Page 91 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
But I decided that whenIwas in a situation to start paying Ivan for his time, I’d get him to find out how much he could earn before it affected his pension and then put him on the official payroll.
As well as all the workmen and visitors, there was a constant flow ofdelivery vans trundling up and down the drive. Much of it was for the workshop, where we stacked everything in the back room next to the newly installed door to Carey’s realm, ready to be unpacked.
Ivan and I were like children with Christmas presents, not knowing which box or parcel to open first: small packages of glass paint and silver stain, a big box of shiny new horseshoe nails, a crate of imported German flashed glass in interesting colour combinations … ginormous rolls of wide cartridge paper – you just never knew what you’d discover next and everything found its rightful place in the workshop.
I’d bought one small light-box, but Grant and Ivan were constructing a larger one on wheels in Ivan’s shed, as a gift to the new workshop, along with a set of wooden battens in different sizes for edging the panels as they were being leaded up. It’s the small things that tend to get overlooked – Ivan had cut some small spare lathekins, the pointed and smoothly shaped pieces of wood we used to open out the flanges of the lead calme as we worked and, one weekend, Louis sandpapered them smooth.
Every morning I’d get up in the early hours, as I always did before Julian’s illness, and go down to the studio next to the kitchen to work for a while. Then, when Carey came down for breakfast, we’d discuss what we were each doing that day. Sometimes we’d have lunch together, too, or he’d bring sandwiches down to the workshop, but if not, we caught up at dinner, when it might be just us – and Fang – or quite a crowd if there were helpers staying and perhaps Nick and the crew up filming. The big drawing room would come into its own on these occasions and the old billiard table got a bit of use. I could see what a lovely room it would be in summer, with the doors from the little veranda wide open on to the terrace and that wonderful view down to the lake and the trees.
Catering was easy enough. Molly kept the freezer stocked up, and now we had broadband the supermarket shopping took minutes. We’d found a choice of delivery takeaway meals to choose from, too, for the days when we were too tired to even open the microwave door.
But Carey’s interest in cooking was rapidly reviving and he bought a bread-making machine. Soon the smell of freshly baked loaves drove me wild every morning and, given the number of calories I wasconsuming, if I hadn’t been working so hard I’d probably have been spherical and could roll down to the workshop every day.
After dinner we quite often went to the pub, especially when we had visitors, and Carey now walked there and back. He seemed to be gaining strength in his bad leg every day and though he always had his black stick studded with shiny silver skulls with him, it seemed now to have become more of a habit, rather than something he actually needed. Once his new series aired, he’d probably start getting walking sticks by every post, as well as the hand-knitted jumpers.
Carey and I were both happy and excited about what we were doing. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten Julian, or didn’t mourn him, but the Julian I’d fallen in love with had vanished with his first stroke and I’d already done my grieving for the life we’d shared together, long before the second …
Fang, due to the dog whispering, trotted docilely about after me or Carey without biting anyone. The only person he really growled at was Ella.
And who could blame him? She was still being really odd and spent hours in the old wing – sometimes at very strange times of day – obsessively polishing the panelling, or communing with the ghosts, or whatever it was she did. She certainly made a point of being there on Fridays, when Mitch and Jenny were cleaning, jealously watching to make sure they didn’t encroach on what she clearly considered to be her own special task.
‘Jenny said Ella now chats to them a bit sometimes,’ I told Carey one day, when I’d been up at the house while the cleaners were having a cup of tea. ‘So it’s just you and me she’s ignoring. And Mitch said he didn’t like to tell tales, but while he was walking along the passage to the muniment room earlier, he was sure he could hear the roll top of the desk going down – and when he went in, she seemed to be locking it.’
‘Remember that other time, when it looked as if she was trying to open it? Perhaps she’s got hold of a key,’ he said, then got up. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a look.’
We went through the house to the muniment room, where everything looked the way it usually did, except cleaner.
‘Youdidput the copy of your will in there, like I suggested, didn’t you?’ I asked as he produced his own key and rolled up the top of the bureau.
‘Yes, and it’s still there, but in a different pigeon hole to the one I left it in!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, positive. It was in the right-hand cubbyhole and now it’s in the one next to it, with the writing paper and envelopes.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Well, you did say it would be a good idea if she knew about my will, in case she’d overheard that conversation with Mr Wilmslow about a codicil leaving her the house and decided to poison me or something equally Agatha Christie!’
‘I did. And I wish she’d found out earlier, because I still have a sneaking suspicion that she had something to do with the stone ball nearly killing you.’
‘Oh, come on, Shrimp,’ he said incredulously. ‘Even if she spotted us from the Lodge, and decided to creep down through the shrubbery to listen to what we were saying, why would she be carrying some kind of box around with her to stand on? Or even know the ball was loose, so that there might be a chance of pushing it off on to my head? It doesn’t add up.’
He had a point; several, in fact.
‘It does sound ridiculous when you put it like that,’ I admitted. ‘But somebodyhadstood on a box behind that pillar, because I saw the marks.’
‘There’s probably a perfectly simple explanation. It was only a couple of faint lines, wasn’t it? Someone could have propped a bike there or something.’
I didn’t point out that bike wheels didn’t have corners.
‘Anyway, Ella knows now that there’s a brand-new will, so she’s got nothing to gain by bumping me off,’ he said.
‘No … I suppose she wouldn’t do it just for a few thousand pounds, or simply because she resented your existence.’
‘Depends how dippy she is, but probably not. I have to say, she does look increasingly strange and I’ve had enough of being cut dead on my own property: I’m going to have to have a word with Clem.’
But when he reported back on the conversation, it didn’t seem to have gone terribly well.
‘I told Clem that we were finding Ella’s behaviour disturbing and hinted that perhaps she might have some mental health issues she should talk to her doctor about and he was quite indignant,’ Carey said.
