The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  Mum, who did have her practical moments, saved him by bashing the branch with the long wooden clothes prop, though he was badly bruised from the fall and half asphyxiated. I reminded him of this.

  ‘Five lives left, then,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better stop having near-death experiences, even if the kiss of life was enjoyable.’

  I looked at him uncertainly, but he gave me his familiar, loopily brilliant smile and pushed the biscuit tin in my direction.

  ‘Sugar’s good for shock,’ he said.

  In the ensuing days, I saw little of my husband and missed our easy comradeship. I was much occupied in the workshop, of course, and I now decided to make a full-size cartoon of the Lady Anne window, which fascinated me.

  And the more I worked on copying the design, the stranger the whole thing struck me. Some of the diamond panes were painted with repeated sequences of motifs of no apparent significance, while others were filled quite randomly, sampler fashion. The man dressed in Cavalier fashion below the house I had at first supposed to be walking through a cornfield, but on closer inspection I thought it resembled more a bed of flames!

  It was all very curious.

  24

  Connections

  Carey’s mind soon turned to practical matters and he wondered if the people up at Moel Farm might know how to get the stone ball out of the ditch. It would in any case give him an opportunity of meeting them.

  Having cut the rusted padlock off the back gate, we dragged back one side, squealing and protesting, just far enough to get the golf buggy through.

  Clem, alerted by the noise, appeared out of the shrubbery with a wheelbarrow and was shocked when we told him what had happened yesterday.

  ‘I haven’t been down the drive since then and the tops of the rhododendrons hides that gatepost from the Lodge, so I hadn’t noticed the stone ball was missing.’

  ‘It was very odd it should choose the exact moment when Carey was standing next to it to roll off,’ I said.

  ‘But perhaps the post has sunk a little, so that it might not be level any more,’ Clem suggested. ‘In that case, if the mortar loosened enough, it could roll off any time.’

  ‘Angel thinks it was pushed off on purpose,’ Carey told him, and Clem’s ruddy face blanched. He glanced at me uneasily and then away again.

  ‘Surely not? Who’d do such a thing?’

  ‘Homicidal squirrels – that’s my theory,’ Carey said with a grin.

  ‘Something big crashed away into the shrubbery right afterwards,’ I insisted stubbornly. ‘I was shocked, but not so shocked I didn’t notice a noise like that.’

  ‘I had other things on my mind,’ Carey said innocently, and I shot him an uncertain look.

  That kiss had certainly been far different from our usual friendly exchanges … but then, shock affects us all in different ways, so it probably had no other significance.

  Carey got into the buggy and suggested to Clem that he might like to oil the gate hinges and pull out some of the weeds and ivy that were trying to take over, then he drove off up to the farm. The buggy jolted over the rough and unused bit of track, then trundled off along the tarmac.

  I went back into the house and worked on my equipment list in the studio for a while, with Fang curled companionably at my feet, but I was making coffee in the kitchen when Carey returned. He was carrying a box of freshly baked cheese scones and wearing a brightly striped blue and purple alpaca scarf.

  A tractor roared down the drive, rattling the window. It was driven by a freckle-faced girl and there was a weather-beaten older man sitting next to her.

  ‘That’s Jodie Rigby and her dad, Steve,’ Carey said. ‘They think they can get the stone ball out of the ditch with that digger thing on the front.’ He stole my coffee and washed half a cheese scone down with it.

  ‘Right, I’d better go and see how they’re getting on.’ He got up again and reached for his stick.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ I told him firmly. ‘I’ll go down, because you need to rest. When you came in, you weren’t so much limping as hopping, even using the stick.’

  I was positive the accident had jarred his bad leg yesterday, and it really must have been painful, because although he grumbled he agreed to go and lie down for a while.

  The Rigbys were still manoeuvring the tractor, so I took the opportunity to have a better look at the ground behind the gatepost. There, pressed into the leaves, I was sure I could make out the impression of the edge and corner of a box or crate. It was very faint, so it was no wonder I hadn’t spotted it the previous day – and I didn’t think the squirrel theory explained that. On the other hand, it was hard to believe that anyone would have deliberately rolled the stone down.

  Still, I thought I’d like to know where Ella had been at the time, since she was the one with a grudge and a dodgy temper, and also she had been listening at the door when Carey was discussing the codicil leaving Mossby to her. Call me a nasty, suspicious person, but maybe we should find a way of letting her know Carey had changed his mind about that.

  I had to admit it all seemed a bit melodramatic and unlikely in the bright light of day, so having watched the successful recovery mission and chatted to the Rigbys about the alpacas and the ghost trail, I returned to the house and went up to check if Carey was awake and ready for a cup of tea and something to eat.

  When I quietly opened his door he was lying on his bed, fast asleep, and his face looked smoothed out, innocent and pale as the dawn, just like it had when we were small children. I brushed a lock of burnished red-gold hair off his forehead and then tiptoed away.

  That afternoon when I suggested that we take some time off to explore the village of Halfhidden, Carey didn’t put up much of a protest.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ I said firmly. ‘And we’re not going to trek round any of the ghost trail this time, we’ll just check the place out.’

  ‘When we clear the back gate, we’ll be able to drive over that way, if we want to.’

  ‘We’ll have to see how many farm gates, if any, there are along it to open first,’ I suggested as I turned the car up the lane just after the Screaming Skull, which was deserted at that time of the afternoon.

  Carey said wistfully, ‘I’d love to take that trail up through the woods from the pub to the Lady Spring, but I don’t think my leg is up to it yet.’

  ‘Never mind, I’m sure it won’t be long till you can make it – and maybe swim in this healing spring too, when the weather warms up?’

  ‘I don’t really expect it to work, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try,’ he agreed.

  ‘Meanwhile, perhaps I can get some of the spring water for you to drink, or pour over your leg, or whatever,’ I joked.

  ‘I can’t really see why it should do any good, but I’m willing to suspend belief and do anything that might speed up the recovery process … and if we tell Nick about it, he’s going to want to film it.’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’ I carefully negotiated the narrow road, which wound steadily upwards with the walls of the Sweetwell estate on my right and the occasional cottage huddled in front of some heavy pine woods on the left.

  It brought us to a sort of green, which I thought must be the centre of the straggling village, for there were larger houses and other buildings around it, including a small church and a village hall.

  I pulled in and put Fang on the lead before we looked around. There was another of the big ghost trail information signs nearby, with a helpful ‘You are here’ arrow on the map, though I think we could have worked that one out for ourselves.

  Carey unfolded one of the leaflets Lulu had given us and we compared the two maps.

  ‘That’s Cam’s gallery over there next to the village shop, which we’d better suss out, because it’s the nearest if we run out of anything,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a clock repair shop in Halfhidden too, of all things,’ Carey exclaimed, surprised. ‘I hadn’t noticed that on the map before. It’s further uphill, where there are
a lot more houses. This village seems to stretch right up the valley.’

  ‘I think they call that a “linear village”,’ I suggested, dim recollections of school lessons surfacing.

  ‘Well, this is the middle and that drive over there belongs to the big house, Sweetwell.’ He swivelled round. ‘There’s a garden antiques place there that sounds interesting.’

  I’d been vaguely conscious of some steady barking nearby since we arrived and now I noticed ‘Debo’s Desperate Dog Rescue’ on a sign just inside the Sweetwell gates, where an offshoot to the drive veered to the left behind a neat fence fronted by rose beds.

  At that moment, Lulu walked down it, together with her friend Izzy, whom we’d met the other night in the pub, and a very tall, elegant woman with urchin-cut silvery hair. She looked vaguely familiar.

  Something that looked about the size of a brown bear was following them, but when it caught up, it stopped and sat down heavily.

  ‘Hi, have you come to suss out the lie of the land?’ Lulu greeted us. ‘You remember Izzy, don’t you?’

  ‘Only just: I think we’d all had too much of the Old Spoggit Brown the other night,’ Carey said ruefully, and she grinned. She had an attractively pixie look about her and was even smaller than me.

  ‘You’ll get used to it – it gets everyone like that the first time,’ Izzy said. ‘This is my aunt Debo – she runs the last-chance re-homing centre for dogs behind us – and this is Babybelle,’ she added, patting the bear, which was panting and exposing a tongue like a giant flannel.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘A Newfoundland. She was a rescue dog, but she’s mine now.’

  ‘I’ve got one, too,’ said Lulu, ‘but mine’s a Staffie.’

  At first sight of the bear, Fang had wisely hidden behind our legs, though I’d got a good grip on the lead anyway. I wouldn’t have put it past the stupid creature to try and bite something twenty times his size.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re looking for a dog, are you?’ Debo asked hopefully. Then her eyes fell on Fang, peeping out cautiously, and her face fell. ‘Oh – I see you’ve already got one.’

  ‘Yes, and he’s pretty desperate, so you can have him, too, if you like,’ offered Carey.

  I gave him a look. ‘He doesn’t mean it. He’s very fond of Fang; we both are.’

  ‘I might be, if it wasn’t for his antisocial tendencies,’ Carey conceded. ‘He’s a bit of a liability.’

  ‘He’s very sweet really,’ I explained to the others. ‘He just doesn’t like men much, other than Carey. He adores him.’

  ‘I don’t know about adore. I think he just associates me with food, though it doesn’t stop him growling at me when he feels like it.’

  ‘What kind of antisocial tendencies?’ Debo asked interestedly, so we told her about the leg biting.

  ‘I know he’s small, but he does have big, needle-sharp teeth and he really goes for it, so they can be quite nasty bites,’ I explained.

  ‘I’ve had a few like that, though Border collies are the worst for nipping people’s legs,’ Debo said. ‘You need to talk to Chris, my dog whisperer. I’ll give you his number. He usually has to take them away for a few days of retraining, but they come back cured.’

  Fang gave her an evil look, though with those protruding teeth and slightly bulging black eyes, it was always hard for the poor little thing to look any other way. There was something in his expression, though, that made me think he’d got the gist of what she’d been saying.

  ‘He looks a clever little fellow,’ Lulu said. ‘He’ll probably learn not to do it really quickly, and Chris only uses kind methods, mostly talking to them and rewarding good behaviour.’

  Debo bent down and looked at Fang, and something must have passed between them because suddenly he wagged his tail and lolled his tongue at her in an amiable kind of way, like a small pink flag of truce.

  She patted him and straightened up. ‘I think he’s been crossed with something: he’s certainly not a pure Chihuahua. I’m not sure entirely what, though.’

  ‘Werewolf?’ suggested Carey.

  ‘Just wait till Chris has worked his magic on him,’ said Lulu. ‘He’ll be a different dog.’

  Izzy said she’d better get back up to Sweetwell, where she had a clothes design workshop, and told us her husband ran the garden antiques centre in the old stables. ‘You should have a look, before you go,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes, and come and see Cam’s gallery, too. He has a small range of Izzy’s clothes and scarves,’ Lulu said enticingly.

  ‘We will, but we’re going to check out the village shop first,’ I told her, which we did after Debo had given Carey the number of the dog whisperer.

  The shop was surprisingly large and well-stocked, with everything from food and drink to toys and gifts. It was owned by Cam’s mother. I was starting to think that everyone we met in Halfhidden was related or connected in some way.

  We hadn’t intended buying anything but, due to the small but interesting deli counter, we came out with so much we had to stash it in the car boot before we went into the gallery.

  It was light and airy inside, the whitewashed walls hung with paintings, and there was an elderly man manning a large, polished wooden counter.

  A folding wooden floor-to-ceiling screen had been drawn across behind this, partially shutting off the far end of the room, which seemed to be a studio, with several people sitting or standing in front of easels, painting.

  Lulu came round the corner of it with a mug of tea, which she handed to the elderly man. ‘There you are, Jonah.’

  ‘Cam’s running one of his painting classes at the moment,’ she explained to us quietly. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘That’s OK. We only wanted to have a quick look this time,’ Carey said, his eyes drawn to the paintings on the wall, which were very good, and lingering, I noticed, on one that looked like shattered sunlight falling across water.

  I’d have liked to have lingered over the small rack of Izzy’s brightly coloured clothes, especially the padded jackets: I loved my coat of many colours, but it was getting extremely shabby.

  ‘Another time,’ Carey said, firmly dragging me away. ‘This is just supposed to be a reconnaissance trip, remember?’

  Outside, he unfolded the leaflet and we followed the trail up the road past the clock shop and a large Victorian house with a tea garden and a glazed veranda. The sign proclaimed itself to be open out of season at weekends, for afternoon tea.

  ‘I wish it was the weekend now,’ I said. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘I can’t imagine where you put all the food you eat, when you’re the size of a sparrow.’

  ‘You eat twice as much!’

  ‘I’m twice as big, and anyway, I burn it off in hard work.’ He consulted the map again. ‘There’s the Summit Alpine Nursery at the top of the valley and near it is the spot that the spectre of a Saxon warrior haunts, where a treasure trove was found. We can drive up there another time.’

  But before we went home, he insisted we investigated the garden antiques centre. I drove up to a parking area and we walked through an arched opening into a courtyard much like the one at Mossby, where a tall, well-built red-haired woman was briskly wire-brushing the rust off some ancient and obscure piece of agricultural machinery.

  Izzy was standing talking to her husband and she waved at us. ‘You remember Rufus from the pub, don’t you? He was dying to talk to you about your gates, Carey, but it was so noisy that night, it was hopeless.’

  ‘We were all so blotto on the local brew, it would probably have been hopeless anyway,’ I confessed.

  ‘It tastes innocuous, but it should have a warning on the bottle!’ she said.

  ‘I’d love to buy your wrought-iron front gates,’ Rufus told Carey. ‘I mean, they’re rusted to hell and in poor shape, but—’

  ‘No dice,’ Carey interrupted. ‘They’re pure Arts and Crafts and brilliant workmanship, and they belong at Mossby.’


  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘There’s a similar but smaller pair of gates at the back of the estate too,’ Carey said. His eye fell on the tall redhead so engrossed in her work. ‘I won’t sell either pair, but I’d pay you to bring them up here and restore them for me. And I’ve found several pieces of Victorian garden statuary in one of my outbuildings that you might like, so maybe there’s even a deal to be done?’

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Rufus, his eyes lighting up, and they moved away and were soon deep in conversation.

  ‘Just as well Foxy loves tackling rust and enjoys a challenge,’ Izzy said drily, ‘because it looks as if she’s going to get one! Foxy Lane is my husband’s right-hand woman and her sister is Debo’s kennel maid.’

  She took me up a nearby flight of stone steps to a large room above what had probably once been a barn, to her workshop, and explained that she sold her lovely clothes mostly by mail order, with a new collection twice a year.

  ‘They’re all made in India and I was inspired by the cotton dresses and padded jackets of the hippie era,’ she said, then admired my jacket.

  ‘This is a vintage one I bought from a charity shop. Or what’s left of it, because I’ve just about worn it to death.’

  ‘I could make you a new version, if you like?’ she offered. ‘I do sometimes create one-offs for special clients.’

  ‘I’d love that. It’s not dissimilar in shape to your padded jackets, is it? Only mine’s velvet patchwork and in random colours.’

  I’d never had anything made just for me. It was quite exciting … and possibly going to be quite expensive, too.

  After a while, I managed to peel Carey away from his new best friend – everyone loves Carey, because he’s so genuinely interested and enthusiastic about everything – and Rufus said he’d be coming up soon to Mossby.

  ‘When you delve into it, there’s an amazing amount of enterprise going on round here, not just the ghost trail,’ I said, driving carefully back down the bendy steep bit of the road.