A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  I’d brought the painting down to the office that morning, and it was really rather nice…but the house was nicer, so it would have to be sacrificed for the greater good. ‘Yes, please.’

  Jonah popped his head in and said, ‘Sophy, there’s a delivery van just been from an outfit called Stately Solutions. Where do you want all the boxes put?’

  ‘In the cleaning room. I’ll come in a minute and sort it out. Thanks, Jonah.’

  Mr Yatton supplied me with sticky labels and a marker pen, and Mrs Lark some large empty jam jars, and I went off to unpack everything. When it was labelled and stowed away, I called Grace in for a little chat.

  She looked around the room curiously. ‘Well, you have been busy!’

  ‘Yes, as you see, Grace, I’m making one or two changes, though it shouldn’t affect you too much. I’m very happy with your work and I don’t want to change your routine. I still want you to change the beds and do the bathrooms on your regular days, sort out the laundry, and clean all the floors. But you won’t need to worry about any further cleaning, dusting, or polishing, because I intend doing the rest of it myself.’

  ‘You mean I’ll have less to do?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘Do you want me to come in fewer days, then?’

  ‘No, exactly the same as you do now.’

  She knitted her brows. ‘So you want me to do less work in the same hours?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘For the same money?’ She clearly thought I was quite mad.

  ‘Yes. Now, there are just a couple of things I’d like to change about the way you clean. First, I’m going to buy two Dyson cleaners, one to be kept upstairs in the housemaid’s cupboard, and one down here.’

  Her eyes lit up. ‘That’ll make a difference!’

  ‘I hope so. Now, see these little foam rubber cylinders? They fit onto the end of vacuum cleaner hoses, so that when you’re cleaning around furniture and into corners with the nozzle, things don’t get banged and scratched.’

  I demonstrated with the end of the old Hoover. ‘Could you remember to start doing that right away?’

  ‘All right,’ she said absently. I think her mind was full of Dyson dreams.

  ‘The other major change is that all floor washing is to be done with this special solution.’ I showed her the container. ‘You need only this capful in your bucket; a little goes a long way.’

  ‘Can I put a bit of bleach in with that?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Absolutely not. Yo u need only this stuff, nothing else.’

  ‘I always put a bit of bleach in,’ she said stubbornly, ‘especially in the bathrooms.’

  ‘It will be best if you clean everything with the solution from now on, including the bathroom floors, otherwise you would have to keep a separate bucket and mop for bleach because you couldn’t use the same one for both. Now, do you think you could do those things for me?’

  ‘If you like. When will I be getting the Dysons, then? Mrs Lark’s got an Argos catalogue in the kitchen; they’ve got them in that.’

  ‘Perhaps you could get the catalogue and show it to Mr Yatton? We might be able to order them this week, but in the meantime, don’t forget to put the foam on the end of the old Hoover, will you?’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed, obviously humouring me. She glanced over the room again. ‘It looks different in here—what’re all these little brushes in the jars for, and the white cotton gloves and stuff?’

  ‘I want to try and preserve everything in the house, and the best way is to keep special brushes, dusters and cotton gloves for cleaning and handling specific things. See,’ I said, showing her a label on the shelf, ‘this is the Silver Dip, and the brushes, dusters and cotton gloves are only for that purpose. The brass and copper have their own. Over here are cobweb brushes, and this is a banister brush—you might want to use this when you do the stairs, but nowhere else. Don’t mix things up or use anything for other than its real purpose.’

  ‘You’ve put tape and foam around everything, even the metal bits on the paintbrushes?’

  ‘Yes, to stop any scratching. I’m not aiming for perfect conservation, because I’m no expert. Besides, Winter’s End is a family home rather than a stately pile, so I’ll just do my best. I’ll still use feather dusters and window wipes, when it suits me! Oh, and this is my own hand-held vacuum cleaner—it will be handy for cleaning fixed furnishing fabrics.’

  ‘I saw the parlour curtains all bundled up in the laundry room,’ she said, ‘and the chair covers hanging on the drying rack. Do you want me to put another load of them in, and then iron the dry ones?’

  ‘That would be great, if you have time, Grace. I’ll put them back on myself later, when I’ve cleaned the chairs—unless there’s a set of winter covers?’

  ‘There is for the drawing room, I think,’ Grace said. ‘Maybe I’ve seen them in the linen cupboard.’

  ‘I’ll have a look later, but now I must phone up and get the parlour curtains collected. They are old, they’ll have to go to a specialist cleaner.’

  ‘Right, I’ll get on with me floors, then.’

  I handed her one of the foam tubes. ‘Thanks, Grace—and there’s your bucket over there, with a new mop. You do understand why I’m doing all this, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I’ll whiz through everything, once I’ve got me Dyson!’

  When I went back later to see how Mr Yatton was getting on, Grace had already taken him the catalogue with a big cross next to her preferred model.

  He was arranging the packing and collection of the Herring and the portrait of Alys, but I phoned up about the curtains myself, using a firm Lady Betty had favoured, who collected and delivered.

  The rest of the day passed happily or, in my case, blissfully. Upstairs, Grace sang as she cleaned and Mrs Lark, rosy with excitement, had made her arrangements and was planning an afternoon visit to a cat rescue home to look for a kitten.

  I’d set Jonah the task of soaking the rag rug from the Great Hall in an old tin bath of mild soap solution, and on my way to and from the cleaning room I heard him singing to rival Grace, only more discordantly. I put my head round the laundry-room door and discovered he was walking up and down on the rug in the bath in his bare feet, trousers rolled, as though he were treading grapes. Going by the colour of the water, the method seemed to be working.

  Bob and Hal were outside cleaning the windows, rattling the long ladders as they extended them, with lots of shouting and many breaks for cups of tea and cake in the kitchen.

  And I—well, I was in my element, cleaning and polishing the parlour until the panelling and furniture softly gleamed and the windows lost their soupy murk.

  Chapter Twenty: Having Kittens

  The baby thrives in Joan’s care, and she is such a simple creature seemingly that they have accepted her into the household as they never have myself. Sir Ralph dotes on the child, but I can see my Lady wishes mee gone…

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582

  Seth obviously believed in striking while the iron was hot, because he came up after dinner with some rose catalogues.

  Since Hebe was dispensing her dark arts in the stillroom, he found me alone in the parlour carefully cleaning the chairs with the little hand-held vacuum, through a net cover to protect the fabric.

  Charlie was keeping me company, mostly by lying on my feet whenever I stopped moving, and sighing deeply. His nose was well and truly out of joint because of the fuss being made over the new kitten in the kitchens, but I expected he would get used to it.

  I didn’t hear Seth come in, what with the noise of the vacuum cleaner and having the radio on, so my heart gave a great thump when I looked up and caught sight of him. Mind you, it seems to do that anyway whenever I see him unexpectedly.

  He took in the room with an expression of astonishment. ‘It looks so different in here—what a transformation!’

  ‘It’s getting there, and it’ll look even better when the curtains come back.
Now I just have to do the same to the rest of the house!’

  ‘Without the full-time assistance of Hal and Bob, I hope. I presume they have finished cleaning the windows? I haven’t seen them all day.’

  ‘Yes, they finished and they worked really hard.’ I didn’t mention the frequent refreshment breaks. I seemed to have fallen over one or other of them every time I passed through the kitchen.

  ‘So I can have them back again tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Well, yes…though I do want the front gates rubbed down and repainted while the weather is dry. But I suppose they could do that as overtime,’ I conceded.

  ‘That would be much better, because this mild weather is good for working on the lower terrace too.’

  ‘I have asked Bob to come tomorrow morning and help Jonah to clean all the inside windows,’ I confessed quickly, feeling strangely guilty. ‘It’ll be much quicker than doing the outside, so you should have him back by afternoon. I don’t want Jonah climbing any ladders, at his age.’

  Seeing his expression grow a little thunderous, I suggested hastily, ‘Let’s move into the drawing room—there’s a fire there, and we can have a drink.’

  He gloomily and silently followed me, but mellowed once he had a glass of good single-malt whisky in his hands and we were poring over the lovely catalogues and deciding what roses to order.

  Charlie sat between us on the sofa, and nudged the catalogues from underneath from time to time whenever I stopped stroking him to write something down. This was quite often, actually, because I’d never seen so many lovely roses. It would have been so easy to get carried away, except that I knew my budget would only stretch so far.

  After a while Mrs Lark sent Jonah in with a three-tiered orange Bakelite cake stand laden with cheese puffs and ratafia biscuits, plus news of what the kitten was up to. I could see that the Adventures of Gingernut were likely to become hourly bulletins.

  ‘She’s taken it upstairs now and she’s going to pop a hot-water bottle wrapped in a blanket in the basket with it, in case it’s missing its mother.’

  ‘Mrs Lark’s got a kitten,’ I explained, handing the cake stand to Seth. ‘Have a ratafia biscuit? They were my last employer’s favourites. I took her some last time I saw her.’

  ‘You were fond of her?’ he asked, taking one.

  ‘Yes, Lady Betty was always very kind. In fact, she gave me this little brooch that I always wear, when she was in hospital after a fall. She had a premonition she would never see her home again, though I told her she was wrong, and I’d give the brooch back the day she returned to Blackwalls…Only she never did, she went to a nursing home instead. I’ve rung to see how she is a couple of times, but they won’t tell me.’

  ‘Couldn’t you phone up the family?’

  ‘No, there’s only the nephew, and he’s a toad,’ I said shortly. ‘But I’ve written to the cook, so I should get some news soon, I hope.’

  I brought my mind back to the present. ‘Well, I think those are all the roses we can afford at the moment, Seth.’

  ‘There will be enough to make a difference, and we can list the varieties in the Winter’s End guidebook, which I suppose you will want to update anyway?’

  ‘Yes…I’ve been thinking about that, and I’d like it to be more a glossy brochure than a pamphlet, and with more emphasis on Alys the witch and the Shakespeare-was-here angle.’

  ‘Ottie seems to be having second thoughts about using Shakespeare to reel in the tourists, for some reason,’ Seth commented, ‘maybe because it’s so apocryphal? Mind you, we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence about Alys the supposed witch, either.’

  ‘But that’s why she was imprisoned, wasn’t it? And she was born, got married and died, so those dates must be recorded.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I made a few discoveries when I was researching for the pamphlet. That’s how we came to find the original plan for the planting on the terraces, while Sir William and I were turning out the Spanish chest in the estate office in search of Alys’s records. Alys Blezzard’s maternal grandmother was quite lowborn, from a family that became notorious a century or two later for witchcraft, the Nutters. But her grandfather was a scholar, so she married above her station. And then Alys’s mother married a Blezzard, who were minor gentry.’

  ‘I’d heard about the Nutter connection. And I suppose when Alys married Thomas Winter, that was a step up again?’

  ‘Yes, though she seems to have come here in the first place because she had been well versed in healing by her mother. She nursed the heir to Winter’s End back to health, then he insisted on marrying her. She had one child, a daughter, was arrested for witchcraft fairly soon after that and died while in custody.’

  ‘That’s all so terribly sad!’

  ‘It’s even sadder when you think that she was only about seventeen when she died.’

  ‘Good heavens! How old can she have been when she married?’

  ‘Perhaps fifteen—it wasn’t unusual then.’

  ‘So young? Poor Alys…and no wonder she’s still here!’

  He gave me an odd look and I said hastily, ‘I didn’t see her grave in the churchyard—where is she buried?’

  ‘Since they thought she was a witch and her mysteriously sudden death might be suicide, they wouldn’t have put her in hallowed ground. Legend has it she’s buried somewhere on the estate—and when I was cutting back some of the undergrowth last year, not far from the pets’ graveyard, I found a large plain slab of dressed local stone. I suspect that might be it, but I’m not going to disturb it and find out.’

  ‘Definitely not! But I know she loved Winter’s End, so she will be happy to be buried in the grounds.’

  He didn’t ask me how I knew.

  ‘I’d better have another look at the pamphlet, Seth. I haven’t really read it properly yet.’

  ‘You won’t find anything very sensational in there—more facts than legend.’

  ‘We’ll have to change that—spice it up! Then it’ll sell like hot cakes.’

  ‘You seem very mercenary and cynical for the child of a hippie,’ he said, looking at me curiously.

  ‘Because I’m the child of a hippie—one of us had to be practical. But I’m prepared to do anything to keep Winter’s End going—anything!’

  ‘Then marrying Jack might be counterproductive,’ he commented drily. ‘At best you’d find yourself living in one wing, with the rest of the estate divided up and sold off piecemeal as swanky country homes.’

  ‘Who’s cynical now?’ I said tartly. ‘Couldn’t he just love the place like I do, and only want it so that he can preserve it? And anyway, as I said earlier, I have absolutely no intention of marrying him, whatever wishful thinking Hebe’s indulging in.’

  ‘From what she was saying at dinner, Jack’s indulging in it too—but then, he’s always been prepared to go the extra mile to get his way.’

  ‘So, you’re implying that he would only want to marry me to get Winter’s End?’ I said indignantly. ‘Thanks a bunch!’

  I don’t know why it made me so cross, since the same suspicious thought had already entered my own head. That Jack was falling for me was something that seemed believable only when he was there in person, telling me so…

  ‘Look, that’s not what I meant,’ Seth began to protest. ‘I just wanted to warn you that—’

  ‘Yes it was,’ I broke in hotly, ‘but whatever his reasons were, it wouldn’t work out anyway. I’ve already told him how I feel.’

  I suppose, since he had seen Jack kiss me before he drove off, I couldn’t blame Seth for looking sceptical—or for abruptly changing the subject to something less fraught with pitfalls.

  ‘Ottie and I found a few good Shakespeare quotes that seemed relevant when we had our brainstorming session,’ he said, handing me a list, ‘or relevant to gardening, anyway.’

  ‘“This knot intrinsicate of life…” Antony and Cleopatra,’ I read out. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘“And Adam was a gardener”, from H
enry VI—we must have that,’ he said. ‘And I like the Othello one: “O thou weed!”’

  ‘I raided the book of quotations in the library before dinner myself, and found one or two of my own. A bit more general than yours, like “Alas! poor ghost.”’

  He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. ‘Any particular ghost?’

  ‘Yes, Alys, of course. Aunt Hebe was right about her walking,’ I confessed. ‘Though so far she’s proved more of a guardian angel than a ghost.’

  He seemed unsurprised by my revelation. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, just turning up and…well, never mind, you’ll think I’m mad—which brings me nicely to my next quote, also from Hamlet, “O my prophetic soul!”’

  ‘Well, I suppose they don’t all have to be about gardening. Would your ghost approve of “What’s past is prologue”?’

  ‘Probably. Where’s it from?’

  ‘The Tempest. That’s my favourite Shakespeare play, because, as it says in Macbeth, it’s like much of life, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.’

  I think he must have meant his love-life.

  I went and fetched the book of quotations from the library and we added a few more, then we started discussing what plants to have in the Shakespeare garden on the lower terrace, and turned to the ‘I know a bank’ speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  ‘Musk roses again, of course,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes, and for the rest, we have lots of shrubs and plants to choose from: the list is endless, from thyme, balm and bay, to carnations, columbine, daisies and daffodils.’

  ‘And bilberries, burdock, bay and burnet,’ I said, throwing in a few I remembered from my research. ‘I Googled it.’

  Seth looked unimpressed. ‘Shakespeare mentions so many plants that he must have been interested in gardening.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what he was doing in Lancashire during the Lost Years, working as a gardener,’ I said flippantly, and he gave me a withering look.