Wickham Hall, Part 2

by Cathy Bramley

  The courier soon left and Ben began tearing into the parcels, humming tunelessly under his breath. I did my best to block him out and tried to get some work done.

  I opened a blank page on my laptop and typed: Thirty Things to Do at Wickham Hall. This was first on my list of extra things to do following this morning’s meeting.

  Ben had blithely ignored my advice to go easy on new ideas. He’d spent the first half an hour of the committee meeting quietly building a tower with drinks mats. But then, as I was outlining my idea for a children’s treasure hunt, he’d suddenly rocked back in his chair, linked his fingers behind his head and puffed out his cheeks.

  ‘It all sounds great,’ he’d said, flashing a smile around the assembled committee members.

  It was the first thing he’d said and everyone had stared. Andy had gazed adoringly and Samantha from Radio Henley had melted quicker than a Solero on a sunbed.

  ‘But I can’t help feeling that we’re missing an opportunity to celebrate all that my parents have achieved in the last thirty years at the hall.’

  ‘With respect, Benedict,’ Sheila, who heads up the committee, had said, ‘Lord Fortescue has sat in on this committee every week until now and has never once mentioned your parents’ thirty-year anniversary.’

  ‘Oh, he’s too modest,’ Benedict had said, flipping a drinks mat off the edge of the table and attempting to catch it. It dropped onto the floor. ‘Neither of them will make a fuss. It’s up to us to do it for them.’

  Jenny had agreed, citing how many people benefited from the Coach House Café that the Fortescues had built in the early nineties. ‘Not just customers, but staff, too. The café works closely with the catering college in Stratford; we’ve helped train hundreds of young people over the years, me included,’ she’d said, twisting a strand of hair around her index finger. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without this place.’

  ‘And the gardens owe a lot to your parents, too,’ Nikki had added, passing her phone round so we could see her latest pictures. ‘See how fantastic the maze looks this year? No offence, Benedict, but your grandfather was more interested in vehicles than visitors and the gardens were too basic to attract the public. The Italian sunken garden used to look like the forest out of Sleeping Beauty from what I understand. And the rhododendron was rampant.’

  At this point, I’d had a sudden – unwanted, I might add – image of my mum and A. N. Other furtling in the rampant rhododendron. I’d grabbed my glass of water and taken a long drink before anyone noticed my pink cheeks.

  ‘Holly, your hidden treasures campaign is great, very imaginative,’ Ben had said, nodding.

  I’d coloured a bit more and mumbled my thanks.

  ‘But I think we can go further.’

  Sheila had looked at her watch pointedly. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘So much of what is special about Wickham Hall is down to old Hugo and Beatrice, and I think we should pay tribute to that in some way.’ Ben had looked directly at me as I looked up from my diary having just scribbled out ‘make treasure hunt clues’. ‘Any thoughts, anyone?’

  Andy, who’d been saving a seat for Ben when we arrived, had wriggled to the edge of his seat as close to Ben as he could be without actually sitting on his lap. ‘Why don’t we have a series of thirty-themed activities? Like, for instance, I could do a “gifts for under thirty pounds” range in the shop?’

  ‘Ooh, yes!’ Samantha had waved her hand. ‘We could get people to phone in to the radio with their memories of the festival and give away thirty pairs of tickets to the best ones.’

  For the next few minutes everyone had shouted over each other with their thirty-themed suggestions: Nikki was going to create a flower bed in the shape of a three and a zero out of white geraniums and position it at the entrance to the show; Jenny would work up a special thirty-pound set menu for the outdoor restaurant that would be set up in the showground and I had come up with a series of press releases entitled ‘Thirty things . . .’ to send out to the press.

  And so here I was. Writing my first press release.

  I had to admit Ben had a point. The Fortescues were too modest to make a splash; well, Lord Fortescue was anyway. And so it was up to us to honour them. It was really sweet of Ben to suggest it and his parents would be thrilled that it was he who had come up with the idea. And also, I realized, there was something about the way he talked about Wickham Hall that hinted that he had a real love for the place. Like me.

  So there was something we could agree on. Unlike the paint-speckled wooden easel that he was in the process of unpacking and setting up under the window in our office.

  I watched him stack pots of paintbrushes onto the newly emptied shelf above the printer. Surely he wasn’t planning on painting in here? And when was he actually going to do any work? So far all I’d seen him do was exercise his delegation skills. He was very good at that.

  ‘You’re an artist, then?’ I said, brushing away the flakes of dried paint that had fallen from the pots of paintbrushes onto my desk.

  ‘Yes, landscapes mainly.’

  Ben uncovered a canvas and held it away from him to inspect it. He cocked his head to one side, grunted and set it against the wall. I was dying to see what it was of but the painted side was facing the wall.

  ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, why take Pippa’s job?’

  ‘Mum and Dad have got a bee in their bonnets about me learning the business. You probably know they want me to take over in five years.’

  I nodded, remembering our thwarted press conference. ‘And you don’t want to?’

  He frowned and I wondered if I’d overstepped the mark. ‘I’m not ready to commit to that yet.’

  ‘So why are you here now?’

  He grinned sheepishly as he unpacked a blank canvas and set it on the easel. ‘I forgot to renew the lease on my London studio. I’ve been evicted. I’ve got a new space sorted but it won’t be free until January. So this stint back at the old homestead has come just at the right time.’

  Ben was leaving at Christmas. I wondered what Lord and Lady Fortescue would think about that. And, more to the point, how did I feel . . .?

  ‘Oh, good,’ I said, in lieu of something more meaningful. ‘About you getting a new studio, I mean, not that I want you to leave.’

  Oh crumbs, now he was chuckling at me again.

  ‘Right.’ He installed himself at Pippa’s old desk for the first time that day and pulled the telephone towards him.

  I heaved a sigh of relief; finally it looked as though he was going to get on with something.

  He flicked a sideways grin at me. ‘Now stop chatting please, I’ve got loads to do.’

  ‘Me chatting? Oh, you are so irri—’

  ‘Irresistible?’ he offered, searching through his desk without looking up.

  ‘No,’ I stuttered, ‘Irri—’

  ‘Oh, Holly,’ he looked at me this time, pulling a comical sad face, ‘don’t say irresponsible, please, look how hard I—’

  ‘Irritating,’ I tutted.

  He mimed zipping his own mouth and I felt my own mouth lifting in a smile. A bit irritating, perhaps, but in an irresistible way.

  Half an hour later I’d given up all pretence of trying to work. Ben was simply too distracting to work with. Not because he pursed his full lips when he was concentrating or because the sun was casting shadows across his face in the afternoon light or because there was a lively citrusy scent that got stronger every time he came near me, but because he seemed to be having problems doing . . . whatever it was he was doing and had taken to grumbling to himself, tutting and slamming the phone down.

  ‘Benedict,’ I said, using his full name for once. I closed the lid of my laptop to give him my undivided attention. ‘What is it you’re trying to do, exactly?’

  His chin was propped up in his hand and he was drumming his fingers on an empty notepad.

  ‘I thought as all the team were doing something special for my parents
’ thirtieth year I should contribute too.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, pushing myself up and heading over to the coffee maker. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ he said, stretching his arms above his head. ‘It might perk me up.’

  I spooned fresh coffee into the filter and turned the machine on.

  ‘I thought of doing a sort of photographic “retrospective”: a look back at thirty years of the festival. I thought we could mount it as a display in one of the marquees.’

  ‘Nice idea,’ I said, ‘we haven’t really got anything arty going on. So what’s the problem?’

  I left the coffee to gurgle and splutter away, perched on my desk and crossed my ankles.

  ‘We employed a professional photographer from 1990, so I’m OK from then on; I can get the pictures from Sheila, she says she’s got them all on CD. It’s the first six years I’m struggling with.’

  ‘What about old Summer Festival programmes? There must have been a few on that shelf you cleared out this morning.’ My lips twitched. ‘In amongst the stuff you decided we didn’t need.’

  Ben shot me a look with a hint of cheeky grin. ‘Sorry to disappoint, but they were all too new. What I really need to do is find some old copies of the Wickham and Hoxley News. That was the local newspaper that covered the festival every year until it was bought out by a bigger regional outfit. And when I phoned and asked them about their archives, they said they didn’t have any.’

  I nodded. ‘I remember. They used to cover all our school events, too. But you want actual pictures, don’t you, and not press cuttings?’

  Ben pushed back his chair and lifted his feet up onto the desk.

  ‘If I can track down the newspaper’s photographer, he or she will probably have the original negatives.’ He raked a hand through his hair and shrugged. ‘But how on earth am I supposed to find copies of an out-of-print newspaper from thirty years ago?

  The skin at the back of my neck began to prickle. How indeed?

  ‘Here you are,’ I said, putting a cup of coffee in front of him. I took a deep breath. ‘Now, I’ll do you a deal: if you promise to let me get on with some work, in peace, for the next hour I’ll see if I can find you some old copies of that newspaper.’

  ‘Really, Miss Swift?’ said Ben, brightening up. ‘In that case, I’ll leave you to it. I think I’ve earned my keep for today anyway.’

  He picked up his coffee and left the office and I sat down to finish that pesky press release undisturbed. Oh yes, I knew exactly where to find issues of the Wickham and Hoxley News dating back to July 1984: our dining room.

  I’d agreed to meet Esme after work for a drink at The Bluebell in Henley. She had news, she’d said, and needed to talk. And after bashing out press releases all afternoon, I was only too happy to accept her invitation. She was already at the bar when I arrived, taking delivery of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and two glasses.

  We kissed our hellos and carried our drinks outside to the back garden. We found a table in the corner and Esme poured the wine while I slipped my shoes off and wriggled my toes.

  ‘Here you go; cheers,’ said Esme, nudging a full glass towards me. She giggled. ‘Oh Holly, your face yesterday when Benedict Fortescue appeared from the fitting room.’

  ‘Don’t, please,’ I said with a shudder. ‘All those things I said . . .’

  ‘And then he turns out to be your new boss. You were right about him being fit, though. Lucky you.’

  I raised my glass to Esme and drank. The wine was ice cold and tangy and hit the spot perfectly.

  ‘I’m not so sure “lucky” is the right word,’ I replied, licking my lips.

  As much as I admired Ben’s energy and creativity, I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d said we had a lot of work to do for the festival and today we hadn’t made much of a dent in it.

  ‘However, to his credit, he didn’t bring up my indiscretions this morning. In fact, if anything, he was quite sweet about Mum. And today was the first time I’d greeted him with his trousers on. So that was a definite improvement.’

  She raised one eyebrow over the rim of her glass. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  We both giggled.

  ‘I think you’ll be good for each other,’ said Esme thoughtfully. ‘Yin and Yang, opposites attract, and all that.’

  ‘No. Men are off the agenda,’ I replied briskly. And even if they weren’t, I didn’t normally go for the rumpled look. ‘All men except my father.’

  ‘I meant as colleagues, actually,’ she smirked, ‘but go on. Has your mum said something?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet. But I can’t shake the feeling that if I can only get to the bottom of the whole hoarding thing, then she’ll feel comfortable telling me the rest of the story. So that’s my priority at the moment. And she’s really making an effort. I’m proud of her.’

  Her eyes glittered. ‘I’m proud of you, Holster. The way you handle life’s hurdles . . . you’re an inspiration to me. I wish I had half your determination.’

  I peered at her, wondering what she was talking about. Esme Wilde was one of the most ‘look out world, here I come’ people I knew. She dipped her head and stared into her glass and I remembered with a jolt that we were here to talk about her news.

  ‘That is a lovely thing to say, Es,’ I said, covering her hand with mine. ‘But enough about me. Come on?’

  My best friend held my gaze for a heartbeat.

  ‘Mum definitely has the onset of rheumatoid arthritis; she went to see the doctor today, finally.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Es.’

  She gave me a wan smile. ‘It could be ages before it really takes hold of her and who knows whether she’ll get it as bad as Gran, but in the meantime, we have to think what it means for Joop. We’re still sitting on a lot of summer stock, which means money tied up. We need something for Mum to get her teeth into now that she can’t sew and I need a fresh challenge too.’

  ‘You need an action plan. Luckily you have a friend who loves a good plan.’ I grinned. ‘So what is it that you love?’

  ‘Fashion.’ she said simply, lifting her curls off her neck and twisting them into a bun. ‘Vintage, retro, couture . . . I’d love to get into something a bit more edgy than the occasional wear we sell but it comes back to cash flow.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘You need to expand what you offer at Joop without lots of upfront investment.’

  ‘Exactly. And preferably something that doesn’t involve me turning up posh boys’ trousers for the rest of my life.’

  We exchanged knowing looks, remembering Ben standing in his boxers in Joop’s fitting room.

  I drained my glass and pushed it across the table.

  ‘I’ll get my thinking cap on, I promise,’ I said, reaching across to kiss her cheek. ‘But right now, I’ve got a date with 1984.’

  Chapter 3

  The next morning I got to Wickham Hall a few minutes before nine. I paused outside our office, holding my breath to listen for sounds of Ben singing while he flung paint around the room. But all I heard was silence and when I pushed open our office door, neither Ben nor his easel were anywhere to be seen.

  The room was stuffy so after I’d dropped my pile of newspapers on Ben’s desk, I flung open the windows as far as they could go and looked across the grounds.

  And there he was.

  Beyond the tapestry of the box-edged parterres, at the very edge of the formal gardens, Ben stood at his easel painting, facing away from the hall, looking out towards the deer park.

  Without a second glance at my diary, or my to-do list, or the undoubtedly full inbox of emails, I made us both a cup of tea and fled the dim and overheated hall for the beauty of the gardens.

  I carried the mugs carefully through the gardens, inhaling the aromas of vanilla, musk, citrus and clove as I brushed past the plants that clung to every gate and archway.

  This was definitely my priority, I told myself, spotting Ben at the top of the worn stone steps; he woul
d want to know straightaway that I’d found six years’ worth of July newspapers for him. Besides, I was curious to see what he was painting.

  He was dressed in flip-flops, T-shirt and shorts, with a paint-smeared rag hanging from his pocket, and appeared to be standing perfectly still, brush in one hand and palette of paints in the other. I cleared my throat softly as I approached, not wanting to make him jump. ‘Good morning, boss. I’ve brought you some tea.’

  Ben’s eyes turned to mine but it was as if he didn’t see me at first. Then he shook his head and smiled. ‘Blimey, what time is it?’

  ‘Nineish.’ I handed him a mug and he smiled gratefully.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said between slurps. ‘Ahh. Nectar. I was beginning to wither; I’ve been out here for hours.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ I stole a sideways glance at the canvas he was working on. ‘May I look?’

  Ben nodded and I stepped closer to the easel.

  ‘Oh my word, Ben.’ I stared at the painting. ‘You’re actually really good!’

  He laughed and pretended to stagger backwards. ‘Finally, you appreciate my talents. Wonders will never cease, Holly Swift.’

  The painting was ninety per cent sky: pink at the bottom, streaked with fiery orange lifting to a pale silvery blue near the top. Smudges of treetops framed the base of the picture, with a sparkling flume of spray rising beyond them and evaporating in the sky. The colours were so vivid that I could almost feel the heat of the sun on my face.

  ‘Consider me very impressed,’ I laughed, ‘that sky is amazing.’

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, sliding a paintbrush in amongst his curls, ‘I could paint the sky every day for the rest of my life and never produce the same picture. And the dawn sky, like this one, is my favourite.’

  ‘You were out here at dawn?’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You are full of surprises.’