Page 83 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘He said they were there when he locked it up, so you must have somehow broken in and stolen them. I told him not to be daft: the spare keys to all the padlocks were hung in the office.’
‘I left all the designs, cartoons and cutlines for commissions that belonged to the workshop behind. The rest were my personal property.’
‘Yes, it was understood that you could take personal commissions for anything that wasn’t going to be made in Julian’s workshop, and I’ve already told him so. Ivan would bear me out.’
‘Why was he looking for my cartoons, anyway?’
‘I think he wants Willow to try and copy your style, though from what I’ve seen, she hasn’t got the faintest idea. Nat’s following up some of the enquiries Julian got at the end of last year, so he means to carry on producing windows in his dad’s style, which he’s quite capable of.’
‘Yes, and he’s a good craftsman. They’ll just lack that spark of originality.’
I was glad I wouldn’t be there to see that happen.
Chris brought Fang back on Wednesday evening and I’m sure Carey had missed him as much as I had. I only hoped it had been worthwhile …
Fang, wearing a quiet and thoughtful air, followed Chris into thehouse but he seemed delighted to see us, wagging his ratty tail and exposing his long sharp teeth in a vulpine grin.
‘I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with him now,’ Chris said, accepting both a cup of coffee and a sizeable cheque. ‘He may still growl to warn you when someone’s about, especially if he doesn’t like that person, but he won’t bite. Well, not unless they’re attacking you.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got any homicidal neighbours,’ Carey said. ‘They all seem very nice.’
‘Mostof them,’ I amended, because I thought Ella was looking increasingly homicidal. And I did still occasionally wonder about that stone ball, even though I told myself I was being over-imaginative.
Maybe Chris should take her away and see if he could do anything to sweeten her temper a bit?
While we were chatting, I explained that I’d never had a dog, because of the glass in the workshop cutting their feet, and he said trained search-and-rescue dogs often wore heatproof boots for searching buildings and perhaps they were made in Fang’s size.
‘Some of the search dogs are spaniels, and Fang does have surprisingly large feet for his size.’
‘That would be a good solution if I needed to have him down there with me a lot, because Carey was away or something. I’ll have a look on the internet and see what I can find … if you think he would let me put them on and not immediately chew them off again.’
‘He’s a changed dog,’ Chris said. ‘Anyway, he can always come back to me for a couple of days and I’ll whisper him into his boots.’
Oh, joy in the morning! At last we finally had working broadband.
The first thing I did was redirect my mail from both my old home and Julian’s workshop to Mossby, while Carey was checking what the viewing figures were like for the newComplete Country Cottageseries. They seemed to have slumped radically for the second episode.
‘That’s not a surprise, seeing he’s just vandalizing the cottage. They should have experts to stop him ruining it and wiping off great chunks of history.’
‘Heissupposed to be the expert,’ I pointed out.
‘Only because he presented one series about historic buildings in Scotland!’
‘If the viewing figures don’t pick up, then they won’t ask him to do another series – but they might try and getyouback,’ I suggested. ‘They were a bit hasty ditching you and now you’re almost as good as new, they probably regret it. The slight limp and the black cane are all a bit alluringly Mr Rochester – the maimed but romantic hero.’
‘Ho, ho,’ Carey said. ‘And there’s no way I’d go back now … though I suppose they might want my Mossby series when they find out about it. But there’s an email here from Nick saying the opposition are seriously interested and negotiating for it. I must let my agent know.’
‘It’s wonderful to have broadband again, but we’ve both got so much to catch up on,’ I said. ‘I’m going right down my list of tools and equipment later and ordering everything, even if it is going to bust whatever’s left of the budget after the kiln and filtration systems. I’ve just got to get back to work as soon as possible and have some commissions coming in.’
‘Nick will want to film the workshop being fitted out and finished, and he wants us to restage finding those cartoons in the attic.’
‘I amnottaking them off the wall and rolling them up!’
‘You won’t have to, Shrimp: you can just put a couple of rolls of cartridge paper in the box, instead.’
‘I suppose so, though I was going to take the metal box down to the workshop. I’d better wait till Nick’s been now.’
‘I’m going to carry on working on the landing upstairs. I’ve got the undercoat, but I’m still trying to find the right shade of white paint,’ Carey said. ‘I found some early photos of Mossby in my uncle’s desk, showing how light the house used to look – and there was a family tree, too. Jessie Kaye’s husband seems to have died within a year of their marriage, so they didn’t have long together.’
