by Ali McNamara
‘Boys will be boys,’ Tom says, pulling open one of the two heavy wooden doors that lead into the Great Hall. ‘Madam,’ he says, pretending to bow as he stands back to let me pass.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ I say, playing along. Tom is one of the few people here who treats me like a regular person. I never need to reprimand him for being over-formal with me, and that makes me like him all the more.
The Great Hall is eerily quiet as the door closes behind us and we stand looking up at our stately surroundings. ‘At least you haven’t got to fight your way through the crowds to get to everything,’ I say. ‘We’ve only had about eight visitors in total today.’
‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’
‘I think it can. But hopefully things will get better as the season moves on. We’ve only just had Easter; it’s early days.’
‘It is indeed, and with all your new ideas, those awful reviews will soon become things of the past!’
‘What awful reviews?’ I ask, staring at him.
‘Oh . . . er . . . I assumed you’d seen them.’
‘No, where? Oh, let me guess, on TripAdvisor, right?’
Tom nods apologetically.
‘I guess I’d better take a look. Oh, I don’t have my phone on me,’ I lie, feeling towards my pocket. The truth is I’d only just got around to ordering myself a better phone; I’d quickly found my basic model just isn’t suitable for running this place. People need to get hold of me all the time, and I need to keep up to date on emails and messages. Arthur offered me a walkie-talkie to keep in touch, but I turned it down, saying that as soon as my phone arrived, we could just all text each other when we needed someone, or perhaps we could have a castle WhatsApp group?
Arthur hadn’t even dignified this suggestion with a reply.
‘Here, use mine,’ Tom says, passing me his iPhone. ‘There’s pretty good 4G here, the castle doesn’t have Wi-Fi in the public rooms yet, does it?’
‘Thank you,’ I say, taking it from him. ‘No, only in the offices and some of the private rooms. But it’s definitely something we should think about for the future. It’s what people want these days.’
I open the internet via the 4G on Tom’s phone and find TripAdvisor, then I search for Chesterford Castle. The results are not pretty.
‘Tired, dated (and I don’t just mean the castle!) and very, very dull.’ 3 stars.
‘My kids were bored stiff, and there were not enough toilets.’ 2 stars.
‘No tour guide to speak of – unless you count the grumpy old man we met while wandering around, who told us to keep off the grass! And nowhere to get refreshments.’ 1 star.
‘No free Wi-Fi & no interactive experiences.’ 1 star.
And so it goes on. Review after bad review. There are a few good ones scattered in amongst the poor ones, but even they’re bad in their own way.
‘Loved how basic everything was. A true historical experience.’ 5 stars.
‘No fuss. No frills. Just history.’ 5 stars.
‘Cheer up!’ Tom says from the window where he’s been attempting to dismantle one of the suits of armour. ‘Things can only get better – as the song says.’
‘I do hope you’re right,’ I say, still staring at the phone. ‘Oh, you have a call.’ I hurriedly pass Tom back his phone, as I see the letter J flash on the display.
‘Do you mind if I take this?’ Tom says, glancing at the screen.
‘No, of course not, go ahead.’
Tom hesitates.
‘I’ll just go in here,’ I say and I press the rose on the panel behind me so the secret door magically slides open.
‘Nice!’ Tom says as he runs his thumb across the screen of his phone. ‘Jo, hi, how’s things?’
I hurry through the opening into the privacy of the Ladies’ Chamber, expecting I’ll still be able to hear Tom talking, but the room is surprisingly soundproof, even with the door still open.
I gaze at the portraits again, and once more my eyes rest on the largest canvas in the room – the one of the fifteenth Countess, Clara Chesterford.
She looks extremely elegant as she stands with her long white fingers resting on the top of an ornate dresser behind her. She’s wearing a pale green satin dress, her tiny waist pulled in no doubt by an uncomfortable corset beneath it. Her dark hair is piled up neatly on top of her head with a diamond tiara adorning it, and at her neck is a beautiful jewelled necklace encrusted with what again might be diamonds, with the addition this time of jade gemstones. Her other hand rests at her side, but in it she holds a leather book.
What a strange painting, I think as I gaze up at the canvas. You’re dressed like you’re about to go to the fanciest of parties, and yet you have a book in your hand as though you’ve just been reading?
‘Hi again,’ Tom says, appearing at the door. ‘Sorry about that. Bad manners and all, but there are some calls you just have to take, aren’t there?’
I nod as though I totally understand, but the truth is that not that many people ring me any more. Most of my friends were friends of my ex-husband too, and once he left, they all seemed to fade away with him. Perhaps they were never really my friends at all.
‘This is quite the clandestine little room hidden away in here,’ Tom continues. ‘You’d never know it was here, would you?’
‘No, I only know about it because Arthur showed me a few days ago.’
Was that only a few days ago? So much has happened since we arrived, it feels as though we’ve been here weeks already, not a matter of days.
‘It’s a ladies’ room,’ I explain, ‘for after dinner when the men retire to smoke cigars and play billiards.’
‘Just like mealtimes today, then?’ Tom grins. ‘Except now when people have eaten, it’s separate screens they all inhabit instead of separate rooms.’
‘Very sad,’ I agree. ‘But I’m afraid very true.’
‘She looks quite the formidable woman,’ he says, looking up at Clara.
‘Apparently she was a bit of a tearaway: she nearly bankrupted the place when she lived here.’
‘Really? She doesn’t look the type, does she?’
‘How can you tell? They all looked pretty proper back in Edwardian England, didn’t they?’
‘Ah, it was all going on beneath those tight corsets, I bet.’ He winks. ‘In my experience of history, the tighter the corset the more secrets are hidden beneath it.’
I grin.
‘It’s true,’ he insists. ‘Think about it, as women’s clothing became looser and more comfortable, so did they. They got stronger and more vociferous in their thoughts and actions – for the good, I may add,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry; I’m not against women’s emancipation. I’m all for women having equal rights with men.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, you having a female boss and all.’
Tom salutes me. ‘Talking of which, I’d better get back to work or King Arthur will have my guts for garters!’
‘You can’t call him that.’ I smile. ‘Only Joey seems to get away with it.’
‘To his face.’ Tom winks again. ‘Right, gotta go a-polishing!’
I watch Tom head back out of the door, then I take one last look at Clara before following him.
‘I bet you’d have some tales to tell if you could talk, Clara, wouldn’t you? Tales I’d be very interested in sitting down and listening to.’
Twelve
‘Gah, he’s still not answering,’ I say to Charlie as we stand in the kitchen preparing our evening meal.
We’ve been living on bits and pieces that I’ve managed to scrounge from Dorothy’s kitchen and the village shop for the last few days. Even though Dorothy has offered on numerous occasions to cook for us, I want to hold on to some independence, and not be ‘waited on by staff’.
But I managed to spend half an hour early this morning doing an internet grocery order on Charlie’s laptop from the nearest large supermarket, and it arrived, to my delight but Arthur’s horror, about an hour ago.
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‘That can’t come in here,’ Arthur said when I asked Joey to open the gate for the delivery vehicle. ‘It’s not right.’
‘I think it’s a bit unfair to ask the driver to carry the baskets from the car park, Arthur. It’s bad enough he’s got to carry them up my spiral stairs when he does get in here.’
To give the driver his credit, he carried everything upstairs – and without grumbling, too. So I gave him a small tip before he left, which he was very grateful for.
‘We don’t see many of them these days,’ he said, popping the note in his top pocket. ‘I can tell you’re gentry, ma’am.’
I was about to explain that I wasn’t anything of the sort when I decided it was just easier to let it go this time. So I bade him farewell and notched up yet another first for the castle – this time in the form of online grocery shopping.
‘Maybe Benji is on holiday?’ Charlie says, putting our cutlery on a tray ready to carry upstairs.
‘Without his phone?’
‘Why not?’
‘I guess it might be possible.’ But Benji didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would go anywhere without his phone. So I decide not to leave yet another message – I’d left three already asking him to call me back.
Besides, Tom was getting on quite well right now; it had only been a few days, but I thought so far he had coped admirably with everything that had been thrown at him.
Perhaps I might be able to persuade Arthur to let him have a go at some proper restoration soon. He’d made an incredible job of the Great Hall. The armour and weaponry now gleamed like it was about to go into battle for the very first time. Even Arthur had been impressed, if saying it wasn’t ‘a bad job’ was praise. Tom and I both chose to see it that way, and when Arthur left the hall, we had a congratulatory high-five between us and a rather nice hug, which I thought had gone on for a little bit longer than was strictly necessary.
‘So have you had a nice day today?’ I ask Charlie as we sit down to eat our food by the window. I’d chosen to place the table there when we’d been rearranging some of our inherited furniture yesterday, so now we could enjoy a gorgeous view from all the windows – whether we were eating, just lounging on one of the sofas or sitting at the old antique desk we’d discovered hidden under a felt cloth when we’d been unpacking.
‘It’s been mega,’ Charlie says, ladling beans on toast into his mouth.
I felt a bit guilty giving him this when I knew Dorothy was serving up homemade chicken pie, roast potatoes and green veg down in the kitchen tonight.
But Charlie (and me, too, for that matter!) really enjoys beans on toast, so the guilt didn’t linger too long.
‘And you were happy enough being with Arthur?’
Charlie thinks about this for a moment.
‘Arthur is great – he knows so much about the castle and its history, and he says we can look for that sword tomorrow to go with the shield he found for me. Joey is going to help us, too. We think it’s packed away in one of the unused rooms upstairs in the main building.’
‘That’s nice.’ I make a mental note to speak with Arthur about this.
‘But when I’m with Arthur, Ruby doesn’t appear.’
Oh no, here we go again. I thought he’d forgotten about Ruby.
‘Maybe that’s a good thing?’
Charlie looks crossly at me. ‘How can it be a good thing? Ruby’s my friend. I think she’s scared of Arthur; everyone else is.’
‘They’re not really scared, they’re just . . . ’ I search for the right word. ‘In awe of him. He’s quite formidable.’
‘What does fomimible mean?’
‘Formidable,’ I correct him. ‘It means someone who isn’t to be messed with; they might come across as a little bit scary but their bark is worse than their bite – a bit like Chester.’
‘I love Chester; he’s great too.’
‘Yes, he is a cute little dog,’ I agree, pleased I’ve led his thoughts away from Ruby. ‘Perhaps we can take him for a nice long walk one day on the beach.’
‘That would be great. But Chester is not the same as being with Ruby,’ Charlie says, staring out of the window. ‘She’s lots of fun.’
I sigh.
‘Tom was telling me the other day that when he was little he had an imaginary friend . . . ’ I venture. ‘Maybe Ruby is your imaginary friend. Moving to somewhere new can sometimes be a bit tricky; I wouldn’t blame you for inventing a new friend.’
‘Ruby isn’t imaginary,’ Charlie says, looking at me with a steely gaze that immediately reminds me of his father. ‘I’ve told you she’s a ghost, and she’s not the only one here.’
‘Really? There’s more than one ghost at Chesterford?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Charlie nods adamantly.
‘Have you met any of these other ghosts?’
‘Not yet; Ruby said I might be able to meet them, but only if they wanted me to.’
‘I see. They’re picky about who they show themselves to, are they?’ Even though I’m trying hard not to, I can feel the corners of my mouth turning up.
‘It’s not a joke, Mum. It’s true. If the ghosts don’t want you to see them they won’t show themselves to you.’
‘Okay, okay. So how would I go about seeing one, then?’ I ask, deciding to humour him. ‘This is my castle, after all. I’d like to meet everyone who’s living in my home.’
‘You can believe in them to start with,’ Charlie says perceptively. ‘Because at the moment I don’t think you do, do you, Mum?’ He stares knowingly at me.
‘It’s difficult to believe in something when you haven’t seen it with your own eyes.’
‘What about gravity?’
‘What?’
‘Gravity. You can’t see that but you believe in it.’
‘That’s different. It’s—’
‘And radio waves,’ Charlie continues. ‘You can’t see them but you know they’re there. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had these baked beans tonight.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘If you hadn’t had the internet you wouldn’t have been able to order them. The internet works by radio waves. We learned that at school.’
I shake my head. I know when I’m beaten.
‘Then there’s oxygen and—’
‘Enough, enough! Okay, you win, I’ll believe in your friend Ruby. But you and she will have to forgive me if I don’t mention her and any of her friends to anyone else just yet.’
‘Not until you’ve seen them.’
‘That’s right, not until I’ve seen them.’
Charlie holds out his hand. ‘Let’s shake on it.’
I take Charlie’s hand, but instead of simply shaking it, I get up and pull him off his chair towards me. Then I envelop him in a huge hug.
‘You are far too clever to have only been on this earth for ten years,’ I tell him. ‘But I love you all the more for it!’
‘Perhaps I’ve been incarcerated?’ Charlie suggests from the protection of my arms.
I think about this for a moment.
‘Do you mean reincarnated?’
‘Yeah, that too. I could tell you all about that if you like?’
‘I think I’ve learned plenty for one night, thank you, mister. Perhaps we can continue this another time when my mind is just that little bit more open.’
Thirteen
A week later I’m walking through the castle grounds on my way to speak to a builder who’s here to give us a quote on our proposed new café and gift shop.
I’m keen for both Dorothy and Tiffany to be involved in these new projects from the start, so I’ve asked them to meet me on the proposed site so we can put forward all our ideas together.
At the second group meeting we’d had to discuss the castle’s renovations, Arthur had poo-pooed every one of our initial ideas, so I had purposely left him out of today’s discussions. When it comes to dragging this castle into the twenty-first century, I only want people involved who are
enthusiastic and positive about the future of the castle, and Arthur, lovely though he is, seems determined to bring everything down.
Joey, at the same meeting, had made the huge mistake of wondering out loud whether three women should be left alone with a builder to make ‘technical’ decisions. The sentence had barely left his lips when he’d immediately been hit by a barrage of protests and derision from the females around the table, which I noticed Tom had found most amusing.
‘I can’t believe you said that, mate,’ I heard him commenting to Joey afterwards. ‘You should have known they’d lynch you.’
‘Didn’t think, did I?’ Joey had grimaced. ‘Opened me mouth before me brain had a chance to stop me.’
Since that moment, Dorothy, Tiffany and I had formed a tight little alliance, and we were more determined than ever to make this new project a success.
I’m the first to arrive in the outbuildings we’ve chosen for our renovations. Originally this area in the outer bailey had been used to defend the inner part of the castle – the inner bailey. Although he might not have approved, Arthur had been keen to inform me what this area had been used for in the past. Apparently, this part of the castle would have held domestic buildings – workshops, livestock stalls and possibly even some servants’ quarters. Arthur said there had even been talk of the castle having its own brewery here, but the area we are hoping to transform – two large buildings – had originally been used as stables.
While I wait for the builder to arrive, I look around at the inside of the old structure.
It doesn’t look much like a stable any more, the walls – still pretty solid – are just plain stone bricks and the uneven floors are made up of colourful flagstones in varying shades of grey through to terracotta. The room I’m in now – the proposed tea room – is surprisingly bright and airy; it currently has quite a few glassless windows that will hopefully allow sunlight to stream through if our plans come to fruition. I’m convinced it will make a lovely area for visitors to enjoy a cup of tea and a scone. And if they wander through to the next room – the proposed gift shop – to buy a few souvenirs of a day they will hopefully want to remember, they’ll find a room with no windows, but one that will make an ideal place to display our new gift stock over its many solid walls. And it’s from that room that I now hear distant footsteps, so I assume that either Tiffany or Dorothy must have arrived before me.
