Winter Solstice

by Pilcher, Rosamunde

  Back at the Estate House, Carrie’s scones were already in the oven and smelling delicious. Elfrida produced the gingerbread and the jam, found a tray, and stacked it with the best, if mismatched, plates, cups, and saucers. She found a sugar-bowl and a butter dish, and even a butter-knife.

  “We are going to be very genteel,” she said. She found teaspoons, and gave the inside of the teapot a good scour.

  Upstairs, she unearthed a tea-cloth from Mrs. Snead’s linen cupboard. Starched and ironed, it looked quite festive spread upon the old table. She laid out five plates and small knives, the cups and saucers, the butter dish, and the jam jar. There weren’t any flowers, but perhaps Sir James Erskine Earle wouldn’t mind too much about that.

  She turned from the table with the empty tray in her hand and looked across the room at her little picture, which, perhaps, after today, would be gone forever. It was hanging very slightly crooked, so she went over to set it straight, giving it a loving pat, as though it were a child encouraged to be on its best behaviour.

  “If I may not have time to say goodbye,” she told it, “I will now. It’s been lovely having you.”

  Oscar and Sam returned from the Golf Club in good time, and good heart. The interview with the club secretary had been satisfactory. Sam had been told that there was a waiting list for members, but as he was going to be a resident of Buddy, it would probably be possible to jump the queue. They had been introduced to the captain and a few other members, admired portraits and trophies, and then walked home.

  Oscar had, clearly, enjoyed his small outing. Recalling his only other visit to the Golf Club, which had ended so disastrously with a panic-stricken escape, Elfrida gave silent thanks and wanted to hug him. But instead she went upstairs to comb her flaming hair and put on another layer of lipstick.

  When he came, on the dot of four o’clock, Sir James Erskine-Earle was something of a surprise. The front-door bell shrilled and Elfrida ran down to let him in, and was a little taken aback to be faced by a man so young. And although he had come straight from some meeting about the War Memorial, he was attired as though for gardening, in elderly tweed knickerbockers and a jacket that seemed to have lost most of its buttons. His shirt collar was frayed and his V-necked pullover had a small hole in it. When she opened the door he removed his tweed cap, and she saw his mousy hair, cut like a schoolboy’s.

  “Mrs. Phipps?”

  “Yes. Sir James …” They shook hands.

  “Please come in.” Leading him upstairs, “It is so good of you to come at such short notice,” she said.

  “Not at all.” He had a charming voice and an ingenuous smile.

  “I always enjoy such occasions, when I am asked to cast my eye over something special.”

  She led him into the sitting-room and introduced him to the others, who were all standing about looking a bit ill at ease, as though it were they whom Sir James Erskine Earle had come to appraise.

  “Oscar Blundell. And Carrie, my niece. And Sam Howard, who is coming to run the old woollen mill in Buddy.”

  “We spoke on the phone, I think. How splendid to meet you. You’re with Sturrock and Swinfield? I was at Eton with one of the Swinfields, but I think not your chairman.” He looked about him.

  “This is a most surprising house. From the outside one has no idea of its splendour. It was part of Corrydale, I understand.”

  “Yes, but hasn’t been for some years,” Oscar told him.

  “Perhaps you knew my uncle, Hector McLennan?”

  “No, not well. I was working in London for some years. I didn’t come north until my father died and we all came to live at Kingsferry. Bit of a culture shock for my family, but they seem to have taken it in their stride.” He moved, inevitably, over to the window, as newcomers always did. It was dark, but Elfrida had not drawn the curtains, and across the street the twinkling Christmas fairy lights shone like jewels against the old stone face of the church.

  “What an outlook. And so close to the church. You must be able to hear the organ from here. Marvellous instrument. We’re so fortunate….” He turned back to face them all.

  “But I mustn’t waste your time rubber-necking. Where is this picture you want me to see?”

  “It’s …” Elfrida cleared her throat.

  “It’s here.”

  “I see. In solitary state.”

  “We have no other pictures.”

  “May I take it down?”

  “But of course.”

  He crossed the room, gently took the frame in his hands and lifted it down, holding it as delicately as if it were a piece of the finest porcelain.

  “What a lovely thing.” He tilted it beneath the light of the lamp that stood on Oscar’s table.

  “Sir David Wilkie.”

  “Yes. I’ve always believed so.”

  “A portrait of his parents. Did you know that? Painted, I suppose, about 1835.”

  “I didn’t know it was his parents. I thought just a sweet elderly couple.”

  A silence fell. All faintly unnerved, they waited for his verdict. Sir James Erskine-Earle took his time, first reaching into the pocket of his reprehensible jacket to bring out a pair of rimless spectacles. Putting these on, he now resembled a young and penniless student. Perhaps a medical student, for his hands were as sensitive as a surgeon’s. Peering, he examined. Touched with his fingertips, turned the painting over, and closely inspected the back.

  Finally, he laid the picture carefully down on Oscar’s table.

  “How did you come by it, Mrs. Phipps?”

  “It was a present. A long time ago. Thirty years. From a Mend.”

  “And do you know where he bought it?”

  “I think in a junk-shop. In Chichester.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “That figures.”

  “I’ve … I’ve always believed … been led to believe … that it’s an original. But I’ve never had it appraised, nor insured.”

  He looked at her, the reflected light from the lamp flashing from his spectacles, and he smiled. That engaging, youthful smile. He turned to lean against the table and took his spectacles off. He said, “I am really sorry, but it’s not the original. It’s a copy.”

  The stunned silence that followed was because nobody could think of anything to say.

  “It is a most charming and beautifully executed work, but it isn’t the original.”

  Oscar found his voice.

  “How can you know?”

  “For one thing, it’s not signed. The style, the subject, I agree, is unmistakably Wilkie’s, but there is no signature. The other reason I know that it is a copy is that, oddly enough, the original passed through Boothby’s sale-room in Bond Street only about a year ago. It went to a dealer from the United States who was bidding for some museum or other. It was larger than your little painting, Mrs. Phipps, which leads me to believe that this copy was never intended as a forgery, but more as a work of respect and admiration. A student, perhaps, wishing to emulate the master’s style. It is certainly an extraordinary simulation … the brushwork, the colour, the light. A beautiful piece of art. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, one wonders who it was who set himself to embark upon such a painstaking task.”

  Again, silence fell upon the room. Finally, Elfrida made herself ask the dreaded question.

  “What is it worth, Sir James?”

  “Please. Jamie.”

  “Well… Jamie … what do you think it is worth?”

  “If it had been the original, I should have said in the region of eighty-five thousand pounds. I can’t remember the exact sum it went for, but something like that.”

  “And as it isn’t the original, but only a copy?”

  “A thousand? Maybe more, maybe less. It would depend | on the market. Nothing is worth anything unless somebody wants it.”

  A thousand. A copy, and worth only a thousand. Elfrida’s little nest-egg, her insurance against an impoverished and lonely future. A thousand. In
a funny way, for herself, she didn’t particularly mind. There was no point in selling it, and so she could go on enjoying it for the rest of her life. But for Oscar she knew an agonizing disappointment. All her plans for buying Hughie out and ensuring Oscar’s security were to come for nothing. All her dreams reduced to dust, to rubbish. She saw them as though being swept away, out of reach, so much flotsam in a swift-flowing river. Gone.

  For a dreadful moment she thought she might be about to burst into tears. In some despair she turned to Carrie, and Carrie’s beautiful dark eyes were upon her, warm with sympathy and understanding. Elfrida opened her mouth to say something, but there were no words, and Carrie came to her rescue.

  “I think,” said Carrie, “that I shall go downstairs and boil a kettle, and we’ll all have a restoring cup of tea.”

  And then Sam spoke, for the first time since he had been introduced to Jamie Erskine-Earle.

  “I’ll come with you, lend you a hand.”

  Elfrida knew perfectly well that it didn’t take two people to boil a kettle, but she was grateful to Sam for his tact, and for removing his presence from a difficult situation. She found herself wishing that Sir James Erskine-Earle would remove himself, too. Asked, he had come to appraise her little painting, and she knew that it wasn’t his fault that it was a fake, but his knowledge and expertise had spoilt so much, and now Oscar would have no alternative but to sell his half of the house. She didn’t mind so much about Sam having it. But she minded dreadfully about Oscar not having it.

  When the others had gone and closed the door behind them, there was a pregnant silence. Perhaps Jamie Erskine Earle sensed Elfrida’s resentment, for he said, again, “I am so sorry.”

  She knew impatience; with herself and with him.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake. It’s not your fault.”

  Carefully, precisely, he rehung the little picture. The old lady in her yellow shawl gazed benevolently down at him, as Elfrida found herself incapable of doing. He said, “At least… it will continue to give you joy.”

  “It will never be quite the same as before.”

  Oscar, sensing tension, moved into the conversation.

  “It is very precious to Elfrida, nevertheless. I am relieved that she has no reason to let it go.”

  “Oh, Oscar, I have every reason. It’s simply a picture. But not for a thousand. That sort of money is laughable.”

  “Elfrida. It will be all right.”

  She turned her back on both of them and went to the fire, in need of something to do that might assuage her disappointment; she took a log from the basket and hurled it onto the flames. She stood watching it catch, and flame.

  And then, behind her, Jamie spoke again.

  “I’m sorry, I do hope you don’t think I’m being curious, but who is the owner of that interesting little clock?”

  For an instant, Elfrida thought that she had misheard. She turned to frown at him in puzzlement.

  “The clock!”

  “It caught my eye. So unusual…”

  Oscar told him, “It is Elfrida’s.”

  “I wonder … may I look?”

  Elfrida nodded. She moved aside, and Jamie Erskine Earle put his spectacles on again and came to her side and took the little clock down from its place in the middle of the mantel shelf For the second time she and Oscar watched in silence while he examined it with minute care. Waiting, Elfrida decided that if he told her it was a worthless bibelot, no more, she would brain him with the coal shovel.

  He said, “A travelling chronometer. Marvellous. How did you come by this little treasure?”

  “Do you mean treasure as sentimental, or treasure as i trove?”

  He answered politely.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Brusquely, she told him.

  “It was left to me by an el godfather. An old sea-faring man.” And then, knowing i she sounded thoroughly cross, relented a little.

  “You can see, one dial is for hours, one for minutes, and one for seconds. I j have to wind it every day. I suppose I could get it fitted with a battery, but it seems …”

  “Heaven forbid. It’s far too rare.”

  “Rare? Surely it’s just an oldfashioned seagoing clock?”

  “Practical. But handsome, too.”

  She looked at it, in his hands, and all at once the clock took on a new lustre, as everyday and familiar objects sometimes do when admired by another. The outside leather was worn, but inside still rich and dark; and the lid, which folded across like the cover of a book, was lined with a bruised pad of velvet the colour of coral. Around the circular face, which contained the dials, the leather was decorated with a wreath of miniature golden leaves, and this pattern was repeated around the edge of the frame. The key, the hinges, the tiny locks were brass.

  She said, “I don’t even know how old it is…. Perhaps you can tell me.”

  “Alas, I am not a clock expert. But,” he added, “I have a colleague who is. If you want… if you will let me … I can show it to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think it is special.”

  “How special?”

  “We used the word ‘treasure.’”

  “You mean, you think it’s worth something?”

  “I would rather not say. I’m not sufficiently specialized.”

  “It wouldn’t be worth seventy-five thousand pounds, would it?” She asked the question bluntly, expecting a rueful shake of the head, or even derisive laughter.

  But Jamie Erskine-Earle did not laugh. He said, “I really it know. Mrs. Phipps, would you … would you let me s it away with me? If I can’t get hold of my colleague I can speak to him on the telephone, or send him a photograph of the clock. I shall, of course, give you a receipt for it, and I keep it under lock and key.” Suddenly it was ludicrous.

  “In Hampshire,” she told him, “in my little cottage in Dibton, it sat on the mantelpiece in my downstairs sitting-room, and I never even locked the door.”

  “Then may I congratulate you on your good luck. It’s not insured,” he added, and he was stating a fact, not asking a question.

  “No, of course it’s not. It’s just a little thing I’ve had for years and take everywhere with me.”

  “If I may reiterate, a very special little thing. May I take it with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “If I could have … a box … or something to wrap it in. My handkerchief is not exactly suitable.”

  Oscar went to his table and pulled out a drawer and unearthed a sheet of bubble wrap which he had salvaged from a parcel of new books.

  “Will this do?”

  “Perfect. And a sheet of writing-paper for a receipt? I usually carry a pad of official forms, but of course, today I have left them at home.”

  He gave Oscar the clock and Oscar wrapped it into a bulbous bundle, and Jamie Erskine-Earle sat at his desk and wrote out his receipt.

  “I had better keep that,” Oscar told him.

  “Elfrida is inclined to lose things.” And he stowed it away in the top pocket of his jacket.

  “There’s just one thing,” said Elfrida.

  “Yes, Mrs. Phipps?”

  “Don’t let’s talk much about the clock when Sam and Carrie come back. We all got too worked up about the David Wilkie, and I couldn’t bear raised and dashed hopes again. Can we just say that you think I should insure it, and you’re going to give me a valuation?”

  “Of course. A splendid explanation. And one, moreover, that happens to be true….”

  That evening, trying to do something about supper, Elfrida felt that she had spent the entire afternoon on a rollercoaster. And because of all the excitement, disappointment, and then rekindled expectations, she had clean forgot all about Lucy. She was stirring a bolognese sauce in a fairly distracted and unconcentrated fashion when Lucy turned up, coming into the kitchen by way of the back door.

  Elfrida glanced at the old kitchen clock. It was nearly seven. She stared at Lucy, trying
to remember what the child had been doing all day.

  Lucy said, “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Oh, darling, I’m sorry.”

  “You look as though I was the very last person you expected to see.”

  “I’m doing my preoccupied act. So much has been happening here, and you just floated out of my. mind. But now you’ve floated in again, which is very delightful.”

  “What’s been happening?” Lucy pulled off her woollen hat and then began to undo the fastenings of her jacket.

  “Have I missed something?”

  “Not really. Just a nice man came for tea. Carrie made scones. I think he ate most of them.”

  “Who was the nice man?”

  “He’s called Sir James Erskine-Earle. He lives at Kingsferry House.”

  Lucy said, “I’ve just been to Kingsferry. With Rory.”

  “I thought you’d gone sledging.”

  “Yes, we did, but then it got dark, so we went back to the Manse for tea, and then Rory and I went to Kingsferry.”

  “Have you been shopping again?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  Elfrida, her attention caught, became intrigued. Lucy’s expression was secret, teasing. As though she couldn’t stop smiling.

  “You look like the Cheshire cat. What have you been up to?”

  Lucy put up a hand and tossed her long hair back from her neck, and Elfrida saw the gleam of gold.

  “I’ve had my ears pierced. The jeweller in Kingsferry did it for me. Rory took me. And he bought me the sleepers for Christmas. Real jewellery. Earrings.”

  “Oh, darling …”

  “I’ve been wanting them for ages….”

  “Let me look.”

  “But Mummy wouldn’t let me….”

  “They’re wonderful. So grown up. They make you look so grown up. What a generous present.”

  “I don’t think,” said Lucy, “I’ve ever been given anything I wanted more.”

  LUCY

  Wednesday, December 20TH

  I think this has been one of the best days of my life. Lots and lots of snow everywhere and it all looks so pretty. This morning I did Christmas shopping, and then when I got back, Rory was here, talking to Elfrida, with the television set he is going to lend me. He carried it up to my room and made it work and then we sat and talked, and somehow he was so easy to talk to that I just told him everything; about boring London and having to live in the flat, and Mummy and Gran and Randall Fischer. And about Dad and Marilyn, and about the family in Cornwall. It was so wonderful having someone listen and not interrupt and keep trying to cheer me up or jolly me along, or even to say I was talking a lot of rubbish. Or didn‘t know what I was talking about.