obvious solution is in his own hands.’
I supposed she knew all about his offer to buy Winter’s End and there was no question about where Aunt Hebe’s loyalties lay.
‘You’ve turned out not too badly, considering,’ she added, turning her beaky head to study me.
‘Thanks.’
‘Though you appear to have no dress sense. Jeans are so unflattering on women of a certain age.’
‘I don’t know, they hold me in where I need holding in, like a twenty-first-century corset. Exactly who did you say was waiting to meet me?’
‘ Everyone ,’ she repeated as we came out of the darkness under the trees. ‘Everyone that matters, anyway.’
And there was the house sitting in a puddle of autumn sunshine, the light dully glittering off the mullioned windows, a shabbily organic hotchpotch of black and white Tudor and local red sandstone, with the finger of an ancient tower poking triumphantly upwards above the rest.
It looked as if it had grown there, like some exotic fungus—but a ripe fungus on the point of decaying back into the earth it had sprung from. Before the porch a distant double row of miscellaneous figures waited, like the guard of honour at a low-budget wedding and, as if on cue, a small, fluffy pewter cloud let loose a confetti of snowflakes.
‘Oh, yes—I see them now,’ I croaked nervously, crunching slowly up the gravel. To my left stretched the curving, billowing shapes of yew that formed the maze, the gilded roof of the little pagoda in the centre visible in the distance. My feet would know the way to it blindfold…
‘The maze has been extended at huge expense back to the dimensions of the old plan, and the pagoda regilded, since your time,’ Aunt Hebe informed me, so maybe I wouldn’t find my way into it so easily—and I suspect a lot of the bank loan went on restoring it.
‘Most of the rest of the garden has been extensively restored, too, since you were last here. It became quite a mania with William.’
Everything in the garden looked pleached, parterred, bosketted and pruned to within an inch of its life. A mere glance showed me that there were still abundant examples of all four garden features here, but the immaculately manicured grounds only served to make the house look the more neglected, like a dull, dirty jewel in an ornate and polished setting.
I circled my incongruous vehicle left around a convoluted pattern of box hedges and little trees clipped into spirals, and the fountain at its heart sprinkled me with silver drops like a benediction as I came to a halt.
We climbed out to a thin scatter of applause and a voice quavering out: ‘Hurrah!’
Hebe rearranged her collection of white angora scarves around her neck and, taking me by the elbow, drew me forward and began making introductions.
‘You remember Mrs Lark, our cook—Beulah Johnson as was? And her husband, Jonah?’
‘Welcome back, love,’ Mrs Lark said, her twinkling eyes set in a broad, good-humoured face so stippled with brown freckles she looked like a deeply wrinkled Russet apple. ‘Me and Jonah are glad to see you home again.’
‘That’s right,’ Jonah agreed, baring his three remaining teeth in a wide grin. He had mutton-chop whiskers and looked like a friendly water vole.
‘I certainly do remember you, Mrs Lark!’ I said, basking in the genuine warmth of their welcome. ‘You used to make me gingerbread men with currant eyes.’
‘Fancy remembering that, after all this time! Well, I’ll make some for your tea this very day—and some sticky ginger parkin too, that you used to love.’
Hebe urged me onwards by means of a small push between the shoulder blades. ‘This is Grace from the village, our daily cleaner.’
‘But no heavy stuff, me knees won’t take it no more,’ piped Grace reedily, who indeed looked even more steeped in the depths of antiquity than Mrs Lark, and was about the size of the average elf.
‘And Derek, the under-gardener, and Bob and Hal…’ Aunt Hebe said more briskly, towing me
I supposed she knew all about his offer to buy Winter’s End and there was no question about where Aunt Hebe’s loyalties lay.
‘You’ve turned out not too badly, considering,’ she added, turning her beaky head to study me.
‘Thanks.’
‘Though you appear to have no dress sense. Jeans are so unflattering on women of a certain age.’
‘I don’t know, they hold me in where I need holding in, like a twenty-first-century corset. Exactly who did you say was waiting to meet me?’
‘ Everyone ,’ she repeated as we came out of the darkness under the trees. ‘Everyone that matters, anyway.’
And there was the house sitting in a puddle of autumn sunshine, the light dully glittering off the mullioned windows, a shabbily organic hotchpotch of black and white Tudor and local red sandstone, with the finger of an ancient tower poking triumphantly upwards above the rest.
It looked as if it had grown there, like some exotic fungus—but a ripe fungus on the point of decaying back into the earth it had sprung from. Before the porch a distant double row of miscellaneous figures waited, like the guard of honour at a low-budget wedding and, as if on cue, a small, fluffy pewter cloud let loose a confetti of snowflakes.
‘Oh, yes—I see them now,’ I croaked nervously, crunching slowly up the gravel. To my left stretched the curving, billowing shapes of yew that formed the maze, the gilded roof of the little pagoda in the centre visible in the distance. My feet would know the way to it blindfold…
‘The maze has been extended at huge expense back to the dimensions of the old plan, and the pagoda regilded, since your time,’ Aunt Hebe informed me, so maybe I wouldn’t find my way into it so easily—and I suspect a lot of the bank loan went on restoring it.
‘Most of the rest of the garden has been extensively restored, too, since you were last here. It became quite a mania with William.’
Everything in the garden looked pleached, parterred, bosketted and pruned to within an inch of its life. A mere glance showed me that there were still abundant examples of all four garden features here, but the immaculately manicured grounds only served to make the house look the more neglected, like a dull, dirty jewel in an ornate and polished setting.
I circled my incongruous vehicle left around a convoluted pattern of box hedges and little trees clipped into spirals, and the fountain at its heart sprinkled me with silver drops like a benediction as I came to a halt.
We climbed out to a thin scatter of applause and a voice quavering out: ‘Hurrah!’
Hebe rearranged her collection of white angora scarves around her neck and, taking me by the elbow, drew me forward and began making introductions.
‘You remember Mrs Lark, our cook—Beulah Johnson as was? And her husband, Jonah?’
‘Welcome back, love,’ Mrs Lark said, her twinkling eyes set in a broad, good-humoured face so stippled with brown freckles she looked like a deeply wrinkled Russet apple. ‘Me and Jonah are glad to see you home again.’
‘That’s right,’ Jonah agreed, baring his three remaining teeth in a wide grin. He had mutton-chop whiskers and looked like a friendly water vole.
‘I certainly do remember you, Mrs Lark!’ I said, basking in the genuine warmth of their welcome. ‘You used to make me gingerbread men with currant eyes.’
‘Fancy remembering that, after all this time! Well, I’ll make some for your tea this very day—and some sticky ginger parkin too, that you used to love.’
Hebe urged me onwards by means of a small push between the shoulder blades. ‘This is Grace from the village, our daily cleaner.’
‘But no heavy stuff, me knees won’t take it no more,’ piped Grace reedily, who indeed looked even more steeped in the depths of antiquity than Mrs Lark, and was about the size of the average elf.
‘And Derek, the under-gardener, and Bob and Hal…’ Aunt Hebe said more briskly, towing me
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