by Daisy Waugh
Alice poked her head between the two front seats to join in. ‘So what about the new people?’ she asked.
She felt Mr Carfizzi bristling. ‘What “new” people?’ he said.
‘The new Todes, of course. India and Egbert Tode, who’ll be interviewing me. What are they like to work for? Quite a change, is it?’
Mr Carfizzi was approaching a junction. He slowed down (even further), changed gear, checked his mirror, indicated, eased left. It became apparent that he was never going to answer.
‘… You don’t like them?’ Alice tried again.
He said: ‘Of course I “like” them.’
Violet chuckled. ‘Doesn’t sound like you do, Mr Carfizzi.’
‘Well of course I “like” them. But of course, it would be strange if we weren’t with any problems.’
‘Teething problems,’ Violet nodded knowingly.
‘They are from London,’ he explained. (As was Alice.) ‘They have arrived here, full of their London ideas, very certain about how things should be done, when – of course – we’ve been doing things at Tode Hall very well without them, you know, for more than three hundred years. So—’
‘A bit of in-fighting,’ Violet said. ‘Only to be expected.’
‘She insulted Mrs Carfizzi’s cooking on the first day they arrived here! Lady Tode was very kind, as always. Mrs Carfizzi was crying and weeping and sobbing. Terrible! Lady Tode had to have a little word.’
‘With Mrs Carfizzi?’ Alice asked.
‘With Mrs Tode. India Tode, as she says we must call her. Why must we call her “India”? We’re not friends.’
Violet said, ‘So you’re not happy with her. What about the husband? Is he any better?’
‘I didn’t say I wasn’t happy with her! What I said was—Ah! Now, here we are at the house. Never mind. You will see for yourselves. In any case Lady Tode is away now, so “India” will be the boss today. Which is just as she likes it…’ He let that sink in. ‘You will see for yourself. But now…’ The funereal drive was reaching its climax. Slowly (so slowly) the car turned in to the long West drive. And there, at last, a quarter-mile distant and framed by a giant arch, loomed the great house. It was a view designed to take the breath away; to end all previous conversations, and so it did, thankfully. Mr Carfizzi had been on the point of losing his temper.
CHAPTER 12
They continued along the drive in silence, interspersed by the occasional, barely audible whimper from Violet, who was clutching her heart and fighting back tears. The car rolled on, past the Old Stable Yard and its retail outlets, and on, past the car park for coaches, and the Garden Centre, the adventure playground, the Boathouse Café…
‘I never believed,’ Violet said at last, ‘the day would come when I would be back here.’
The house was closed to the public for the winter, it being November. But the gardens were open every day of the year, and on this misty morning, as ever, the grounds were strewn with tourists. Today was a weekday, which meant the majority of visitors were on international coach tours. Tode Hall (and its retail outlets) had, in the last five or so years, become especially fashionable in China.
Carfizzi weaved carefully and slowly between the milling tourists, along the front of the house, past the chapel, past the Great North Door, and on to the Estate Offices at the back end of the East Wing. Alice hummed the theme tune. Her heart was beating. It felt neither good nor bad to be back, but she was aware of blood pumping too fast around her body and she didn’t like it.
‘Funny,’ she said, as the car drew up, ‘You know how most places get smaller when you revisit them as an adult. I think this place may have grown.’
‘It is a large house,’ Mr Carfizzi agreed proudly. He glanced at his watch. His instructions had been to bring his passengers to the café in the basement, but first, he needed to show them their bedrooms.
Alice and Violet had been invited to stay the night. This was mostly in honour of Violet’s great age and former position in the household. Alice had made it clear she wasn’t coming without bringing her grandmother, and everyone agreed she probably wasn’t up to making the return journey in a single day.
The invitation also worked well for the young Todes, who wanted, more than anything, to charm Alice into taking the job. They were desperate for help. The running of Tode Hall was proving to be a massive operation – and far more political than, in their innocence, they had ever imagined. They felt isolated. In a household long stuck in its ways, whose allegiance to the outgoing Lady Tode was overt and quite oppressive, India, especially, needed a friend: someone even newer to the situation than she was, and yet also unquestionably connected to the past. Alice Liddell could not have been more perfect.
Alice didn’t know this. She also didn’t know that there had, in fact, only ever been three applicants for the job – despite running the advertisement twice. India had already rejected the other two applicants. The first, a Manchester-based NHS manager, had wanted to leave her stressful job, the better to take care of an ailing husband, and was well equipped for the position, but had been dismissed as ‘boring’. The other one, young Egbert and Lady Tode had both been ready to employ. She was a qualified accountant with a master’s degree in business, a single mother, currently based in London and looking for a better place to raise her two young children. India had rejected her for being ‘gross’.
‘ “Gross” in what way, Munchkin?’ young Egbert had asked.
When pushed for more detail, it transpired that India didn’t like her wardrobe – ‘very power-suity’; nor her exaggerated levels of efficiency; ‘she’ll make us all feel hopeless’; nor her apparent total absence of humour. ‘I’m going to have to spend a lot of time with this person,’ India said. ‘After half an hour with that woman I wanted to throw myself off a cliff.’
Alice wasn’t boring, or gross, or remotely efficient; was unlikely to make anyone feel hopeless, being fairly hopeless herself, and she had an excellent sense of humour. Add that to the fact that she knew the house, had spent much of her childhood here – it was a shoo-in. Assuming she wanted the job.
* * *
Violet Dean was mortified when Alice told her she’d arranged for them to be staying a night as guests in Tode Hall. She would have far preferred to stay in a B&B. But it was too late, Alice had already accepted the invitation. ‘After all those years looking after the place, you should spend a night in one of those big four-poster beds, anyway,’ Alice said. ‘It might be fun.’
‘It’ll be weird, more likely…’ A terrible thought occurred to her. ‘We won’t have to eat with them in the dining room, will we?’
‘I should think we will,’ replied Alice. ‘Unless they give us sandwiches to eat in the bedroom? But that really would be a bit weird – wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t do that, would they?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ Violet snapped. ‘You’re the bloody fool who accepted the invitation.’
In any case, here they were, each with their overnight bag, not knowing what to expect with regard to sandwiches, but as ready as they ever would be for the adventure ahead. Mr Carfizzi lifted Violet out of the car and into her wheelchair. There was a cold wind blowing. He wanted to tuck her under the blanket again, but she waved it away.
Not all the rooms in the house could get a wheelchair into them very easily. The rooms with the most obvious wheelchair access happened, as Violet knew well, also to be the best rooms in the house. To reach them, they would need to wheel all the way back along the front of the house, past the Great North Door to the entrance in the west, beneath the Chapel.
‘Feels more like Peking than Yorkshire,’ Violet said, as they barrelled along.
‘Not really, Granny,’ said Alice. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘I’m just saying,’ said Violet. ‘… It’s not like it was.’
‘I agree with you, Mrs Dean. But even here at Tode Hall we must move with the times,’ said Carfizzi. ‘Our Chinese visitors spend a lot of money in
the gift shops. They are very welcome here.’
‘I’m sure they are if you say so,’ she said.
He put the guests in the Queen Charlotte Suite (so named because in June 1782 a pregnant Queen Charlotte, formerly Her Serene Highness Princess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg, had used the rooms to rest and change, en route, it was believed, to a shooting and shopping trip in Edinburgh). The rooms were adjoining: built as bedroom and dressing room to the first Baronet’s wife, Rosalind (1686–1734), they were as grand as it is possible for two rooms to be. Each one was dominated by an ancient four-poster, upholstered in suffocating damask, and on every wall, paintings of long-dead, waxy-faced Todes in powdered wigs glowered down at them.
‘My goodness,’ muttered Alice, feeling slightly overwhelmed. She glanced at her grandmother.
But Violet was beaming. There were tears in her eyes. Alice had never seen her look so happy. ‘… Mr Carfizzi, I didn’t dare to hope,’ she was saying. ‘But I was hoping, I was hoping… because of the wheelchair, see. But I didn’t know, I was only hoping… These are the most beautiful rooms in the Hall. I’ve always thought so, Mr Carfizzi. Do you agree?’
Mr Carfizzi beamed back at her. He waggled a finger in the air. ‘Ah-ha!’ he cried. ‘I think you know why the rooms are so special!’
‘Know what? I don’t know anything…’ But she was blushing like a maiden.
Carfizzi explained to Alice that, in Prance to the Music, these were the rooms where Tintin’s father’s long drawn death scenes had been recorded.
‘That’s quite special, eh?’ Carfizzi chuckled. He knew why she was blushing.
‘I think I could die now, Mr Carfizzi!’ she said. ‘Quite happily!’
He laughed. ‘No need for that, Mrs Dean. Just enjoy this special night.’
‘It’s certainly a beautiful room,’ Alice said. ‘Are you all right, Granny?’
Mr Carfizzi, still grinning, patted the bed: ‘You can imagine his Lordship, the Lord Olivier, right there on the pillow beside you, Mrs Dean!’
Her smile died. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to be disgusting.’
CHAPTER 13
The basement restaurant, cannily designed by Lady Tode to look and feel no different from a John Lewis coffee shop, was heated to a pleasant room temperature. There was a food bar along one side of the room displaying a selection of nice-looking salads, some involving feta; also a hell of a lot of cakes. Interspersed between tables of slim and serious Chinese, there were fatter, plainer English folk, many with pushchairs. As young Egbert would explain shortly, Tode Hall offered Annual House & Grounds Membership Cards, which were popular with local young families, who liked to take advantage of the adventure playground below the Boathouse, and who appreciated the John Lewis style restaurant, especially the cakes.
Carfizzi was meant to stay with the women until India and Egbert arrived, but he didn’t want to do that: he said he was too busy to stand around waiting, and that India was always late. He left them alone in the restaurant.
Violet said to Alice: ‘Go on then, love. Go and get me one of those flapjacky things.’ Alice was delving in her purse for the money when Egbert and India rolled in.
There could be no mistaking them. They shone with good health, and good diet, and good looks, and good nature, and good bank balances. It wasn’t that they wanted to attract attention to themselves: they couldn’t help it. The two of them paused at the door, side by side, smiling expectantly – scanning the tables for their guests – and a shimmy of glamour passed through the room. Even the Chinese tourists, not attuned to the subtleties of British class, could feel a change in the vibe. Everyone sat up a little straighter.
‘Forget the flapjack,’ said Violet, too loudly. ‘They’re here. And my goodness, she’s a beauty, isn’t she? Mr Carfizzi didn’t mention that. I tell you what though,’ she added, ‘I suspect our Mr Carfizzi’s more into the gentlemen. Don’t you?’
‘Maybe,’ Alice said. ‘You may be right there… Shall I go over and introduce myself?’
‘Coo-ee!’ Violet shouted: ‘Over here!’
India and Egbert spotted her, waved and smiled, and made their way over.
‘Hello, hello, HELLO!’ Egbert boomed, but not on purpose. It was just the way he spoke. His voice carried across the restaurant, its loudness ruffling English and Chinese airwaves alike. Only the toddlers thought it was normal. ‘Mrs Dean! You must be Mrs Dean! Well done, getting here!’ he bellowed, giving her frail hand a hearty shake. ‘Was it a dreadful journey? I hope Mr Carfizzi was on time? I must say it’s an absolute honour to meet you! – And you,’ he said, turning toward Alice, ‘you must be Mrs Liddell? I’m Egbert, and this is my wife India and we are absolutely thrilled to meet you both! Aren’t we India?’
‘You bet we are!’ said India, with her big beautiful smile.
‘Especially you Mrs Dean, if I may say,’ continued Egbert. ‘Super impressed you made it! How does it feel to be back here, after all these years? Does it feel strange? I bet it does. My aunt, Lady Tode – unfortunately she’s not here today, as you know, but she wanted me to tell you specially how very, very sorry she was to miss you… She was so looking forward to seeing you again after so many years. She was terribly upset. But that’s the trouble with these cheapo airlines, isn’t it? She’d booked the ticket and there was absolutely no way they were going to let her change the date! So.’
‘Never mind,’ said Violet. ‘I was looking forward to seeing her again too. But not to worry. It’s just smashing to be back.’
‘Yes, I bet!’ boomed Egbert. ‘And Mrs Liddell – for you too, I imagine? I understand you spent many of your school holidays here, is that right?’
‘It is, yes—’
‘Well, well!’ Egbert smiled. ‘I should think you two know this place a hell of a lot better than we do! I’m not certain whether you should give us a tour, or the other way round!’
Everyone laughed. And then there was a kerfuffle while they settled themselves at a table. Egbert, with enormous politeness, asked a waitress to bring cakes and tea. India, elegantly cocooned in oatmeal cashmere and loose, expensive jeans (she learned of the label via an actress friend in LA), plopped herself onto the metal seat opposite Alice, and beamed.
‘I can tell already that I’m going to like you!’ she said.
Alice didn’t reply at once. It was, she thought, a nice thing to say. A very positive way to start a job interview. Not the usual way, she assumed (not that she would know, having never been interviewed for a job before). It occurred to her fuzzily that the feeling might even be reciprocated. She liked the look of India. There was a lively look about her: a promise of mischief which Alice found attractive.
‘I think I’m going to like you, too,’ Alice said at last.
Again, it was an odd way for the interview to begin. But the two of them were simply stating facts.
Egbert rubbed his hands together and laughed very merrily. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘that’s settled! When can you start?’
Ha ha ha, they all agreed.
But he wasn’t really joking.
In the meantime, they ate cakes and listened to Violet talking about the old days. Alice wanted to know what the job of Tode Hall House and Grounds Manager actually entailed, but nobody seemed able to tell her. Egbert said: ‘Look, it’s a jolly hard job, I’ll tell you that much.’
India said: ‘But you get a car and a house and virtually everything you need, paid for. Doesn’t she Egg? A phone, heating. Your whole life would be for free really. Everyone gets free veg from the kitchen garden – literally. I don’t think anyone on the estate has paid for a single vegetable in three hundred years…’
‘Wow,’ Alice said.
‘The fact is…’ India leaned forward, directing her saucer blue eyes directly at Alice. ‘I just need someone to help. You know what I mean? Someone I can whinge to – that sort of thing.’
‘Oh well,’ said Violet. ‘She’s been listening to me whingeing
for God knows how long, haven’t you Alice? She’s a good listener.’
‘I bet she is!’ Egbert said. He’d eaten a doughnut and there was jam on his jacket cuff. He was a bit distracted, trying to scrape it off. ‘I think alongside that,’ he said, ‘I’ll be honest with you Alice – I think there’s probably quite a lot of organisational stuff that needs doing. The Estate Offices already have a couple of wonderful PAs and an office manager, of course. So nothing too terrible. Just sort of – what do you think Munchkin? It’s more a PR-y sort of type job really, isn’t it Munch?’
‘Yup,’ said Munch. She was getting restless. The coffee shop reminded her of boring school holidays. Buying school uniforms with her mother. She grinned. ‘Are we done here? Shall we show each other round?’
Alice was about to stand up. Instead, she said, ‘… India, I hope you don’t mind me saying. Only I really hate it when people don’t tell me and I just wander around for ages not knowing. You’ve got something caught in your teeth.’
There was a pause. Egbert looked alarmed. ‘… She’s right Munch,’ he said gingerly.
India, straight faced, her eyes locked on Alice’s, stuck a ringed finger into her mouth. ‘Where?’
‘Just – just there,’ said Alice, staring at it. ‘… That’s it. You’ve got it…’
‘Oh. My. God,’ said India. ‘Thank you. I think I love you, Alice. I swear, if you don’t come and work for us now, I’m going to throw myself off a bridge. I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to throw myself off the gallery in the Great Hall. And I’ll do it while you’re watching so you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life…’ She was laughing. Egbert laughed along too.
‘Bit much, Munchkin! Slow down – you’ll scare the poor girl off.’
India giggled. ‘I’m not scaring you off, am I?’
‘Not really,’ Alice said. ‘I presume you’re not serious.’
Ha ha ha! More laughter. No one was being serious. On the other hand it was clear that India loved Alice. And if India loved Alice then obviously so did Egbert. Only one question remained: did Alice love India – and her grandmother – enough to uproot both their lives and move North? Not even Violet could have answered that. Alice was never an easy woman to read.