“I don’t think anything to do with a house would cheer her up,” said Eliza with a sigh.
Eliza dropped Emmie off with Sandra and then went to the Savoy; Charles was waiting for her, looking rather irritable.
“Where’s Mummy?”
“She’s not coming. Going to meet an old friend instead. There was a message with the front desk here when I came in.”
“Oh. How annoying.”
“It is a bit. I planned this so carefully too. As a treat for her.”
“Never mind,” said Eliza, “we can have a nice lunch. How are things, Charles? You look much better, I must say.”
“I feel it. And I’ve got a job in a nice little prep school near Esher. Start at half term. I’m looking forward to it.”
The meeting was set for three. When they arrived, they were greeted by Digby Ward, the manager of the trustee department. He was tall, white haired, slightly overgracious in his manner, wearing morning dress, and with a habit of rubbing his hands together repeatedly as he spoke.
“Mr. Fullerton-Clark, Mrs. Shaw, how delightful to see you here. Do follow me to the boardroom. May I offer you tea?”
“Tea would be nice. Is our mother here?”
“No, not yet. She has been delayed.”
“What! How much delayed?”
“Only about fifteen minutes. My assistant, Mr. Fleming, has prepared some notes for the meeting. I will ask him to bring them in so that we can go through them before your mother joins us.”
They were shown into the boardroom, dark, book lined, with green-shaded brass lamps hanging over the table. In front of each place was a folder with a picture of Summercourt on the front—This is going to be worse than I imagined, Eliza thought—and “Family trust, entailing Summercourt, Wellesley, Wiltshire,” written underneath it.
“I have the deeds here, if you would like to see them,” said Digby Ward, and, “Yes, please,” said Eliza and Charles in unison. And the lovely things were produced, great pages of waxy parchment with exquisite cursive writing in thick black ink, covered in great red seals, the complex language made further inexplicable by the script, but still certain words and phrases were familiar … “Summercourt, situated in the parish of Wellesley in the county of Wiltshire … large house … freehold … two hundred acres … with pasture … stables … orangery … woodland … two tenant cottages …”
There was the trust document too, the instrument, astonishingly still laboriously written out by hand in 1936, detailing the strictures of the trust, putting it into the ownership of the trustees, while forbidding them “to raise security on the house by way of mortgage” and Sarah’s absolute power of appointment, “lasting in accordance with the royal lives clause.”
“What does that mean?” said Charles.
“Ah,” said Digby Ward, “it means that the period of the trust would end on the death of the last living descendant of the monarch of the time the trust was settled, plus a period of twenty-one years after that. King George the Fifth was on the throne when your grandfather entailed the property; as our dear Queen is still so young, you will appreciate there are many years for the trust still to hold.”
“So you haven’t found a way we can actually sell the house?” said Charles. “No way of going against these terms?”
“Sadly not. I thought you realised that.”
“I did. But I also thought we had come here to find a solution. To keep Summercourt from becoming derelict and ultimately a ruin. Which it undoubtedly will unless something can be done.”
“Of course. And it is extremely difficult to see what can be done. The house is too small to be opened to the public in order to raise money, in too much disrepair to let—and even that would be against the terms of the trust, of course, were the tenants not to be known to and approved of by your mother.”
“Well, all right,” said Charles. “Is there really no way we can at least raise a mortgage so that my mother can do some work on the house?”
“Sadly not.”
“And … what you’re saying really is that this is a stalemate. We have nowhere to turn,” said Charles.
“That would certainly have appeared to be the case,” said Digby Ward.
Eliza looked at him sharply. “ ‘Would have’? So you have found a solution? Is that what you’re telling us?”
“It’s possible. As of today, as a matter of fact.”
“Well … what is it?” Her voice sounded suddenly silly and squeaky, even to herself.
“A … person has come forward. With the necessary funding available—”
“I don’t understand. Did my mother know about this, and if so why—”
“Not until today. Ah, Mrs. Barton—is Mrs. Fullerton-Clark here? Yes, excuse me, please, just for a moment. I must go and greet your mother.”
He went out, closing the door behind him.
“What on earth is going on?” said Eliza, staring at Charles. “Oh, God. I’m scared. Mummy could have warned us; she must have known something was up.”
The door opened again, and Digby Ward came in.
“Your mother won’t be long,” he said. “Now, there is something that I must warn you about, before we go any further. I am asked to tell you that this solution could—I only say ‘could’—result in some things being done to the house that you might not find acceptable.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well … there is talk of … er, modern windows being installed. And possibly even a … Let me see.” He consulted his notes. A very discerning observer would have noticed his lips coming close to twitching. “Sky blue and pink paint on the front door—”
“I suppose we don’t have any right to—” began Charles.
“Oh. My. God,” said Eliza, and she was smiling now. “The bastard! The bastard! Charles, it’s Matt!”
Matt it was indeed, and he came in with Sarah, grinning, looking even slightly sheepish, and Sarah was flushed, half laughing.
“The thing is, darlings, I knew nothing of this until yesterday afternoon. Matt called me and asked me if I could meet him here early today—”
“You bastard!” said Eliza. “You’re mean and hateful and … and cruel and—”
“Eliza!” said Sarah. “Matt has been the opposite of mean, I do assure you.”
And he had.
Sarah had agreed to appoint the house out to Eliza, thus terminating the trust.
What had made this financially viable as a solution was that Matt had paid Sarah something called an inducement—“It sounds a bit dodgy, doesn’t it? But it’s a legal loophole; anyway, it’s very, very generous”—of twenty thousand pounds—Summercourt’s market value.
“This would enable your mother to buy herself a smaller, more suitable property,” said Digby Ward, “and then Mr. Shaw has also agreed to provide the wherewithal to do the house up, make the necessary repairs—”
“And install modern windows,” said Matt with a grin.
“That will, of course, be impossible, Summercourt being grade-one listed,” said Digby Ward. “I do hope you will forgive that little joke, Mrs. Shaw.”
“I forgive you,” said Eliza, “not my husband.”
“So,” said Charles, “will the house now belong to Eliza? Or to Matt? Or will there be a further trust? I don’t quite understand.”
“It’ll be in our joint names, belong to both of us,” said Matt. “I’m not that much of a saint. So that if she leaves me, she can’t walk off with it. Now, something else I’d like to say: bit hard on you, Charles, all this, and I’m sorry. But … you’ve said often enough you couldn’t cope with the expense, and at least it’ll be in the family.”
“No, no, that’s true,” said Charles, “and oddly, I don’t see it as hard. I see it as a marvellous solution. If it was going to someone outside the family, I would mind very much, but as it is … well, I think it’s fine. I really mean that,” he said, smiling gently at his mother. “I’m not just being noble. I really do feel that.�
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“Charles, as far as I’m concerned,” said Eliza, “Summercourt will still be home to you as well as me. And I’m sure Matt would say the same.”
“I would. Of course. And, Sarah, you don’t have to move out. You can stay there, long as you like. We’re hardly going to be living there full-time. I’m sure I speak for Eliza as well; don’t I, Eliza?”
Eliza nodded; she felt very emotional suddenly. She got up, went round the table, and, careless of any embarrassment she might cause, put her arms round Matt and kissed him.
“I love you,” she said, “and thank you. And you’re not that mean and hateful. Not really.”
And so it was that on one particularly lovely August evening that year, the new owner of Summercourt—for that was how he regarded himself—drove down to view it, with his wife and daughter, there to meet his mother-in-law, who had arranged a picnic supper in the orangery, always his favourite part of the house.
A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket on the picnic table; Sarah asked Matt to open it and then went very pink.
“I have something to say, Matt,” she said, raising her glass to him, “and that is that I feel extremely fortunate at the turn of events, of course, but I also feel extremely ashamed of myself over my behaviour when Eliza first brought you to meet Adrian and me. You’re the best son-in-law I could have wished for, and I’m only sorry I couldn’t see it then.” And she started to cry; Matt told her not to be so silly and that he wouldn’t have thought much of himself as a prospect for his daughter. “If I’d come asking to marry Emmie, I wouldn’t have given myself the time of day.”
“Well,” Sarah said, “if there’s anything I can do to show my gratitude …”
Matt told her not to worry about it, but after supper, when Emmie sat sleepily sucking her thumb demanding stories, he said yes, now here was a thing; if Sarah really wanted to show her gratitude, she could put Emmie to bed so that he and Eliza could be alone together for a while.
Sarah led Emmie off towards the house, and Matt turned to Eliza in the dusk of the conservatory evening and said, “I love you, Eliza,” adding that he couldn’t recall their having had a row, whereupon Eliza said she couldn’t either, and she loved him too, and maybe they could reverse the usual order of things …
“You mean you want to … do it now?”
“I do. I want it more than more than.”
“What—here?”
“Here.”
“And then, since we’re doing everything the wrong way round, do we have to have a row?”
“We can if you like,” said Eliza, “but it’s not compulsory.”
“Oh, God,” he said, and he reached out and took her hand and kissed it and then pulled her towards him, the intense expression on his face that he wore only on such occasions. “Oh, God.” And then: “The floor’s a bit hard. Won’t you mind?”
“I might,” she said, “but it’ll be worth it. Don’t you think?”
“I can’t think,” he said. “I can’t think about anything. Get your knickers off, Eliza. Quick.”
It was not the most romantic of phrases, but then, romantic phrases had always irritated her.
In the house, sitting by the open window of her bedroom, Sarah heard some wild, strange cries coming from the direction of the conservatory and hoped they hadn’t shut some poor creature inside it, and resolved to send them back to check when they came in. But they were a long time—wandering the grounds, she supposed—and by the time she did hear them on the stairs she was too sleepy to care.
So began, Eliza realised, looking back, one of the happiest periods in her life. She was still restless, still lonely—for the kind of company she craved, at least—still bored, but Matt’s saving Summercourt had made her see how much he loved her. He had done it primarily for her, and she knew it. And consequently knew that all his demands, all the personal sacrifices she had made, were actually worth it.
Matt was also very happy—when he thought about it. The least analytical of people, he was aware of only uncomfortable emotions: rage (frequent), stress (more frequent still), envy (now rare). When he was feeling none of those things, it could be presumed he was happy. He had the things he had always wanted: money, status—and Eliza. His love for Eliza surprised him at times: born that day in Waterloo Station, it had never faded, never failed. From an unapproachable creature a world removed from him, she had moved towards him through the years, and was now almost unbelievably at the centre of his life.
It was not a comfortable relationship still: he found her frequently enraging. Eliza was disruptive, demanding, restless, and very critical. He had no opportunity of growing complacent so long as he was with her.
Sometimes when they quarrelled, and more seriously than usual, he would glance at least in the direction of life without her, and found himself faced by an abyss so vast, so terrifying, so ugly he would literally close his eyes and turn away.
She was what she was, with all her imperfections, and he could consider no other.
His honeymoon—for he had had one—with the rest of his immediate world was, however, coming to an end.
He called Louise into his office one morning and told her he had offered Barry Floyd Jimbo’s partnership in the firm—without consulting her, looking in her direction, or considering that he might offer it to her. She found it hard to believe the cruelty of it. The sheer, blind, callous, careless cruelty.
She listened in silence as he told her. Then, as she had never, ever done in all the years of provocation and injustice, she knew she was going to break down.
And she said that she wanted to be alone and shut the door, and put her head on her arms on the desk and cried and cried.
It was Jenny who had listened to the sobs, in an agony of sympathy, her tender heart wrung; Jenny who had asked Matt what was wrong and whether there was anything she could do, and was told to do what she liked; Jenny who put her arms round Louise and told her to hush and fetched her some water and then sat down beside her and drew her head onto her soft, comforting bosom, which might have been created for exactly such a purpose, and waited there until the sobs subsided and was told that she had been kind, very kind, but Louise thought she would go home for the rest of the day.
What hurt Louise most was that to him, in spite of all the loyalty, the thought, the care, the hard, hard work, the near-inspirational ideas, she was still simply the sassy girl with good legs who had walked in the door and been hired as the company PA. There she was, preserved, a sexy dolly bird, for the rest of their time together; everything else that she had achieved had clearly been seen as some kind of happy accident made possible by Matt’s and Jimbo’s generosity and the opportunities they could offer her, and had nothing to do with any talent that she might have brought to them.
And just as bad—worse, possibly—was Barry, who had accepted the offer, shaken hands on the deal, and not even thrown her a word of warning, or insisted that she should at least have been aware of it, before going off to meet some developers in Manchester for the day. That was a truly, truly dreadful example of men, in all their arrogant, God-given superiority, at work.
At some point in the afternoon, Jenny called and said that Matt would like to speak to her.
“I said I’d try, Miss Mullen, ask you if you wanted to speak to him, but I told him I didn’t think it was very likely.”
“You tell him you were right, Jenny. I don’t want to speak to him.”
Later, much, much later, the phone rang again and it was Barry. Louise told him to fuck off.
“And just before you do, may I say I always thought Matt Shaw was a bastard; I had a slightly higher opinion of you. How wrong I was.”
She stayed at home for another two days, gathering her strength, and then called them to say she was coming in to see them.
They said all the predictable things: that they really valued her input to the company but that it was a man’s world, and there was no way she could do the job that Jimbo had and Barry wou
ld; that they would create a new role for her within the company, with a new title, like new business director, give her more money, give her a swanky new office.
“Well, that’s extremely generous of you. Let me tell you, you pair of bigoted, self-centred, chauvinist idiots, I wouldn’t go on working with either of you if you paid me a million pounds a year. This is the last time I shall set foot in this office. And don’t think I won’t play very dirty if you try to hold me to my contract or tell me to keep my hands off the clients. I can think of several who’d rather work with me than you. WireHire, for a start.”
“I think you should be very careful about all this,” said Matt. “Whatever you might say, there are legal restraints in place.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Louise, “I suppose you think I’m not capable of realising that either. Anyway, I’m having lunch with a guy from the Mail tomorrow. I think I can persuade him to write a really nice piece about me and what I’ve achieved, and your pathetic, antediluvian attitude and how I’m looking for a job. I’m going now. Barry, please don’t bother trying to contact me. I’ll decide when or rather if that happens, OK?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Matt, as she swept out. “We’ll have to think of something pretty damn smart. And … what does antediluvian mean?”
“Before the flood,” said Barry.
“Right. But I’ll tell you something,” Matt added, “I’m not going to be held to ransom over this, Barry, and I imagine you aren’t either.”
Barry, who had spent most of his life avoiding conflict by the simple deployment of his charm, found himself in the interesting position of having to make a choice between Matt and his career and Louise and his personal life. Matt, slightly to Barry’s own surprise, won.
Louise, having checked out her contract and removed her personal possessions from the office, had left without further discussion of any kind. They tried to tell themselves they didn’t care.
“I think you’re quite mad, both of you, and I think you’ll be very sorry,” said Eliza, when Matt finally told her what had happened.
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