Page 11 of The Christmas Retreat
But while itwouldbe a nostalgia trip, it would also be a celebration of the ten mostly happy years spent at Wisteria Cottage with Mrs Snowboots.
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‘I’ve been to see those two oil seascapes at Charlotte Vane’s house,’ Evie said without preamble when I picked up my phone early one morning. She did tend to ring at odd hours in order to use me as a sounding board for ideas, if Liv wasn’t around.
A flake of plaster, dislodged by the vibrations of a passing lorry, floated down from the ceiling. I fished it out of my coffee cup.
‘You know, the ones signed “A. Madoc”. They’re well painted in a semi-abstract style, very luminous and atmospheric. I don’t think that came across in the photos I just sent you.’
‘I’ll have a look in a minute,’ I said.
‘I took them down from the wall so I could have a good look and discovered that they were both Cornish scenes, painted in September of 1919.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she’d not only written the date and location on the back stretcher, but also the time of day and the weather conditions, too.’
‘So if the paintings are by Arwen, then that definitely places her in Cornwall by that time.’
‘It does. But I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to these paintings before, I just can’t remember where or when. The style is very loosely painted – quite expressionist – and the colour luminous. She was a very accomplished artist for someone so young.’
‘I expect it will come back to you,’ I said.
‘I am sure it will. I’ve done an internet search for more of her work, but not turned anything up yet,’ Evie said, before adding: ‘What’s that horrible noise?’
I glanced out of the side window, which had once been a door on to the drive, before the cottage was sold off.
‘It’s a big cement mixer.’
‘I thought you didn’t get much traffic up your lane,’ she said, but abstractedly because her head was obviously full of her own concerns.
‘Things change,’ I told her, then noted on my shopping pad a possible title for the last in the ten-book series about the cottage I was planning:Change at Wisteria Cottage.
When she’d rung off, I sat there for a while longer. I didn’t much fancy the coffee now, which was still flecked with white specks of plaster, like dandruff.
It had quickly become clear that I’d made a terrible mistake when I’d exchanged contracts on the cottage before I was due to move out, because although I had the agreement in writing that that was not to be until 1 February, the new owners were starting to make my last weeks there almost untenable.
There seemed to be a one-way system on the estate, so that all the lorries and cement mixers arrived by the front drive of Brocklebank Hall and left by the back entrance, the constant rumbling noise of them shaking the old cottage.
Then, the weather having continued mild into December, the workmen who had been repairing and heightening the estate wall began digging a trench right across the front of my garden to take the footings so they could extend the wall across it.
It was only because I dashed out and harangued them and then threatened them with my solicitor that they put boards over the trench in front of the garage so that I could get my car in and out. Even so, the boards were so thin and bendy that I was scared to drive over them.
I suspected all this was intended to make my life so unbearable I’d move out early, but since I hadn’t yet got anywhere else to go and was still determined to spend Christmas at the cottage, I was digging in my heels.
Eli, when he brought my eggs and vegetables, said it looked as if I was under siege and I told him that is what it felt like.
Meanwhile, I invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and carried on delving into the sketchbooks and thinking up titles for each year of my residence at Wisteria Cottage, losing myself in the past.
4
Trunk Call
After that, life at the cottage grew more difficult by the day, so that before we were even two weeks into December, I found myself confessing to Liv about what was happening and that I was only managing to work because I’d bought those noise-cancelling headphones.
‘Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day?’ she suggested sensibly. ‘You can put everything in storage until you find a new home and move back to the flat.’
Evie must have been sitting nearby, for she took the phone and said: ‘That makes sense, Ginny, and there’s lots of research for the new book you could be helping us with.’
