Page 81 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Of course, and I’m sure she’s done her best, but I think a building of that age and size needs a bit more attention than one person can give it.’
I was quite proud of that bit of tact.
‘I did see Ella letting herself into the old wing earlier,’ said Carey, when I relayed this conversation and her snub. ‘It looks like she’ll carry on haunting the place with the other ghosts, whether we like it or not.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s a harmless obsession, and the door from the muniment room is usually locked from this side, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, and the door from the tower on the upper floor, too. So, since she doesn’t have those keys, she can’t hauntus!’
After dinner, which I whipped up from Molly’s delicious selection of healthy ready meals, we both went into the studio to do some work, only I got distracted again by the cartoons. This time, though, it was the ones for Jessie Kaye’s own windows. There was such a contrast in style between the earlier, more stylized roses of the hall panels and the much freer form of the later window.
The latter carried on the same rose theme, but with the unusual juxtaposition of deep gold-pinks and amber and the flowing lines that made her later work so instantly recognizable.
The notes she’d scribbled were about the meaning of flowers, especially the different colours of roses. I had a little book about it somewhere – the Victorians were very keen on that kind of thing.
Carey was still working away on his laptop when I emerged from my reverie, updating his notes and photographs –andhis thoughts, because they would all go to make up the first ofThe Mossby Sagas, an upstairs/downstairs epic in which we played all the main roles ourselves, with a fluctuating cast of extras.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t forgotten that the second ofThe CompleteCountry Cottageprogrammes was on that night, and insisted we both go into the sitting room to watch it, though I knew it would only infuriate him – and it certainly did that, all right.
In that evening’s instalment, they exposed a section of ancient wall that had faint traces of painting on it– and Seamus announced his plans to remove it, so that two small rooms could be turned into one, with the central fireplaces left back to back as a feature.
‘And,’ he added complacently to the camera, ‘a fragment of the painted wall will be framed and hung in the new room.’
‘Noooo!’ groaned Carey, running his fingers through his burnished hair so that it stood up wildly. ‘It’s probably medieval! It’s sacrilege! It should be left where it is!’
But the cottage wasn’t listed and no one seemed interested in stopping Seamus from doing anything he liked to it.
Carey was so furious that he tried to ring the director, though he hadn’t been answering his calls since the accident. When that didn’t work, he rang Daisy, whodidanswer, though after listening to Carey’s rant on the atrocities Seamus was committing, she probably wished she hadn’t.
I could only hear his side of the conversation, but I could fill in the gaps for myself.
‘You can’t let him go on doing these things! It’s criminal!’
She must have reminded him that the whole of this series was already in the can, so she couldn’t stop him even if she wanted to, because he said, ‘Then stop him destroying any other wonderful old buildings in the next series.’ And then he abruptly ended the call and sat there breathing heavily through his nose, like a dragon about to emit fire.
‘I think we’ll go to the pub now,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll drive, so you can anaesthetize yourself with Old Spoggit Brown.’
Mr Browne and Ralph decided between themselves, without consulting me, that the workshop exterior and the square of barns and stables behind it should be stuccoed white to match the Lodge.
I thought this a needless expense, since they could not be seen from the house or terraces, the shrubbery hiding them – and also, I was starting to become increasingly alarmed by Honoria’s hints that Ralph was running through his fortune at an astonishing pace.
I knew that his father had been a wealthy man when he married the last of the Revells and took her name, but surely he must have left Ralph a great fortune, to enable him to have carried out the rebuilding of Mossby?
But I could see Honoria was becoming ever more worried with every lavish extra expense … and I began to worry, too. There was also the coming child to think of now …
28
Joy in the Morning
Soon after I’d arrived at the workshop the following morning, Carey rang my mobile and said the postman had just delivered two sacks of fan mail and a huge parcel containing seventeen more jumpers, hand-knitted by fans.
This is what happens when you mention in a programme that the unusual jumper you’re wearing had been an unexpected gift from a viewer …
‘And there’s one woollen legging,’ he added. ‘Muriel of Leicester, aged eighty-six, knitted it for me to wear under my jeans to keep my bad leg warm.’
‘That was really sweet and thoughtful. I think I should send her a picture of you wearing it, without the jeans.’
‘No chance!’ he said, then added that Mr Wilmslow had rung up too and was coming to Mossby that afternoon, about four.
