Page 50 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘So much for avoiding him, in case he realizes you were the teenager monster from hell.’
‘If it hasn’t clicked by now, it isn’t going to,’ I said with dignity. ‘So long as I don’t let slip anything that would jog his memory, of course …’
‘Famous last words, O Queen of Carthage,’ he said. ‘What exactly are you going to help him with?’
‘Just moving things from the cupboards and shelves on to the pasting tables for him to sort more easily. Everything is so crammed in, he can’t tell what’s there, and not only is he looking for material for the biography, but Mrs Powys has asked him to put aside any papers that should go to Mr Powys’s old university’s archive.’
‘Sooner him than me,’ he said. ‘Maria sent me a text to say she’d already pre-booked the supermarket delivery slot for tomorrow, by the way, so I’d better go and add everything we need to that before I do anything else.’
I handed him the shopping list and he said, ‘It might take me a while, but after that, this little elf is going to light the sitting-room fire and then restock the drinks in there before anyone gets home. And on the way back, I’m going to collect all those gorgeous copper and brass diving helmets from the Great Hall and put them in that little boot room, ready for a good polish.’
‘Well, I’m dying to clean out those cupboards and shelves in the study, so we each have our own idea of fun,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think you’ll get all that done before you take tea through!’
‘No, I’ll probably be polishing after that – and I still have all the joy of reorganizing the cellar, too, before the wine merchant’s delivery on Friday.’
He went off with the shopping list and I could hear him talking to Xan in the Garden Hall, before the baize door stopped swinging and cut them off.
I exchanged my white tunic for a big, wrap-around pinafore, because I suspected it would be a dusty job, and after collecting some cleaning materials, went through to the study.
Plum, who had lingered in the hall to lap water from the bowl there, creating a small tsunami across the tiled floor, pattered after me.
Xan had put up the two pasting tables and arranged them next to each other down the middle of the long room, with a walkway between. They were not things of beauty, being of the usual hardboard and rough wood construction, with metal rods to hold them steady when unfolded. There were a few empty cardboard boxes underneath.
‘Henry’s going to save you the empty wine boxes,’ I said. ‘He thought they’d come in useful.’
‘They will, and I suspect we’ll need a large one marked “Rubbish”,’ he said, looking up. He’d clearly just dumped anarmful of what looked like a mixture of manuscripts, magazines and loose papers on one end of a table and the upper layer was trying to slide off.
‘These are from the cupboard by the French window. I couldn’t get everything back into that one once I’d opened the door anyway, so it seemed as good a place to start as any.’
‘I expect they’re all just as crammed full,’ I said. ‘You need a Cunning Plan.’
‘I suppose I do,’ he admitted. ‘I hadn’t anticipated the scale of the problem!’
‘Well, I’m here to fetch, carry and clean, while you’re the one who has to look through everything, so I’ll empty each cupboard on to the first pasting table and then you rough-sort it all on to the second. You know – journals, newspapers, manuscripts, bundles of whatever they are …’
‘Emails, I think,’ he said looking down. ‘According to Sabine, Asa printed out all his emails and pinned copies of his answers to them. He even did carbons of his replies to handwritten letters.’
‘That would generate quite a bit of paper on its own,’ I said, and then, since he was still looking down at the first heap in rather a lost way, I added firmly, ‘You make a start on that pile, while I’m getting the rest out of the cupboard. If you toss any journals and magazines straight into one of the boxes under the table I could sort those out, because they’re not personal.’
‘OK, bossy boots,’ he said mildly, and began pulling out glossy periodicals and lobbing them into the nearest box.
When the first cupboard was empty I gave it a good clean, before cautiously opening the doors to the next.
The usual miscellany slid out on to the carpet, but right at the back were piled a few small and slightly crushed cardboard boxes, which rattled when I pulled them out.
I lifted the lid and peeped inside one. ‘These might be archaeological finds, Xan. There are labels, though they’re very faded.’
He had a look and said, ‘You’re right – these are all pottery – mostly Samian ware, I think. We’ll put them at the end of the second table to go through later.’
It was quicker for me to empty the cupboards than it was for Xan to go through everything, of course, so he hadn’t made a huge amount of progress by the time I’d finished cleaning the second cupboard.
‘There we are – I’ve made a start,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘But I’ll have to leave you to it now, because time’s getting on—’
I broke off as the door to the library swung open and, for a minute, I expected to see Henry, come to see where I’d got to.
Instead, framed in the doorway stood Mrs Powys, still in a long coat of glossy brown fur, though she had thrown it open.
She didn’t see me at first, but said to Xan: ‘I just came to tell you I was home again and see how you were getting on. Where did those tables come from? I don’t think—’
