The Hardie Inheritance (33 page)

‘That way lies ruin,' said Ellis; but he was smiling.

‘I shall rely on Trish to keep me in my old age. Right, Trish?'

‘Half my stale crust will always be yours,' Trish assured her. ‘And talking of stale crusts, d'you think there's anything for supper?'

‘Let's all go and see.' Mrs Barrett was enjoying an evening off, but had probably left a salad prepared.

As Trish led the way towards the kitchen, she smiled to herself in satisfaction. She would be sad to say goodbye to Dan and Boxer, whom she thought of almost as brothers. But on Tuesday she would see Rupert again and before too long would be able to leave home and make a life for herself in London.

London! She was going to become a metropolitan person at last: the very thought made her feel sophisticated. And in the meantime she was part of a happy family, which would still be there whenever she wished to return to her home. It was all too good to be true.

In the nineteenth century the ninth Marquess of Ross had been at some pains to ensure that that new-fangled invention, the railway, should not be allowed to spoil the view from Castlemere or disturb the pheasants by crossing his estate. So when Trish dismounted from the train for her visit, she found herself being led to a long, low open coach bearing the Beverley coat of arms.

‘How splendid!' she exclaimed. ‘Is this a governess cart?'

‘Certainly not,' said Rupert. ‘Don't you know a phaeton when you see one, ignorant girl?' He helped her up before flicking the reins to start the chestnut on its way. ‘It was Mother's idea, when petrol rationing first came in, to see what we'd got in the coach-house. And in the stables – all those “horses eating their heads off and getting fat for lack of exercise” while Miles and I were away. There was a certain amount of protest to start with, I'm told, but they soon got the hang of it. Rather more quickly than I'm learning to cope with petrol rationing. I'm sorry to have inflicted such a journey on you instead of nipping over to pick you up as usual. This time last year, if I wanted to go anywhere I simply hopped into a tank.'

‘Just what we civilians always suspected,' laughed Trish. ‘The army simply didn't know there was a war on!'

‘Well, I'm certainly learning fast about the hardships of peace. Just wait till you see Castlemere!'

‘Is it very bad?'

‘Yes.' He was no longer smiling and was less chatty than usual as they rattled first along the road and then through the huge park which surrounded his home.

From a distance, nothing seemed to have changed. It was still a fairy castle, a French chateau improbably set down in the middle of the English countryside. But as they came close and Rupert slowed the horses to a halt, Trish gasped in dismay. The moat had always been one of the glories of Castlemere, a smooth ring of water on which swans were accustomed to float. Now, however, the house was surrounded by nothing but a wide, muddy ditch.

‘The headmistress had it drained because she was afraid that one of her little darlings might fall in and drown,' Rupert explained. ‘Simply refilling it would be no problem. It was designed to be fed by a cutting from a stream to which the water returned lower down. That was why it was never stagnant or smelly. It would be easy enough to unblock the dam. But unfortunately it seems that six years of being allowed to dry out for the first time ever have done unexpected things to the foundations. It's going to cost a small fortune to make them good before we can risk letting the water back.'

‘Isn't the school liable for that sort of expense?'

‘I've been living with the contract for the past month until I could recite it in my sleep. I'm afraid my father wasn't too well advised. At the time, of course, he may have seen it as a patriotic duty rather than a business negotiation. Or else a way of avoiding army occupation, which might have been worse. There are clear categories of damage which have to be made good. And there are clear exclusions, for fair wear and tear, which are left on our plate. But there's a terrible fog in between. If the school sent its handyman to set the stream flowing through the moat again – as they were on the point of doing when our agent pointed out the risks – they could claim that they were leaving it as they found it. I suspect that the lawyers are going to have a field day before it's all sorted out. And that's only one out of dozens of problems. Come and look inside.'

Trish's last visit to the great house had been in 1939, when her father took a portfolio of photographs of the interior. She
had seen the rooms very much as they must have been when the house was first built, filled with the furniture which had been sent over from France as a bride's dowry, curtained with elegant silk draperies, and with expensive rugs and carpets on the polished parquet floors. But since then all the best furniture had been put into store. As Rupert led her first into what had once been the marquess's study, she was not surprised by the bleakness of the empty spaces or the ugliness of the thick blackout curtains. But he gave a sigh as he waved a hand towards the panelled walls.

‘They used this as a sort of reading room for the older girls. Equipped it with their own tables and chairs and brought in a couple of old bookcases which they picked up at a country sale. Now we find that the panelling's infested with woodworm. The whole lot will have to come off the wall so that it can be treated.
They
say it must have been there already. I claim that they must be responsible. But the truth of the matter is that a house like this needs loving care, which a temporary tenant isn't interested in providing. Do you remember the Chinese room?'

Trish nodded. It was a small room which took its name from the beauty of its hand-painted wall covering and the intricate carving of the gilded mirror frames.

‘Well, for a couple of centuries maids have been going into that room every morning to pull down a blind, and returning three hours later to let it up again. They may never have known why they did it. It was just a regular duty. That room was one that the school undertook not to use, because the danger of damage to the wall paintings was so great; so how, they cry, can we possibly hold them responsible for the fact that a four-foot strip of the paper has completely lost its colour? All they did, in the interests of opening a window one day to air the room, was to draw back the curtains and forget to close them again afterwards. Six years of sunshine, and the room will never be a perfect work of art again. How do you send in a bill for something like that?'

‘I'm so sorry,' said Trish. ‘You must be terribly upset.'

Rupert looked at her with the serious expression which she was more and more often nowadays catching on his face.

‘Yes, it is upsetting, because I love the house,' he said. ‘But I'll tell you what's almost worse, though I don't know if it will make sense to you. I've always known that Castlemere would never belong to me. To be a son living in my father's house, that was all right; that's natural. But to be a brother, living in Miles's house, that wouldn't do at all. So after the pater's death, I told myself that Castlemere was no longer my home. I might come back for the odd visit, but the first thing to do after the war would be to find a home of my own. I could have managed that all right. Clean break. All this, putting things right, ought to be Miles's job.'

‘But now Miles isn't here.'

‘That's it. We heard this morning that he's been put on a hospital ship. But it doesn't sound as though he'll be in any state to get down to business for some time when he gets home. And there's too much that can't wait. A socking great bill for estate duty after my father's death, for a start. Two million pounds.'

‘Two million!' gasped Trish.

‘They value the property, you see, without taking into account whether or not we have any assets apart from the property itself with which to pay.'

‘I see.' Trish remembered the occasion on which she had overheard David quarrelling with Grace. He had made exactly the same point about death duties. ‘What will you do?'

‘Mother's been battling on that front while we were both away. But it's been a worry to her, and we were supposed to settle within five years. We shall have to sell some land. Even if I don't actually
do
anything, I must have some solutions cut and dried, ready for when Miles returns.'

‘You're probably better equipped to do it than he would be even if he were here.'

‘Maybe so. But it's hard, all the same, to have to devote
every waking thought to Castlemere and know that sooner or later I shall have to tear myself away for a second time.'

‘What about Julia?' asked Trish.

‘What about her?'

‘Well, if she's going to become the chatelaine, couldn't she –?'

‘I did have a word with her about that,' confessed Rupert. ‘At the party we had to celebrate winning the seat. She put forward what seems a very balanced point of view. She's longing for Miles to come home, and she still regards herself as engaged to him. But they haven't seen each other for five years. He might not be interested in her any more. “I don't want him to marry me merely because it's the gentlemanly thing to do,” she said. I admire her for that. But it means that she's not prepared to jump the gun in any way. So, for the moment at least, it's down to yours truly.'

Throwing off his sombre mood, he flung an arm round her shoulders and hugged her affectionately, grinning in the way she remembered from the old days, before the war. ‘With a little help from my friends!' he exclaimed. ‘I can't tell you how marvellous it is to see you, and looking so happy and pretty. In the desert, you know, I used to conjure up my own mirages, remembering people as I used to see them and trying to imagine what they might be doing at that particular moment.'

‘Was I on the cast list?' she asked, happily anticipating the answer.

‘Starring role. Except that I didn't manage to grow you up quite enough in the imagining bits. It's good to discover that not all the surprises are rotten ones. Well, Mother will have luncheon waiting for us in the dower house at one. Before that, I want your advice on what to do about redecoration.'

‘I don't know anything about decorations.'

‘Yes, you do. Those marvellous rooms you've done in Greystones. Not,' he added hastily, ‘that I quite see the drawing room at Castlemere painted in black and white with red spots. But you have an eye. Don't deny it.'

Shaking her head to disclaim any expertise, Trish allowed herself to be led through a series of stately rooms. She did her best to close her eyes to the discoloured patches on the walls which could be covered once again with the paintings now stored, and to the tatty light shades, ludicrously small, which would be replaced by the original chandeliers. But it was easy to sympathize with Rupert's depression at the sight of scratched parquet floors and lines of dirt or grease to show where school furniture had been standing against the walls.

At Castlemere even the bedrooms were larger and grander than most people's drawings rooms, but many of them were now scarred by blackened dents – caused, no doubt, by iron bedheads banging against the wall during one of the jolly pillow fights for which Trish herself had once pined.

‘I see what you mean,' she said when the tour was over. They were both silent as they returned to the phaeton for the drive across the park.

‘And you see,' sighed Rupert, ‘there are two separate problems and each of them is a killer. Money, first. No one ever believes that a family like ours could be strapped for ready cash and yes, before the war we did manage to cover running expenses out of rents. But there was never much in hand for extraordinary expenditure like this, and now we're faced with the death duties too.'

‘And the other?'

‘The other problem is that even if we could afford to buy, the goods aren't there to be bought. I mean to say, if I have to hand over sixteen coupons to buy myself a new suit, what would they expect for hundreds of yards of silk to hang on the ballroom wall?'

Trish resisted the temptation to inform him that furnishing fabrics were unrationed, for he was quite right in principle. Shops stocked only with utility fabrics and wallpapers would certainly not be able to offer expensive imported silks.

‘Come on, Patricia. I need your advice.'

‘I don't see that you can do more than draw up a list of
priorities,' she said. ‘If the death duties have got to be paid, and if the damage to the foundations could have worse effects if it's left untreated, presumably those must come at the top of the list. The entertaining rooms ought to be restored eventually to their original state; and since that's impossible now, they'll have to come at the bottom. That will put them on Miles's and Julia's list of problems.'

‘But I ought to do something practical. Or at least have firm proposals to make. At the moment I don't feel that the house belongs to us at all. It's as though the invaders have destroyed the – oh, I don't know what the right word is: the atmosphere, the ambience. I need to make some gesture to show that Castlemere is ours again.'

‘I'd start with the bedrooms,' said Trish. ‘They've been altered from the original state already, haven't they?'

‘True. My grandmother gave them a great doing-over to make them suitable for Edwardian house parties.'

‘So it wouldn't do any harm to redecorate them unambitiously now. You could always put them back to the eighteenth century later on. If I were you –' she spoke with the confidence of someone who had acted as Terry's assistant while he worked at Greystones – ‘I should strip, make good and paint. Pale country colours. Because probably there isn't the right sort of wallpaper around, and paint is cheaper, as well as being easier to cover later, and flat colours look better for hanging pictures on.'