“Yeh well, like I told ya, most of its just stories ...but I thought you ought’er know, just in case.” saying this, Arthur got into his car, slamming the door several times before it closed. Banging his fist down on the lock, he muttered something about needing to get that fixed, “Can’t get the thing durned thing open, then can’t keep it shut.” he complained to Hamish through the open window which he had wound down with difficulty, before turning on the motor. He proffering a small green business card picked from an untidy pile spread over the passenger’s seat, through the window. “Me daughter insists I ‘and these things out to anyone I meet who might be lookin’ fer plants.” he said loudly, talking over the noise of the engine, which was running less than smoothly. “Like I says, she’s took over the family nurs’ry an’ is always lookin’ out for new business. She done one of those fancy pancy courses in ‘orticulture and design and stuff, mostly by correspondence ...waste of time, if you ask me, not that she ever does, ...no substitute for experience, I says. But, she knows ‘er plants, if I do say so meself, an’ she could ‘elp you choose stock that would do well in the garden. Might save you making expensive mistakes like some folk round ‘ere ‘ave. ...’An I know a good tree surgeon, an ‘all, ...you’ll be wantin’ to do something about those great bigguns that’re too close to the ‘ouse ‘fore they comes back into leaf in the spring, like.”
“Thanks ...I’ll keep it in mind.” Hamish said, as he took the card. Reading,
Blaine’s Nursery
Thornden
emblazoned in gold against a deep green background, with phone, fax, postal and e-mail addresses all lined up neatly underneath.
“She a bit of a one for all that ‘igh-falutin’ stuff, but like I said, she knows ‘er plants a’right ...so don’t be a stranger.” Arthur had to practically shout the last, as he dropped the car into gear with an ear-damaging graunch, before rumbling off up the drive; clouds of blue-grey smoke billowing from the car’s exhaust almost obscuring the hand waving from the open window. Hamish waved back, as much to disperse the haze from in front of his face as to say farewell and promptly moved away from the fumes. “I thought I got out of London to get away from the traffic pollution,” he muttered to himself, as he returned to check on the barely smouldering bonfire. “Hmmm, fairies ...what next ...throw in a few elves and pixies and I could start a new Euro-Disney.” It took little effort to put the conversation out of his mind, as he ran the hose from the nearest connection and thoroughly doused the embers.
As he rewound the hose onto the reel he was planning his next task, knowing that he really needed to make a start on some of the cleaning and unpacking, inside, which he had been putting off since the day he’d moved in. Steve and Linda had offered to come down on the weekend to lend a hand with some of the work, and Hamish wanted, at least, to have somewhere suitable for them and the children to sleep. That, he knew, would mean doing something about the upstairs bedroom and the studio before they arrived. While the weather had been so settled, he had spent most of the daylight hours outdoors. Once inside, in the evenings, he had made a few desultory attempts to clean some of the kitchen and unpack a few of his belongings, but they had remained mostly scattered about still in the removal firm’s cartons. He was so enjoying the novelty of working in the garden, going to bed early and sleeping through the night that he hadn’t yet got around to much of the indoor work.
He didn’t know if his improved sleeping habits had anything to do with his daytime exertions and the fresh air, or with the change of location, but it was such a relief, after so long, to open his eyes, refreshed after a good night’s sleep. Even if he did wake early in a frigidly cold room, he fervently hoped this would continue. In the meantime he was making the most of it, even if he was little more than camping-out before the fireplace in the smallest downstairs room, which was tucked behind the stairs on the south-eastern corner of the house. It had probably been used as a study, lined as it was with bookshelves. As it was the only room in the house that was carpeted, and with the night-time temperatures dropping regularly to below zero, it had seemed the best place to sleep on his first night in the house. That night, he had been so tired that he had done little more than unpack blankets and a pillow from a carton marked ‘bedding’ then dragging the seat cushions off a dustsheet-covered sofa in the living room to make himself a nest, resorting to sleeping in his goosedown sleeping bag, designed for almost arctic weather conditions and unused since college climbing trips to the French Alps. Once cocooned in it, he had been asleep within seconds.
Waking up was less pleasant. The morning temperatures were so cold that a central heating system was now high on Hamish’s list of ‘must haves’ if he was to stay in the house for any length of time, but for now he was loath to risk changing anything, in case he went back to his old sleeplessness. So, he’d remained on the floor of the little room, building a fire each evening to take the chill from the air and sleeping with the bag’s hood pulled up over his head to keep the night-time cold at bay.
Levering off his boots at the front door, Hamish went inside in search of something to eat. The work outside might be helping him to sleep, but it was giving him an appetite too. He skirted around piles of unopened cartons on his way to the kitchen. ‘Kitchen’, he thought was a bit of a hopeful term for a room that had little more than a sink, albeit a wonderfully deep divided ceramic butler’s sink, and a bit of old laminate bench with a badly delaminated surface and sagging shelves. There was an electric oven, of sorts, in one corner, but Hamish was unwilling to risk his life using pre-war electrics that had been left to the mercies of rodents and rust for over half a century. So far, he’d been relying on a supply of frozen Marks and Sparks’ heat ’n’ eat meals, warmed in the microwave, for most of his evening meals. Fortunately he had also brought the refrigerator-freezer and other bench-top appliances from the studio, because just anything that had been left in the kitchen was pretty much defunct. Fortunately, his 50’s-styled blue refrigerator was right at home in this kitchen, he thought, and a good place to start his new kitchen design from.
Washing his sooty hands in ice-cold water wasn’t overly pleasant, but he was hungry, and it took an age to wait for hot water to travel from the cylinder to the kitchen tap, so he hurriedly rinsed and dried his hands before his fingers froze solid. A new cylinder, closer to the taps, and lagged pipes, he thought ...more jobs for the ever-growing list.
After flipping the switch on the espresso machine, he opened the refrigerator door and pulled out cold chicken left over from his previous night’s supper, a container of pasta salad, and butter and mayonnaise from the door shelves, before dragging open the crisper drawer to gather up tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. Gathering up all his finds in his arms he pushed the fridge door shut with his foot then carried them to a small bright-yellow Formica table set in a lovely windowed alcove in the outer wall of the kitchen. The table and matching chairs had been a welcome find, and unlike the stove, were in pristine 1940’s condition. He walked back to the large terracotta crock on the bench to check if he’d left any bread out. He hadn’t, so he grabbed several slices from a loaf in the freezer and threw them in the microwave to defrost, took a plate from the single shelf under the bench. New shelves and cupboards …add to list ...then reached for a knife from one of several jam jars full of clean cutlery on the bench top. New cutlery and utensil drawers …add to list. No, he thought; as he manufactured a substantial doorstep sandwich ...just make that. New Kitchen. Period.
Lunch prepared, he took it, along with a mug of freshly brewed hot coffee, to the sunny spot just outside the conservatory doors that had quickly become his favourite spot to sit and think. Sitting on a paint-peeling garden bench in the weak sunshine, devouring his lunch and sipping fresh hot coffee, he took time to muse over what had happened since he’d made the decision to move.
Once he’d started the ball rolling, Hamish had found that events took on a life and a speed of their own, and he’d had little time for reflectio
n between making the choice to move and actually moving. As soon as his signed documents had arrived at the lawyer’s office, Charles had been on the phone, telling Hamish that the keys were on their way to him as they spoke. True to his word, a courier package had arrived within the hour, containing an assortment of unlabelled keys and Hamish’s copies of the paperwork, signed by the lawyer.
Hamish, now that his mind was made up, had immediately picked up the phone and had the studio listed with an estate agent. In a sought-after neighbourhood and freehold, it had sold in the first week, before the photograph had even had time to appear in the agent’s brochure. By the end of that day, Hamish had organised a date for the removal firm to come and pack, and started to tie up any loose ends of his life in London. Whether the Kent cottage worked out or not, he had decided, he had no intention of going back to the city.
It had seemed auspicious that he should move into his new home on the first day of December as he had been dreading spending another Christmas alone in the studio. Last year, the first Christmas after the accident, he had still been numb with grief and had hardly noticed the season going by, but this year, he was sure that he would feel every reminder as a stab of pain. Elaine had loved everything about Christmas and had made sure that the holiday season really was festive for everyone around her. December was her special month ...especially, she’d said, as it gave her a bona fide excuse to spend Saturdays shopping on the crowded streets. She would happily spend hours searching for just the right gift for friends or family members, stopping for coffee only when Hamish insisted that he wouldn’t go a step further until he’d had a break. Shopping, she knew, was not his forte. She, however, was as delighted as any small child at the anticipation of Christmas, and would drag Hamish out in the evenings, first down Regent Street to admire the lights ...where they’d have to stop at every window with Christmas displays, including Liberty and Hamleys toy store, then Harvey Nichols and Harrods before she would allow Hamish to tow her home. Lucy had been too young at the time of her death to get very excited about Christmas ...she was still more interested in the boxes and paper that her presents came in to bother overly much about their contents, ...but, if she’d lived, by this year he was sure she would have started to share her mother’s excitement.
Yes, it had been good to get out of London before December got to him, thought Hamish, as he drank the hot coffee ...and he had no plans to visit in the near future.
Once the removal firm had gone, Hamish’s first priority, after necessities such as the electricity and water, had been to employ a firm to erect scaffolding, making it possible to reach the highest windows and those sections of the roof that were covered in vines. After some thought, Hamish had decided to carry out the work of clearing away the Virginia creeper himself, not wanting to remove any more than was absolutely necessary. That snapshot in his mind’s eye, of how beautiful the small house had looked when he had first seen it, lit bright red and orange by the morning sun, had stayed so clearly over the past month, making him less than keen to entrust the work to anyone other than himself. Since some of the upper windows would be difficult to reach once the scaffolding was removed, he took the extra time, once the vine was gone, to clean the multitudes of tiny glass panes. Now, all of the windows, on the outside at least, were sparkling clean, and the house looked postcard perfect from the spot where Hamish had first seen it ...it was only upon entering the front door that the true state of the interior became evident.
As he had worked, clearing first the steeply pitched roof, with its small central turret and twisted brick chimneys, then the upstairs windows, Hamish started to get a better feel for what the house might have once looked like. Uncovering exquisite detail after detail, he had begun to think of the cottage as his pocket-sized Gothic castle. The tiny central tower room had been a surprise, one he had yet to investigate properly, as he hadn’t, so far, found a means to access it from the inside of the cottage. He wasn’t entirely sure that it was designed to be accessed at all or had been added more as an attractive folly than a space with any practical purpose.
Lunch eaten, it would have been too easy to doze off in the warm sunshine, tired as he was from his morning’s labours, but knowing there was work to be done still, Hamish forced himself to move from the bench and go back inside. Shortly afterwards, armed with the vacuum cleaner, a stout broom, and a bucket full of bottles of various cleaning solutions and cloths, he climbed up stairs which started from a small entrance hall immediately inside the front doors. With the windows cleared, the afternoon light made kaleidoscopic patterns of kingfisher blues and greens, counterpointed with bright red and yellow, as the sun shone through the diamond-shaped panes of coloured glass of the stairwell windows onto white marble steps. The vestibule was open to the floor above and the same colours had been repeated in a long chain of glass lampshades that were suspended from a single fixture set high in the ceiling above the open hub of the stairwell. Set in motion by a tiny breeze, the light reflected through these added to the display, causing the entire stairwell to be full of pulsating colour. Hamish paused on the stairs for a moment to enjoy the scene. But the sun had, unfortunately, also accented the thick cloud of dust motes that hung in the air, reminding him of what it was he was here to do. He had only been upstairs once since moving in. By the time he had got back to the house the evening after the movers had left, he had been so tired that he hadn’t the energy to eat, let alone start exploring the house, so he had left coming upstairs until the next morning. It had been a dull grey, cold, day and he had not been impressed by what he had seen. Since then, he’d been so busy outside that he hadn’t ventured up this far again inside the house, until now.
At the top of the stairs he stopped to put down the cleaning equipment, before turning to his left to open three tall casement windows that were positioned underneath a pretty oriel window facing southwards over the garden. The air that came in was fresh, if a little overcool, but it would help, Hamish thought, to refresh the air in the room and, hopefully, get rid of some of the dust at the same time. He went back to stand in the middle of the room and looked around, amazed at the enormous difference removing the creeper had made. This was the largest of the cottage’s rooms, the stairs opening directly onto a high-ceilinged studio cum sleeping space replete with solidly constructed built-in furniture that looked as if it had been in the space since its inception. Deep storage cupboards ran along the wall under the huge round window set high in the west wall and an immensely solid, damask-draped, oak four-poster tester bed sat next to a pretty green marble fireplace, occupying the rear wall of what was effectively one room. At the far end, down two steps was another space where a projecting alcove with a low platform which he thought could be used as sleeping space for guests had been built under the eaves. A bathroom was tucked in the north-east corner above the downstairs laundry, the one area that was shut off from the whole and also a couple of steps lower than the majority of the space. It had been, so far, a room that Hamish had barely bothered to venture into. Since living in the house he had made do with the downstairs facilities, washing in the laundry off the kitchen, and using a small toilet that was tucked under the stairwell.
This would all have to do for now, but later, he mused, it might be an idea to add built-in drawers under the platform for extra storage space and showers both upstairs and down. He mentally added them to the list ... Oh dear; he thought ...he might have to stop adding to the list for a while, until he’d cleared a few of the more pressing items off it.
The reason he stood now, mouth open, transfixed by the change in the room, was because of the light. When he had first looked upstairs it had been to find a disappointingly dingy, sunless space that had little if any resemblance to the warm light-filled studio he had left behind in London. Now, with the removal of the creeper from the south-facing casements and oriel, the large circular window in the end of the gable and the high dormers that functioned as skylights, sunlight literally poured into the space from all dir
ections. The difference was phenomenal. He smiled with satisfaction, thrilled with the change that his hard word had wrought ...now it looked more like an artist’s studio, and he could readily imagine himself working here.
He spent the rest of the day industriously cleaning, vacuuming, mopping and driving spiders from webs that must have taken generations to build. By the time he had finished, the upstairs was habitable and the bed-spaces and bathroom, though Spartan, were clean enough for his guests. He’d also made a very interesting discovery regarding the tower. While cleaning out the studio cupboards, Hamish noted that if Jonathan Kendal had been a sculptor, there was little left that gave any indication of his industry. He supposed his sister or the mysterious disappearing ‘wife’ must have emptied the studio and cupboards after his death. From what he’d gleaned from Miss Kendal, her brother had been involved in some sort of espionage work that had seen him going to and from Germany and Russia, intermittently throughout the duration of the war and in the years after until his disappearance and presumed death. Given the sporadic nature of the work, he would have undoubtedly been able to continue a certain amount of creative work here in the studio. Hamish knew that he would have done something like that if he had been in similar circumstances. Too long away from his painting and he started to feel the effects. He hadn’t minded taking a break these past weeks, but, now that he had seen the studio, his fingers were itching to hold a palette knife and paintbrushes once more.
But not today. He pushed thoughts of painting aside and went downstairs to retrieve bedding, brought from London. The four-poster was without a mattress but he’d checked, and found that his own should fit well enough. It took a gargantuan effort to single-handedly manhandle the awkwardly heavy thing up the stairs, but he eventually dragged it into the bedroom and onto the bed. Puffing with exertion, and feeling inordinately proud of himself he stood back to survey the scene. There was little time for self-congratulation, though, as he still had to manufacture beds for Jamie and Ali. He went back to the packing cartons, searching and emptying boxes until he found two single futons that he and Elaine had used as pack-away, occasional guest beds in the studio. He ferried those up to the alcove then fetched enough sheets, pillows, comforters and blankets to ensure the children and their parents would be warm and cosy. At last, late in the day, the beds were ready and looked clean and comfortable.
Flowers in the Morning Page 13