by Anne Weale
'Isn't that rather unfair? He provides a service which people need.'
He glanced sideways at her. 'That's the second time you've accused me of unfairness. I think if we're going to have dealings for a number of years, you'd better accept from the start that I'm not and never was a model of the English public school ethic of fair play and a stiff upper lip at all times.'
For the third time that afternoon she spoke without thinking.
'That was clear from the outset,' she informed him tartly. And then gave a smothered gasp as she realised she was speaking to her employer.
Far from looking annoyed, he laughed. 'I like you better when you speak your mind than when you're being pious, Miss Roberts.'
But I don't like you, and never shall, she retorted silently.
'On the other hand, I applaud your discretion when Watts was trying to pump you just now. Your answer was evasive but not untruthful. In spite of your lapse the other night, normally you disapprove of untruths as strongly as of unfairness, I expect?'
'Yes, I do. Don't you, Mr Gardiner?'
'I daresay I'm as truthful as the next man,' Was his casual reply. 'As we're both Americans, don't you think it's time we stopped being formal. Even the British get on first-name terms pretty quickly these days, I noticed while I was in London. You've no objection to my using yours, have you?'
'No... not at all.' But she didn't want to call him by his.
'I've never met or even heard of a woman named after one of the seasons before,' he went on. 'But why not? Most of the names of the months have been used. April... May... June... Julia... Augusta. You were born in summer-time presumably?'
'Yes: on Midsummer Eve—June twenty-third.'
She could guess what he was thinking; that, for the person she had turned out to be, no name could be more ill-chosen. A girl called Summer should be a fairy-like creature, not a great galumphing 'hulk'.
She said, 'Last night, when you told her Cranmere had to be sold, what was Emily's reaction?'
'She accepted that if I said it was necessary, it was. I believe she has an adventurous streak which perhaps, up to this point in her life, hasn't been recognised because she's been sublimating it, reading other people's adventures. Have you ever looked closely at the portrait miniature of Maria Lancaster, painted in 1810, the year before she took off on her travels?'
The Castle contained many of the small portraits, painted on vellum or ivory, which in previous centuries had taken the place of family photographs.
'I don't think I have? Which room is it in?'
'It always used to be in the Yellow Bedroom, unless it's been moved, which I doubt. It was hung rather high, and surrounded by other paintings, so it didn't catch the eye; particularly as, in her thirties, Maria wasn't a beauty. Later on she published her Memoirs. Maybe you've read them?'
Summer shook her head.
'No? She was the eccentric spinster sister of the fourth Marquess. After Lady Hester Stanhope had gone off to live on Mount Lebanon in Syria, and become uncrowned queen of the local Arabs, Maria also left home for foreign parts. I may be wrong—it's a long time since I saw her portrait—but I think Emily's like her. The first time I saw her, I knew she reminded me of someone but I couldn't place the likeness. It came to me today, during lunch. When we get back I'll check it out with the miniature.'
'You say Lady Maria wasn't a beauty. I think, when she's older, Emily is going to be lovely.'
'Maybe—it's too early to tell. The Lancaster females have never been renowned for their looks. Some of the wives have been pretty women, but the daughters have usually been on the plain side.'
And the men haven't been notably handsome, she thought, mentally reviewing the many large and small portraits of the Marquesses and their sons and brothers.
Where had the last of the Lancasters come by his arresting looks? Not from his mother. Judging by her portrait, she had been one of the pretty wives he had mentioned. Blue-eyed with small, regular features. It was not from her genes that his looks had sprung. Perhaps his dark colouring and tawny eyes came from his maternal grandfather.
They found Emily in the hotel lounge, already engrossed in one of her new paperbacks.
'Summer has to hurry home—the estate agent is coming to look at her cottage. So we'll have tea when we get back,' her uncle told her, after she had handed over the change from the ten-pound note.
They dropped Summer at the cottage gate and she didn't expect to see them again till next day.
After the estate agent's visit, she felt deeply unsettled and in need of someone to talk to. But there was no one in whom to confide her uncertainties. Her aunt had prevented her from being on close terms with anyone in the village, and she had gradually lost touch with the friends she had made at University.
She had written letters to them, but they had been too involved in all the extra-curricular and social activities which the University offered to have time to reply regularly. Postcards, during the vacations, were the most she received from them now. She understood. Had she stayed up at Oxford herself, she would have been similarly involved—not with male undergraduates, but in other ways.
As she wandered restlessly from sitting room to kitchen and back again, needing company, needing comfort, a vision of the treacle tart which James had eaten at lunch came into her mind. She felt an overpowering craving for something to munch. A candy bar. Ginger biscuits. A tin of dry-roasted peanuts.
Suddenly the need was so overpowering that she flung on her raincoat, grabbed her purse, and rushed down the street to the village shop, a small general store which didn't close until six.
She arrived seconds too late. The shopkeeper was turning the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED before pulling down the roller blind.
She still bought all her groceries from him, and not many of his customers did now—a lot of his trade had been lost to the supermarkets in town. If she tapped on the glass, he would unlock the door and be pleased to serve her. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. The voracious longing for the foodstuffs she hadn't tasted for what seemed like three weeks, not three days, egged her on; self-respect held her back.
While mind and body were in battle, the proprietor switched off the lights and disappeared into his living quarters behind the shop. Still tormented by the longing for something sugary and crunchy, but thankful to have temptation removed until the shop opened tomorrow, she walked slowly back to the cottage.
There, fortunately, she had only two crispbreads left and one orange. When they were eaten, the larder was bare. If it hadn't been, she knew she wouldn't have had a hope of resisting temptation all evening. She was what James Gardiner had called her—an uncontrollable glutton. And if she didn't do something about it, it was going to ruin her life. Not quickly and horribly, like an addiction to a drug, but just as surely. For what man would love her as she was?
She was letting the fire die down, thinking about going to bed early, when there was a loud rap on the front door.
She rarely had any callers, and never in the evening. Before opening the door, she called out, 'Who is it?'
'James... James Gardiner.'
What could he want at this hour? Perplexed, she opened the door.
'Did Watts turn up as he promised?' he asked, as he entered the house.
'Yes, he did. I have to telephone him tomorrow morning to find out when those people from Spain, the Seatons, are coming to see me.'
He was carrying something wrapped in brown paper. It looked like a bottle. He handed it to her and began to take off his coat.
'As you don't seem to keep any liquor in the house—or at least you didn't offer me any when I ran you home last night—I brought some with me. Your fire's getting low. Shall I make it up while you get the glasses?'
Clearly he was intending to stay for some time. Flustered, she said, 'Yes... perhaps you'd better,' and went to the kitchen to fetch two glasses.
She didn't know yet what kind of liquor he had brought, and she had ne
ver drunk spirits. But, if he meant to stay a while, she could do with a little Dutch courage.
He had built up the fire and was relaxing in an armchair when she came back with two large tumblers.
'I'm afraid I haven't any ice.' She remembered her father had always had ice in his drinks. 'Don't you have a fridge?'
'Yes, but the ice tray is empty. I only use it in hot weather.'
The lion's eyes mocked her. 'You don't indulge in a Manhattan at the end of a long day at Cranmere?'
'I enjoy my days at Cranmere. I don't need to unwind.
He put his hand inside his blazer. 'The portrait miniature of Maria was still in the same place. I brought it to show you.' He held it out to her.
It was in a narrow gilt frame; a portrait of a woman in a high-waisted white dress with most of her hair concealed by a satin bandeau and there was a string of pearls round her neck.
Lady Maria Lancaster. Not a beauty, but not so ugly that no one would have offered for her. Her level, imperious gaze, the forceful line of her chin, suggested an early feminist.
'I see what you mean. There is a likeness,' she said slowly. 'And probably more pronounced when Lady Maria was younger. Are her Memoirs in the library? We must read them. Things like this won't be auctioned, surely?'
'No, no—nothing which Emily wants to keep, or which she might want, later on, has to be sold. But such things as the Rubens Lion Hunt are more suited to an art gallery than a private house, wouldn't you agree?'
The painting he referred to was one she had always disliked, a huge canvas depicting two lions in combat with several horsemen. The horses looked terrified. It was a masterpiece, but at the same time a painting which no one could look at without a shudder of disgust. One of the lions had the face of a fiend—a human fiend.
'How did you come to notice this miniature, and to know about her Memoirs?' she asked. It seemed unlike a schoolboy, as he had been then, to be much interested in his forbears, particularly the females.
'When I was at school I used to go skiing every winter with the family of my closest friend. One year I shared a ski-lift with a woman who painted miniatures and had a collection of early examples. She got me interested. I learnt to recognise the good ones. I used to make myself some money buying them in country antique shops and selling them to dealers in London. In those days you could sometimes pick up a very good quality miniature for five to ten pounds. Now they'd fetch hundreds of pounds.'
His chance encounter with the woman on the ski-lift must have developed into more than a holiday acquaintance if she had had time to teach him the finer points of an art which, as Summer had discovered for herself, were only recognisable with the aid of a magnifying glass.
'Did your friend the artist paint one of you?' she asked.
'Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.'
The enquiry appeared to surprise him, as indeed it had her. She didn't know why she had asked that.
But when his reply was affirmative, it confirmed her strong suspicion that the artist had taught him more than now to know a valuable miniature.
He said, 'I discovered Maria by going round the house, trying to identify the painters of all the Lancaster miniatures. That one was easy. It's initialled G.E. and dated. The puzzle was: who was the subject? Fortunately, George Engleheart kept a fee book. He kept it for thirty-nine years and he entered the names of 4,853 sitters and what they paid him for his work. Among the people he painted in 1810 was Lady Maria Lancaster. She probably had it done as a parting gift to her brother, in case she didn't return. It's the only portrait of her there is.'
He unwrapped the bottle, a new one, uncapped it with a twist of his muscular wrist, and poured some of the late Lord Cranmere's favourite Johnnie Walker Black Label into the glasses.
'Have you any branch water or tonic in the house?'
She knew that by branch water he meant bottled spring water. 'I'm afraid not—only tap water.'
'That won't do. It's full of chlorine and God knows what other chemicals. We'll have to drink it neat.'
He handed one of the glasses to her. 'What shall we drink to? A new start in the New World?'
'To a happy future for Emily.'
Without waiting for his concurrence, she raised her glass to that toast and took a cautious sip of the de luxe blended whisky responsible for the old Marquess's purple complexion and bloodshot eyes. It wasn't as strong as she had feared. Remembering a sip of bourbon which had made her choke and splutter as a child, she had been prepared to find her mouth on fire. But taken in the small amount she had sipped, the whisky didn't taste unpleasantly fiery.
'A happy future for Emily,' he repeated.
They sat down.
'And the Memoirs; how did you find them?' she prompted.
'I was told about them by my history master. No one in the family seemed aware of their existence. The Lancasters have never been noted for their intellectual powers,' he said sardonically. 'Field-sports have been their main interest for generations. The Memoirs is a small thin volume. Like her portrait, the book was squeezed in among some larger, more impressive-looking ones. It took me some time to find it, but once I knew what to look for there were several copies.'
'I wish you had brought one of them with you. I'd like to have read it tonight.'
'Yes, I should have done. I didn't think of it. I shouldn't have thought of the miniature if I hadn't passed the Yellow Bedroom on my way from my own room. I actually came over to hear what Watts had to say. What rent did he suggest? And how much does he think the cottage might sell for?'
She told him. She thought it was typically highhanded of him to demand the information rather than waiting for her to volunteer it. But it would have been hypocritical to deny that she wanted to talk it over with someone.
From another inside pocket he produced a small calculator and a fountain pen. He used the rounded tip of the pen to touch the keys. After making calculations for some moments, he said, 'It's your decision, but my advice is—sell. The only strong reason for keeping the property would be if you were definitely going to return to this country. I should say that's extremely unlikely. Once you've been back to America, I'm sure you won't want to leave it again, except for vacations maybe.'
She took another sip of whisky. The first one had sent a warm feeling coursing downwards from her throat to her stomach.
'You may be right. On the other hand, I've spent more than half my life in this country. There are many things about England which I love and shall miss when I leave here. Legally I'm an American citizen; but I sound and think like an English person. I could be more home-sick for England than I used to be for America when I first came here.'
'Nothing is impossible,' he agreed. 'But if that were so, would you want to return to this village? How would you support yourself in this area if it weren't for your job at Cranmere?'
'No, probably I shouldn't want to come back here,' she conceded. 'But as long as one owns a place to live, one can always sell it and buy another. If I were to sell the cottage, and then property values rocketed, I could find in, say, three years' time, that the smallest, most badly-built bungalow was beyond my means.'
'That's been a well-founded theory at certain times and in certain conditions. There are also times when money works better in investments than in bricks and mortar. You have to bear in mind that any property, especially when it's old, as this is, requires some maintenance. And that's not the only expense to take into account. Your agent will require his cut for acting for you, and there'll be tax to pay.'
He paused, swirling the last of his whisky round the bottom of his glass.
'No doubt you're wondering if my advice is reliable. Before you come up to the house tomorrow, I'll put some figures down on paper for you. You can then get your bank to check them for you. They can check me out, too, if you ask them. You don't have to take my word for it that I know more about handling money than Emily's father and grandfather.'
Again that strange distant way of referri
ng to his brother and father, she thought, as she watched him drain his tumbler and rise to replenish it.
'Can I refresh yours?' he asked her.
'No, thanks. Not at the moment.' She was becoming aware of the same slightly hazy feeling the sherry had induced before lunch.
Undoubtedly he and Emily would have had a more substantial evening meal than hers had been. Two crispbreads and an orange wasn't much of a lining on which to drink strong liquor.
'You may think it's none of my business, but I'd like to know where Emily stands financially. Has she means of her own now, or is she dependent on you?'
'She'll have some funds when she's older. At present she has none.'
'It seems so extraordinary that her parents made no proper provision for her... just in case something happened to them.'
'I agree. But it's not unusual for people to ignore life's less pleasant eventualities. Your own parents did.'
'Yes, but my father had practically nothing to leave. Hers had a great deal.'
'Not really. I don't think you understand the realities of owning an historic house. A few of Britain's aristocratic families are rich. The Duke of Buccleuch is said to be one of the richest men in the country. But in terms of income, many owners are actually quite poor. They may have paintings worth a fortune on their walls, but amazingly little cash at the bank.'
He leaned forward to poke the fire.
'Most of what Emily's father owned wasn't his in the way my holdings are mine,' he went on. 'He was merely a trustee, keeping things going for the next generation or, as he had no sons, for the next in line. Both he and the old man knew that, as much as they might dislike it, there was no way they could prevent my inheriting everything if they died.'
'But if they both disapproved of you—'
He cut her short with a harsh laugh. 'They hated my guts.'
She longed to ask, Why did they hate you? What had you done? But she hadn't drunk enough whisky to overcome her very British inhibition about asking intimate questions of anyone but a close friend.