Page 18 of One More Christmas at the Castle
There was a cloakroom off the hall, which was large and also used for arranging flowers, with a shelf for vases and a table.
‘And next to it, the door to the wine cellar and the boiler room, but you can look at those later,’ she said, and then led the way back into the bright, warm kitchen again.
‘That all seems fine,’ said Henry. ‘We can settle in and study all your helpful files later, when we’ve seen Mrs Powys, but I’m sure we’ll manage perfectly well.’
‘I will come in in the morning to make sure all is well, but then I go home to wait for the ambulance bringing my husband and to cook his favourite dinner.’
‘What is his favourite dinner?’ I asked curiously, wondering if it was traditional meat and two veg, or some Greek speciality she had converted him to.
‘Haggis with neeps and tatties,’ she said. ‘He is Scottish, and his late mother, she taught me to make the traditional food.’
She glanced at the wall clock. ‘It is not yet time for me to take the tea through and for the Lady to see you, so you could bring in your things?’
‘Good idea, and I’d like to tidy up a bit before I see her, too,’ I said.
The light was going and Maria said she would show Henry the outbuildings in the morning.
‘Yes, that can wait,’ Henry agreed. ‘Come on, Dido, let’s bring in the stuff. We can pile it in the corner of that vast sitting room and sort it out later.’
Maria looked up at a row of servants’ bells, which I hadn’t previously noticed.
‘The Lady knows I am still here, so she may ring for her tea. But now her godson has arrived, she may forget. He is to stay till after Christmas, to make notes for the book he will write about Mr Powys, who was a very famous and clever man, so they will be talking, talking …’
We donned our Arctic gear and emptied the contents of the van first into the Garden Hall, and then onwards to the staff sitting room.
Last out of the van was the snowboard, which Maria eyed dubiously.
‘You bring your surfboards at this time of year, and so far from the sea?’
‘Snowboard,’ Henry explained.
She opened a large cupboard under the hall stairs. ‘You put in here with the skis and skates and golf clubs,’ she said firmly.
We stripped off our outdoor clothing, faces glowing from the cold after even such a short exposure to the elements, and then left Maria assembling the tea tray, while we took our suitcases and went to freshen up, ready to meet our formidable-sounding employer.
When we came back to the kitchen, the tea tray was groaning under the weight of the pot, crockery and a small cafetière of coffee, plus a plate of that sticky Greek delicacy, baklava.
‘You could do with a tea trolley—’ Henry began, when a bell suddenly jangled on the board over the door, making us jump.
‘You had both better come with me. She is impatient.’
Henry insisted on carrying the heavy tray for Maria and she led the way through a door on the other side of the Garden Hall and through what must have been the original manor house, not letting us linger, but announcing the purpose of the rooms we passed, like a house agent.
‘Morning room, dining room, Mr Powys’s old study, which is kept locked … the summer sitting room and the library.’
Through the open door of the latter, I saw a hard drive and monitor sitting incongruously on an antique leather-topped desk, a printer next to it on a small table.
‘Did you say you could get broadband here, then?’ Henry asked.
‘Yes, but not fast.’
‘I didn’t really think I’d be streaming films in the evenings,’ Henry muttered to me.
‘You’ll be too exhausted after lugging firewood about, anyway,’ I whispered back, as Maria passed through an archway. ‘You might even have to chop it.’
The stone archway, an example of Victorian Gothic Revival, marked the transition from the oldest part of the house to the huge, square hall of the battlemented tower. It had a tiled floor with an inset circular mosaic in the middle.
‘Wow!’ I said, but we barely had a chance to take in its magnificence, before Maria was chivvying us across it, practicallysnapping at our heels like a sheepdog, and into a warm, well-lit sitting room on the other side.
