Summer Of The Raven

Her discomfiting reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Antonia herself, elegant in an Italian hand-knitted two-piece, a reminder of the boutique’s heyday.

‘I’m going into Keswick to do some shopping,’ she announced. ‘Is there anything you want?’

‘Into Keswick again?’ Rowan felt impelled to remonstrate. ‘But I thought you’d done the shopping on Tuesday when you went in to cash the housekeeping cheque. And we were supposed to be tackling the bedrooms today.’

‘All right, so I’m going to have my hair done,’ Antonia said petulantly. ‘You don’t grudge me that little luxury, I hope.’

Rowan held on to her patience. ‘I hope I don’t grudge you anything. I’ve certainly no right to do so.’

‘Then what’s the argument?’

‘There isn’t one,’ Rowan said defeatedly. ‘I’ll do the bedrooms. You don’t have to worry about them.’

Antonia shrugged. ‘I shan’t, sweetie. The last thing I try to think about is this benighted hole, believe me.’

‘Don’t you like the house?’ In spite of herself Rowan was curious.

‘If it were elsewhere, it might be tolerable. But I don’t like being perched halfway up a mountain, and I certainly don’t care for the climate. Do you realise that it’s rained every day that we’ve been here?’

‘I suppose it has, but everything’s so green and beautiful here. And we’ve had a lot of sunshine as well.’

‘You sound as if you’re trying to sell me the place.’ Antonia checked through the contents of her handbag, looking slightly amused. ‘It won’t work, you know. When Carne and I are married, I shall persuade him to sell this place and move to somewhere more civilised and accessible. God knows what possessed him to buy this site, when he could have lived anywhere.’

Rowan thought of the morning sun touching the remaining patches of snow on the crowding fells with pink and gold. She thought of the glimpse of turquoise which was Ravensmere far below them, and the moist cool scent of the garden where plants were showing green spikes through the rich dark earth, and she thought she could understand why anyone would choose to live here.

But not Antonia, of course, who thought anywhere more than a taxi ride from Harrods was the beginnings of outer darkness. And possibly not Carne Maitland either. The house had an untouched, unlived-in air about it, for all its shining luxury, as if its worldly, sophisticated owner had thought better of the whim which had brought it into being.

She heard Antonia’s car drive away, and with a sigh went along to the utility room which opened off the kitchen to fetch dusters and polish and the vacuum cleaner before commencing her onslaught on the bedrooms. It was a day when the outdoors beckoned. Early rain had given way to puffs of white cloud scudding across a pale blue sky, and although Rowan knew perfectly well that the weather could change in a moment with mist and heavy cloud coming down like a blanket, she wished she was out somewhere on a hillside lifting her face to the soft wind.

She began on their own rooms. Hers was relatively tidy, except for the small table which she had moved under the window and which held her typewriter and papers. She had started another story, and for her the creative process demanded a kind of organised chaos in the immediate environment.

She remade the bed, shaking up the quilt with deft flicks of her wrist, and changed the fitted sheets with their matching pillowcase for another set brought from the first floor linen room, where all the bedding, towels and table linen needed for the household were kept.

Antonia’s room was a different story, and Rowan gave a soundless sigh as she looked about her. Cosmetics, many with their tops and fids off, were strewn across the vanitory unit, which was coated with a faint film of spilled powder. Soiled tights and undies were draped across the dressing stool and the bedroom floor, and the dress Antonia had worn the previous evening was flung in a crumpled heap across the bed.

She thought, ‘I hope Carne Maitland can afford a lady’s maid for her, because she surely needs one!’

She was hot, sticky and cross by the time she had restored order, and was ready to move on to the guestrooms. These fortunately only needed a light dusting, and she opened the windows to let in some of the spring sun and air and get rid of the unused smell. She would take her lunch into the garden, she thought, and find a patch of sunlight to sit in. She wasn’t sure exactly how much of the land belonged to the house, and much of the garden was overgrown and in need of attention. It needs someone to live here and care about it, just like the house, she thought sadly.

She took her crispbread and lettuce and cottage cheese and found a flat stone under a tree which seemed dry and moderately sheltered. The April wind still held a nip, reminding her that there was still snow on the surrounding hills, and could be more, even this late in a golden spring. When she had finished her brief meal, she leaned back against the tree and let the sun warm her face. She felt wearied by her rather tedious morning’s work, and disinclined to start again, especially as her next port of call was Carne Maitland’s luxurious suite of rooms in the other wing of the house. Today was a day for working in the garden, she thought, for cutting back briars, and uprooting nettles and dandelions and dockweeds, and pulling away handfuls of the goosegrass which seemed to be encroaching everywhere under the roses and shrubs. Not that she knew a great deal about gardening. The garden of the cottage in Surrey had been very different from this one, with herbaceous borders alive with colour, and smooth lawns to the front and rear, and Mr Pettigrew from the village to look after it.

There was nothing smooth or ironed out about the garden at Raven’s Crag. Apart from the clumps of ubiquitous daffodils, any colour was planned for later in the season, and the general effect was bleak and rather stark like its surroundings. You couldn’t transplant the pretty traditional cottagey flowers they had grown in Surrey to this place, Rowan thought, but you could create a setting for the house which would be equally satisfying. But at the moment, the wilderness seemed to be taking over again.

She brushed the crumbs from her jeans and rose reluctantly. She probably didn’t need to clean Carne’s rooms. No one had so much as set foot in them since she had cleaned them last time, nor would do until she cleaned them next time, but she was determined that Carne Maitland should have no cause for complaint whenever he chose to honour them with his presence.

The door from the corridor led straight into a dressing room, and his bathroom and bedroom both opened off from this. It was a reasonably sized room, with one wall entirely occupied by fitted wardrobes and drawers, yet he didn’t have a lot of clothes, because she had looked. What there were, of course, were gorgeous—silk shirts and cashmere sweaters, and a leather coat as soft and supple as velvet. There were few toiletries in the bathroom, but those few were expensive and Rowan, sampling them out of curiosity the first time she had cleaned the bathroom, approved his taste.

The bedroom was something else again, with a carpet so thick that her feet sank into it as she walked across the room, and a king-sized bed, which was invariably made up with brown silk sheets. When they had first inspected the room Rowan had seen Antonia give the bed a long look, before she turned away without comment, and Rowan herself had felt hot with inexplicable embarrassment. Antonia, of course, was used to a bedroom of her own, and not merely since becoming a widow; however, Rowan doubted whether she would find the man she had chosen to be her second husband as mildly acquiescent to this as her first had been. There was a narrow divan in the dressing room, but Rowan could not imagine Carne Maitland being tamely dismissed there. Besides, a bed the size of the one in the master bedroom was for sharing, not for solitude.

There were blankets on this bed, instead of the duvets used in all the other rooms, and a dark brown satin quilted cover, all very restrained and masculine. The bed faced the windows which reached from floor to ceiling, giving a panoramic view over the valley to the fells beyond.

The sunsets would be fantastic, Rowan thought, and grinned to herself, in self-mockery. Anyone using this bed that early in the evening would probably not be staring at the sunsets, unless they’d used the ploy ‘Come and see my sunset’ instead of ‘Come and see my etchings’. Carne, she decided, could probably use either line and make it a winner. Probably had, as well, and very likely was at this very minute, whatever time it was in Barbados.

There was a full-length mirror on the wall, and she gave its surface a brisk rub with a clean duster, viewing herself with detachment as she did so, and deciding that she looked totally out of place in this room with her faded jeans and elderly sweater shirt with the sleeves pushed up. A satin dressing gown is what I need, she thought, the corners of her mouth lifting in derision, one that fastens at the waist and nowhere else, in a colour to harmonise with the dusters. She gave the mirror’s frame a final, cheerful flick and turned away, moving her shoulders wearily. She had worked hard, and she was tired. She deserved a shower and a rest before Antonia returned and it was time to start preparing the evening meal. She pushed the sandals off her aching feet and walked across the carpet relishing its softness. She leaned across the bed, straightening its already immaculate cover, testing the firmness of the mattress with a tentative hand. Then she said, ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ and jumped into the middle of the bed as she had been longing to do since she first entered the room. Forbidden ecstasy, she thought, bouncing up and down on other people’s beds, and how many years was it since she’d done so? She had been seven and not enjoying a stiff tea-party at Sally Armitage’s, until, when tea was over, she and Sally had discovered that the double bed in Mrs Armitage’s bedroom made a superb trampoline, and they’d bounced and leapt with undiminished energy until the arrival of a scandalised nanny had put a premature end to their game. A childhood incident she had not even given a moment’s thought to until now. And the Armitages’ bed had not been nearly as wide and opulent as this one. That’s what this house needs, she thought. It needs children, to fill up the empty rooms and climb the trees in the garden, and even bounce on the beds. But it wouldn’t get them. Even if Antonia was willing to have a child, which Rowan doubted, she couldn’t imagine Carne Maitland opting for that sort of family life.