Page 46 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Wow!’ I whispered finally. ‘These are so beautiful – and technicallyreallyclever.’
‘They’d look much better if all the woodwork in here was repainted white, instead of this dark green. You can see the original colour where it’s chipped at the corner.’
‘Yes, that would make it much lighter in here,’ I agreed, running a finger lovingly over a piece of seedy ochre glass, feeling the tiny bubbles nearest the surface. You have to be so careful not to break into them when you’re cutting and leading-up, or the cement seeps into the bubbles and it doesn’t look good.
‘If you could possibly bear to tear yourself away, there’s more house to be seen – and after all, now you’re living here, you can come and gloat over them any time you like,’ he said finally.
‘I suppose so,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘Where next?’
‘This way, madam,’ he said, back to his tour guide role. ‘On your right is the cloakroom I mentioned, with the picture of Windsor Castle in the toilet bowl.’
‘Every home should have one.’
‘The porch has the same plain octagonal and square patternedwindows as the rest of the house, though the ones in the bays also have quite intricate borders – as you can see,’ he added, throwing open a door in the half-glazed wall, revealing a vast room with two curved bay windows looking out on to the front, with a door to the veranda between them.
‘Ella calls this the drawing room, though it seems to have been intended to be multi-purpose, what with the billiard table and the veranda.’
The billiard table was at the far end of the room, across an acre of original carpet, but round the hearth was an arrangement of slightly faded and shabby period seating. A grand staircase vanished upwards and the whole effect was a bit like a stage set for an Agatha Christie play.
‘It wouldn’t be exactly cosy, unless you’d got lots of people staying, but it has a sort of charm to it,’ I commented.
‘If you want cosy, have a look in here,’ he said, opening the door to a small sitting room with a TV, bookshelves and rubbed, squishy velvet sofas and armchairs.
‘That’s more like it. You could relax in here,’ I approved. ‘What’s through the teeny-tiny door?’
‘The ancient tower that links the two parts of the house,’ he said, opening it. He had to duck his head to avoid knocking it as he went through, but it was just the right height for Hobbit-sized me.
‘My uncle had a lift put in, as you can see, and though the cage looks a bit antique, the workings have been modernized and regularly serviced.’
The tower’s narrow window had been glazed and the large stone fireplace was obviously original, but probably not the plastering and panelling on the walls, or the polished wooden floor.
‘The bookshelves in the sitting room are sort of an overflow from the library, which is in the muniment room next door, the only part of the old wing the family regularly used. But we’ll go upstairs first and work our way down to it.’
With some trepidation, I let him take me up in the lift and I could tell from the way he operated it that it was a new toy, though at least that meant he would sometimes use it while his leg was mending.
‘You can explore the bedrooms in the new part on your own later,’ he said as we stepped out into a room that was a replica of the one below, except that the stone fireplace was carved with a battered coat of arms and there was a glass-lidded curio cabinet.
It was lined in dark velvet, so it was hard to see what was inside. I’d just begun to lift the lid when Carey said, impatiently, ‘Never mind that! This is supposed to be a quick overview of the whole place, so you can get your bearings: we haven’t got time to faff about with curios. Aren’t you dying to see Lady Anne’s bedchamber?’
I reluctantly lowered the lid and followed him through another Hobbit-sized door … and stopped just inside the bedchamber, shivering.
In the ancient tower I’d had no sense of the pressing presence of past centuries, yet as the chilly darkness of this room heavily enfolded me, it felt as though I was stepping back into another age.
Politeness made me hide my impatience while we admired the paintings of Revell ancestors in the Long Gallery, but it was soon rewarded when we descended the stairs, for on the half-landing were five narrow rectangular windows.
The two on either side of the central one were of great antiquity and consisted of diamond panes in uneven greenish glass, inset with brightly coloured heraldic devices. They were bordered with the woven strap pattern Father had copied in his own work.
The middle window was constructed in a similar style, with the woven border and quarry panes, but the central device in this case was a painted and silver-stained depiction of the old house, with two women standing on one side, and a girl kneeling in prayer on the other. Below, a Cavalier seemed to be striding through a cornfield, while high above, a spiked sun shone down on all.
The diamond panes of clear glass surrounding these figures each contained a central circle or square painted with a different and seemingly random motif. At the bottom had been lettered:
Lady Anne Revell caused me to be made: let no man remove me.
To God, all things are clear.
‘You seem quite dumbstruck, Miss Kaye!’ said Mr Revell, amused.
‘I told you it was remarkable, Jessie,’ Father said. ‘What do you make of it?’
