The Fountain

by Mary Nichols

  He got up and padded in his pyjamas to look out of the window, just as another tree creaked ominously and then thudded to the ground, flattening the fence they had built between The Chestnuts and the manor grounds.

  He grabbed his trousers and pulled them on over his pyjamas. By the time he was halfway down the stairs, the children were awake and crowding at the landing window which gave them a good view of the garden. Sheet lightning illuminated a scene of destruction: trees down, branches broken, fences flattened. The sound of breaking glass told them the greenhouse had gone. As they watched they saw their father crouching against the wind as he battled his way to his mother’s bungalow.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Barbara said.

  By the time she had made cocoa for them all, George was back with his mother.

  ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said, as Barbara came forward to help her. And then jumped out of her skin as they heard another crash and all the lights went out.

  ‘Has a tree fallen on the house?’ Jay-Jay asked, grabbing hold of his mother in the dark.

  ‘No, you don’t suppose I’d be daft enough to build a house that close to trees, do you?’ George fumbled in the kitchen drawer for candles and matches. ‘I expect a tree has brought the lines down somewhere. Back to bed with you.’

  The devastation became obvious with daylight. Trees had been uprooted, blocking roads and doing untold damage, roofs had been lifted off buildings and carried hundreds of yards. Power lines were down and heavy rain had flooded low-lying fields. Rescue teams and council workmen were up as soon as it was light enough to see, to begin on clearing up. Before he went to work, George went down the garden to inspect the damage. One of the trees inside their own boundary had come down across the fence; the copse in the manor grounds was a copse no longer and looked like a logging camp. He was thankful there had been no buildings in the vicinity.

  ‘It could be worse,’ he told Barbara when he returned to the house. ‘A gang with saws will soon clear it, but it’s certainly changed the view.’ He put his jacket on and picked up his briefcase. ‘It’s an ill-wind as they say. I’ve a feeling I’m going to be very busy today dealing with requests for repairs. And Donald had better make sure he’s well stocked.’

  It was typical of him to think of profit, Barbara thought, watching from the window as he fetched the Daimler out of the garage and drove off. She sent the children to school and set off for the manor.

  Isobel was clearing up the hearth in the drawing room where the heavy rain had dislodged an accumulation of soot. ‘The chimney is old and there are crevices a brush can’t reach,’ Isobel said, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead and leaving a smudge of soot to join others already there.

  Barbara smiled at Isobel’s appearance. She was wearing an old, grey wool skirt and a jumper which she must have found in the ragbag, it was so out of shape. Over it she had tied a huge white apron such as her cook might have worn. Her hair was crammed under a scarf commemorating the old queen’s jubilee. ‘You look a bit like a chimney sweep.’

  Isobel peered into the mirror and laughed. ‘I do, don’t I? I’ll clean myself up and we’ll have some coffee. Luckily I can make it on the range, I don’t need electricity.’ She whipped off the apron and scarf as she spoke. ‘Are you all OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ She followed Isobel into the kitchen. ‘A tree brought the fence down and the greenhouse is gone, nothing that can’t be put right. Do you want George to come and see if there’s anything needs doing here?’

  ‘No thanks, if I find any problems, I’ll call him.’ She tried not to sound offhand, but she didn’t want George Kennett poking round again. She didn’t like the man, had a fair notion that he had cheated her over the roof repairs, so she had been wary when he had arrived a few weeks before, offering to buy the manor. ‘It must be a headache to you,’ he had said. ‘Why not be rid of it? With twenty thousand pounds you could buy a small modern house. No damp rot, no leaking roof, no blocked gutters, no draughty windows. And heating which would cost a tiny fraction of what it costs to heat this place.’ She had told him she did not want to sell her home, but the dreadful part of it was that he was probably right.

  They spent a few minutes drinking coffee and chatting about the storm and how lucky they were. There must have been injuries, perhaps fatalities, and some people would have lost everything. It would have far-reaching consequences. Just how far-reaching Barbara was not to know until she returned home and found George pacing the drawing room.

  ‘Barbara, where’ve you been?’ His voice was ragged and husky.

  ‘I went up to see if Isobel was OK. She was busy clearing up soot, but there doesn’t seem to be much damage. She said she’d call you if—’

  ‘Barbara, listen, will you?’ he interrupted.

  His voice, bordering on panic, warned her something was wrong. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s Virginia… She’s…’ He was finding it difficult to speak. ‘She’s dead…killed by a tree falling on her car.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ She paused. ‘ What about Donald?’

  ‘She was alone, driving home from Cambridge along the bypass beside the old copse. She was killed instantly…’

  ‘Oh, George, I’m sorry.’ What else could she say?

  ‘Will you go and see if Donald needs anything? I can’t go.’ It wasn’t that he was too busy, she understood that, it was simply that he wouldn’t know what to say. Virginia and Donald had been married over two years but George’s hurt was still too raw to comfort anyone else.

  ‘Of course. I’ll go now.’

  The congregation at the funeral mirrored that of the wedding. Donald, grey-faced, followed the coffin down the aisle on leaden feet, a lonely figure with head bowed. Barbara felt sorry for him and stepped out of her pew to walk beside him. A moment later she became aware that George had followed her and regretted her impulsive action, because her husband’s grief was plain for all to see and she had drawn attention to it.

  Maggie Doughty had been sent by the Melsham Gazette. It was, so her editor told her, the town’s bereavement and she was to write it up sympathetically. She would do that but she was also interested in George Kennett. He had been heard to remind people that he had advocated taking down the trees when the bypass was built, and if his advice had been taken, no one would have died – not there at any rate. It was a comment her editor had seen fit to publish, but now she was seeing something else: two men in mourning, two men weeping for the same woman, two men who could not even look at each other, let alone speak.

  Maggie hated George Kennett. Her father had died because of him. They said he had taken his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed, but who had disturbed it in the first place? George Kennett with his massive new store and its cut-throat prices; her father’s rather old-fashioned hardware shop hadn’t stood a chance. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad except that, bowing to the inevitable and closing down the shop, he had approached George Kennett for a job. The bastard had turned him down, said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. Too old at fifty-five! Dad had tried to pretend he had chosen early retirement, but no one had been fooled. One day, a year later, he had hanged himself.

  Looking at Kennett standing beside the grave, black suit, black tie, hair ruffling in the breeze, she saw his grief and smiled grimly. He would grieve more than that before she had done with him.

  Barbara didn’t know what to say to George. He hardly spoke, turning his misery in on himself, embracing it. Did he suppose she was glad about it? Of course she wasn’t glad, but neither could she tell him she was sorry. It wasn’t that she expected him to fall in love with her all over again – it was too late for that, far too late – but with no Virginia in the background, they might just pull themselves back on an even keel. After all, they were not in the first flush of youth, and they had three children who were fast growing into adulthood, children who needed them both. And she hadn’t been blameless. If they could achieve some me
asure of ease with each other, that was all she could hope for, all she deserved.

  She fell back on her usual palliative and began a new painting, standing before the canvas, slashing colour on it, hardly stopping to think what she was doing. The result was a windswept tree, dark against a blood-red fen sky. In the branches appeared the shadowy heads of George and Virginia, her father, Simon and the children, their faces distorted with some unseen vision of terror. It was horrible, frightening, much too revealing to leave for anyone else to see. She took it down the garden and put it on the bonfire their gardener had made with the branches of the fallen tree. Its therapeutic work done, she went back indoors and began another.

  Barbara dipped her brush in black paint and wrote The Market of Old Melsham along the bottom of the picture and signed the corner. It had taken over six months to complete, mainly because she was so busy with other things, and it had been such a monumental task, which was what she had intended it to be. It was full of detail: the old buildings on which she had spent painstaking hours of research, the market traders, the church and the old pump where the fountain and dirty pool now stood, people chatting beside it. Looking at the figures on the canvas, some of whom had the faces of people she knew, she allowed her mind to drift.

  George seemed to have got over Virginia’s death and so had Donald and they continued to work together. If anything it seemed to bring the two men closer, leaving Barbara on the periphery of her husband’s life which was, she supposed, where she had always been. Business, politics and golf were all he thought about. She was heartily sick of all three, but especially politics. It was politics which had ruined George as a husband. That and his craving for power. As her mother had often advised her, she had counted her blessings. She had a nice home, a husband who, whatever his faults, was a good provider, and three children who were a credit to them. She had friends and charitable work which often reminded her that there were a great many people worse off than she was, and whenever counting blessings did not seem to work, she had her painting. She spent hours in this room, absorbed in composition and colour and effect, cut off from reality, almost content.

  Alison, in a printed cotton dress, her dark hair worn in two plaits, put her head round the door. ‘Mum, Aunt Penny’s here. Didn’t you hear the doorbell?’

  ‘Penny?’ she queried in surprise. ‘Why ever didn’t she say she was coming?’

  She cleaned her brush and hurried from the room, leaving Alison looking at the picture with her head on one side. It was huge, every inch of it covered with figures. She recognised Lady Isobel sitting upright in a carriage drawn by four horses and driven by James. There was Mrs Younger, carroty hair spilling out beneath a black straw hat and her shoulders draped in a fringed shawl, with a basket of flowers on her arm. There was Dad, sitting arrogantly on a fine hunter, and Jay-Jay, a barefoot urchin, dodging among the stalls with an orange in his hand. Gran was there, shopping basket on her arm, and Nick sitting on the back of a cart, and she was there, dressed in a crinoline of blue taffeta, a straw bonnet on her dark hair, carrying a frilled parasol. A young boy was working the old pump, and the water sparkled as it gushed into a bucket, and there was an old-time policeman in shiny-buttoned uniform and top hat, standing on the kerb. There was so much to explore, she was reluctant to leave it, but she had arranged to go to the Saturday matinee with one of her friends and she didn’t want to miss the beginning. She’d come back to it later, persuade Mum to hang it somewhere where it would be seen.

  Penny was like a breath of fresh air, her red-gold hair framing a face that didn’t seem to have aged one iota since Barbara had first met her. She was bright, cheerful and glamorous in a dress of flower-patterned silk with puffed sleeves and a skirt gathered at the natural waist. Her hat, worn tilted to one side, had a huge brim. It was an elegantly simple outfit which had obviously cost a great deal.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ Barbara said, kissing her cheek. ‘I don’t need to ask how you are. How do you manage to stay looking so young?’

  Penny laughed. ‘With difficulty. I hope I haven’t interrupted anything. Alison said you were painting.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. May I see it?’

  ‘Yes, if you like. Come up and I’ll show you.’ She led the way. ‘You’ll stay for lunch? There’s some ham and a salad, is that OK?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Are you filming in the area?’

  ‘Not exactly. I’m going into production in partnership with Hal Erikson. He’s the man who produced Dragon Castle. We’ve got a story lined up, but we need a location. I’m looking round East Anglia for something that fits…’ She stopped when she caught sight of the painting. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She walked over to inspect it more closely. ‘It’s terrific. All those people. However long did it take?’

  ‘Months. I started it last October.’ Barbara moved over and pointed to a figure wearing a riding habit and a tall hat with a sweeping peacock feather, standing beside a slender-limbed horse. Beside her a man in the red coat and white breeches of a soldier was bent cupping his hand ready to help her to mount. ‘That’s you. And that’s Simon.’

  ‘So it is! How clever of you! And the ambience of the time is just right. Very Victorian. Are the buildings still like that?’

  ‘Basically yes, though some have modern fascias and windows now.’

  ‘They could be altered,’ she mused aloud. ‘I’ll have to go and look.’

  ‘For your film?’

  ‘Yes, but I need a house as well. A stately home without too many modern touches.’

  Barbara laughed. ‘I know the very place. I’ll take you there after lunch.’

  Isobel had persuaded James to teach her to drive. She was practising up and down the long drive from the gates to the house, but she couldn’t get the hang of the gears and the clutch. James wasn’t a good teacher, and though he didn’t for a minute raise his voice or lose his natural deference when speaking to her, she could feel the tension in him, knew how hard he was trying not to lose his temper. She was unprepared for any other traffic and was completely thrown when Barbara’s little Austin turned in at the gates. She stamped her foot on the brake and yanked on the steering wheel and the car slewed into a flowerbed.

  Barbara stopped and ran over to her. ‘Isobel, are you all right?’

  She was helpless with laughter. ‘Perfectly, my dear. It was entirely my fault. I’m sorry if I gave you a scare.’

  James, who had left the passenger seat, was standing looking at the car with an expression of such pain on his face, Barbara began to wonder if he had been hurt. ‘Excuse me, My Lady,’ he said stiffly. ‘Shall I put the car away?’

  ‘Yes, do. I’ll go up to the house with Mrs Kennett.’

  Isobel clambered out and the two women stood and watched as he backed the Bentley onto the drive and drove it down to the road where he was able to turn it. He passed them on his way back at a steady five miles an hour, sitting very upright and looking straight ahead. ‘Oh, dear, he’s miffed,’ Isobel said. ‘He loves that old car.’

  ‘It’s hardly an easy car to drive,’ Barbara said, leading the way to her own. ‘Why don’t you try a small one like mine? I’m sure you could manage that.’

  Isobel smiled. ‘I can just imagine what James would say if I suggested changing the Bentley for a Baby Austin, can’t you?’

  ‘I suppose he would think it a bit of a comedown.’

  ‘The trouble is, he shouldn’t be driving the Bentley either: he’s getting very old and he drives so slowly we have everyone hooting at us. That’s why I suggested the lessons.’ For the first time she noticed Penny in the passenger seat. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise…’

  ‘This is Penny Barcliffe, Isobel.’ Barbara opened the back door for her. ‘She’s a film star and a very good friend. So I’ve brought her to meet you.’

  ‘If you’re a friend of Barbara’s, you’re very welcome.’ She smiled and held out h
er hand across the back of the seat. ‘Let’s go up to the house, shall we?’

  After the car stopped, Penny stood on the gravel looking at the facade for several seconds before following Lady Quarenton and Barbara indoors. Isobel showed them into the drawing room then disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Barbara, it’s just what we want,’ Penny said, looking about her.

  Isobel reappeared with a loaded tea tray and set it on the coffee table. ‘James hasn’t come back from putting the car away.’ She sat down and poured tea from a silver teapot into delicate bone china cups, added milk and offered the sugar bowl, but both shook their heads. ‘He won’t retire while he thinks I need him. The alternative is to sell up and move somewhere smaller and more convenient.’

  ‘But it’s such a lovely house,’ Penny put in. ‘I don’t know how you could bear to part with it.’

  ‘The prospect appals me,’ Isobel admitted. ‘I was born in this house, a disappointment to my Papa because he had wanted a son and heir, an even greater one when he realised my mother could have no more children.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think it would be lovely not to have the worry of it.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Your husband was right, Barbara, but the thought of walking out on all that history…’

  ‘My husband?’ Barbara queried.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you he’d made me an offer? I think he wants to pull it down to build houses. He could get a lot of those little boxes on this land. I should hate that.’

  Barbara had not known of the offer but, then, George never told her anything. ‘There is an alternative,’ she said. ‘A temporary one, at least. That’s why I brought Penny to see you.’ She turned to Penny, who had been standing with her cup and saucer in her hand, looking out of the window onto the terrace with its steps down to the lawn. ‘Pen, do tell Lady Isobel about your project.’

  Penny sat down opposite Isobel and explained what she had in mind. ‘We won’t be tramping all over the house, I promise you,’ she ended. ‘It’s the exterior, and perhaps one or two downstairs rooms, we would like to use, especially this one because of its view of the terrace and gardens. We’d pay you very handsomely for the privilege, and believe me, it will be a privilege.’