He said the book had been selling well, but then his face clouded suddenly and he told us that someone had stolen a copy that morning and he had his suspicions about who it was.
‘It seems an odd thing for anyone to take, really,’ I said, thinking that even in small rural villages, you couldn’t get away from shoplifting. It sounded, oddly, as though this was someone local and known to the shopkeeper …
19
Full House
Outside Toller’s general store, we bumped into the tall, rangy figure of Cressida Lordly-Grace, dressed in what was probably her everyday garb of riding breeches, boots and waxed jacket.
‘Hi, Cress,’ said Treena. ‘Marnie told me you lived in Jericho’s End. I just never happened to bump into you when your mum called me out to see her dogs, so didn’t make the connection.’
Cress looked faintly alarmed. ‘She didn’t mention there was anything wrong with Wu and Wang this morning – but I do keep telling her not to feed them cake and biscuits!’
‘It’s OK, I’m not here on an official call-out this time. I came over with a friend and thought I’d catch up with Marnie – she’s my adopted sister, you know.’
‘Oh, right,’ Cress said, looking relieved, probably because she’d been worried about the expense of Treen’s professional house calls. She looked interestedly at me. ‘I didn’t realize you were sisters. What a coincidence that I should know Treena.’
‘It’s a small world,’ I agreed, though I hadn’t realized quite how small, or how overlapping the coincidences were going to be, before I got the job here.
‘Mummy’s out of sherry, but so are Toller’s, unfortunately,’ Cress said, explaining her presence. ‘I might be able to buy a bottle in the Devil’s Cauldron, though.’
‘We’re on our way there for lunch,’ I said. ‘Treena’s friend Luke is the archaeologist who’s going to be in charge of the dig at the ruins after Easter and he’s looking over the site, then joining us for lunch.’
‘Would that be Luke Ridgeway?’ Cress exclaimed. ‘He rang me yesterday evening to ask if I could give him a room until they finish in September. Of course, I told him we’re just a B&B and don’t do lunches or evening meals, but he said that wasn’t a problem.’
‘He did mention he was going to look for somewhere to stay in the village,’ Treena said. ‘Risings will be very handy for the site, if you can take him.’
‘I’ve said I will. It’s a regular booking and he’s going to pay weekly, up front,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Why don’t you join us for lunch, too, Cress?’ I suggested. ‘Ned said he might come.’
She looked wistful. ‘I wish I could, but I won’t have time. I’ll need to drop the sherry in for Mummy and then dash off to give an advanced dressage class at the riding school at two. But I have got time for a cup of coffee, first.’
‘Won’t you want anything to eat?’ I asked. ‘A quick sandwich?’
‘No, we’ve got two lots of B&B guests and I find when I’ve cooked all those greasy breakfasts, I don’t feel hungry for hours. Gosh, it’s amazing how much food people can put away when they’ve paid for breakfast. They really want their money’s worth!’ she added. ‘And Mrs Laidlaw, who takes over when I have to go to the riding school, was late … and then, to top it all, Mummy suddenly reminded me about her sherry, which she needs because a friend is coming over later. So it’s all a bit of a scramble today.’
‘Well, have a cup of coffee and chill for half an hour before you rush off,’ Treena suggested.
We found Luke already there and Treena introduced him to me and to Cress, his future hostess.
He was like a taller, older version of Harry Potter, though with hazel eyes, instead of green, and an engagingly boyish smile.
He went to order our lunch and Cress’s coffee, and she and Treena fell into horse talk, as was entirely inevitable.
Cress told her how she kept her own horses at Brow Farm behind the house, where she rented two paddocks and some stabling.
‘It’s very convenient, because I can slip out for a hack whenever I get the chance. There are some great rides locally,’ she added. ‘If I can’t get up there, one of the boys from the farm sees to the horses for me.’
‘It sounds a perfect arrangement. The riding school looks after Zephyr very well, but it’s extremely expensive.’
‘Well, there’s room for a couple more horses with mine – you could move her up here,’ suggested Cress.
Treena, turning this over in her mind, thought it might work out. ‘It’s not that much further than the livery stables from my cottage in Great Mumming, just in a different direction. I’ll have a think about it.’
But at that moment Ned walked in, and Cress’s eyes went unfocused.
I hadn’t really thought he’d join us – it had been more likely that he would have started work in the garden and entirely lost sense of time passing – but, after nodding to a couple of acquaintances, he came over.
Cress patted her hair, which was today drawn back into a messy pleat and, smiling eagerly, made room for him on the bench seat next to her.
I introduced Ned to Treena and then pointed out Luke, over at the bar, ordering food and he went to join him.
‘I wish I could stay for lunch,’ Cress said wistfully, looking after him, and Treena and I exchanged amused smiles. Ned seemed to come at least a close second to her horses in Cress’s affections.
The two men were already talking ruins when they came back and seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. If Luke was aware of Ned’s previous incarnation as a TV gardening personality, or all the scandal, it had clearly made no impression on him in the least.
Cress, once she’d drunk her coffee and purchased a bottle of sherry over the bar, reluctantly tore herself away just as our ploughman’s lunches of Lancashire Crumbly cheese, fresh bread and pickles arrived.
While we ate, Luke told us that his dig would start on the Tuesday after Easter. ‘I’ve taken a sabbatical from my university till September, got some funding, and most of the manpower will be students and local volunteers.’
‘It’s going to be handy for you, if you’re staying at Risings,’ Treena said.
‘Yes, Cress seems nice and she said she did a good cooked breakfast that would set me up for the day. Then I’ll probably eat in here most evenings.’
‘Now I’ve met a few archaeologists, I can confidently predict you’ll find most of them hanging out in the nearest pub after work finishes for the day,’ Treena said drily.
‘This dig’s a bit off the beaten track, though,’ Luke said. ‘They may have to travel quite far every day and so want to get off home after work.’
‘I often have a quick meal here in the evenings, when I can’t be bothered cooking,’ Ned admitted.
‘I expect I’ll see you here, then, and you’ll have to come and see what we’re finding when the dig gets going,’ suggested Luke. ‘The first few days we’re mostly just rolling and stacking the turf and moving rocks.’
‘I’ve walked round the site a few times,’ Ned said, ‘and I wouldn’t have thought there was a lot to dig up.’
‘I think it’s more extensive than it looks. I’ve seen some aerial photographs of the area that showed more walls extending out.’
Luke was off again on his pet subject. Apparently, he hoped the site would have been a very early monastic settlement, even if it had been abandoned quickly.
‘Depending on when that was, it might have been the result of Viking invasions into the area, though in west Lancashire, they mostly seemed to have come to settle and farm.’
‘Elf – she’s my great-aunt and a local historian – says their land was flooded by there being two successively rainy years, so they decided to join forces with one of the larger established monastic foundations further to the east,’ Ned said.
The dig was starting to seem a little more interesting than the collection of not terribly inspiring hummocks and bits of wall that I’d seen from the ca
r park, on the day I’d arrived.
‘I’ll come and have a look at what you’ve found, too, once you’ve got going a bit,’ I said.
‘Why not help with the dig?’ Luke suggested eagerly.
‘Because Marnie already spends all day digging, Luke,’ Treena reminded him. ‘She’s a gardener!’
‘I don’t get a lot of time off,’ I said, ‘and being involved in restoring the Grace Gardens is enough for me.’
‘Oh, yes – of course. Treena told me you were restoring a historic apothecary garden,’ Luke said to Ned. ‘It’s behind that interesting Tudor house over the bridge, isn’t it?’
Ned nodded. ‘Old Grace Hall. The garden was originally laid out in the late seventeenth century, but part of it was commandeered to grow fruit and vegetables during the war and it’s been neglected ever since. The house, of course, is very much older. In fact, I’m told there was an even earlier building on the site and you can still see part of it incorporated in the later structure.’
‘It sounds fascinating,’ Treena said, and Ned suggested we all go back there for coffee and he would give us a quick guided tour of the interesting bits.
‘Coffee?’ I said dubiously, and he raised one fair eyebrow.
‘Good coffee. I’ve got a machine now that does it all at the press of a button or two – foolproof.’
‘You can’t go that far wrong with a cafetière, like in the office,’ I pointed out, but men do seem to like their gadgets, and the more complicated, the better.
Still, I’d been longing to see inside Old Grace Hall, without wanting to suggest he showed me alone, in case it brought back any lingering worries about my being dangerously neurotic. But there was safety in numbers, so here was my opportunity!
Ned put on the lights as soon as we entered the house, illuminating the long passage that opened before us, with doors off it on either side and a narrow, worn wooden staircase that vanished upwards into darkness.
‘I hope you aren’t going to be too disappointed with the interior,’ Ned said, ‘because most of it was remodelled in the thirties and forties. Several of the smaller rooms were knocked into one.’
‘I suppose they could do that kind of thing with impunity before you had to get Listed Building permission,’ Luke said.
‘Yes, I think an Englishman’s home was still his castle back then. The house isn’t in too bad a shape structurally, but inside it’s very shabby and needs some replastering, painting and decorating. I just don’t have the time or the money to spare from the garden, right now.’
‘Or the skill, when it comes to things like plastering,’ I pointed out. I’d happily help him do things like that later, if he’d let me …
‘The Hall appears to have started out as a much humbler dwelling, with a room on either side of a cross passage,’ Ned said. ‘One side was for the animals and the other, the family. It developed from that and was rebuilt later into the Tudor house you see now. There’s a wing, added around the early eighteenth century, where the kitchen and dining room are now.’
Luke was looking with interest at some stones sticking out of the wall below the stairs, which he said looked like the remains of an earlier stone one. ‘So it may have been bigger and perhaps fortified in its earlier incarnation,’ he added.
Ned opened a door on the right to show us a parlour that had been knocked through all the way to the back of the house and made into a sort of library-cum-study. It was quite cosy, with a log-burner, a big desk and modern lamps and some squishy chairs.
Some of the upright beams from the dividing wall that had been removed had been left in place, presumably to support the upper structure, and both they and the beams of the ceiling were huge and had odd bits cut out of them.
‘Family legend says that the beams are all from ships that have been broken up. The Grace family had shipping interests in the past, when it was built, even if they thought “trade” was a dirty word later.’
On the other side of the hall was another big room, with long windows at the back onto the terrace, the walls painted a soft sage green, and the furnishings of a vintage gentlemen’s club variety. It was all quite Agatha Christie; you could stage a nice murder in there.
‘It must have been a warren before it was opened up a bit,’ said Treena.
‘The rooms between this part and the new wing still are, though the kitchen was modernized around the seventies and the electrics have been upgraded fairly recently.’
He didn’t seem to mind Luke poking about and examining beams and exposed bits of wall, or the carving over the huge fireplace, which incorporated a galleon like the one on the sundial.
‘I think that’s the sign of Nathaniel Grace,’ I suggested, and then told Treena and Luke that Ned had a buccaneering ancestor.
‘He was one of those Elizabethan seafaring men who sailed close to being a pirate, but so long as he only attacked Spanish vessels and kept the Queen sweet with occasional gifts of looted jewellery, she turned a blind eye,’ Ned said. ‘He married and retired here – bought it from his cousin, after he’d moved his family to Risings.’
‘And became the first of the Lordly-Graces,’ I finished for him.
‘I’m glad I bought a copy of the book. I’m looking forward to reading it,’ Treena said.
‘I read it when I went through the proofs for Elf,’ Ned told us. ‘There was a lot of detail about my family and the other local ones that I didn’t know, though I was vaguely aware there was some slight link way back with the Vanes from Cross Ways Farm – and I’d much rather not have known about that.’
‘The family scandal,’ I said lightly, avoiding Treena’s eye, and inside my dungaree pockets crossed my fingers in the hope he’d never find out I was a part of that clan.
‘Still, it’s so far back, it’s negligible,’ he said, dismissing it.
‘I told you the story of the servant girl who eloped with the younger son of the Lordly-Graces,’ I reminded Treena.
‘And ended up married to my ancestor, Richard Grace,’ agreed Ned. ‘That caused a rift with the Lordly-Graces. Audrey Lordly-Grace, Cress’s widowed mother, still likes to keep her distance.’
‘She isn’t very pleasant,’ Treena said. ‘Talks to me as if I’m her servant and then haggles over the bill.’
‘She’s like that with everyone she considers beneath her,’ Ned said, and then added, since Luke was looking slightly alarmed, ‘She lives at Risings, Luke, but she keeps herself to herself, so you probably won’t cross paths with her.’
‘From the sound of it, that suits me fine,’ he said. ‘Cress’s nice, though, and I’m sure it’ll be very comfortable. Better than trying to commute to and fro between here and Liverpool.’
‘Do you want to see a bit more of the house?’ asked Ned. ‘Upstairs there’s an amazing Victorian bathroom, though luckily there’s also a very new one, put in when my uncle Theo got frail.’
We duly admired the Victorian bathroom, with its absolutely huge, claw-footed bath, but he didn’t open all the bedroom doors, just showed us one that had an ancient dark four-poster bed, and another furnished with a complete Edwardian suite in maple.
‘Furniture through the ages,’ he said.
‘I think old houses should reflect the generations that have lived in them, just like old gardens,’ I said.
At the further end of the corridor, past the splendours of Victorian plumbing, was a door to the new wing – so called – with the modern bathroom, and the bedroom that had been Ned’s uncle’s next to it. There were signs of occupation, so I think he’d taken it over.
A narrow, twisting staircase brought us out near the kitchen, which was a very big room with a somewhat schizophrenic air: what might have been the original Regency closed stove remained, with various bits of metalwork hanging next to it that were probably roasting spits, but looked like instruments of torture. But around the other sides of the room were cupboards and dressers and a range of more modern cabinets, with worktops in a horrid speckled granit
e finish.
There were some mod cons, though: a big fridge-freezer, a dishwasher and all the usual gadgets, including a gleaming new monster of a coffee machine.
I looked critically at it as he filled up the jug. ‘I think that’s overkill.’
But I accepted the coffee, which was good, and we sat in the kitchen to drink it. It was warm and cosy in there, probably due to the Aga that now sat next to the old stove.
‘I could do with proper central heating,’ Ned said. ‘Uncle Theo had electric night storage heaters installed all over the house, but they only seem to take the chill off.’
‘Something more ecologically friendly,’ I suggested.
‘I don’t know what, but it’ll have to wait till the garden is earning its keep, anyway,’ he said, predictably.
‘Unless you find this treasure that Nathaniel is supposed to have hidden,’ I said with a grin.
‘I’m sure that’s just an old tale,’ Ned said, smiling. ‘The house has been remodelled so much since his time, and people must have searched for hidden places, so it would have turned up if it really existed.’
‘These old stories get passed on like Chinese Whispers,’ agreed Luke, ‘changing with each retelling.’
‘I have found a couple of treasures in an old chest in the library,’ Ned said. ‘The original plan of the apothecary garden, and some impressive documents, including Nathaniel’s will. I expect there’s still more to discover.’
‘Well, if anything relates to the monastic ruin, let me know,’ Luke said hopefully.
‘You’d be better asking Cress, because any papers pre-Nathaniel probably went to Risings when the original family moved there.’
‘I might do that,’ he said. ‘You never know.’
‘At some point I’ll go through all the papers,’ Ned said. ‘There’s a large wooden box full as well as the chest – and one of the library window seats is full of old accounts books and paperwork, too. My uncle had a rummage about in everything, when he was thinking of writing a family history, so it’s all very jumbled.’
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 20
