by Georgia Hill
‘Haven’t you had enough?’ the barmaid said, eyeing his swaying form. ‘You been trying to catch up with Kev?’
‘I’m drunk on success and besides, Dawnie, I’ve never had enough from you.’
Dawn raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t know how you put up with those two, Gabe, I really don’t.’
‘So, where have you been, then?’ Paul tried and failed to focus on his friend.
‘Had some stuff to do,’ Gabe said shortly.
‘Your Rachel’s a bit of all right, mate.’
Gabe watched as the thin man hung an arm round Rachel’s shoulders. ‘She’s not mine, Paul,’ he said and turned to go.
‘Gabe,’ Paul called. ‘You haven’t finished your drink!’
Gabe strode to the door. ‘You have it. I’ve gone off the idea.’
Chapter 16
Rachel crept down the stairs, early next morning, so as not to wake Tim.
They’d all carried on the celebrations late into the night at the pub. Last orders had somehow never been called and when Rachel realised the time, it had been three in the morning. She’d dragged a reluctant Tim home.
Now, too few hours later, she was desperate for a cup of tea to dull the headache drumming at her temples. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she hopped from one foot to another; the quarry tiles were cold and the chill struck through, even though she wore her sheepskin slippers.
Leaving Tim to sleep and desperately in need of liquid, she took the teapot into the sitting room. She drank the first mug sitting alone on the sofa, her feet curled up underneath her, enjoying the quiet.
Last night had been fun. She still hadn’t taken to Kevin. He’d got even more drunk and had eventually been poured into a car and driven home by Dawn. Paul and some of the others there had been good company. The real revelation of the night, though, had been Stan and Tim bonding, over of all things, the Bauhaus arts and crafts movement!
‘Hetty, what else did the social scene offer you, apart from afternoon tea? No pub quizzes, I expect’ Rachel glanced at the biscuit tin, lodged in its usual position on the bookshelf. She cocked an ear upstairs, if Tim kept to his usual habits he wouldn’t surface until lunchtime. ‘Lots of time, then,’ she said to herself with glee. ‘Lots of lovely time to find out more about you.’ Rising, she walked over and took down the Huntley and Palmers tin.
Ignoring the headache still thrumming between her ears, she found the diary and settled on what looked to be a continuation of Hetty’s description of that eventful Christmas.
January 1908, Delamere
Richard continues to fluctuate in mood, as do I. We are a volatile pairing and clash continually – that is, when he isn’t off riding with the Parkers.
Yesterday he found me in the schoolroom. It was a dark day filled with sleety rain. I was ensconced in a blanket on the window seat, where I could at least have enough light with which to read. I did not want to be disturbed.
Richard was bored. ‘Oh come on, Hetty. Let’s do something,’ he wheedled.
I refused to look up. He was making my body do strange things and filled me with odd emotions. I did not want to be with him. ‘I’m happy reading,’ was my only reply.
He peered over my shoulder at my Girl’s Own Annual. ‘God, what rubbish you read.’ He was so scornful it made me laugh. ‘Come on, Hetty. I have to go back to school next week.’
‘And you cannot ride because of the weather.’
He shifted on his feet, guiltily. ‘It’s not just that. I thought we could have one last adventure. I won’t be back until Easter, remember.’
I looked up then, at his blue eyes gleaming from under sooty lashes, and relented. How could I not? I would miss him terribly until he came home again, despite his trying moods and his teasing me with Flora. Putting my book carefully in my desk, I pulled the blanket more closely around my shoulders and shivered violently; the entire house was freezing. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘What have you in mind?’
‘Good-oh Hetty, you’re such a brick. You’re more fun than all my school fellows put together.’ He kissed me quickly on the cheek and then took hold of me and danced me into the corridor.
‘I doubt that very much,’ I gasped. ‘Oh Richard, let go of me, do. I’ve got dust all over my sleeve.’ He stopped whirling me around and brushed at my arm, where the crumbling lime-washed walls had shared their flakes with me.
‘I know,’ he said, his face aglow, ‘let’s go and do some dancing where we have plenty of room.’
I knew that look. It meant trouble. ‘Wherever do you mean?’
‘The ballroom, ninny.’
‘If you call me ninny again, I shall not go anywhere with you,’ I said, folding my arms primly over my chest. I blew out a breath and watched it mist in the dull light of the corridor. I shivered again. Maybe dancing would warm me up.
Richard looked abject, but only because he wanted his own way. ‘Sorry. Are you coming, then?’
I shrugged and followed.
We ran down the two flights of steps, using the servants’ stairs and then crept along the main hallway past the aunts’ sitting room. We stood, for a second, in front of the double doors. Beyond here was strictly out of bounds. It was the part of the house that was falling down. Neglected, it had become unstable and therefore dangerous.
Richard turned to me, a grin on his face. ‘Do you dare?’
We had, in fact, once or twice before, ventured through. Each time we visited this part of the house it seemed more decrepit. There were pigeons roosting and swallows in the summer. Bats at night and more spiders than I ever wished to see. But I could never resist Richard and, truth be told, he was far more exciting than Lucy Maud Montgomery’s latest serial. I nodded my assent and we slid through.
It was very dark in this corridor. Richard felt for my hand and I gladly gave it. I was not sure who was comforting whom. I brushed away a cobweb in disgust and shut my mouth to prevent anything going in.
We felt our way along before coming to yet more double doors, which we knew led to the old ballroom. Richard pushed at them. They gave an almighty creak and one dropped entirely from its hinges with a crash.
We staggered back, blinded and choked by dust, giggling a little from fear. Then froze as we listened for a reaction from the other part of the house. Nothing.
We could now see slightly better and, when we entered the room, could see why. Part of the roof had collapsed, taking most of the wall with it. The cold shuddered its way through, along with what little light the winter day could provide. Sleet puddled on the floor and daggers of window glass lay about. I could understand why this part of the house was out of bounds; it looked to be in imminent danger of collapse.
In its decaying state, it had a kind of Miss Havisham-style beauty. Stepping over the prone door, I ventured in. Most of the old chandeliers were still in place but were swathed with cobwebs and dulled with inches of dust. The wall sconces had yet more cobwebs stringing down and drifting in the wind, which was blowing the sleet in from outside.
‘It’s in an awful state, isn’t it?’ Richard wandered around, tentatively fingering a rotten chair, its gilt eaten by woodworm. He went to the grand piano, still holding a regal position in the corner and safe from the dereliction of the east wall. He pressed an ivory, but only a dead plonking sound emanated. Mice must have eaten the strings.
‘I hate it see it like this!’ Richard exploded. He wheeled around, rage filling his face.
I went to him. ‘But there’s nothing any of us can do.’ I put my hand on his arm. He was shaking. ‘It would take too much money to make good.’ I shrugged. ‘And we have none.’
He stared at me for a second, but I could not discern his emotion.
‘Do you know why we have no money, Henrietta?’
I shook my head. He was unnerving me.
He brought his face close to mine. He had a smudge of dirt on one cheek. ‘We gambled it all away. Every last penny. Be wary about joining the Trenchard-Lewises, H
etty, we’ve always been a bad lot.’
‘Aunt Hester said it was something to do with the farming crisis in the 1880s.’ I stuck my chin out. I did not like to think of my adopted family being tainted.
Richard grinned with malice. ‘Believe that if you will, innocent little Hetty.’
Sometimes I wondered if he were quite sane, with his delight in untruths and his wild moods. To appease him – and stop my violent shivering, I said, ‘I thought we came here to dance?’
His shoulders dropped and the smile he gave was less manic. ‘Then, shall we?’
He put me into the correct position and, for a moment, we were very close. I thought he might kiss me he was staring at me with such intensity, but he simply smiled again and led me in a waltz. We swayed across the floor, stumbling a little over the debris. Neither of us were very good dancers.
After I had trodden on his foot for the third time, Richard strode off in a huff, saying it was no good without the music. He left me to make my own way along the dismal corridor. I would have to make up a story to explain the mess on my skirts.
Rachel frowned. This diary extract made for dismal reading. Richard sounded downright odd. He delighted in taunting Hetty and deliberately played with the truth. She could understand the attraction the girl had for him, but he played games with her. She knew how that felt; Charles had been an expert at it.
‘And we don’t deserve that, do we, Hetty? No matter how hot the guy is.’
Something in the room rippled around her.
Rachel flicked through the pages for something else to read, something lighter, which didn’t test her hangover.
One entry, dated May 1910, summarily dismissed the month as a ‘dull time, during which we are all in enforced mourning for the king and cannot do anything, lest we show disrespect. It is terribly dreary!’ Another, written earlier in the same year, described a party, a hunt ball, Hetty’s first.
Rachel sat up eagerly, wanting to read about a slightly older Hetty. She skimmed the lines, but it wasn’t Hetty at her best. The tone was unusually stilted and formal. It turned out to be a fairly dry account of a new dress, of dancing with Edward and of Richard flirting with Flora. Disappointing.
After a while, the effort of reading the spidery writing was too much. Rachel’s hangover had begun to make her feel sick and, with a craving for more tea, she rose stiffly and tiptoed into the kitchen.
She was sitting at the kitchen table in a daze, trying to summon up enough enthusiasm to take a mug of tea up to Tim, when the kitchen door burst open. The noise shattered any remnants that were left of 1910.
‘There’s an Adonis on your roof!’
Tim stood, hands on hips, an enormous grin on his face. He was wearing an odd collection of clothes: jeans from last night, the diamante wellies and a huge baggy t-shirt.
‘What?’ Rachel’s brain was befuddled with alcohol and she wanted to linger in the past, with Hetty. She struggled to make sense of the peculiar vision standing in front of her.
‘A veritable god, darling heart – ooh is that tea?’ Distracted, Tim slid onto a kitchen chair. ‘Heaven,’ he sighed, as he drank. ‘Just what a boy needs. Actually,’ he sniggered, ‘I think what this boy really needs is the god on the roof. My wonderling, he’s gorgeous, I’ve never seen such beauty.’
Rachel wrinkled up her nose and listened. There were, now she came to think about it, faint sounds coming from the roof at the back of the house. Surely it couldn’t be Gabe or Mike here so early on a Saturday morning? Padding back across the hall, carefully avoiding the holes in the floorboards, she drew back the curtains and peered out of the sitting-room window. Sure enough, there was the Toyota pickup parked in its usual position, under the deep early-morning shade of the horse chestnut tree. Mike, although well preserved, would hardly qualify for Tim’s fevered description, so she assumed it was Gabe.
When she re-entered the kitchen, Tim was busy adding boiling water to the teapot. He poured another mug, added milk and sugar and drank. ‘Nectar!’ he exclaimed, with a smack of the lips.
Rachel’s hangover wasn’t sure it was in the mood for Tim’s exuberance this early in the day. ‘You seem to be in a very lyrical mood this morning. What’s brought this on?’
‘Oh, Miss Grouchy Rachel, how I’d forgotten your hangover moodiness!’
Putting his mug down with a bang that was far too loud for Rachel’s currently sensitive state, Tim rose and tried to dance her around the kitchen. She shrugged him off, slumped back down at the table and poured herself yet more tea.
‘I didn’t know you’d got up. It’s most unlike you. What are you doing up this early?’ Rachel wrapped her hands around her mug and sipped. The aspirin she’d taken first thing was just beginning to work and her headache was gradually easing.
‘How could I not be when in Elysium?’ Tim clapped his hands together and noticed, with glee, that the noise made Rachel wince. ‘You’ve lost your drinking head, my darling.’
‘Last night was the first time I’ve ventured into the pub since I got here. Mostly, I just have the odd glass of wine here in the evening. But only the one.’ She shrugged. ‘I think you’re right, though, I have lost what little tolerance I had for booze. And anyway, you know I don’t like drinking alone.’ Rachel frowned. She wasn’t at all sure she was making any sense. The image of her mother, drinking alone in her pristine kitchen flashed before her. Paula was at her most venomous when drunk. All the frustrations of her life were tightly bottled, until the pressure cap was released by gin.
Rachel sank into gloom.
Tim was determined the morning shouldn’t be spoiled, however. ‘I went walking,’ he said, with the emphasis on the verb. ‘A walk! Me!’
Rachel managed a laugh. ‘Where to?’
‘Oh, just down the track again and through the village to the church.’ Tim waved his hands in the air. ‘My wonderling, it is so lovely here, I’m almost tempted myself.’
The thought of the very urban Tim in her little village made Rachel chuckle. ‘You’d last five minutes. No proper clothes shops, you can’t get sun-dried tomatoes for love nor ready money and there’s no broadband.’
Tim sat back, his mouth agape. ‘What? However do you manage?’
Rachel pulled a face. ‘Dial up. Which I use very sparingly. It costs me a fortune otherwise. And I warn you to do the same while you’re here.’
‘No wonder you haven’t been in touch much recently. I thought you’d just found new friends to play with. You should get yourself a mobile phone.’
‘Thought of that. The network coverage is crap, though.’
Tim made a face. ‘I’m rapidly going off this place.’
‘I thought you might.’ Feeling stronger, Rachel tackled a chocolate digestive.
‘There are, I believe, some compensations,’ Tim began, helping himself to several biscuits. ‘Talking of new friends, just who is that darling man on your roof?’ He winked.
‘Gabe,’ Rachel said expressionlessly. She didn’t want him exposed to Tim.
‘Oh my God! The same Gabe who created all the lovely, lovely hot water? So he’s good with his hands too? As well as being so divinely handsome? I haven’t seen lean muscles like that since a certain strip joint in New York. Oh my.’ Tim began to fan himself.
‘Leave it out, Tim. He’s straight.’
‘A man can always hope.’ Tim treated her to a comic leer and swallowed a biscuit whole. He munched, his cheeks bulging and rolling his eyes.
‘You are incorrigible!’ Rachel pointed a reproving finger. ‘Come on, seeing as we’re both up with the lark, what shall we do with the day?’ She peered out of the kitchen window – it was sunny again. It was turning out to be one of those long, hot summers when you forgot what it was like to be cold or bothered worrying about the chance of rain.
‘Well,’ Tim began doubtfully through a mouthful of crumbs and looking around at the dilapidated kitchen. ‘I suppose I could always give you a hand with some decorating. It must be dri
ving you absolutely nuts to have to live like this.’
Rachel laughed again. ‘Actually, you know, I’m coping far better than I thought I would. I really think, after you’ve lived with the dust and mess for a while, you forget to see it, if that makes any sense.’
She followed Tim’s disbelieving gaze and, while her eyes saw the toolbox left in the corner and the alien-looking pile of brass plumbing bits, her mind saw the finished kitchen. ‘It’ll be lovely in here, one day.’
Tim reached forward and put his hand on hers. ‘You’ve changed,’ he said abruptly. ‘For the better. Thank God,’ he added, as if it was all getting far too emotionally intense. ‘Couldn’t have borne a weekend with the anally uptight old maid you were becoming. I saw a spinster and her pussies looming!’
‘Thanks a bunch!’ Rachel grinned, manfully ignoring the jibe. ‘But, back to the subject, what do you want to do today? If we’re not careful, we’ll fritter it away and it’s another gorgeous day.’
‘I’m in your hands, darling heart, but if you can rustle up a nice stately home and a National Trust luncheon then I’ll be ecstatically happy.’
Rachel laughed. ‘Around here? There are loads of them.’
‘Oh goody. You know how I like to goad those Trusty volunteers. They’re so wonderfully earnest and sycophantic.’
Rachel groaned. Another one of Tim’s hobbies was to fake an intense interest in displays, museum exhibits or art collections and engage any hapless attendant unlucky enough to be on duty in lengthy discussion. His record to date was forty-five minutes in the Museum of London. National Trust volunteers were a special target.
‘Oh, I was right all along, this is heaven indeed!’ Tim took another noisy slurp of tea.
‘You won’t be saying that when you have to toil down the track to collect the Sunday papers from Rita in the morning.’
‘What, no lusty youth pedalling up the hill to have a glass of homemade lemonade and a ginger biscuit, all ready to have his sweaty brow mopped?’
‘You’ll have to be content with mopping Rita’s sweaty brow instead. She’s menopausal. Go on, get back up those stairs and put something half decent on.’