Paradise Lane (18 page)

Tom glanced over his shoulder, saw that Ivy was asleep. ‘Sally?’

Sally was twisting and turning in the front passenger seat, her eyes all over the place. ‘Trees, hundreds of trees. Millions,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of room, isn’t there?’ They passed through a hamlet in the twinkling of an eye. ‘Only about ten houses there,’ she remarked. ‘And no mills.’

‘But you remember the potteries, don’t you? When we came through Stoke-on-Trent, all those kilns? Different things get made in different places.’

She nodded her agreement. ‘Yes, that was dirty, that place where they do the pots.’

He negotiated a bend, checked to see whether Ivy was still asleep. ‘Sally, I have a very big house,’ he began. ‘It’s falling to bits, but it’s enormous.’

‘Like Buckin’ham Palace?’

‘A bit. Not as big as Buckingham Palace.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t care about his house; she was too interested in the sheep. ‘Millions,’ she said again. ‘And no black ones.’

‘Sally, I’m a lord.’

She turned her head and gave him her full attention. ‘Like Jesus?’

He tried not to laugh. ‘No. Jesus is a different kind of lord. I’m just an ordinary one. A long time ago, when my family was very rich and important, the King of England turned one of my ancestors into a lord.’

She was not getting a grip on this at all. There were stories at school and in picture books, fairy godmothers changing pumpkins into coaches. But not in real life, surely? ‘Did he use a magic wand?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The king. Did he do a spell with a wand?’

He shrugged. ‘He used a sword.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m Lord Goodfellow, Sally. Not for much longer, though. Our real name was Marchant and I’m changing my name back to that.’ And he wouldn’t be parading about in ermine and velvet, either. Poverty had not exactly suited him, but he had enjoyed being an ordinary man. For over twenty years, he had been a plain ‘mister’. ‘When we reach Oakmead, you will hear people calling me ‘My Lord’. I’ll soon stop them. In fact, most of them have begun to learn already. But your grandmother may feel uncomfortable.’

‘Why?’ Grown-ups always made things hard for themselves.

‘Because I’m a lord.’

They were back to the beginning again and she was still no clearer. She didn’t know what to say to him, because too much was happening. There were fields and animals flashing past the window, and here was Uncle Tom going on about some dead king and changing his name with a sword. It was all beyond her.

‘Make Ivy stay, Sally. Persuade her. She needs the rest and she needs a change.’

‘I’m stopping, your blinking lordship,’ said the voice from the back seat. ‘Don’t be setting our Sal on me. I can make me own mind up on me own by meself with no help from nobody.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Tom. Ivy was great at putting people in their proper place.

‘And you’re not telling us nothing we didn’t already know, ’cos we’d all guessed as how you were summat unusual. Will you stay away from these hedges, Tom? They’re scratching at the window. Any minute now, you’ll be in the ditch. And don’t expect me to treat you different just ’cos you’re next to royalty.’ She sniffed. ‘I’ve a lot of time for the king, but I can’t be doing with all them hangers-on.’

Tom grinned. He might have known. Whatever he said or did, there would be no shocking Ivy. ‘We’re nearly at our next stop,’ he told them.

Ivy sighed, muttered about her bones being jangled in this bloody car, stopped mid-sentence when she saw the view ahead.

Sally’s jaw dropped. ‘Fairyland,’ she whispered.

Tom stopped the car. ‘You’re right in a way, Sally. I spent the happiest years of my life here.’

‘Look at that,’ exclaimed Ivy. ‘That is the bonniest place I’ve ever seen in my life. Where are we?’

‘The Earl of Goodfellow Hall wiped some wetness from a cheek. ‘Oxford, Ivy,’ he said. ‘This is where we’ll sleep tonight.’

Ivy was all agog. She had travelled to Oxford in a Rolls Royce, had seen more wonders than she’d experienced in her many years on earth. ‘All them books,’ she kept saying when they drove through the city on the last leg of their journey. ‘There’s more books there than in the rest of England put together. Scotland and all, I bet. My Derek would have loved Oxford. What was that last place called?’

‘University College.’

Ivy turned for one last look at the spires. ‘Well,’ she began. ‘You live a long life, you fettle as best you can, and you still know nowt. All them men in black coats. Gowns, I mean. And folk walking about with their heads stuck in a book. That’s all been going on while I’ve been living in the same place with nowt new to see.’

He nodded to himself. Ivy had wisdom and common sense. Some of those in gowns could well finish up under the wheels of a motor car, because they hadn’t the wits to glance up from the written word to look out for themselves. ‘It’s just another way of life,’ he told her. ‘And I am a student of the way people live.’

Ivy laughed. ‘A student? At your age?’

‘Oh yes. You’re still learning, aren’t you? You’ve been inside a hall of residence, a refectory and a library. I’d never been inside a factory until I came to Bolton to write a thesis. My learning continues. Everybody learns constantly, from birth to death.’

Ivy looked through the window, saw ordinary people going about their ordinary business. ‘They’re not all students, are they? Look at her, that one in the green coat. See, she’s three children getting under her feet.’

‘Town and gown,’ he told her. ‘There were riots in the past between townsfolk and gownsfolk, but they’ve settled for ignoring each other. That woman’s possibly a jam maker. They specialize in marmalade, you know. Then there’s publishing, some engineering – it’s not all degrees and end of term celebrations. Like any other place, it’s a mixture.’

‘Eeh, we live and learn – don’t we, Sal?’

Sally had little to say, simply because she had been overwhelmed by all the sights and was organizing her thoughts. She had run around a big square called a quad, had dashed in and out of archways, had been given a mint by a very old man with colours on his black gown. And she’d looked up and up into the sky until she’d got dizzy, had tried to count all the steeples, had listened to many kinds of bells, had seen great big paintings that would never fit on a wall at home.

‘Sal?’ Ivy leaned forward, touched the child’s shoulder. ‘Did you like Oxford, love?’

Sally nodded, let it all spill out. ‘I’m going back there,’ she said. ‘I’m going to read all them books and have a bike and a black gown. They were nearly all men, but some were ladies. I’m going back,’ she said again. ‘And I’ll have a straw hat and go on that river Isis in a boat with a long pole and have my dinner in that re-flectory place at a big long table.’

Tom grinned to himself. Sally had fallen in love with Oxford. That was a very easy thing to do. ‘It’s not out of reach,’ he told her. ‘Work hard at your lessons, and you’ll be halfway there.’

She looked at him. ‘Why did you leave? Couldn’t you have stayed there? Bolton’s horrible and dirty.’

Tom slowed down. ‘No. Bolton’s a lovely town, but its beauty is different from Oxford’s. The moors are wonderful and the people are splendid.’

‘It takes all sorts,’ pronounced the oracle in the rear seat. ‘And somebody’s got to spin the cotton, eh?’

Ivy stood in the middle of a huge lawn. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said for the fourth time. ‘Why, Tom?’

He shrugged. ‘Family trouble. I just had to get away. I’d fought in the Great War when I was just a boy – ran away to join the forces – and I couldn’t seem to settle when I got back. Then there was Oxford. After that, I came home very reluctantly and . . . and the trouble between my father and myself began.’ He coughed, seemed ill at ease. ‘My older brother died, and my sister went abroad to work with missionaries. So I simply disappeared.’

She stared at the house. It was nearly as broad as Paradise Mill, and she’d counted forty-odd windows in the front.

‘My mother left me money. I reached twenty-one while at Oxford, got the inheritance, but my spending spree began some years later. Sailing, tennis, golf, gambling on the horses and—’

‘And you spent it all and ended up in Bolton.’

‘To study.’

She winked at him. ‘Aye and to live cheap and stop away from your dad.’

‘Something like that, yes. The old chap wrote to me every month through solicitors, but I never read his letters. He was an unpleasant man, another Andrew Worthington, I suppose. My mother died of a broken heart.’

‘And your brother?’

‘Drowned.’

She gripped his hand tightly. ‘Tom, what are you going to do with this lot, eh? I mean, look at it, lad. Just take a good, long look. It’s . . .’ Words failed her, but not for long. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She hadn’t been inside yet. But here she stood, on a park-sized patch of green with weedy paths, a dried-up fountain, statues, urns. ‘This is all yours, Tom. It’s a responsibility. I mean, yon chap who chased wild boar with that fat King Henry – he owned this and all. It goes back to Adam, does this place.’

He inclined his head. ‘Ivy, it means little to me.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You’re gentry, aren’t you? Take me, now. I’m from a cotton and mining family. It were like a tradition. Boys down the pit, girls in the spinning. Your history’s longer than mine. It’s important, is history.’

‘So is progress.’ He watched Sally cavorting about with a couple of daft spaniels, saw that the child was inhaling good air for the first time. ‘The house wants children.’

‘Then get some,’ Ivy answered. ‘I don’t need to tell you how to go about that, do I? Bring the house back to life.’

He nodded. ‘Oh, I shall.’

Something in his tone made her face him full on. ‘You’re not planning on stopping here long, are you?’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t ask, Ivy. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you precisely what Goodfellow Hall signifies for me. Meanwhile, I’ll take you and Sally to look at the cottage. One of the servants has prepared it for you. Then, after a cup of tea, we’ll go into the big house. You may choose where you live. There’s space in the house, but if you want a bit of time to yourself, you can use the cottage.’

She grinned broadly. ‘I’d not know how to talk to a servant.’

‘Oh, but you would,’ he told her. ‘Because you’ll talk to my friends here just as you talk to me. The people who work here are no different from the rest of us.’ He became pensive for a moment. ‘Have you ever talked to Joseph Heilberg about Judaism?’

‘Not really, no. He’s told me about what they do on a Friday night and why he shuts his shop on a Saturday. Mind, he leaves Maureen’s shop open so that she can have her Sunday off instead.’

‘That’s a very old religion and it’s packed with common sense. Like, “therefore, but a single man was created . . . that none should say to his fellow, ‘My father was greater than thy father.’” All equal, Ivy. Those who work here do a job and I pay them, but we remain on equal terms.’

‘Different from your dad, I bet.’

‘Very much so,’ he said softly. ‘Thank God.’

They climbed into the car, this time with the two dogs. The animals squealed and panted a lot, steamed up all the windows. Ivy, squashed beneath the weight of a golden-coated hound, grinned ruefully at Tom when he turned to look at her. ‘I’ll be all dog hairs,’ she complained. The dog licked her face, gave her a thorough going over with its gentle tongue, made her giggle like a child.

She looked better already, thought Lord Goodfellow. There was colour in the old woman’s face, while some of the wrinkles seemed to have been ironed out, particularly round her eyes. Hampshire would be good for Ivy, he decided.

They drove a few hundred yards, stopped outside a cottage that seemed to have been picked out of the pages of a story book. It had roses round the door, sweet little windows with bottle-bottom swirls in some of the panes, a tiny garden filled with flowers. Sally looked through the car’s windscreen, her hand fastened to the collar of the second spaniel. ‘It’s what I dreamed about,’ she said. ‘This and flowers on the cups, too.’

Tom opened his door and a dog bounced away from Sally and followed Tom out at the driver’s side. Sally swung round and looked at Granny Ivy. ‘I want to stay here for ever,’ she said.

‘What about Oxford?’ Ivy was still being assaulted by the larger dog. ‘I thought you wanted to read all them books. Get off me hat, you bugger,’ she told the wayward canine.

Sally shrugged. ‘This is nicer than Oxford, Gran. This is a special place where we could live, just the two of us.’

Ivy thought about that. It wasn’t what she wanted. Funny, she said to herself. Sometimes, you had to have a look at the nice things before realizing that they weren’t important. This was the most beautiful little house she’d ever seen, and a holiday round here was going to be lovely. But when she studied the situation, all she could think of was home. At home, there were the Blunts and Maureen Mason, there was the corner shop, the Co-op, the market. When she pictured the giant H that formed Paradise, she suddenly realized that she knew dozens of people and that she needed them. Especially now, when she was becoming less robust.

The dog yapped, got a cuff from Ivy, was dragged from the car. Ivy stepped out, opened the garden gate, walked up the path to Rose Cottage. Its name, written over the door, was only partially visible because of a profusion of the blooms after which the building had been christened.

The door swung inward, was pushed all the way open by the dogs. There were two rooms downstairs, just a parlour and a big kitchen. ‘Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs,’ said Tom. ‘And a big garden at the back.’

Sally was in heaven. The back door was in two halves, and she slipped through the bottom part in pursuit of the golden spaniels. Then she remembered Gus, flew back into the house. ‘Where’s my cat?’ she asked.

‘At the hall,’ replied Tom. ‘He’ll be in the kitchen with butter on his paws. The cook always butters a cat’s paws to stop him from straying.’

Ivy was going to make a comment about margarine being good enough, but she held her tongue. If there was butter in the country, then she’d be taking advantage of it, so sarcastic comments had better stay put inside her head. ‘Lovely cottage, Tom,’ she said. ‘But whose are them bloody dogs?’