Tremarnock Summer
Page 36
Loveday bowled up in a purple fake-fur coat with bare legs and silver wedge sandals that were so high she could hardly walk, while her muddy toes, the nails painted black, peeped out from the ends.
‘I’m so relieved I don’t have to work today,’ she told Bramble breathlessly. ‘Jesse’s off, too.’
She pointed at the girls’ drinks in their hands. ‘Where’s the bar? I’ve been looking all over.’
Katie waved her in the right direction.
‘Cheers!’ said Loveday, almost tripping on a loose bit of turf and grabbing at Bramble’s arm to steady herself. ‘Look at me!’ she giggled. ‘What am I like? And I haven’t even got started on the booze yet!’
The place was rapidly filling up with families, groups of young people and older types with sensible haircuts in unflattering slacks and good, strong walking boots who’d clearly come more to have a nose around the manor and grounds than to hear the music. But the mix of ages and styles seemed only to enhance the gaiety of the occasion, and there was a great atmosphere, with folk talking and laughing, lovers strolling arm in arm, children chasing each other around the tents and grannies and grandpas hobbling after them.
As the sky started to darken and the shadows lengthened, stallholders lit decorative fairy lights around the entrances to their tents and braziers, on which they roasted chestnuts and marshmallows dipped in chocolate. The scent of damp earth, canvas and mulled wine mingled with the other smells, creating a sort of sensory overload, so that Bramble felt quite dizzy, although she’d still only had one glass of cider. Katie, on the other hand, who’d returned to the bar several times for a top-up, was already giggly.
‘I think I just saw the fishmonger,’ she whispered, nudging Bramble in the ribs. ‘I won’t know what to say.’
‘You’re quite safe. He’s got a new girlfriend,’ Bramble replied drily.
Katie saw Kieron, one of the part-time bar staff from The Hole in the Wall, and dashed off for a chat. ‘I’ll catch up with you,’ she trilled, heading purposefully towards the ‘Poetry Gazebo’, where a number of local writers had banded together to erect a makeshift stage from which they could recite their work and, with luck, flog a few books at the same time.
Kieron – who was tall, fair and very handsome, if rather young for Katie – had been her second choice after Danny, until she’d discovered that he’d be off on his gap-year travels shortly before starting medical school.
‘I can’t be doing with all that studying,’ she’d informed Bramble soon after they’d moved to the manor. ‘Never mind the travelling. He might come back with a nasty tropical disease. Besides, he keeps mentioning his mum.’
Dressed in jeans, wellies and her thick green sweater and with a red scarf pulled up under her nose, Bramble managed to amble almost incognito around the site for a while longer before venturing into the manor through the open French windows. She stood for a moment at the entrance to her large drawing room, gazing at the strangers milling around, some with children making for the soft-play areas, others looking up at the ornate ceiling and admiring the architecture and paintings.
The lamps were blazing, and Bramble and her helpers had pushed back the furniture and laid dust cloths over everything, including the wooden floor, but she had insisted on leaving the artwork, wanting visitors to enjoy it and get a real feel for what the place had been like when Lord Penrose had lived here. The paintings weren’t particularly valuable, and besides, it would have been difficult to wander out with an enormous canvas under your arm without being seen.
‘It’s so grand, isn’t it?’ she heard one woman comment to her companion. ‘What an incredible place to live!’
A shiver of pride ran up Bramble’s spine, and she sensed that her manor was glad to be filled with noise, appreciation and laughter, with the shouts of children and the patter of numerous feet. Today it didn’t feel austere at all but warm and welcoming, despite the dust cloths and mud. Whole families and children must have lived in Polgarry at some point in its history; perhaps its walls and floors, its very foundations, remembered. Perhaps they recalled her grandfather’s famous parties, too, because echoes from that time seemed to pervade the air.
A tap on the shoulder jogged her out of her reverie.
‘Miss Bramble, there is a call for you. I thought you would prefer to take it in the morning room.’
She stared at the housekeeper for a moment, because she’d forgotten all about her. In fact, she’d rather assumed that Maria would hide in her room for the entire time.
‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘Don’t they know it’s the festival today? Can’t they call back?’
Maria shook her head. Her hair was brushed and shiny and she was in a rather pretty floral dress that Bramble had never seen before. What was going on?
‘They said it is urgent,’ the housekeeper insisted. ‘They said it cannot wait.’
Bramble frowned. ‘How inconvenient!’ But she followed Maria out of the drawing room, across the marble hallway, through the door to the east wing, which had been firmly locked, and along the narrow corridor that led to the hexagonal room with the desk and corded Bakelite telephone.
The receiver lay on its side, waiting to be picked up.
‘Hello?’ said Bramble tentatively, aware that Maria was hovering right behind.
‘Is that Bramble Challoner?’ said a female voice with a cut-glass accent. She went on to explain that she was Dr Maura Levy, senior director in valuations at the auction house Bramble had contacted.
Bramble listened, spellbound, while the woman explained that they’d been consulting a number of worldwide experts about the painting she’d found in Lord Penrose’s desk, and after rigorous checks they could now confirm, beyond any doubt, that the work was genuine. Just before the invasion of France by Germany in 1940, it had been sold by an anti-Fascist French collector to a Norwegian shipping magnate. Soon after, he re-sold the painting at auction in Paris to an anonymous collector. There were some references to its having then been sent to a secure location in the south of France, but in the chaos of post-war Europe it appeared to have gone missing and was feared lost.
‘We now know that anonymous collector was your grandfather,’ the woman went on. ‘How he got the work to Britain, we don’t know; nor do we know why he kept it hidden in the desk. Perhaps for a while after the war it hung in Polgarry Manor until he decided that it was too precious to display. Maybe he simply didn’t like it anymore. In any case,’ she continued, ‘your painting is extremely valuable. It’s worth a great deal of money, several million at least. You are a very rich woman, Miss Challoner. Congratulations.’
For a moment Bramble couldn’t speak; she just stared out of the window, only dimly hearing the thud of music in the distance, the roar of the crowd.
‘Several million?’ she said at last, scarcely aware of Maria pulling back a chair and gently pushing her on to it. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure,’ said the woman, before going on to suggest that Bramble should take a while to decide what she’d like to do next. ‘If you wish to sell, we shall of course be delighted to represent you.’
Sell? Keep? Run away and hide? Bramble was all at sea, until a voice in her ear whispered, ‘I told you that your grandfather was a good man.’
Startled, she swung around, still clutching the phone in one hand, and gawped at the housekeeper.
‘You knew about this? You knew about the painting?’
Maria shrugged. ‘He told me only that he would take care of you, that you – and Polgarry – would be properly provided for. He did not say how.’
Bramble’s mind was racing, her thoughts flying hither and thither. ‘You mean he intended me to find the painting? But if that’s the case, why didn’t he mention it in his will?’
Maria shrugged again. ‘Lord Penrose was a strange man; he had his own ways of doing things. Maybe he wanted to give you a little test – I don’t know – to see if you were clever enough to find his special hiding place.’
‘Clearly, it was a risk he was prepared to take.’
‘Hello? Are you still there? Miss Challoner?’
Bramble had forgotten about the woman from the auction house, who’d been waiting patiently all this time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, struggling to make sense of what was happening. ‘I’m in shock, to be honest. I hardly know what to think. Would it be all right if I called you back in the morning?’
They agreed to speak again the next day, and after she’d hung up Bramble sat for a while, trying to regulate her breathing. When at last she rose, Maria was standing with her back to the door waiting for some instruction, perhaps an idea of what this might mean and of what she was supposed to do now.
In two paces Bramble was alongside her, and before she knew it she’d opened her arms wide and Maria had walked right in. She felt surprisingly small and light, almost fragile, crushed against Bramble’s chest.
‘I’ll look after you, too,’ she said firmly.
‘I know.’
‘You were a good friend to my grandfather. You cared for him for all those years.’
‘I wanted to,’ Maria said simply.
When at last they separated, there was a slightly awkward pause during which the housekeeper straightened her dress and adjusted her collar and hair.
‘Will you go back to the party now, Miss Bramble?’ she asked at last, and Bramble took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.
‘I suppose I must.’
24
BACK OUTSIDE, AMIDST the hustle and bustle of festival-goers, beneath a sky, now black, that seemed to be lit by a thousand flickering fires, Bramble felt quite dazed and unable to focus.
‘Where were you?’ Katie asked breathlessly, running to her side and slopping cider from her ever-present plastic glass down Bramble’s leg. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’
Bramble hesitated. For some reason she didn’t want to tell her friend about the painting; in fact, she didn’t feel like telling anyone right now. The news seemed too big and portentous, too unreal to blurt out in a few sentences, and besides, she hadn’t even begun to imagine what it would mean for her or for the future of Polgarry.
‘I think Tabitha’s up next,’ Katie said, knowing that Bramble wouldn’t want to miss her. ‘I suppose Danny will be there.’ She pulled a face but brightened again just as quickly. ‘He’s not as hot as Kieron.’
‘Mm?’ Bramble muttered, hardly hearing. ‘That’s nice.’
Katie looked at her oddly before taking her by the arm and leading her rather solicitously towards the main tent, which was packed tight, with barely an inch between one person and the next. At first they thought they’d have to stay outside, but then they spied a narrow opening and managed to weave their way towards the centre. They couldn’t avoid treading on a few toes, but by and large it was a good-natured gathering and no one complained.
Bramble spotted Danny to her right, with Oscar on his shoulders wearing a pair of big, serious-looking ear defenders, but they were both focusing on the stage and didn’t see her. When Tabitha walked on clutching her guitar in a pair of frayed jeans, cowboy boots and a silky cream top with billowing sleeves, her long black hair parted in the middle and loose around her shoulders, she looked as if she’d stepped straight off the set of a seventies’ movie.
‘How are you today? I hope you’re having a good time!’ she yelled, to a cacophony of claps, shouts and stamping feet. You’d never know that she was a bag of nerves – she looked like the Queen of Cool – but Bramble recognised the way she licked her lips and that nervous little laugh. It was all an act.
‘I’m going to start with a song I wrote a very long time ago, when I was a teenager,’ she began, settling on a stool with the guitar on her lap and adjusting the mike. ‘I was going through a difficult time, living away from home...’
Bramble found herself drawn into the story, relieved to be distracted from her swirling thoughts, but as she listened she became aware of something behind her. Call it instinct or a sixth sense: she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that someone was staring at her. Spinning around just as Tabitha started to sing, she scanned the sea of faces until she fell on one that brought goosebumps to her skin: Liz. The older woman was standing several rows back, near the entrance to the tent, balancing Lowenna on her hip and wearing a red woolly hat and a navy jumper. When Liz’s huge dark-brown eyes met Bramble’s they seemed to grow even rounder and wider, and she gave a tentative smile that was hard to interpret.
What was she doing here? Tabitha’s voice started in a haunting minor key before rising to an urgent higher pitch. Bramble would have turned back to the front, glad for the excuse to look away, but Liz mouthed something that she couldn’t understand and beckoned to her urgently.
Mesmerised by the act, Katie was totally unaware of Bramble’s dilemma.
‘It’s Liz,’ she hissed, digging her friend sharply in the ribs. ‘What shall I do?’
Finally, Katie swivelled around and examined Liz from afar. ‘It looks like it might be important. You’d better go and speak to her.’
‘Really?’ Bramble was aghast.
‘Do you want me to come, too?’
‘It’s OK,’ Bramble replied, and she weaved her way back through the crowd. If there were to be a nasty scene, she’d rather deal with it on her own. There was no need to spoil Katie’s evening, too.
As she reached the entrance Liz moved a few steps outside, still clutching Lowenna – who, blind to any hostility, flashed a row of pearly-white baby teeth and beamed joyously, thrilled, no doubt, to be out and about at such a late hour.
‘What –?’ Bramble started to say, but Liz held up a hand.
‘I’m sorry to drag you out but I need to speak to you.’ She paused and swallowed while Bramble waited on tenterhooks for what was coming next.
‘I was furious with you for what happened,’ Liz went on in a faltering voice. ‘I thought it was so irresponsible to take Lowenna into the water. She nearly died—’
‘I know, and I’m so sorry. I realise you hate me and I wish I could put it right, but I can’t.’
Inside, Tabitha’s singing reached a climax before fading out, and the audience broke into rapturous applause. The women, however, scarcely blinked.
‘I didn’t come here to rake up the past,’ Liz explained gently.
‘Then why did you come?’ It seemed a reasonable enough question.
Lowenna made a lunge for the small gold chain around Liz’s neck and she unlaced it carefully from her daughter’s chubby fingers.
‘I want to apologise for my part, for bearing a grudge and refusing to speak to you,’ she blurted. ‘I’ve been childish and vindictive and I’m ashamed of myself. Tabitha says you’re in pieces, but everyone knows it was a freak accident and you weren’t to blame. The sea wasn’t particularly rough that day; you couldn’t have seen it coming. And you did your very best to save Lowenna. You were incredibly brave. You could have died yourself.’
Liz took a tissue out of her trouser pocket and blew her nose, and for the first time Bramble noticed how pale she looked in the shadows, how drawn and pinched, with dark circles under her eyes that were almost blue they were so black.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Bramble whispered again hoarsely. ‘I—’
Liz interrupted: ‘Shush. Lowenna loves you, everyone here loves you. It was just me who couldn’t move on.’
She touched Bramble on the shoulder so softly that she could hardly feel it, but it seemed to her like the warmest of warm embraces.
‘Can we be friends again – please?’
A wave of relief and gratitude enveloped Bramble – and surprise, too, for she wasn’t sure that she would have been able to forgive if it had been her child. She seemed suddenly lighter, as if the force of gravity itself had changed.
‘Of course,’
she managed to choke out in reply.
At that moment Lowenna struggled violently and made a bid for freedom. Without a second’s hesitation, Liz passed her into Bramble’s outstretched arms.
‘Hello, gorgeous. I’ve missed you!’ she said, hugging the little girl close before spinning her around and stroking her silky hair. ‘Do you know? I think you’ve grown!’
‘There must be magic, magic in the air,’ Tabitha crooned in the background, and although Bramble hadn’t heard the song before, the words seemed uniquely appropriate, as if they’d been written especially for her.
‘Shall we go back inside?’ Liz said at last, and Bramble followed her into the tent, still carrying her charge. She was thinking that life could throw up the most unexpected of surprises, and that all in all this was turning into a truly extraordinary day.
*
Most of the parents and children, including Liz and Lowenna, left at about ten p.m., and the stallholders packed up and the bands stopped playing at midnight, but the party didn’t end there. The speakers were turned off outside the main tent so as not to annoy the locals, but inside they continued to blast out disco music and a gaggle of hardy revellers took to the dance floor, soon to be joined by scores more.
At last Bramble was beginning to feel that she could relax a little and pat herself on the back for what had undoubtedly been a wild success. There had been no accidents or nasty brawls, the manor seemed to be undamaged and feedback from festival-goers had so far been one hundred per cent positive. Right now, however, the most glorious thing of all was that Liz had forgiven her, which seemed to be worth more than any triumphant event or fabulously precious work of art currently hidden away in some high-security vault in London.
‘You should make this an annual do!’ someone shouted as Katie grabbed Bramble’s hand and led her reluctantly into the mêlée. She wasn’t in the mood for dancing – in fact, emotion had left her exhausted – but it would have been churlish to refuse and risk dampening her friend’s high spirits.