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Authors: Elizabeth Wilhide

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Cultural Heritage, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary, #Historical Fiction

Ashenden (37 page)

BOOK: Ashenden
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“Is he your butler?” said Lucy.

“Technically,” said Reggie, wondering how to convey the extent to which they depended on Panton. “We’ve been very fortunate with our staff and I can say they have all been as much a part of the revival of the house as we have.” By way of illustration she told the
story of how she, Panton, and their cook, Mrs. Marsham, had spent days disentangling an old chandelier she’d bought at auction, washing each beaded rope and crystal drop in Fairy Liquid before hanging it in the staircase hall. “Only Panton could have worked out what went where. It was quite a puzzle. The next time we cleaned it, we put the bits in numbered boxes.”

Shorthand flew across the pages of the notebook. “And how many other staff do you employ?”

“There are ground staff, of course, with a park of this size. I suppose half a dozen work for us, off and on.”

Lucy looked up through eyelashes clotted with mascara. “Just how big is the park?”

“About four hundred acres.”

“Gosh,” said Lucy. “And how many children do you have?”

This was always a dreadful question. Over the years Reggie had found no good way of answering that didn’t betray her daughter by denying her existence or lay guilt on the unassuming and unaware who’d asked it. The truth was that they had no children but had had a child. She couldn’t remember if this was recorded in
Who’s Who,
but she could hardly go and consult it now.

Their daughter had been born on a stormy March morning and lived two days. The birth had been easy. Nothing easy about the death. They had named her Grace because in the short while she was with them, grace was what she had brought. It hadn’t occurred to either of them to photograph her while she was fighting for her life, and after she died it seemed the worst thing to do. Reggie could no longer remember what she looked like, although she lived every day with the hole her daughter had torn out of her center.

“We have many children who visit,” she said, opting for indirection. “Nephews and nieces on both sides.”

The shorthand flew again and the wings of Lucy’s hair swung down.

Several more questions followed, whether they had dogs, what the dogs’ names were, how long was the drive from the gates to the front door?

“And horses?” said Lucy Costello. “I noticed horses in a field as we arrived.”

“Yes, we also have horses,” said Reggie.

Six months after Grace died, a period about which she remembered very little, Hugo had woken her one morning, opening the curtains with all the delicacy of a nurse removing a bandage, and announced they were going to a sale. Another house sale, she thought, pulling on the clothing she’d worn the day before and chafing her hands.

Not a house sale, as it turned out, but a horse sale. They stood in the arena, with its sweet smell of wood bark, and he pointed out some fine, expensive horses with good bloodlines, elegant, nervy creatures, the sort she used to ride, and she had responded dully and had wanted to go home and get back under the covers. Then towards the end of the proceedings a dealer had led out a cob. People were leaving by now and, among those that remained, there was widespread indifference.

It was not surprising. Piebald, sturdy, the mare was no oil painting. She had big feet, which she planted round the ring, one after the other, as if she’d been there before and didn’t expect anything to come of it. When the dealer led the horse past, the mare looked at Reggie with dark, kindly eyes, as if to say, “No matter how rough the going, I will get you home.” She found herself gripping the rail so hard that splinters worked their way under her skin.

“That one?” Hugo was incredulous. “Bit of a dobbin, isn’t she?”

Horses can heal you and that mare had saved her.

“Domino?” said Lucy.

“Black and white, you see.”

“Oh, I get it,” Lucy said.

Reggie had little experience of being interviewed and had imagined the whole process very differently. A series of questions, certainly, but with some sort of discernible order to them.

“It would be much easier for you to get an idea of what the house was like when we bought it and what we did to it if I took you on a tour.”

“That would be lovely,” said Lucy, lifting her head and giving Reggie an enormous smile.

“For example,” said Reggie, “the room where we’re sitting now was the first room we were able to occupy. We camped here for months.”

Lucy looked around as if expecting to see a tent pitched somewhere among the French and English antiques.

“My wife is too modest to say that almost everything about this house is the result of her efforts and resourcefulness,” said Hugo, coming into the room.

“This is Lucy Costello,” said Reggie.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Costello,” said Hugo, and proceeded to conduct the interview the way he wanted it to go, beginning at the beginning, clearly setting out the problems they had faced and the remedies they had come up with, going into detail where detail was required and avoiding it where it wasn’t. The tour was put on hold.

“Carrying out historical research is a bit like being a detective,” Hugo said. “Early on, we knew we needed to know more about the work of James Woods in order to interpret what he had built here at Ashenden, so we traveled to Yorkshire and saw various houses he designed, including Faraday Hall, which sadly no longer exists. What we discovered was that Woods, like many at the time, adhered closely to a particular pattern in his architecture. You might say he repeated himself. When Faraday Hall was sold and broken up, we were able to acquire a number of doors and chimneypieces for Ashenden. They fitted like a glove.”

Reggie could see that he had captured the young woman’s complete attention and that he was not unaware of the fact. It amused her, but it also made her uneasy, thinking about the phone call earlier and the hemline six inches above the knee, rather more than four inches above the knee sitting down. In due course the chandelier story came up again, but he wasn’t to know she’d told it earlier. Lucy wrote it down for a second time.

“Twelve, fifteen years ago,” Hugo was saying, “it was possible
to acquire many objects and furnishings of the right period quite reasonably, which was a great help. The most important thing, however, was to strike a balance. We couldn’t have put everything back the way it was and it would have been wrong to try. Of course, one needs to be guided by what remains, and an important part of that is atmosphere. But one also wants these places to live again, and my wife has a genius for making that happen.”

For some time Lucy had asked no questions, except to check a spelling of an unfamiliar word or name. The enormous smiles, however, were much in evidence, all directed at Hugo, along with encouraging murmurs of appreciation. At last, having taken charge of the interview almost the entire way through, he brought it to an end by asking her if there was anything else she’d like to know before they showed her round.

“Yes,” said Lucy. “How much did it all cost?”

*  *  *

It was a fine evening and they had drinks outside before dinner. The gardens that sloped down to the river were only now beginning to come together, landscape taking longer than buildings to be restored, needing to go at its own pace. In the early years they had cleared the undergrowth around the house and reseeded the lawns; then they had begun to think about uncovering the underlying structure of the terraces and how to plant them. Reggie’s particular project, the rose garden, where earlier she had cut the flowers she had taken to Bunny, was at its best in June, and she caught a teasing whiff of it in the evening air, along with the night-scented stocks she had decided to grow where their heady perfume could waft into open windows on summer nights.

“Balm for the soul, this view, after London,” said Frances, staring into the distance, her eyes unfocused behind her spectacles. Hugo’s cousin had been briefly married to an anthropologist called Benton Fenwell; it had been one of those wartime marriages that hadn’t lasted, and she had reverted to using her maiden name, which was Dunne. She worked for the BBC, where she was regarded as formidable.
“I must say, I’ve had an extremely trying day, but the aggravation seems to melt away sitting here.”

“We’ve all had a trying day,” said Hugo. “Reggie went to visit Bunny this afternoon.”

“How is he?” said Frances.

Reggie shook her head. “Not good. Hugo was planning to visit later this week, but I’ve told him he must go tomorrow. I don’t think it can be much longer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Frances. “Do you know, I don’t think I’ve seen him since your wedding.”

That wasn’t surprising. Before the BBC, Frances had worked for the British Council, which took her abroad for long periods, and she’d spent much of the war in Cairo, where she’d met the anthropologist.

It was dusk, the time of night when the bats came out, and Reggie trained her eyes to see if she could spot one flit past. Whenever she did, it always felt like a gift or an unexpected blessing. The dogs snoozed at her feet. No bats came.

Hugo said, “And this morning, a journalist came to interview us, which was an interesting experience and possibly one we shan’t repeat.”

“Oh yes?” said Frances. “Did he grill you? The papers these days seem determined to prove that there’s a skeleton in every cupboard. Happy couple in beautiful house: must be something wrong somewhere. Canker in the rose, trouble in Eden. You know the sort of thing.”

Reggie flinched at the thought of trouble in Eden, remembering the telephone call that morning.

“Are you cold, darling?” said Hugo.

“Thank you, no. Not at all.” She turned to Frances, whom she admired but also found intimidating. “It wasn’t a grilling. Far from it. Until Hugo took matters into his own hands, the questions didn’t seem to be getting at anything, really. And it wasn’t a he, it was a she.”

“Girl in an alarming dress,” said Hugo. “Rather like a walking Bridget Riley.”

“Short?” said Frances.

“Very short.”

“They all wear them like that, surely you must have noticed. There’s one at work who comes into the canteen, skirt up to her ears, and the men practically drop their trays at the sight of her. They can’t believe their luck. I suspect you protest too much.”

“Other men might drop their trays,” said Hugo. “Personally I feel as if I’m being invited to a party I have no wish to attend.”

Reggie thought that comment was for her benefit. “She asked us how much we had spent.”

“What did you tell her?” said Frances.

“Somewhere between almost nothing and quite a lot.”

“Did you show her the clever bargains you found, such as those Regency bed hangings you bought for ten pounds, and all those curtains you made yourself?”

“She wasn’t very interested in curtains,” said Reggie. But she was interested in my husband, she thought.

*  *  *

Over dinner, Hugo talked about the pavilions and their plans to convert them. “It’s too late now to show you the courtyards, but last year we laid them with the bricks we were able to salvage from the broken-down glasshouses. That’s worked out quite well, I think.”

“I can’t believe how much time and patience it takes,” said Frances, “more than I’ve got, to be sure. You’ve been at this for years.”

After coffee, Reggie rose from the table, excused herself, and said she must go to bed. The dogs lifted their heads, querying this next move.

“You go up, darling,” he said. “We shan’t be long.”

Reggie kissed Frances, and the dogs followed her out of the room.

*  *  *

“She looks tired,” said Frances. “Beautiful, as always, but tired. As if a light has been dimmed. It isn’t like her. She always has so much energy and spark.”

They had gone through to the library and were having a nightcap,
sitting opposite one another on either side of the unlit fire. Frances had kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her; she had never lost these girlish gestures and it touched him. A number of catalogs were spread across the desk, open and heavily annotated. A sale was coming up and there were one or two pictures he had his eye on.

Hugo said, “She’s more upset about Bunny than she lets on. They have always been fond of each other, and if it weren’t for him, I don’t suppose we would be here.”

“I think it’s something else,” said Frances.

“Her sister rang from Dublin this morning. She’s pregnant again.”

“Oh no. How many is it now?”

“It will be six.”

“Good Lord. Have you told her?”

“Not yet.”

Frances said, “Then tell her. You know how good Reggie is at picking up signals. She will know you have something on your mind and will be worrying what it is.”

He swirled the brandy in his glass.

“And how are you about it all?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“In such situations, people often say what a tragedy it is for the wife, forgetting that the husband is childless too.”

“Of course it saddens me that I can’t have children with the only woman with whom I’ve ever wanted to have children,” said Hugo. “And I’m afraid that I’m old-fashioned enough to think that it’s a pity no son or daughter of ours will inherit one day.”

“The house doesn’t have to stay in the family,” said Frances. “Have you thought about the National Trust?”

Hugo frowned. “I’m aware that’s an option, clearly.”

“Not keen on the idea of these beautiful rooms open to the public?” said Frances.

“I hope I’m not so hidebound as that. Nor as snobbish.” He struggled to put his feelings into words. “It’s simply that when one has lived here, one gets a sense of what the house wants, if that
doesn’t sound too fanciful. Which is to be lived in as a
home
. Not gawped at from behind a crimson rope.”

“Then what are you considering? I take it that you
have
considered?”

“Reggie and I have discussed leaving it to Charlie.”

“Just Charlie?” said Frances.

“Primogeniture. Closest male relative on the male side. Straightforward that way.”

“Now that
is
old-fashioned.” Frances wagged a finger at him. “Charlie has a sister. Why not leave it to both of them?”

BOOK: Ashenden
9.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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