Page 101 of The Christmas Retreat
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The stair to the attic over the guest wing was right at the end of the passage, with a door at the top of the stairs, which opened to reveal a dark and cavernous space. Rhys, going first, switched on the lights: two dim bulbs, which did little to reveal the gloomier corners of the very crowded space.
Evie produced three torches from her pocket and handed them out. ‘Tudor found them for me.’
‘This attic is the same size as the one over the family wing, but since that was already converted into servants’ rooms in the past, it’s been turned into extra guest accommodation,’ Rhys said. ‘Nerys has plans for this one, too, but it will need a lot more work – partition walls and plumbing and so on.’
‘The clutter of centuries seems to be up here,’ said Evie, ‘and only this bit near the top of the stairs is dust free.’
‘We only come up here to get luggage, or the Christmas decorations,’ explained Rhys, ‘and those are kept handy nearthe door. Other things get pushed into it occasionally, but no one has ever tried to sort it out. I think it will take ages when they go ahead with the conversion!’
There were passages between the stacked boxes, trunks, broken chairs, an old dressmaker’s dummy and all the other miscellanea you could possibly imagine would accumulate up there, and we sidled along the cleared aisles shining our torches into the darker corners.
There was no obvious bundle of paintings or sketchbooks or a folio, just a few prints in saccharine Victorian style and some sporting engravings.
At the back was some heavier old furniture, including a large and very dark wood wardrobe.
Evie, turning from a cupboard that only contained a flowered chamber pot, tried the handle, but although the key was in the lock, it took Rhys some brute force to wrench the door open with a very eerie creak.
Evie, ducking under his arm and shining her torch into the depths, exclaimed with satisfaction, ‘Eureka!’
Then, stepping in, as if she was about to pay a visit to Narnia, she began to rummage about, passing things back to us with admonitions to take care.
31
In the Basket
There were several small oil paintings, some tied together face to face with string, and a large sketchbook. Evie opened the sketchbook and ran her torch over a watercolour of cliffs and sea.
‘Yes, these are what I was looking for.’
When everything was out, she commanded Rhys to help her carry it all down to her room, while I was instructed to stay and check anywhere else we hadn’t yet looked, in case there was a second cache.
I searched diligently, but all I found were cobwebs and a wicker laundry basket with plaster flower decorations, which I rather liked, even though, being precariously balanced on top of a flimsy bamboo table, it had fallen on me.
Rhys, returning in time to help me up off the dusty floor, remarked that it was just as well that Evie hadn’t seen me lying down on the job.
‘I’ve already looked everywhere now,’ I said indignantly. ‘And I’m filthy.’
‘Me too. It’s certainly time this place was cleared out.’
‘Did Evie say if we could go down and see Arwen’s paintings?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No, she ushered me out of the room and said she’d show them to everyone downstairs at teatime.’
‘Oh, well,’ I said resignedly. ‘But I’m dying to see them. It’s so exciting having a talented great-grandmother. Still, I could do with a shower and to wash the cobwebs out of my hair.’
Rhys agreed. Then, as we turned back along the dusty path marked with our footprints to the door, his torch illuminated a cardboard box, less dusty than anything else nearby, the word ‘Annie’ boldly written in black felt tip on the top. He stopped dead.
‘I’d entirely forgotten that was up here,’ he said.
I realized that whatever the box contained had belonged to his wife. It seemed that even up here, she was haunting me!
Rhys ran a hand through his already dishevelled and cobwebbed black curls. He stood, looking sombrely down at the box. ‘Such a small box to contain a life, although there’s her work as well, of course.’
‘Yes, she was a brilliant sculptor. That’s her true legacy,’ I said gently.
He sighed. ‘We’d been divorced for ages by the time she died, but everything she owned came to Cariad, which wasn’t a lot, other than clothes, a bit of jewellery and the contents of her studio. After the funeral, her boyfriend dumped everything in boxes on the landing outside his flat and texted me to collect them.’
