Page 14 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
Mr Revell had inherited the property some few years previously and had since pulled down half of it, before embarking on an extensive programme of remodelling and extending in the new style. Everything, including the interior furnishings and fittings, had been designed especially for it, down to the smallest detail.
Father, upon first accepting the work, had travelled up to Lancashire to view the house for himself, then again to oversee the installation of the main windows and described to me how Mr Revell’s architect and good friend, Mr Rosslyn Browne, had incorporated what remained of an existing Elizabethan wing and an ancient tower into the new house, which stood on a terraced bluff above a small lake and woodlands. He’d been surprised to find both the new building and the ancient tower rendered in white stucco, such as he’d seen favoured in the Lake District, rather than leaving revealed the honest workmanship of the grey local stone.
However, the house was very light, airy and modern and the effect pleasing.
6
Spelt Out
It was late when I finally went back to the dark and silent cottage and let myself into the kitchen, switching on all the lights. I didn’t hang up the workshop keys, because I’d put them on the ring with my house ones, and if Nat wanted them back he’d have to fight me for them.
There was no sign of the Terrible Two and the house felt empty, so I assumed they had not yet returned. I sort of hoped one of those sudden and hungry sink holes had opened up underneath their Chelsea Tractor and swallowed them whole. Not that you’d get much meat off Willow: she looked all hair and gristle.
The kitchen was still littered with dirty mugs and crockery, evidently from Nat and Willow’s breakfast and lunch, which I ignored, though I did thoroughly scrub out my and Julian’s mugs before hanging them in their right place on the dresser.
By now I was so spaced out with weariness that my head seemed to float above me attached only by a string. I felt hollow, too, but then I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten anything. I can’t say I felt hungry, but I heated some soup from a tin and had that with a hunk of strange, dark bread from the end of a loaf that was in the fridge. I washed it down with cocoa, laced with a slug of dark rum. It didn’t exactly shiver my timbers, but I didn’t feel quite so shaky after that.
When I went upstairs I automatically walked into the bedroom I’d shared for so many years with Julian – then immediately recoiled, feeling as if I’d been both burgled and invaded simultaneously, for there were belongings scattered everywhere, and none of them mine. Themakeup littering the dressing table, the stiletto shoes kicked off by the bed, the jacket hooked over the back of a chair – they were all alien.
I went out again, closing the door behind me, and along the landing to the boxroom, where I’d dumped my luggage earlier. I’d been too overwrought to notice anything then, but now I saw that the clothes from my wardrobe had been heaped on a padded ottoman under the window, while the contents of my chest of drawers and my personal effects were in a cardboard box on the bed.
Not only did I now feel burgled, but as if someone had also struck me a very low blow, one that just then I had no resources left to deal with.
I found clean pyjamas overlooked in the airing cupboard on the landing, then pushed the box on to the floor and tumbled into bed, where, despite the turmoil in my mind, I fell deeply and instantly into an abyss of sleep.
Something woke me from the depths of a comforting dream of my early, happy childhood. Carey and I had been sitting at the newspaper-covered dining table in our tiny cottage, each absorbed in our different interests. I was drawing a dead mole I’d found in the garden, the small black velvety corpse laid out to show the pink palms of the shovel-shaped front feet, while Carey was carefully taking a clock to pieces and making notes as he did so.
He had a passion for knowing how all kinds of things worked, so if he wasn’t avidly watching someone lay bricks, repair a car, or shoe a horse, he was taking things apart – and even sometimes managing to put them back again, in working order.
One advantage of having a carelessly bohemian mother had been that she’d had no objection to our doing this kind of thing in the house, despite the possibility of germs and mess. Carey’s mother, Lila, would have banished the mole to the garden and the clock dismembering to the workbench in the shed.
Reluctantly surfacing from this golden dream, I opened my eyes to find myself in the back bedroom of the cottage – and only then did the full recollection of yesterday’s nightmare homecoming rush in upon me like a dark and unsavoury tide.
I’d slept much later than usual, for already daylight filtered through the sunflower-yellow curtains, but somethinghadwoken me up and I wondered what it was.
Maybe it was the back door slamming, for now two car doors did the same thing, like synchronized pistol shots. Then came the roar of an engine and the heavy scrunch of gravel under the tyres of Nat’s four-by-four. Julian and I could never imagine why they would need a monster off-road vehicle when they lived in London.
The house was now silent again, as if holding its breath. I padded down to the kitchen in my pyjamas and bare feet and found the debris of breakfast had been added to the remains of the previous day’s dirty crockery. Did they think we had a servant popping in and out to clear things away? Or were they expectingmeto take up that role, banished like Cinderella to kitchen duties?
As I put the kettle on I spotted an envelope propped up against the teapot on the table, with my name on it. Inside was a brief note from Willow and several folded sheets of thin paper.
She’d written:
We’ve gone out, but here’s the inventory I made of the contents of the house. Perhaps you could circle whatever is your own personal property on both copies so we can go through it together later. Nat will be doing the same in the workshop tomorrow. He’s been too busy with all the arrangements to do it sooner.
Laters,
Willow
PS Please do not eat the rest of my special spelt bread – it appears to be impossible to buy it around here.
So that was what the weird loaf was.
I hoped they got back verymuchlaters. In fact, the laters the better.
I read the note again with a sense of disbelief, before glancing at the inventory: she certainly hadn’t let the grass grow under her feet. Butthen, last night they’d seemed totally certain that Nat would inherit everything and I nothing at all, not even, it appeared, the common courtesy of giving me time to come to terms with my loss and make arrangements for my future.
I found it hard to believe that Julian’s intentions and our long relationship, not to mention all the years of hard work and happiness we’d invested in the business and our home, counted for nothing. For a start, was it right that I could be turfed out with so little warning? Maybe it was something I could ask the solicitor about tomorrow.
