Page 41 of Wild Swimming at Croftwood Lake
‘Thanks for the reassurance.’
Archie laughed. ‘Here’s to us.’
‘To us,’ she said.
Archie led the way through the rooms on the ground floor, which was really the first floor since the kitchens and what have you were downstairs, where Nora had come in.
‘This is the best part of the house. We try to keep it as it was. All of these things are handed down from generations ago. A lot of it was brought over from France after the French Revolution.’
They walked through room after room. Nora wondered why it wasn’t an option to sell the odd painting or twenty to raise funds. Surely Archie and the family must have considered doing that to take the pressure off. But it didn’t seem like the right time to ask, so instead she concentrated on admiring everything.
In one room, there was a row of cabinets with glass fronts that held all sorts of china. Everything from dinner services to serving dishes to commemorative ware. Nora was drawn to it, remembering that even the plates Archie brought to the lake had been Royal Worcester porcelain. And there, in the cabinet, mixed in amongst all sorts of vases and jugs, looking as if no one knew what it was, was something that she knew might be the answer to Archie’s money worries.
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NORA PEERED INTO the cabinet. The light was awful. The heavy curtains weren’t drawn back very far, stopping the weak spring sunshine from reaching very far into the room.
‘Look at that vase,’ she said, pulling out her phone and shining the torch into the cabinet. ‘It’s Royal Worcester.’
‘Most of this is, I think,’ Archie said, clasping his hands behind his back and leaning in for a closer look.
‘I think it could be worth something.’
He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. We had everything valued when Father died and anything of note wouldn’t be in here. We have all the best pieces on display.’
‘Honestly, Archie, I think it’s a Donaldson vase.’
A gong sounded from somewhere and Archie turned to leave the room. ‘Lunch is served,’ he said, smiling at her.
The nerves had abated, overtaken by excitement at seeing what she was sure was one of only a few surviving examples of the eighteenth-century painter John Donaldson’s work for Royal Worcester. She turned her phone torch off, picked up her almost empty glass of wine and followed Archie out of the room. She’d pick this up with him later. For a vase like that to be languishing amongst all sorts of run-of-the-mill crockery was a crying shame. But the lunch gong seemed to signal that everything else had to wait by the speed Archie was heading for the dining room.
Constance was already there, pouring herself a sherry from a decanter on the sideboard, but abandoned it to welcome Nora, giving her an air-kiss on each cheek.
‘Welcome, Nora. Lovely to see you,’ she said. ‘Archie, pour the sherries. I had Ursula sound the gong early so we might enjoy a quick apéritif before lunch. Although I see you’ve started without me.’ She raised a disapproving eyebrow.
‘A sherry would be lovely,’ Nora said. ‘Archie would you mind fetching the gift I brought for your mother? I left it on the table in the drawing room and I’m not sure of the way.’
‘A gift?’ Constance said, looking thrilled. ‘How lovely.’
Archie handed Nora her sherry and inclined his head, checking she was happy for him to leave her for a moment. She returned an imperceptible nod.
‘Come, Nora,’ Constance said. ‘Let’s take a seat in the smoking room.’
She led the way next door into a room that was a smaller version of the drawing room, with many sofas and chairs. The decor was darker and heavier than some of the other rooms, with thick burgundy velvet curtains at the windows and flocked wallpaper. Constance perched on a window seat that overlooked the gardens and patted the cushion next to her.
‘This is one of my favourite spots in the house,’ she said. ‘When I was first married, it wasn’t the done thing for the ladies to venture into this room. It was men only, if you can believe that.’
‘It feels quite masculine compared to the other rooms,’ Nora said.
‘It reminds me very much of my husband so I’m not inclined to change anything about it,’ Constance said with a smile.
Nora smiled back, but thought that nothing in the house looked as if it had changed an awful lot in the last hundred years anyway, let alone this room.
‘This is very unusual,’ Constance said. ‘It’s been years since Archie brought a girl home, and he’s plumped for you.’
Nora wasn’t sure whether Constance thought that was good or bad.
‘He’s a lovely man,’ was all she could think to say.
