with the butler. I got the place and she died a month after. I’d like her to see me now. I’d like that a lot.’
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