Page 33 of The Christmas Invitation
The prospect didn’t appear to fill her with joy.
‘Why? He can’t want all the bedrooms for guests, surely?’ asked Clara.
‘Hesayshe will.’ I thought Sybil had forgotten I was there, but evidently she talked as frankly about personal matters in front of total strangers as the Doomes did, because she explained for my benefit: ‘The plan is that the Gidneys will stay on as they are now. They live in a cottage in the groundsand Gidney looks after things generally while Mrs Gidney is housekeeper and cook. But Mark has two friends who will come to stay during the wedding season to cater exclusively for the receptions.’
‘Which will be a short season, with the weather as it is up here –andif he gets the business off the ground,’ Tottie said.
‘He applied for all the permissions needed ages ago, before he came back permanently, and the barn is nearly completed,’ Sybil said. ‘The builders knocked through into the old scullery before they downed tools and left.’
‘Mrs Gidney won’t like sharing her kitchen, will she?’ Clara said.
‘She won’t have to, because several of the small rooms behind it, which back on to the barn wall, have been knocked together into what will become one huge new catering-standard kitchen.’
‘It all sounds very expensive,’ Clara said, then added to Mark as he reappeared, ‘What exactlyareyou planning for Underhill?’
Mark was carrying a large tray, laden with a teapot, crockery and a plate piled with sandwiches.
‘If those dogs come anywhere near the food, they’re going out in the hall,’ he said, sitting down opposite and favouring me with another slightly smouldering, but seemingly approving, stare.
‘Underhill needs to pay its way if it’s to stay in the family,’ he said to me, as if we were alone together. ‘My grandfather didn’t leave much money and what there was, was tied up.’
He gave his mother a look as if that had been all her fault.
‘Your mother looked after George for several years with little thanks and no salary, so it was right that he should provide for her,’ Clara said. ‘She only had a bit of a widow’s pension and what she made from breeding the dogs.’
‘It needn’t have been so much, though. In fact, you can’t really need half of it, Mum, so I’ve no idea what you do with it all.’
‘Oh, but it’s not that much, Mark …’ Sybil protested, looking flustered, so that I started to wonder if she might indeed have a secret vice, though it was hard to imagine what. ‘Now I’m starting to pay for the horses’ upkeep it’s going to make quite a dent in my income: shoeing, feed and the vet’s bills.’
‘And it will have to stretch to paying some of Len’s wages too, if he’s going to continue as groom as well as my gardener,’ Mark pointed out.
Sybil looked crushed and Mark turned to me again.
‘I’m going to advertise the manor as a wedding reception venue – that will all be in the old barn and coach house, which I’ve thrown into one big room – and I hope to hold weddings too, eventually. Perhaps in the hall; the half-landing would make a great stage for the ceremony with the guests standing below.’
‘I can imagine that,’ I agreed. ‘Or, at least, I could if it was brighter and warmer.’
‘I only intend opening from spring to early autumn, because you can’t trust the weather up here outside that. It means it’ll have to be very upmarket and expensive, so I can make a lot of money in a short space of time.’
He’d obviously thought it out, but would people be willing to come all the way out here to the back of beyond for their receptions?
‘I’ll just shut the place up in winter, with the Gidneys to look after it, and go off to Italy,’ he continued. ‘I have a house there.’
Presumably his mother would also be shut up at Underhill for the winter with the Gidneys.
‘I should be able to create six letting bedrooms with en-suite facilities, plus my apartment over the east wing and another suite of rooms for Art and Gerry.’
‘Art and Gerry are Mark’s friends,’ explained Sybil. ‘Art is a chef and Gerry … arranges things.’
‘Gerry has a lot of artistic flair and he’ll organize everything for the receptions – flowers, table settings, all of that,’ said Mark. ‘And Art will cater for the wedding dinners, or buffets, or whatever they choose, and cook for any of the bridal party staying here.’
‘The boy has got it all planned out, you have to hand him that,’ Tottie said, and the boy – who looked to be not much younger than my thirty-six years – scowled at her. It seemed to be his default expression. He should really have been born to an earlier generation because he was an Angry Young Man personified.
Sybil began to pour tea and Tottie passed plates. I was happy to see there were cheese and tomato sandwiches as well as egg and cress, and no sign of the ham.
Mark began to tell me all the details of his renovation ups and downs, which were amusing. His determination that he would finish in time to open in spring, no matter what, was quite admirable.
I did think he was being more than a bit mean towards his mother, but I could see he needed every last penny he could scrape together. And also, he must love Underhill to do it, though he seemed to love his Italian house even more, and waxed lyrical about the sun, the vines, the lemon tree in the garden and the beautiful views … which I must come and see on a visit one of these days.
