A Winter's Child (72 page)

‘I'm no good, Toby.'

‘You're my Princess Polly – always have been. My best girl.'

He took her, still leaning against him, still sobbing, through the hotel and to his car, Claire walking behind them, vaguely uneasy, suffering one sudden pang of alarm which made her turn hastily to Kit.

‘Shouldn't somebody go with them?'

He shrugged, his mind too on their lakeland journey, not really caring.

‘Who? You're the only one who could go with them to High Meadows, Claire, and I wouldn't care to suggest it.'

‘Just the same …'

‘Come on, Claire – that's good old Toby over there putting her into his car and tucking his travelling rug around her knees – not Arnold Crozier. I reckon she's safe enough with him, don't you?'

‘I suppose so.' The idea that it might be otherwise was, she agreed, ridiculous.

‘And in any case, Claire, it rather looks to me as if the damage has been done. And not by Roger either, the poor bastard –'

‘Yes, it does look that way. Poor Polly.'

‘Yes – poor Polly, since one gets the distinct impression she didn't enjoy it. But it's not our affair, is it, love?'

‘Not really.'

‘And might it not pay us to remember that there's a valuable diamond lying about somewhere under one of the bar tables? Might be as well to get to it before MacAllister. Polly may not want it again but Edith Timms certainly will.'

She smiled and nodded.

‘All right, Kit.'

And they were both thinking about tomorrow.

The journey to Westmorland was accomplished easily and pleasantly, by train to Windermere and then the jolting, shawl-wrapped delight of a pony-trap between banks of rhododendrons just in bud and rippling waves of daffodils to the village of Wansfell; a dozen low slate cottages, their walled gardens making a purple and yellow patchwork of spring flowers beside a stretch of smooth, quiet water. And on the hillside above the lake the great house of Wansfell Howe, turreted, aloof, in its several wild acres of broom and lilac and giant rhododendrons, huge conifers standing sentinel at its gateway, last year's dead leaves still drifting in the breeze of a new spring, the leaves of two years past, or more, lying sodden beneath them.

‘I used to be under-footman here,' said Kit, smiling at his own past without regret. ‘Then footman. Then butler in all but name since the old boy who was supposed to be doing the job was getting a bit past it. It was a good house to work in – decent people. Three very lively little boys running about and raising hell all over this garden in my day – and in the lake. We had to fish them out many a time. Very pleasant place to grow up, it always seemed to me. And Madam had no edge to her either. Nice woman. An earl's daughter, married a bit beneath her, I suppose, since he had no title – although nobody ever denied he was a gentleman. Scholarly sort of a bloke, liked his Wordsworth and his Coleridge and his De Quincey. He died about a year ago and the house has been empty ever since. She wouldn't see much sense in living here alone.'

‘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 would 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.