Page 44 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘I haven’t room to grow much fruit behind the Lodge. I’m more avegetable man,’ he said, and I suddenly had a vision of him as Mr Potato Head.
‘This terrace must be lovely in summer when the roses are out, but time consuming to keep up.’
‘It is, so it’s just as well there’s nothing by way of a formal garden anywhere else,’ he said. ‘Carey’s uncle used to get some men in once a year to cut back all the shrubs along the drive and clear the trail through the woods, but he started economizing a few years back.’
‘Carey would probably have been straight out with a chainsaw himself by now, sorting out the fallen trees, if it hadn’t been for his accident,’ I said ruefully. ‘He can turn his hand to pretty much anything.’
‘I know he had that series on the telly doing up cottages, because our Vicky told me.’
‘That’s right, and he actually did a lot of the work involved himself. But the new series is being presented by someone else.’
‘If that’s his bent, there’s plenty for him to do here at Mossby.’
‘There certainly is,’ I agreed. ‘Well, I’d better get going – and thank you for taking my luggage in for me. That was kind.’
‘No problem,’ he said, and started scooping slimy brown leaves out of the bottom of the fountain again, so I left him to it and joined Carey, who had appeared round the corner of the house.
‘Would madam care to enter for a spot of lunch?’ he suggested when I was within earshot.
‘What’s on offer?’ I asked, suddenly hungry. I’d tended to forget about eating regularly lately, and I suspected by his gaunt aspect that Carey had been just the same.
‘Dishdu jouris cheese on toast – and come on round this way to the kitchen door, because I’m not letting you near any windows until we’ve eaten.’
I’d been casting lingering glances at the leaded windows in the façade but capitulated. ‘Sounds good to me … and Molly sent an apple tart up – I’d forgotten. It must still be on the back seat of the car.’
‘No, Clem left it on the kitchen table with your car keys. Come on!’
Next morning, as soon as we had breakfasted, Mr Revell took us all over the house. Father’s windows looked very fine, with central large octagons and squares in clear glass and borders in a woven strap effect, which I knew he had copied from some old heraldic windows in the Elizabethan wing. Looking out, I thought the view over the lake and woodland was perfectly delightful.
It was a bright day and the house was now quite flooded with light, so that I could imagine how my windows would look in the inner hall. When he conducted us up the wide, curving staircase, I longed to design something to replace the tall, narrow, plainly glazed window on the landing, too.
Father had not seen the finished house, so he was just as interested as I in all the details of furnishings and fittings that had been so carefully designed for their situation. We saw one or two of the principal bedrooms, which were very fine, and then passed through a dark wooden door of some age into the old tower.
I observed that glass had been inserted in the narrow window to keep out the weather, and a seat built into the embrasure underneath, but otherwise the walls of roughly dressed stone, the large hearth and wooden floor must surely be original to the building.
Our host did not pause here, but led us through another door into the Elizabethan wing. I was hard on his heels, because now I knew that it contained a window designed by a woman of a bygone age, I was quite agog to see it! First, though, we must tour the upper part of the house. MrRevell played the guide very well, telling us that this first bedchamber was that supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Anne Revell and had been kept locked up during her lifetime … and unused since.
Mr Revell’s new gas lighting obviously had not yet reached this far, so it was very gloomy, not helped by all the old linenfold panelling. There was another of those vast hearths and a massive and ornately carved bed of wood so dark it seemed black.
‘The old house has many ghosts besides Lady Anne, who commissioned the stained-glass window I know you are so eager to see, Miss Kaye,’ our guide said with a smile.
‘I have no patience with such imaginings – old tales told round a fire to frighten children!’ said Father.
‘I admit, I have never seen any ghostly apparitions myself, so I expect you are quite right,’ Mr Revell admitted.
But I did not feel the same, for there seemed a dark, brooding atmosphere in the chamber, as though something bad had once happened there and it would not have surprised me if someone – or something – had stepped out of the deepest shadows …
With a shiver, I hurried after the others.
17
Let the Revells Commence
‘It’s surprising how parts of the old house have been joined into one fairly harmonious whole with the new,’ Carey said, as we drank our coffee after lunch and prepared for what he kept referring to as ‘The Grand Tour’.
‘You seem to have picked up an awful lot of information about it already, considering you’ve only been here a couple of days.’
‘That was Mr Wilmslow’s crash course in Revellry, the day I arrived,’ he said. ‘He seems especially interested in how the building evolved through the centuries. Then Ella insisted on showing me over the house again the next day, butherconversation was confined to terse statements like, “Here’s the linen cupboard,” and, “That stair goes up to the attic.” She only waxed lyrical about the Elizabethan part, in a strangely proprietorial way.’
