The House of Hopes and Dreams

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The House of Hopes and Dreams Page 31

by Trisha Ashley

‘Look, he doesn’t want you here because we’re filming a series for ITV, right?’ Sukes told her. ‘We don’t want any BBC moles trying to find out what’s happening.’

  ‘You mean … you’ve already signed a contract with ITV?’ Daisy exclaimed.

  ‘No, but we’re definitely going to,’ Carey told her.

  She looked crestfallen, but then rallied. ‘Right … but you did tell me that the new series was different, just about you living and working here at Mossby, and it’s on such a huge scale! So there’s no reason why you couldn’t do both series, is there?’

  Fang, who had been sniffing in the shrubbery, made a belated appearance just then and, spotting his former mistress, greeted her with the return of his old aggression, so that I had to grab hold of his collar. He probably thought she was going to snatch him away.

  ‘That’s never Tiny!’ she gasped. ‘He’s turned into a monster!’

  ‘We call him Fang and we’ve been feeding him a bit more than miniature portions of pedigree mush,’ Carey said.

  ‘And … he seems to be wearing boots.’

  ‘They’re a fashion statement, Daisy,’ I said shortly. ‘You know all about those.’

  Daisy looked as if she was about to do battle, but Carey sighed in a resigned kind of way, took my elbow and urged me forward.

  ‘We can’t stand out here in this freezing wind for ever; we’d better go in.’

  Daisy took this as an invitation and followed us. Then, a couple of minutes later, when it became obvious that no one was bringing in her case, she went back out to fetch it herself, along with a carrier bag that clinked.

  The bag contained a peace offering intended to pour liquid balm over any slight awkwardness her arrival might have caused: a bottle of super expensive spiced rum and another of some rarefied whisky that Carey drank on high days and holidays … if someone else was paying.

  Of course, the crew broke into the rum with cries of loud joy even before the takeaway we’d ordered arrived, and a bit of a thaw soon set in.

  Sukes offered to bunk up with Jorge, which she was doing anyway, so Daisy could have her room for the night.

  ‘But only tonight,’ qualified Carey. ‘You’d better look trains up for tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course, darling,’ she said, and added that if she was staying, she’d love to go and freshen up.

  I took her up in the lift, since it was evident that she couldn’t carry the case, only trundle it. God knows how long a stay she’d intended making!

  I pointed out the bathroom opposite, next to my room. Then she asked casually where everyone else was sleeping and said she supposed Carey had the best bedroom. So I told her he did indeed have the biggest one, the last on the right …

  When she reappeared, she’d changed into a jumpsuit that was tight round her scraggy butt and baggy above, where she didn’t have much in the way of boob. But I have to admit black did set off her Nordic, almost other-worldly fairness, with her lint-coloured hair and glacier-blue eyes. I’d forgotten how breathtakingly pretty she was.

  I’d forgotten how amusing she could be, too – and indiscreet. By the time we’d relaxed in the sitting room with the takeaway and the bottles, she’d shared several very funny stories about how Seamus made increasingly bizarre demands during filming. ‘Having a certain brand of Nepalese herbal tea, brewed in his own glass teapot, constantly on tap, was only the start of it.’

  ‘Weren’t you living with him, though?’ asked Nick bluntly. ‘You must have already known all his little ways.’

  ‘Oh, not really. I mean, I needed somewhere to stay and he totally got the wrong idea,’ she lied quickly. ‘I had to move out again almost right away.’

  I looked at Carey once or twice, to see how he was taking all this, but his expression remained withdrawn and non-committal, so I’d no idea how he was feeling. But her lights were certainly all turned on for him, and they made quite a blaze.

  Of course, it was inevitable that at some point the party was mentioned and she said wistfully that she’d love to stay for it.

  ‘No dice,’ Carey said curtly.

  ‘Anyway, we’ll be filming it for the new series, so if you were in it, it wouldn’t go down well with your boss,’ Nelson pointed out.

  I was sitting at one end of the velvet sofa with Fang curled on my knee, and every time Daisy spoke, he lifted his lip in a silent snarl, which she seemed to find disconcerting. Or maybe, after a glass of spiced rum, I was doing the same …

  I’m not sure what kind of scenario Daisy had envisaged would develop when she arrived with her two bottles. She’d known I’d be there, so perhaps she’d intended laying me out with one, then rendering Carey resistless to her charms with the other?

  But she hadn’t reckoned on the crew, who demolished the rum, but left the whisky to Carey, who had one small tot, then put it away in the cabinet in the corner. I had coffee after my solitary drink: I didn’t want to spend tomorrow nursing a hangover.

  I was just drifting off to sleep that night when there was a sudden rumpus somewhere at the other end of the landing. I slid out of bed and opened the door a crack – and there was Daisy, clad in something diaphanous, backing out of Nick’s room.

  He appeared in the doorway, looking slightly sozzled and amused.

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t who you expected, but I’ll give it a go if you like?’ he called after her retreating form. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘In your dreams, buster,’ she snapped. ‘Stay off me!’

  ‘I never touched you. You’re the one who threw yourself on me,’ he pointed out. ‘In fact, I was trying to protect my virtue.’

  ‘I wish you’d protect it quietly, I’m trying to sleep,’ said Nelson, popping his dreadlocked head out and staring at them, especially the transparently clad Daisy. ‘It’s hardly worth wearing that thing, you know,’ he added to her, then went back in and shut his door.

  Daisy, her face scarlet, made a furious hissing noise and rushed for her own room, though unfortunately forgetting the two steps down and up, where the stairs rose to the landing. She fell heavily, floundered back up again and staggered on.

  I silently closed my door just as another opened and Jorge’s voice said, ‘What the hell’s all the racket?’

  It was just like an old-fashioned farce.

  Daisy’s door slammed resoundingly. There’d been no sign of Carey, though I was sure he couldn’t have slept through all of that.

  As my shape changed and my slender body grew ever more rounded, it seemed to me that both my husband and Mr Browne regarded me with increasing distaste. Indeed, though Ralph was punctilious in enquiring after my health, he seemed to find me physically quite repugnant and avoided even kissing my cheek whenever he could do so, let alone according me any more intimate demonstrations of affection.

  I confided these concerns in a letter to Lily and she replied that she had heard that some men did find pregnant women unappealing, even the most loving of husbands, but she thought his affections would soon rekindle when the child arrived.

  I hoped she was right … but I now suspected Ralph and I would never draw close again while Mr Rosslyn Browne was planted firmly in our midst. Even when he had to go away on business, Ralph would often go with him, so we rarely spent time alone together.

  Honoria and I both feared that one day Ralph would return from one of these excursions and inform us that he had purchased land in the Lake District on which to build a house …

  34

  The Morning Chorus

  My inner alarm woke me at five and I got up, and then shivered under the antiquated shower next door, a brass arrangement that sprouted like a strange steampunk flower from one end of the bath. Daisy was in the room opposite, so my bathroom reeked of something delicately exotic – though her snores were not delicately anything, but of the more homely snort-and-whistle variety. I was tempted to record them for posterity … or blackmail.

  She wasn’t the sole emitter of nocturnal noises, because there was a positive sy
mphony of snores as I tiptoed along the landing with Carey’s card and painting tucked under my arm, like a slightly Goth and out-of-season Mother Christmas. Silently I cracked opened his bedroom door and listened: he sighed gently and turned over, so I quickly slid the envelope and parcel in and closed it again.

  Downstairs, once I’d let Fang out for his morning watery communion with the fishy fountain, I made a mug of coffee and took it through to the studio. This was probably going to be the only quiet time to myself that I’d get that day and I had the two enquiries about possible commissions to think over and reply to. Then, I wanted to start designing a series of free-hanging roundels, based on the under-and-over the sea idea, like portholes. I could sell that kind of thing for a good price very easily, through galleries and online.

  And maybe some more angels … starting with one of Carey. Not that he was any kind of angel in reality, and nor was Daisy, despite her other-worldly beauty. Last night he hadn’t shown any signs of falling for her all over again, but she’d certainly done her best to make him.

  Perhaps he was still attracted by her, but too proud, or afraid of being hurt again, to show it.

  Deep in thought, I’d been sitting at my worktable staring blankly at the wall opposite for ages, coffee in hand, before I registered the brown paper package leaning against it. An envelope bearing my name was stuck to the front. And even without the unmistakable writing, the style of the wrapping was typical of Carey: his presents were always covered in recycled brown parcel paper, turned inside out, or odd wallpaper samples.

  I got up and when I pulled off the envelope and opened it, I found inside a slip of paper that said:

  Here you are, Angel, my little Heavenly Host all rolled into one –

  Happy Valentine’s Day!

  I had no idea what Carey meant by that ‘heavenly host’ bit, but I carried the package over to my table, cleared a space at one end and laid it down flat. From the sheer weight and feel of it, I had a good idea of what it was, though not what form it might take, so I ripped off the paper eagerly.

  Inside was a fragment of a stained-glass window, the empty flanges of surrounding broken-off lead calme splayed out around it. It was bound with clingfilm to a piece of square board, which I removed, my eyes fixed on the painted face beneath. It was as if my earlier thoughts had conjured up the haloed head of an angel, Pre-Raphaelite in style and brilliantly painted and stained. There was a hint of celestial blue robe in one of the remaining pieces and the feathered top arch of a wing behind the head.

  That was all that remained intact – the head and three other pieces – then the torn protruding bits of empty calme where the window had been knocked out. I’d seen it happen many times before, but never with glass of this quality. It was a miracle that someone had at least thought this fragment worth preserving, perhaps worth a few bob.

  I grieved for the window that had been lost, even while I rejoiced in the part that had been saved.

  The door opened and Carey entered, carrying the painting and card, which he set down on his desk before picking me up and giving me a bear hug and a smacking kiss.

  ‘Thank you, Shrimp, you couldn’t have given me anything I’d like more!’

  ‘Ditto, though I wish I had the rest of the window,’ I said breathlessly when he put me down. ‘It’s so beautiful, they must have been mad to smash it.’

  ‘I know, but I expect it was just workmen doing what they were told. I found that piece mixed in with a box of loose squares of that pink and blue machine-made glass you hate, in the architectural antiques place. They couldn’t remember where the box came from and they’d had it for years. I had to buy the whole lot, so the rest of it is in one of the stables.’

  ‘It’ll come in handy for Grant, if he sets himself up doing repair work,’ I said, then looked down at my angel’s head again. ‘I think this is – or was – an important window.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, too. You can’t mistake the full, sulky-looking mouth on that angel, beautiful as she is in her way,’ he agreed. ‘Pre-Raphaelite – maybe even Burne-Jones?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘Take it apart and then re-lead the remaining pieces into a roundel, I expect. I meant to make some more angel ones anyway – just for me, not to sell.’

  ‘You could hang some in the windows in here,’ he suggested. ‘And I’ll have my painting in here, too, so I can contemplate it when I need inspiration.’

  ‘I think right now you’d better get inspired about cooking breakfast, because I can hear the thunder of hoofs on the trail.’

  ‘So there is,’ he said, but instead of heading out to the kitchen, he stood looking down quizzically at me, his large, warm hands gripping my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry about Daisy turning up, Angel. I just couldn’t shove her out into the cold and dark last night, but I’ll send her on her way this morning, even if I have to drive her to the station myself!’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re apologizing to me – I don’t care whether she’s here or not,’ I said untruthfully. ‘But now she’s got wind of the party, I doubt you’ll dislodge her before tomorrow.’

  ‘Limpet’ was probably her middle name.

  ‘Just watch me,’ he said, then added, still looking down at me and raising one quizzical eyebrow, ‘You know, I could have sworn I heard her and Nick arguing on the landing in the middle of the night. It sounded as if she’d walked into his room and woken him up.’

  ‘Did she? Perhaps she was looking for the bathroom,’ I suggested, with limpid innocence.

  After breakfast, I drove over to Molly’s to collect the cake and the rest of the party food. Daisy still hadn’t put in an appearance, which was probably just as well, because there was much ribald joking about the bedroom farce in the middle of the night. Nick was pretending that she’d fallen suddenly and passionately in love with him and he’d had to fight her off to preserve his honour.

  As usual, the crew were none the worse for the rum, though slightly sleepy. Carey, Nelson and Jorge were to go up to the Halfhidden shop while Nick and Sukes took some shots of the alpacas in the field behind the back gates for, as he put it, a bit of quirky local colour.

  I left them discussing it, hoping that dumping Daisy at the station with her huge suitcase would be part of Carey’s plan. Fang had wanted to come with me, but since I might have to put some of the food on the back seat of the car, that wouldn’t have been a good idea. He’s such a glutton.

  Molly had iced a big rectangular cake like a stained-glass window and lettered ‘Angel Arrowsmith Art Glass’ on to a scroll in the middle. You could have leaded up that design quite easily, so Grant must have had a hand in it.

  There were biscuits with stained-glass middles made of melted brightly coloured sweets, as well as some more mundane offerings like mini sausage rolls, cheese straws, quiches and savoury tartlets.

  ‘I’ve marked anything that isn’t vegetarian,’ she said. ‘If you’ve invited any vegans, then they’re on their own.’

  ‘I don’t think I have – but they could eat the crisps and nuts, I suppose.’

  We had coffee and a slice of carrot cake before it was time for her to load her deliveries into her little van. I told her about Daisy and the bitch that barked in the night.

  ‘You’re a terrible woman!’ she said, laughing. ‘Do you think she’ll have gone by the time you get back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nor do I know how Carey really feels about her now. You haven’t seen her, but she’s almost unbelievably pretty,’ I said gloomily. ‘He says he’s totally over her but …’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft – even I can see he’s not looking for someone else!’ she said robustly. ‘The two of you are having too much fun together for him to even think about it.’

  ‘It has been fun – like old times – but I’m being selfish not wanting him to meet someone else just yet. I mean, I couldn’t very well carry on living at Mossby, if he married, or moved a partner in, could I
?’

  ‘Oh, Angel!’ she said, looking at me in a strangely exasperated way. ‘That’s really not going to happen. Now he’s got you, why would he want anyone else?’

  ‘But that’s different! We’ve known each other so long, we’re like brother and sister.’

  ‘Not like any brother and sister I’ve ever known,’ she said drily. ‘And I suspect you haven’t always thought of each other that way, have you?’

  ‘Well … in our last year at university I did think our relationship was starting to change,’ I admitted. ‘But then I caught him snogging yet another blonde at a party, so I knew it would be better to keep things as they’d always been.’

  ‘Then you met Julian soon afterwards anyway,’ she finished.

  ‘Yes, and Julian and I fell in love at first sight, so it was obviously meant to be.’

  ‘But now you and Carey have both had to move on into a new phase of your lives and you need each other,’ she said. ‘Things change.’

  ‘They do, but we’re destined to remain just best friends for ever.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Molly sceptically.

  ‘No, really, we are,’ I insisted … but then into my head popped the recollection of that very unbrotherly kiss he’d given me, right after the stone ball almost fell on him, and I could feel myself turning slightly pink.

  I got up. ‘I’d better leave you to it. See you later at the party!’

  When I got back, Carey helped me unload the food on to the cold slate shelves of the larder and told me that Daisy had disappeared. It seemed that having come downstairs so late that she found herself alone in the house, apart from a sneering dog, she’d ignored the note he’d left suggesting she ring for a taxi to the station and vanished into thin air instead. Unfortunately, she’d left her suitcase behind, which wasn’t a hopeful sign.

  It was a puzzle, but one we soon forgot about while we set to and finished the preparations for the party. Nelson, assisted by Sukes, produced his hedgehog canapés, while Carey cut and buttered thin triangles of a kind of fruit loaf he’d made in the bread maker. Finally, everything was ready and it was time to ferry it all down to the workshop and arrange it, under its clingfilm wrapping, on the tables.

 

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