Rumours

by Freya North

  Stella thought about him. Had he? Hardly.

  Lydia looked at her watch. 9.14. She waited. 9.15. The doorbell clanged. Moments later, Mrs Biggins was showing Xander Fletcher into the room.

  ‘Miss Hutton,’ he nodded at her. Then he clocked Will and the expression on his face, which he cast to and from the boy to Lydia, could only be described as aghast.

  ‘Hullo,’ Xander said quietly, his eyes scouring the boy’s face as if checking for wounds.

  ‘I’m William Ewan Taylor-Hutton.’

  ‘I’m Xander Fletcher.’ He smiled at the boy, relieved that he appeared unscathed and seemed relatively chirpy. He went over to Lydia to receive his instructions. But he glanced back to Stella and her boy, on whom Lydia’s eyes remained fixed.

  Will was pulling his ear, having just scratched the back of his head, rubbed his nose into the palm of his hand and quickly given a small cough. Currently he was doing peculiar arm movements as if performing some strange mime. Just then, Lydia and Xander noted he was aping his mother who had been rummaging in her bag, scratching her head, pulling her ear, rubbing her nose and leafing through papers on her clipboard.

  ‘What are you doing, child!’ Lydia barked.

  Stella sensed Will freeze. And then she noticed Xander freeze too.

  ‘I was …’ Will stammered. ‘I was … My mum told me I had to be her shadow. So I was being her shadow.’

  Lydia looked from the boy to his mother, both of them standing there trying desperately to pull a mask of nonchalance over their obvious discomfort. Lydia stared levelly at Stella, imagining all she’d said to Will, prepping him on their way here this morning. Don’t touch! Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to! Don’t fidget! Just be my shadow.

  Almost eight. With his hair now lying nice and even. Fair and straight. Almost the same. A pretty face. But not the same – how could another face be anywhere near as beautiful? But wide eyed and button nosed and a bloom to the cheek – not dissimilar. Less cherubic. A little skinnier. And older, of course. By a few months.

  ‘I’m sorry, Your Ladyship,’ Will said meekly, with a small bow.

  ‘I told him not to—’

  Lydia swatted the air as if the two of them were intensely annoying. ‘Xander, show them what needs to be seen, would you.’

  ‘Thank you, Lady Lydia,’ said Stella. ‘Shall I come back in, afterwards?’

  ‘No!’ Lydia said, the thought of it apparently appalling her.

  ‘Thank you for having me, My Lady,’ said William, backing out of the room as if unable to turn away from this terrifying aristocrat in her dreamlike surroundings.

  Mrs Biggins was at the front door. She handed something to Will. It was an envelope made ingeniously out of a cloth napkin. She patted him on the head and then, just as Stella was passing, Mrs Biggins laid her hand fleetingly on her shoulder. By the time Stella looked round at her, she’d taken it away and was talking quietly to Xander.

  ‘What’s in here!’ Will whispered excitedly to his mother as soon as they were outside.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Stella, glancing at Xander.

  ‘It’s shortbread,’ Xander told them while Mrs Biggins shut them out. Then he grinned at Will. ‘For sharing. No,’ he smiled, ‘don’t open it here – I’ll show you where.’

  Though Stella was familiar now with the house, with the look and smell of the place, the slightly dank feeling of some of the rooms, the dusty celestial light in others, outside was still a mystery. The distances between places so much greater in reality than her memory recalled. The walk from the house, across the drive, up the box-lined pathway to the garden, the route across the lawns to the lavish rhododendrons, in front of which Lord Fortescue gazed out. The expansive undulations of impeccably mown grass. The size of the pond, strewn with lilies. Lake – she would definitely put ‘lake’ on the particulars. The long run of wall of the kitchen garden, plotted and pieced into obedient vegetable beds behind which was a forest of fruit canes and cages.

  Xander led them a circuitous route from the domestic side of the exterior, through a wooded walk, to what had once been the busy stable block and was now occupied by the two doddery old boys, Art and Mr Tringle. Will walked on beside him, gazing in awe and pointing out everything around him, waiting for direction from Xander whether to go left or right or keep going. This wasn’t a back garden, this was a whole county! Stella lagged behind, absorbed, trying to formulate descriptions that would do the place justice.

  ‘So,’ said Xander to Will as they walked. ‘You’re Will.’

  ‘I am,’ said Will.

  ‘Must be boring to give up your Saturday to come and see an old crumbling house.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. And it isn’t a house – it’s a palace.’

  Xander smiled, looked about, realized how he’d grown up taking all this for granted in some ways.

  ‘The house my mum and I live in – it could fit into a cupboard at Longbridge Hall.’

  My mum and I. It certainly made Stella more human.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Oh – in a town called Hertford. In my uncle’s house. Not with him, though.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Xander, pointing out a buzzard.

  ‘I can’t wait to eat the shortbread,’ said Will.

  ‘Me too,’ said Xander. ‘Not long now.’

  Stella caught up with them and Will scampered ahead.

  ‘Good week?’ Xander asked as they walked, because silence seemed to clash with such a beautiful day.

  ‘Ish,’ said Stella, thinking how relieved she’d been to leave the office yesterday, dirty looks striking her between the shoulder blades resulting in a stiff neck and a headache that still lingered. ‘You?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Xander. She asked politely what he did and where he did it. Then she told him about Lydia and the plant sap and Will’s hair and the dowager’s asperity.

  ‘God,’ said Xander, ‘how could I have forgotten about the glump.’ He ran his hand over his head, as if he might find vestiges of it there. ‘That’s what she calls it – glump.’

  ‘Is she really a dragon – or is it just her manner?’ Stella stopped, her question was sincere. ‘It’s just so difficult to tell.’

  Xander looked at her. He could say the former, or the latter. Neither were untrue. ‘She doesn’t like boys,’ he said. Stella looked down as if guilt-stricken for exposing her son. ‘You should have left him at home. Couldn’t your husband have looked after him?’

  ‘I – don’t have a husband.’ She paused. ‘I’m divorced.’ It was the first time she’d qualified her new status. A direct answer to an acceptable question.

  ‘Oh,’ said Xander. He found himself wondering whether his question suddenly seemed intrusive and hostile. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Stella stressed, slightly snappish. She continued, calmer. ‘I didn’t realize bringing Will could be a problem. I should have asked first.’

  ‘Sorry – that was a bit sharp of me,’ said Xander. ‘It’s just I know what Lydia can be like.’

  ‘Did she like you when you were a boy?’ Stella asked, thinking how Lydia appeared to like no one.

  Xander broadened his shoulders and snorted a little through his nose. ‘Not at first,’ he said.

  ‘What is it with boys?’

  He shouldn’t really be going into all of this. He should be taking Stella only to the stable yard and on to Clarence’s. But he glanced at Will, holding the package of shortbread so carefully, like a ring bearer and his cushion. ‘Edward,’ Xander said quietly, turning to face Stella. ‘Her son. Who died.’

  Stella suddenly remembered Lydia saying she had a son, past tense. ‘How old?’

  ‘Just seven.’

  ‘Oh, dear God.’ She paused. ‘Did you know him?’

  Xander shook his head. ‘Before my time.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Leukaemia.’

  ‘Just to
o terrible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you grew up here?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Did she terrorize you?’ Stella said it gently, not wanting to offend. And actually, her son appeared to be unscathed and seemed rather in awe of Her Ladyship.

  Xander acknowledged her tone. ‘Pretty much,’ he said. ‘But I was very – close – with Lydia’s daughter, Verity, in our childhood. And that was important to Lydia. Useful, you could say.’

  ‘Sounds very Charles Dickens,’ Stella said.

  Xander thought about it. ‘You know something? It was.’

  ‘Very Pip and Estella.’

  ‘No, not like that at all. Verity was – different.’ Xander called ahead to Will. Left! Through there! Straight on and through the archway! ‘Is your name short for Estella?’

  ‘No. Just Stella.’

  They were at the top end of the stable yard, passing under the clock tower, Art and Mr Tringle’s quarters on the left. On the right, the three sets of old arched double doors of the coach house in the French grey of the Longbridge estate. The paint flaking and brittle, like tired old horses in need of a groom. Xander walked ahead to the side of the building where exterior stone steps led up steeply to a small grey door at the top. The metal banister bent in some places, rusted in others and occasionally missing all together.

  ‘Up here?’ Stella said. Will and Xander looked at her as if she was a little dim.

  ‘Can I unwrap the shortbread now?’ Will asked.

  ‘Almost,’ Xander laughed.

  He had a key in his pocket. He unlocked the door and it creaked open. He let Will in first. Held the door open for Stella next. She had to squeeze by, not anticipating how narrow it was. Had she, she would have turned away from him, gone in with her back to his body. But she didn’t think. A hair’s breadth between them, close enough for her to notice the few dark hairs on his chest at the opening of his shirt, close enough for him to detect the fragrance of her shampoo.

  Glanced up. Him looking down. Eyes, dark and intense – not grey blue today but slate navy. He hadn’t shaved.

  That’s not a glance. That’s a linger.

  The apartment above the coach house bays was long and appeared to be subdivided by little more than folding screens. The windows themselves, of which there were six in a long horizontal run, were wide but short and resembled pairs of eyes squinting. It wasn’t dark inside, but it felt low, quiet, because one had to stoop a little to see out, as if those within the apartment could choose to hide from the outside world. It was empty, dusty, still. There were some old tea chests filled with rubbish, gingham curtains hanging limp and moth-eaten at the windows like a peasant girl’s skirt. Will, automatically, was walking to the far end. Xander was not directing him otherwise. Just in front of him, Stella. She had stopped at the first of the partitions – which were indeed folding screens covered in calico.

  ‘My dad called this place a moveable feast.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘This is where I grew up.’ Why am I telling her this?

  ‘This? Here?’ Stella turned and for a split second, Xander thought she was going to reach for his arm, at much the same time that Stella thought she might, too. She hugged her clipboard close. ‘This is your childhood home?’

  ‘It was,’ Xander said, looking about himself. ‘Unconventional – I’ll say. But it was a merry place. Warm and bright – with my parents forever rejigging the layout with the screens. I can’t exactly remember where my room was – it grew with me when I was a boy and needed the space to play, then it seemed to shrink when I was in my late teens and hardly ever here. And when I left for uni, it disappeared altogether and my parents went for the Ultimate Open Plan – like something you’d see on Grand Designs these days.’

  He sat on a tea crate and watched Stella gazing about. He told her how his parents moved to Little Dunwick when they retired, but that his mother still visited Lydia regularly. He told her about Nottingham University and Caroline and Andrew and their communal, post-student existence in Highbury before they all moved to Long Dansbury. Him renting. Them buying. Marrying. Again, he wondered to himself why he was telling her any of this.

  ‘No mortgage?’ Stella asked. ‘No offspring?’

  ‘Er – no,’ Xander laughed.

  And then he wondered, what about you, Stella? What’s your story? Divorced? When? Are you a single mum by choice? And while Will came back to them, in awe of his surroundings, asking for Xander’s say-so to start the shortbread, Xander wondered why Stella should be of any interest to him. Why had he noticed the amber in her eyes, why was he interested to see what she’d make of it all, up here in the quiet shadows of his past? Why had he stopped to think that she suited being a mother to a boy like Will?

  ‘Please, Mr Xander, can I have the biscuits now?’

  ‘Very nearly almost.’ Caroline’s kids loved it when he said that. ‘Come on.’

  At the very far wall was a door, which opened to another door – much like between the carriages of a train. Through this door, and at right angles to the apartment and to Art and Mr Tringle’s flats, ran the clock tower section, joining the two. It felt draughty, as though they shouldn’t be there. There were gaps in the floor and holes in the roof and bird shit encrusting some of the rafters like barnacles on a lobster pot.

  ‘Are there bats here?’ Will asked.

  ‘Yes, right up high in the clock tower itself.’

  ‘Does it chime?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Can I eat the biscuits?’

  ‘If you share them with your mum and me.’

  ‘Can we go in further?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask your mum.’

  ‘Can we, Mummy?’

  ‘No, darling. No. I don’t think so. I think it’s time we went on.’

  Xander noted how quiet Stella had become as they left the stable yard and walked through the yard with the workshops in the old barns, past the livery stables and out into the farmland.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said Stella. She looked at her clipboard. ‘Clarence’s place?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Xander. ‘Over there.’ He pointed, a long way off, to a stone shack.

  ‘Who is Clarence?’ Stella asked. ‘The only Clarence I know of is the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life.’

  Xander smiled. ‘He’s a great big, soft gentle bear of a man.’

  ‘Sounds like Hagrid,’ chirped Will.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You can tell you haven’t got children,’ Stella laughed.

  ‘Clarence is special,’ Xander said defensively. ‘Of all the people still tied to Longbridge, he’s the one I’ll worry about most, if the estate goes. He’s more than just a tenant – he’s part of the land. I honestly don’t know-how he’ll manage.’ She could feel Xander looking at her – no doubt with some confrontational expression as if to say, well, have you thought about that? She kept her eyes on Clarence’s place.

  The building seemed at odds with all the others on the estate. Stella thought it looked best suited to the moors. Stout and low with thick walls constructed from uneven slabs of stone. Small windows, like deep-set eyes. Clarence wasn’t in. Though she stood on tiptoe and cupped her hands around her face as she pressed close to the window, Stella could see little.

  ‘It’s really an outhouse,’ Xander said, now with affection. ‘It’s very simple inside – Clarence has made it homely. He’s been here since the War. Many times Lydia’s offered him different quarters, but he’s happy there.’

  ‘Since the War?’ Will was all ears.

  ‘He came with his parents from the East End of London,’ Xander said. ‘He was a boy. His dad was a corporation dustman – none of them had ever seen a cow before.’ He paused. Will would love Clarence. Xander remembered how he’d sit for hours on an upturned bucket listening to Clarence’s stories.

  ‘Never seen a cow?’

  ‘Never. His
dad became head herdsman. He had a gift – passed it on to Clarence. Limousins – the cattle at Longbridge.’

  ‘Where are Clarence’s cows now?’

  ‘Long gone.’

  ‘But he’s still here?’

  ‘It’s his home,’ he told Will, whilst looking at Stella accusingly. ‘He’s very old.’

  Stella thought, don’t you look at me, you with your dark stare. But she couldn’t say anything. And she couldn’t look away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Look!’ Will showed Sara the napkin that had contained the shortbread which Xander had advised him to keep because, if Will returned it to His Lady, Mrs Biggins would be in trouble. Xander had winked at Stella at that part but Will hadn’t seen so he couldn’t recount that bit.

  Sara fingered the embroidered crest. ‘How fabulously posh,’ she said.

  ‘You should see the place,’ said Stella. But tonight, Sara wasn’t interested in details of cornicing and fanlights and horse’s bums and men called Clarence.

  ‘Go,’ Sara said to her. ‘The life of Riley awaits you.’

  ‘Who?’ said Will.

  ‘It’s a saying,’ said Stella, sensing Sara grinning at her lasciviously. ‘You help Robbie and Sara with the Stickies, darling,’ she said, ‘and I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’

  Driving home, Stella thought how bizarre the concept of going on a date seemed. She felt a little alarmed that she wasn’t more excited. A blind date at the age of thirty-four, her first blind date ever, in fact. It was too long after breaking up with Charlie, not least now that the divorce was through, to consider the merits of The Rebound. A couple of her friends had proposed it, in the early days, but Stella had an intrinsic sense that it wouldn’t suit her. These days, she doubted a relationship was her thing either. But there again, Saturday nights alone were rather pathetic, when they happened week in, week out, so she’d humour the good intentions of her loved ones and spend the evening with some charming, well-off, handsome chap with a silly name.

  She’d been through various options of what to wear – standing critically in front of her wardrobe and mirror and sharing her thoughts via text and phone calls with Jo, Juliet and Sara. Ultimately, the women closest to her were unanimous in the pairings they suggested. Dark grey skirt not too short but sassy enough, black boots with a heel and her silky tunic top in dusky rose. Hair up, she’d been told. Drop earrings. Dark lipstick. Smokey eyes. And be five to ten minutes late. Stella was slightly concerned that her own instincts were apparently so far off the mark – she’d have been on time, in stretch jeans, just a lash of mascara, just a slick of lipgloss and lower heels in case a getaway was necessary. She started to fret. Say she found Riley unattractive physically and in person? What would she do and what would she say – not to him, but to all those involved in making this evening happen? As she made her way to the restaurant, she felt utterly burdened by the expectations of others. Only then did she think, what on earth would Riley make of her? What was he expecting? Oh God – this all felt so contrived. Awful. It was little comfort knowing her domestic army was behind the scenes, rooting for her and, it had to be said, living vicariously through her too. It just felt like pressure. Jo had told her to buy new underwear – just in case you’re tempted. Sara, conversely, had advised old, mismatched, shapeless – to ward against temptation on a first date. If those closest to her couldn’t agree on how she was to behave, what chance did Stella have to decide for herself? Stop bloody thinking! The one thing she did hope was that either they would both find the other attractive – or else that neither of them would.