Page 14 of The Christmas Invitation
‘Tottie’s father had spent a lot of time in France and Italy, learning to paint at variousateliers, but he was something of a dilettante. The family fortune came from their brewery, but he sold Gillyflower’s Ales to a larger company and then lived on his capital. A bit like Henry’s brother, George, who sold out of the army the minute he married an heiress, and had no sense with money … though Tottie’s father doesn’t seem to have drunk to excess, womanized or gambled, which is something.’
‘I … suppose it is!’ I was taken aback by this frankness and her words also cast an unedifying light on the late George Doome. The brothers were obviously totally unalike.
Clara turned to more practical matters. ‘We had the studio rewired along with the rest of the house when we bought it and it’s been updated again since, so there’s lots of lighting. We had these wall lights installed.’
She demonstrated and the long wall opposite suddenly sprang into a patchwork of paintings of all sizes, stretching from floor to ceiling and with barely an inch between them.
I went across to have a closer look. ‘Were all these painted by Tottie’s father?’
‘Yes, they’re all Adrian Gillyflower’s work. There are still one or two dotted around the house and several in Tottie’s bedroom, but she moved most of them in here when she was attempting to run the place as a bed and breakfast. What do you think of them?’
I could see they were mostly portraits, or still lives of fruit and flowers, and his style appeared to have been totally uninfluenced by any artistic trends later than the eighteenth century.
‘Competent but uninspired,’ I said at last, cautiously.
‘Yes, that’s what I thought, too. You can learn technique in any art form, but not everyone can breathe life into it. But Tottie thinks Papa was an undiscovered genius, so we won’t disillusion her.’
‘No, of course not, I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘So, will this studio suit you? Of course, you can set up camp in here, but paint me and Henry elsewhere in the house if you want to. See how you feel about it tomorrow, when you’ve settled in and got your bearings.’
We went out and she indicated another door that led to her own study overlooking the rear garden, the small library, which was apparently Tottie’s domain but which she mainly used to store the materials for various kinds of craftwork, and the passage that led to the formal dining room, a garden hall with a cloakroom and the door to the conservatory off it, the kitchen and utility rooms. A faint clashing of pan lids and voices could be heard from that direction.
‘That’s Den and Tottie making a start on dinner,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave them to it. Den can be quite an inspired cook, but Tottie has no imagination. She wasn’t brought up to cook and clean, which was part of the reason her B&B business never took off. Dumping a loaf, butter and pot of jam in front of your guests when they come down for breakfast and telling them to help themselves to the stewed coffee on the hotplate, because she was off out to see to her bees, or do some gardening, was never going to go down well.’
‘I suppose not,’ I said, though if I’d been one of the guests I’d have quite liked that.
‘It was home-made jam, though: shehaslearned to make preserves and pickles, and also wine and mead.’
‘Oh? River makes a kind of medicinal mead from the honey bees at the Farm.’
‘Then they’ll have something in common to talk about when he visits,’ Clara said. ‘Tottie’s officially our housekeeper-cum-gardener, but she’s cast herself as occasional cook’s assistant to Den. Den’s such a blessing! Henry picked him up in Greece years ago, before we married. He’d just got out of the local gaol – some slight disagreement in a bar – and he’s proved quite invaluable ever since. He can turn his hand to anything.’
‘Really?’ I said, thinking that Clara and Henry seemed to attach people to them.Iwas already starting to get the feeling that they wouldn’t turn a hair if I never left at all either, just embedded myself in the studio and appeared for meals.
Not that that was likely to happen, with Lex Mariner in the offing …
‘So, Tottie and Den aren’t … ?’ I paused, searching for the right phrase and Clara looked at me, puzzled. Then her face cleared.
‘Oh, no, they’re not in a relationship, just good friends,’ she said.
I’d thought they seemed an extremely unlikely couple, but you just never knew with these things!
‘That tattoo on Den’s neck is … interesting. He told me he’d got it in Brixton. The prison?’
‘Probably. He did have a chequered career before he met Henry, but just petty larceny and he could never resist an expensive car if he found one for the taking. He can drive Henry’s vintage Jaguar whenever he likes now, though, so he doesn’t do that any more.’
She turned and headed briskly for the main staircase. ‘Come on, I’ll show you your bedroom and the nearest bathroom, then leave you to unpack before dinner.’
She grasped the fierce wooden eagle on the newel post familiarly round the neck as she began to climb up to where, at the top, a passage led off on either side.
‘Teddy’s room, mine and Henry’s, and Lex’s are to the right,’ she said. ‘You’re down here to the left, near Tottie.’
‘I thought you said Lex didn’t live with you?’ I blurted out, startled.
‘Oh, no, but some years ago he did live with us for a time, before he set up his business in Great Mumming. He often stays at the weekends,andover Christmas, too, of course.’
That did it! I’d be very sure to leave with River after the Winter Solstice and only hoped Lex kept clear till then. It was only a fortnight, so surely he could manage that? He must want to see me as little as I wanted to see him.
