Dreams to Sell (22 page)

‘Fancy! And Ma and me were saying how much we'd like to see Bellfields.'

‘But you're not having to sell it,' sighed Roz.

As they had their light breakfast, Flo and Chrissie insisted on talking about the lovely country house Roz was going to see and saying how much they wished they could be going too.

‘I've seen pictures in magazines,' Flo remarked. ‘And on a calendar we had once. It looks really beautiful. You being so keen on houses, Roz, you'll have a grand time there, eh?'

‘She's worried about the sale,' Chrissie told her. ‘They'll have to get a good price.'

‘No need to remind me,' Roz said bleakly. ‘Look, I've got to go. See you tonight, eh?'

‘Good luck, pet!' cried Flo. ‘You'll feel better when you're away, and you look really lovely.'

‘Very smart,' Chrissie agreed. ‘Just right for Bellfields.'

They were due at the house at ten o'clock and left in good time, Mr Appin driving the firm's Vauxhall that had succeeded the old Hillman with Roz next to him and Reggie MacEwan, the photographer, following in his own ancient sports car. Roz, full of nerves herself, though controlling them well, was relieved to see that Mr Appin seemed to have recovered his confidence and was looking his usual calm self. He'd asked if she would like to drive, for, after some hard saving up, she'd finally taken lessons and passed her test a year ago, but though she frequently drove on their usual visits, she knew she'd be happier as a passenger on this one.

Why make such a thing of this? she asked herself. Seeing Mr Carmichael again, but in his grand home – what did it matter? She had no answers, only concentrated on looking out at the scenery, which was pleasant, and checking the road map for their turning off the A7.

‘The instructions we were sent said Bellfields would be signposted,' Mr Appin reminded her. ‘It should be coming up now – hey, there it is, and that daredevil Reggie's gone ahead!'

With a wave of his hand, the photographer was already turning off for the minor road and roaring away from the Vauxhall, which only made Roz and her boss laugh. Reggie MacEwan, in his late twenties, straw-haired and craggy-faced, was known as a law unto himself, very good at his job but also very unpredictable. As Mr Appin said to Roz, still laughing, ‘Now you know why I'm glad he doesn't usually have to do the interiors with us. I only hope he doesn't break any treasures at your friend's house.'

‘My friend?' Roz stopped laughing. ‘I've met him once.'

‘Well, I've never met him at all. Suppose I'll have to mind my p's and q's, eh?'

‘I told you – he's very nice. But, look, there are the gates – we're here!'

‘Thank God for that. I can't wait to get started. The sooner we begin, the sooner it's over.'

The wrought-iron gates to the house were open, but there was no one looking out from the little lodge nearby, and Mr Appin drove straight in and began to negotiate a winding drive. Though there were trees either side, glimpses of parkland could be seen, but there were no deer or anything else to be spotted until the drive left the trees behind and the house itself came into view.

‘Oh, yes,' Roz whispered, ‘there it is. Bellfields. Just like the pictures – it's beautiful.'

‘Very fine,' Mr Appin commented. ‘Very fine indeed. Reggie should have a field day, taking photos here.'

For a moment, he stopped the car and they both sat gazing at the elegant, honey-stoned façade of the house they had come to sell.

Not overpoweringly grand or particularly large, it was everyone's idea of a gracious country house; a family house, maybe, but of a special kind. Though it was not actually designed by one of the Adam family, as they'd read, it did have the Adam look, with three lines of long, white-framed windows symmetrically placed at intervals from a central front entrance which was reached by curving stone steps. A stonework balustrade over the top storey added decoration to the roof, where, on such a fine day, smoke wouldn't be seen rising from the forest of chimney stacks.

All the same, as he drove on, Mr Appin murmured to Roz, ‘When every one of those chimneys is working, what on earth do you think the fuel bills will be? It's no wonder Mr Carmichael wants to sell.'

‘Has to sell, you mean. He doesn't want to.'

‘The problem is, will anyone want to buy? Mr Banks is putting it on at offers over fifteen thousand, which is no snip if it needs a lot of work.'

‘I see the owner's talking to Reggie,' Roz observed, keeping her voice level. ‘There you are, Mr Appin, that's Mr Carmichael.'

Wearing a light summer jacket over a blue shirt and corduroy trousers, he was looking very casual and relaxed, but as soon as he saw Roz stepping out of the Vauxhall, his eyes went to her. With a polite word to Reggie, he moved fast towards her, his hand extended. ‘Miss Rainey, we meet again! How are you?'

‘Very excited to be here today,' she answered, proud of her own formal manner as she shook his hand. ‘May I introduce Mr Appin, head of Tarrel's property department.'

‘Mr Appin, it's very good to meet you,' Laurence Carmichael told him as they shook hands. ‘I've been so busy trying to get the place looking decent, I'm afraid I haven't managed to see you to discuss the sale personally. I do apologise for that.'

‘No need at all, Mr Carmichael, that's quite all right,' Mr Appin told him smoothly. ‘The main thing is we're all here now and ready to begin. I see you've already met our photographer, Mr MacEwan?'

‘Reggie, please!' cried the photographer. ‘I've just been telling Mr Carmichael that this job is not going to be a quick one. Just from looking at the outside, I can tell that we're going to need a lot of time to do Bellfields justice.'

‘Please, take as long as necessary,' Laurence said earnestly. ‘There's no hurry at all. The longer you take to prepare the sale, the longer I'll be here.'

‘Might take some time to make the actual sale, sir,' Mr Appin said after gazing in some surprise at his client. ‘One never knows just how things will go.'

‘As I say, the longer it takes, the better.' Laurence shrugged. ‘I'm in no hurry to leave. I know it has to come, but I needn't wish it to come soon.'

At the expressions on the watching faces, he suddenly smiled.

‘But first, before you do anything else, come and have some coffee. My housekeeper has it all prepared for you in the morning room.'

The morning room … When they entered the spacious apartment from the long, elegant entrance hall, the same thought occurred to all three visitors: that in most of the houses they usually saw, this would have made a very grand drawing room.

Here, however, it seemed to be their client's living room, for there were books and newspapers scattered on a low table in front of the marble chimneypiece, a jacket on the back of a chair, and on the chintz-covered sofa two spaniels lay before leaping off to make themselves known with tremendous fuss.

‘Down, Hector! Down Mascot!' Laurence cried, as the room came alive with noise and bustle and a middle-aged woman in a dark blue dress appeared with a trolley, on which sat a large silver coffee pot, fine china cups and saucers, and a plate of shortbread.

‘My housekeeper, Mrs Meldrum,' Laurence announced, before introducing the team from Tarrel's. ‘Mr Appin, Miss Rainey and Mr MacEwan will be here for some time, writing, measuring, photographing, and I know you'll do your best to make the house available to them.'

‘Oh, certainly, sir,' said Mrs Meldrum calmly. ‘Anything the young lady and the gentlemen want, they've only to ask.'

‘Thank you very much, Mrs Meldrum,' Mr Appin said quickly. ‘We'll try not to get too much in the way of you and your staff.'

She smiled a little. ‘The only staff are two girls, a handyman and a part-time gardener from the village, sir. The girls come in most mornings. Ben, the handyman, is here most of the time, doing odd jobs. Now, may I pour everyone some coffee?'

‘So good to see you again, Miss Rainey,' Laurence murmured, coming to join Roz as she sipped her coffee and looked out at the drive from one of the long windows. ‘I've been thinking about you.'

‘In the middle of all your tidying?' she asked lightly.

‘Oh, Lord, yes. Had to have something to take my mind off things.'

‘It all looks very nice in here.'

‘You think so?' His mouth twisted a little. ‘Look a little more closely.'

She turned and looked back at the lovely room and, as she saw Mr Appin and Reggie staring up at the cornice of the finely plastered ceiling, let her eyes follow their gaze. Oh, God, it was out of line, it was slipping! There must be some subsidence to have that effect – the very thing any surveyor would instantly find. Was it just this room, or elsewhere?

‘I see you've all found the cornice,' Laurence was saying drily, moving to the centre of the floor. ‘Not to mention the ancient window frames, damp on the ceiling, the threadbare curtains and rugs. You'll also be seeing the chimneys that smoke the entire winter, the temperamental boiler, and the roof missing tiles.

‘Trying to make the place look decent, did I say? Only works in the main apartments. Some of the top-floor rooms haven't been used for half a century or more, and the kitchens – well, only a saint like Mrs Meldrum would work in them. You didn't bring your own surveyor with you, did you?'

‘It's up to prospective buyers to send in surveyors.' Mr Appin's face had taken on a hunted expression. ‘But it might be a good idea if you had your own structural survey done, sir. Just to let you know the situation.'

‘Far too expensive, Mr Appin.' Laurence's tone was decisive. ‘I believe most people interested in Bellfields will expect to find it needs money spent on it. Isn't the phrase in the adverts “some modernization required”?'

‘Got it in one,' Reggie cried with a laugh. ‘But by the time they've seen my pictures of this stunning place you'll have people queuing up to buy, I promise you. So, let's to work.'

‘To work,' Mr Appin agreed. ‘May we look around, Mr Carmichael? We usually like to begin at the top.'

‘Oh, hell, I told you about the top storey, didn't I? Better watch where you walk. Some of the floorboards are pretty rotten.'

Afterwards, Roz was to conclude that looking round Bellfields might be considered a mixed experience, except that she'd already lost her heart to it. But, there it was …

On the one hand, there was the beauty and splendour of the principal rooms – the drawing room, the dining room, the library and the main bedrooms, where, if there were obvious repairs needed and the furnishings were old and shabby, there was still so much to admire.

On the other hand, she had to admit, there was the terrible top floor, where paper was peeling from the walls of the rooms used by servants long ago, the floors were positively dangerous and the ancient windows hadn't been opened for years. Were there mice, too? Awful thought! Roz had been relieved when they'd moved down a floor to view the guestrooms, which at least were still swept and dusted by the ‘girls', and where there were a couple of tiled bathrooms, though because of the boiler, Laurence said, the provision of hot water for these would be a very hit and miss affair.

What to make of the prospects for a good sale? Mr Appin had to confess that this was unknown territory for him. Some buyers would be put off by the amount of work needed to be done. Others, if they could afford the outlay, might be desperate to own such a house as Bellfields, or keen to start a school there, or even a hotel.

‘We'll just have to see how it goes,' Mr Appin told Roz when Laurence was talking to Reggie about which rooms he wanted to photograph. ‘In the meantime, we do our best.'

For the rest of the morning they worked hard, though by lunchtime they felt as though they had still only scratched the surface of what had to be done.

‘We haven't even thought about the grounds, or the stable block and offices Mr Carmichael tells me are at the rear,' sighed Mr Appin, who was feeling the heat and mopping his brow. ‘As for the property department, that's on hold for today but we can't leave it too long – we're definitely going to have to stagger our visits here to take that into account. Or you might have to hold the fort while I finish up here. You can do that, of course, Miss Rainey?'

‘Oh, yes, Mr Appin!' At the thought, Roz's eyes were shining. Hold the fort? Take charge? Wasn't it what she'd always wanted? ‘Of course, I'll have to make appointments for the valuations, but I can do everything else.'

‘That's settled, then. I know Mr Carmichael seems in no hurry to sell, but I'd like to get on with it. In the meantime, what about lunch?'

The pub in the village was Reggie's suggestion, to which the others agreed, and though Laurence said Mrs Meldrum would have been glad to rustle up a light lunch for them, he understood that they'd like to relax on their own.

‘Miss Rainey,' he whispered as she was about to leave. ‘May I have a word when you come back?'

‘Of course, Mr Carmichael.'

‘I wish you'd call me Laurence.'

She met his blue gaze with a direct look of her own. ‘I don't think—'

‘Oh, come, I told you when we first met that I felt we were friends. I can't be Mr Carmichael to you. And you can't be Miss Rainey. May I call you Roz?'

‘They're waiting for me; I'll have to go,' she said hurriedly, running out to join the men, colour rising in her face.

‘We're taking our car, Miss Rainey,' Mr Appin told her. ‘Reggie wants to be able to drink. I want to keep my head clear.'

‘What's all this formality?' asked Reggie. ‘I'm Reggie, but you two are Miss Rainey and Mr Appin – how about Roz and Angus? You're not in the office now.'