The Hardie Inheritance

by Anne Melville

  ‘Do you never use grapes?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘The vine that you probably remember was in one of the glasshouses. We don’t heat those any longer.’

  ‘But you could grow vines out of doors.’

  ‘Surely not. They wouldn’t ripen in an English summer, would they?’

  ‘Romans,’ said Philip. On the rare occasions when he spoke, he was economical with words; but Andy, understanding his meaning, nodded.

  ‘That’s right. The Romans had vineyards in England – even further north than this. I was walking about earlier on, while your visitor was here. The ridges on the lower pasture, you know, below the house – I reckon that’s old terracing. Facing south-west, sheltered from the north, draining down well. There could have been a vineyard there once. Could be again. Though nowadays anyone who wanted to plant would take the rows north to south. Let me show you.’ He stood up, eager to lead the way down the hill.

  Both Mrs Hardie and Philip shook their heads smilingly. The visit of their young relative had interrupted their usual daily routine and they were anxious to return to work. Only Grace, who had abandoned her carving for the day when she took off her working clothes, was prepared to walk down through the upper meadow and stand with Andy on the highest of what must certainly have been a series of terraces long ago.

  ‘A row going north to south would cut across these lines,’ she pointed out; for the meadow, like the house itself, had a south-west aspect.

  ‘All the better,’ said Andy. ‘The extra height would allow more sun to reach the end of the rows. It would be more difficult to plough the land for the first time, I suppose – but you wouldn’t need to use the whole meadow. An acre would be quite enough to start with to see how it went. About three thousand vines, say.’

  ‘Three thousand!’ Grace had thought they were discussing only a small test area: half a dozen vines, perhaps, from which an experimental wine could be made by the same method which Philip applied to raspberries or redcurrants. ‘You’re not suggesting that we should attempt to start a proper vineyard here!’

  ‘It’s easier than you might think. In France –’

  ‘We’re not in France,’ said Grace. ‘And we have no labour. Who is going to dig out three thousand holes and drive in three thousand stakes and plant and prune and hoe for three or four years, I suppose, before the first fruit is seen? And all for nothing, perhaps, if the soil proves unsuitable or the summers too cold.’

  ‘The soil’s all right. And it’s autumn that matters, not summer. I remember some good Septembers and Octobers here. Five years out of six you’d get a good ripening.’

  ‘Anyway –’ Grace hardly listened to his interruption – ‘we couldn’t possibly afford to buy vines on such a scale.’

  ‘Well, you could cut the number by half and plant them at six feet instead of three. Or even fewer to start with, and root the prunings to build up stock.’

  Grace shook her head. ‘Your mother must have told you about the change in our circumstances,’ she said. ‘We’re very content with the way we live; and thanks to Philip’s war pension and your father’s help in selling produce as well as growing it, we have as much money as we need, just about – but nothing extra that we could possibly risk in such a way. I mean, it would be far too much for your father to undertake on top of his present work, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That’s something I need to talk to you about,’ said Andy, his enthusiasm fading into gravity. ‘Doctor’s not too cheerful about Dad. Not to beat about the bush, he’s dying.’

  ‘Oh, Andy, I’m so sorry.’ Instinctively Grace put out a hand and felt it firmly taken. ‘Is it his chest? I’ve heard him coughing in the mornings.’

  He nodded. ‘Nothing to be done, doctor says. So I have to ask you about my mother. Would you let her stay on in the lodge, after? She’d be miserable living with us, not speaking the lingo, and she can’t be doing with my wife at all. I could pay a bit of rent, what you thought was right. And I could send one of my boys over. Not the eldest, because he’s got his eyes on the family land. But the next one, Jean-Paul, he’s a bright boy. Learnt a bit of English from me already. He’d be company for my mother. And he could be useful to you on the land. He’s thirteen. Not got his full strength yet – and none of my father’s know-how, of course. But you’d find him a good worker if you showed him what to do. You could pay him in food, with a bit of pocket money. He wouldn’t expect the market proceeds, not till he was old enough to be useful.’

  Grace, troubled, was silent – not considering Andy’s suggestion, but thinking about his father, who had been part of her life at Greystones ever since she could remember. While aware that he was ill, and sorry on his account, this was the first moment at which it was brought home to her how much the Hardies depended both on his work and on his willingness to sell their surplus produce. Philip possessed all the necessary gardening skills, and Jean-Paul certainly could be useful in the steady labour of keeping the gardens tidy, but none of the family would enjoy acting as a salesman. If only Andy himself … but there was no point in day-dreaming.

  ‘Of course your mother will be able to stay on,’ she said at last. ‘And we’ll be glad of your son’s help. But –’

  ‘But I see what you mean, yes, you can’t be tackling a vineyard, not just now.’ Andy was changing the subject with a deliberate briskness; and releasing her hand as he did so. ‘Tell you what, though. Suppose I were to send over just half a dozen roots with Jean-Paul when he comes. Just to try out the soil and the weather. Your brother could take cuttings in a year or two, if they settled in well. Wouldn’t commit you to much in the way of work. But might be interesting?’

  ‘I’ll ask Philip what he thinks. Thanks for the offer, anyway.’ They began to stroll down the terraced meadow, its grass kept short by the grazing sheep. But almost at once Andy came to a halt again, looking down at the flatter land which lay between them and the centre of Oxford.

  ‘Have you thought of selling any of your land?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Must be more’n you can manage. And would put a bit of money in your pockets.’

  Grace shook her head. They had moved round the side of the hill as they talked. The view from here was no longer obstructed by the wood, as it was when she looked from her bedroom window. Instead it offered – or rather, had offered once – a vista of open countryside, broken by the villages of Cowley and Temple Cowley, with Iffley in the distance. Even when she was a little girl the barracks had already been in evidence at the foot of the hill, but only later had the sprawling buildings of the Morris Motor Works begun to spoil the view. They were still spreading. She could see from here the unfinished building which would contain a new production line – and between the spokes of the roads which stretched from Carfax was growing a grid of narrow streets to house the workers who were swarming to Oxford to take employment in the motor car factories. The bricks and concrete were creeping towards Greystones. At all costs she must preserve her own land as a buffer; a no-man’s land on which no builder could set foot.

  ‘The villagers would lynch me if I let the wood go,’ she said laughingly. The inhabitants of Headington Quarry claimed old-established poachers’ rights on the strip of woodland which bordered the stream. They took furze for their fires and acorns for their pigs and rabbits for their pots. There were plenty of rabbits left to be eaten at Greystones itself and, in return for the Hardies’ forbearance in respect of the lower land, it was tacitly understood that no one would trespass or steal from the cultivated ground higher up the hill.

  ‘Do you remember how we used to play there as kids?’ Andy asked her.

  ‘I remember how you planted a forest once. Acorns and conkers and sycamore wings. All in about a square yard of ground. Shall we see how it’s grown?’

  She felt once again like the little girl she had been when nine-year-old Andy first showed her his plantation as she led the way into the wood – although the shoes and stockings she was so unusually wearing were inappropriate for
such an exploration. Andy needed to take her hand as she made an unsteady crossing of the stream by means of a fallen tree trunk, and he did not let it go. She thought nothing of it. It was as if they were children together again. Only when they reached the boulders was her heart pierced by a memory of the day when she had ceased to be a child.

  The two huge boulders stood in the silent heart of the wood, near the place where the stream fed a deep pool from which it emerged both invisibly and inaudibly on the further side. Grace knew now that the stones must have been smoothed and rounded by a glacier many thousands of years earlier; but as a little girl she had thought of them as a giant’s playthings, for each was indented in one place only, the shape resembling a handhold.

  As she grew older she had brought her anxieties and hopes to the boulders, using them as both comforters and confidants. But it was not the emotional crises of her early years that she remembered now. It was here that Andy had kissed her for the first time. It was here, a year later, that they had said goodbye.

  ‘Do you remember –?’ she began; but quickly bit back the words. It was the wrong thing to say – the wrong thing at any time, but especially now, when Andy was holding her hand so tightly.

  ‘Of course I remember. I wish–’ Andy in his turn left words unspoken, but it was because he was already pulling her into his arms, pressing his lips against hers. Not, as on the occasion of that first kiss, with a boy’s shyness and joy, but with all the force of a man’s passion. Grace felt her lips bruising against her teeth as her head was forced backwards. Andy’s body pushed her own against one of the boulders. One arm was round her waist, holding her close, while the other groped underneath the skirt of her dress. Between kisses, his breath emerged with a noisy shuddering and he muttered something which she could not hear or understand.

  Grace, for her part, was faint with excitement and wonder. She was not sure what was happening – what Andy was going to do or what she herself was supposed to do; but with all her heart and all her body she wanted it to happen. She must tell him, though, lest he should think her unwilling when she was merely ignorant.

  ‘I don’t know – I never have –’ How difficult it was to say – the words. But it seemed that he understood at once. He drew a little way away, swallowing the lump in his throat as he looked into her eyes and then pulled her by the hands away from the boulders and down on to the mossy ground. Stroking each inch of her skin as he exposed it, he was for a little while gentle again; but before long his body once again began to beat against hers. Grace felt herself being battered, pierced. It should have hurt, but instead only took her breath away.

  ‘I love you, Andy,’ she panted. ‘Love you, love you.’ They were moving together and then lay still together.

  Afterwards came a sense of anti-climax. As Andy helped Grace to her feet she could not help staring at him. She had often enough noticed Philip stripped to the waist as he worked in the sun, but this was the first time that she had seen a man without his trousers. His vulnerability should have increased her love, but instead she found the sight interesting but somehow ridiculous. No doubt she looked equally absurd to him, with the skirt of her dress rucked up around her waist. Tugging it down, she saw with dismay that her petticoat was stained with blood and her dress with streaks of green from the moss. Her skin was sticky and she found herself walking awkwardly. Anyone who saw her would guess at once what had happened.

  There was an awkwardness, too, in wondering what she should say to Andy. She put out a hand to touch him in a gentle gesture of love and thanks, but almost at once picked up her stockings and knickers and hurried away through the wood – because already, as the excitement faded, she knew that this was something which ought not to have happened.

  Philip would be back at work in the walled garden while Mrs Hardie prepared supper in the kitchen. Grace made for the stable yard and wrapped herself in the rarely-washed overall which she wore when making up glazes for her pottery. If her appearance caused raised eyebrows now, it would only be because she normally stripped off such a covering before going into the house.

  Nor would it come as any surprise that she should take a bath before the evening meal, for this was her usual habit whenever she had been carving stone. And only a few hours earlier she had indeed been carving stone, with no possible way of guessing that so many visitors were on their way. What an ordinary start it had been to such an extraordinary day!

  Chapter Six

  Grace was dreaming of Castlemere. Rupert Beverley was driving her round and round the house in his Lagonda whilst Ellis Faraday dodged out of the way, doing his best to take a photograph of a blonde six-year-old who was waving from a window. A peacock perched in a tree with its long tail dangling, emitting a raucous shriek every time the car passed.

  It was the shriek which aroused her at last, for of course it came from the roof of the henhouse at Greystones, where the cock was announcing the start of a new day. As a rule Grace was quick to rise as soon as the sun touched the east window of her tower bedroom. But it had taken her a long time to get to sleep on the previous evening as questions and doubts and excitements swirled through her mind; and now, in a half-waking state, her uncertainties returned.

  She felt little guilt about what had happened. Andy, who was a married man, had behaved reprehensibly, but she herself had not. She had not deliberately excited him: indeed, the events of the evening had taken her by surprise. If she were to be honest with herself she must admit that she had hoped for some expression of regret and love – a word, a look – but her very inexperience had made it impossible for her to foresee what might happen.

  Was she glad that she had lost her virginity? Had she enjoyed it? Odd, how difficult it was to answer what should have been simple questions. There was a surprising satisfaction in knowing that she would not after all grow old and die without ever understanding what it was that inspired poems and novels, betrayals and murders. What was to her an extraordinary experience had made her for a moment ordinary: that must be good. And the gasping happiness with which she had surrendered both body and spirit was a memory to be cherished.

  But not necessarily an experience to be repeated. She had decided many years ago to keep control of her own life instead of surrendering it to a husband; and the way in which that control expressed itself was in her domination of inanimate materials: wood, clay, stone. Was she prepared to put at risk her contentment with the routines of her daily life by allowing herself to hope for an occasional invitation to delight?

  The peacock – no, the cock – shrieked again impatiently. Although she must decide before too long what she should say and do at her next meeting with Andy, for the moment there were more urgent tasks to be performed. But she felt stiff and heavy, reluctant to leave her bed.

  ‘Come on, now,’ she exhorted herself. ‘Work to be done.’ To start with, the hens and pigs must be fed. And then a bedroom must be prepared for Mr Faraday, and its dressing room for his daughter. She had already opened the necessary windows to begin the airing of the room, but the events of yesterday afternoon had allowed no time to sweep the floors or make up the beds.

  What should she wear? Yesterday she must have looked like a labourer when the first of her unexpected visitors arrived. Mr Faraday had not seemed disapproving, nor even surprised; but since he was returning by invitation it seemed only polite to disguise herself as a conventional hostess. Even so, he and Trish were unlikely to arrive before nine o’clock. She would have time to change out of her working overalls after breakfast, when the dirty jobs had been done.

  So there was nothing unusual about her clothing as she passed through the kitchen to pick up the bucket which was waiting outside for the pigs. Nor was there any way, surely, in which her appearance revealed that she was no longer the same person that she had been twenty-four hours earlier. And yet she was conscious of her mother glancing at her with what seemed like curiosity, although it could only be concern.

  ‘Didn’t you sleep well, Grace?
Your eyes look tired.’

  ‘All that coming and going yesterday. I’m not used to it. What vegetables would you like me to pick for lunch?’

  ‘I suppose a child expects her main meal in the middle of the day? I can hardly remember – it’s so long.’

  ‘Don’t pretend that you ever cooked for any of us when we were children,’ laughed Grace. But she shared both the excitement and the slight nervousness which Mrs Hardie was exhibiting. Since the days when preparing for a visitor required no more exertion than the giving of instructions to the servants, no one outside the family had ever been invited to spend a night. Grace was amazed at herself for having issued the invitation, and realized that she must take responsibility for her guests while they were at Greystones. She was glad to be distracted from thoughts of Andy, and set to work with all her usual vigour.

  By the time the two Faradays arrived she had changed into a cotton dress. The day promised to be too hot to make the wearing of stockings tolerable, but she had put on a pair of shop-bought sandals instead of the home-made moccasins in which Ellis had caught her the previous day.

  ‘What a lot of equipment you need!’ she exclaimed, going out to greet them while Ellis was still unloading it all. In addition to the cameras – larger and heavier than she had expected – there were tripods and reflectors and umbrellas and heavy wooden boxes.

  ‘The old-fashioned stuff is the best,’ Ellis told her. ‘And I can rely on a house not to blink or fidget through a long exposure. Unlike débutantes. But you can see why I never feel I can simply arrive on someone’s doorstep with all this. What a cracking day I’ve got for it! I’ll get on with the exterior views straightaway.’