Rumours

Chapter Ten

Stella arrived back at Longbridge Hall at two minutes before eleven o’clock and sat in her car listening to the radio for the pips on the hour. She imagined that, for people like the Fortescues, it was considered as impudent to turn up early as it was decreed discourteous to turn up late. She rang the bell and gave a lively knock at precisely eleven o’clock.

‘You’re back?’ Mrs Biggins said, as if Stella might not be of sound mind.

‘I’m expected,’ said Stella, taking off her coat and giving it to Mrs Biggins.

‘One moment,’ Mrs Biggins said and Stella thought she could detect a glint of approval.

When Lydia appeared, Stella felt grateful for Paul Smith and high heels because she both looked and felt taller and more imposing than she had the day before and it was obvious that Lady Lydia had noticed. The woman bristled slightly, tipped her chin upwards as if competing for height. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘As you asked – eleven o’clock prompt.’ And then Stella saw a flicker of confusion scuttle across Lydia’s face and settle as dull discomfort behind her eyes. She softened her tone. ‘To see the grounds?’ Stella prompted in her more usual voice, ‘And art?’

Lydia gathered herself. ‘I’ll take you.’

However, the art wasn’t Beckinsford or any other painter remotely connected with Reynolds, nor was it portraits or landscapes or equine backsides. The Art Lydia took Stella to see was short for Arthur, a wizened old man little younger than Lady Lydia. He lived in an apartment in a wing of the stable courtyard which was some way from the main house and cordoned from view by the mighty wall of the kitchen garden. Made from the same rosy-hued bricks as the main house, the buildings ran three sides of a square, with a central archway crowned by a clock tower. The clock face itself was greening, the hands fixed at ten past three as if it had been dredged up from the pond where it had lain for some time and fish had feasted upon a great many of the numbers. The wing to the right had been converted into two dwellings. To the left, above what must have been the coach bays, appeared to be another apartment – Stella noted curtains at the windows but the glass was so dusty she was sure it was derelict.

Lydia rapped on the door. ‘He’s as deaf as a post,’ she said, with the same exasperation she extended to Mrs Biggins. ‘Art,’ she said when he appeared, ‘please be a dear and take Miss Elmfield around.’

‘It’s Miss Hutton,’ said Stella.

‘He doesn’t need to know, he won’t be interested and he won’t remember,’ Lydia said bitingly whilst smiling benevolently to Art, whose eyes shone like small beads of jet. He disappeared back into his home. ‘And you do not mention why you are here.’

Stella was taken aback.

‘You can be an historian, or a writer – something like that. But not an estate agent. Make it up.’ And she walked away, banging down her stick every stride as if expecting to find part of her land hollow.

‘Hullo!’ Stella said loudly. ‘Lovely day!’

‘It is,’ said Art in a soft voice which suggested she really needn’t raise hers. ‘Where would you like to see first?’

‘Everywhere,’ said Stella.

‘Where in Everywhere?’ Art asked measuredly. ‘Longbridge sits in over five hundred acres.’

‘Seriously!’ Stella had assumed the grounds extended to a posh garden and perhaps a paddock or two.

‘Four hundred arable, the rest pasture – used to be for cattle, just for ponies now – also woodland and the grounds around the house. Formal gardens, pool, kitchen garden, orchard, tennis. Which way to Everywhere do you want to go?’

She liked him instantly. She really liked him; the pared-down way he spoke, his shapeless clothing, old boots, unflattering cap and dark little eyes set into a craggy, haphazardly shaven face. She reckoned Art was either spoken at, or ignored, these days. And perhaps in those days too, if the current Lady’s manner was in any way a family trait.

Silently, Stella cursed Paul Smith and her high heels, not least because Art’s stride was surprisingly assertive and fast. He described the lay of the land, took her on a whistle-stop tour of the livery yard, which was modern and spruce, and an area of old barns the least dilapidated of which were now rented out as workshops. She felt herself being peered at – two young geeky-looking guys in one barn, from another a cabinetmaker whose face was the colour of mahogany. The third had an array of tree stumps outside – whether this was a tree surgeon or a sculptor Stella was unsure. All these people will have to find new premises, she thought to herself. And she thought how odd it would be to rent somewhere purpose built, modern, after being treated to barns like these. And Art would need to find somewhere to live too. And he’s been here decades. But she said nothing and just enthused, instead, about all he showed her.

The formal gardens, which ran in a curvaceous swoop around the house, were shielded from the drive by magnificent rhododendrons. They were set out as manicured swathes of lawn plotted and pieced by rolling herbaceous borders and grand specimen trees. There was a pond, which was really too large to be called such but a lake would sound too ostentatious, also a swimming pool which could have been bigger and, Stella noted, cleaner. Garden seats, small stone obelisks and spheres and statuary were positioned here and there, providing either focal points or surprises. All the while, the house itself appeared pompously to survey all that lay around it. The kitchen garden, however, was its own private world, shielded from the house by a long stone building whose purpose Art explained to Stella.