A Week in Winter: A Novel (20 page)

They walked the horses up the drive and crossed the road. Once on the slopes of Black Down they broke into a canter. The cold blue air seemed to fizz like wine as the moor unfolded at their feet, stretching into an infinite distance, hill upon hill. As they trotted beside the Becka Brook Hugh reined in and brought his mount alongside Posy’s.

‘You’re looking good,’ he said, studying her. ‘Better than last time.’

She smiled at him gratefully. ‘I
am
better. Things are … easier. You were right, Hugh. Apparently Dad’s … thing seems to have finished. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, after all. He’s still very subdued and stuff but Mum’s absolutely sure that it’s over.’

‘Things get out of proportion.’ Hugh leaned forward to pat his horse’s neck and the warm flesh twitched appreciatively at his touch. ‘Everyone gets a bit heated and emotions can spiral out of control.’

Posy grimaced. ‘Mine certainly did,’ she admitted. ‘But it was really clever of you to know that it might be something quite different from an affair.’

‘Not really.’ He shrugged. ‘It happened to my parents once. Actually it was my fault, really. It was when I was still in a state over Charlotte and my parents were getting a bit desperate. Dad decided to approach Charlotte’s mother about it without telling Mum and she got the idea that he was having an affair with her. It got really out of hand and Mum was convinced that Dad was being unfaithful. Luckily it was sorted out before any real harm was done. It just occurred to me, when you told me about your father, that it might be something similar.’

‘Well, he was certainly helping Mary,’ said Posy cautiously. ‘I still don’t know if it was any more than that but Mum seems OK now.’ She hesitated, gazing out towards Hound Tor. ‘Dad’s not his usual self, though. He’s very quiet. Sort of abstracted.’

‘He’s probably had a bit of a fright,’ said Hugh reassuringly. ‘He might have got quite fond of this other woman and then realised that it was getting out of control. Could be anything. Don’t start imagining things.’

She smiled at him, stretching a hand to him. ‘I won’t. Honestly. Thanks, Hugh.’

He held her hand for a moment and then let it go. ‘Mind you don’t. Come on, let’s make for Honeybag Tor, shall we?’

Single file they guided their horses down the bank, splashing through the brook, and set out together, beneath Greator Rocks, cantering over Houndtor Down in the bright sunshine.

In the end, Melissa came upon the house quite by chance. She’d lost her way in the winding Cornish lanes, driving slowly, peering at fingerposts which bore unlikely—and occasionally oddly religious—names, wanting to get a feel of the place before contacting the agents next morning. There were no precise instructions on the details—‘Clearly they don’t want people nosing round,’ Mike had said—but between them they’d drawn a circle on the map, noting the given distances from the A39, from the coast at Tintagel and from Launceston.

‘Its name shows that it’s at the edge of the moor,’ she’d said, as they’d pored together over the map, ‘so it’s got to be within this small area. It should be obvious.’

It might have looked obvious on the tourist map but here, in the twisty, secret, unmarked lanes it could just as easily have been a maze. Nevertheless, she was enchanted. There were primroses growing, luminously pale,
on the steep banks beneath the trembling catkins, and violets clung, sweet-scented, amongst woody roots. She drove slowly through a small hamlet, granite cottages huddling about a grassy triangle with a stone cross set in it, and plunged once more into a deep, narrow lane which curved sharply left, uphill, and opened suddenly upon a grove of trees to the right. To the left was the house. It was set back a little from the lane, settled well in, comfortable, solid; an old farmhouse washed a deep, warm cream with—surprisingly—dark red painted window frames and gutters. It should have looked odd but to Melissa’s fascinated gaze it looked wonderful. The ‘For Sale’ board leaned a little drunkenly against the low stone wall.

She edged the car in close to the wall and switched off the engine. Silence. Presently she became aware of the cawing of rooks and, further off, the plaintive bleating of lambs. She stepped out of the Polo and stood in the sunshine, looking across the roof of the car at the house. It wasn’t particularly large or architecturally beautiful, just a stone and slate farmhouse, but she felt, quite simply, that it was hers. The front garden was tiny, but crocus and daffodil were growing in the narrow beds beneath the windows and jasmine climbed the porch. There was a small gate in the wall, which closed the garden off from the yard to the left, and the flagged path led across to the lawn which spread away to the right of the house, encircled by tall shrubs. The outbuildings had been restored and the yard was empty.

Melissa closed the car door quietly and strolled to the wrought-iron gate. ‘Moorgate’—the legend was painted in black on a small wooden board attached to the gate. Moorgate. The gate to the moor. She glanced up the lane, which curved to the right and wound out of sight. There was no reason to believe that the moor was not just around the curve. She laid her hand upon the gate, pushing it gently, and passed into the garden. It was a matter of a few steps to the front door but she chose, first, to walk upon the springy turf of the lawn and to look more closely at the tall, flowering shrubs. Here, hidden from the lane by azalea, weigela and lilac, out of the wind’s touch, it was warm, and she moved slowly, looking up at the shrubs, noting the buds already formed. After a while she returned to the path and stood looking at the house. Her whole instinct told her that it was empty but, simply to prove that it was so, she rang the bell. No one came hurrying to answer it. Gently, very gently, she turned the door handle but the solid oak door remained firmly closed. Cupping her hands about her eyes she looked through the windows, into the rooms on either
side of the porch. They were similar: large, heavily beamed, with great granite fireplaces and shelved recesses. Both were full of sunlight, newly painted and quite empty of furniture.

She wandered back along the path, round the corner of the house and stopped short with a tiny cry of amazement. The moor, stretching as far as the eye could see, flowed like some great ocean up to the very house. The path finished in a cleared turfed square, enclosed by a ring fence, and beyond it she could see the lambs with their mothers and, beyond again, ponies grazing. Outcrops of granite burst haphazard from the peaty earth and she could hear the sound of water singing in some nearby coomb which was hidden by the folded brown cheek of the moor. The ponies, disturbed by something she could not see, skittered together, prancing and whinnying, so that the sheep raised their heads, crying to their lambs who raced on springy legs to press against reassuringly warm, rough, woolly flanks. Here on the north side, out of the sun, the air was icy and, pulling her ruana more closely round her, Melissa turned her back on the moor and gazed up at the house. A huge glassed porch enclosed the back door and once again she went to peer in at the windows. On either side of the porch, the windows let in to the same room: a huge kitchen with a range. There was a door at either end and one opposite the window which almost certainly led into the hall. Standing on tiptoe she could see the sink unit directly below the window and imagined herself standing there, washing up, preparing vegetables, gazing out at the moor.

Once again Melissa stepped back, staring up at the windows on the first floor. There were five bedrooms altogether—and what views the rooms on this north side of the house must have! Whoever lived here, however, must choose to wake to the morning sun or to breathtaking views; must decide between moonlight or the shadowy moorland. She crossed the turf behind the house and entered the yard. Logs were piled in the corner of an open-fronted barn next to a loosebox and a washing line was strung between two sturdy poles. Leaning for a moment on the five-bar gate, she watched the rooks. Noisy, acrimonious, but sociable, they congregated in the tall trees across the lane; the beginnings of bulky, twiggy nests conspicuous amongst the bare branches.

Melissa thought: How wonderful to live in a place where the only sounds you can hear from your front gate are made by rooks and lambs.

She let herself out, closing the gate carefully behind her, climbed into the car and drove slowly up the lane.

Later that same day, arriving home from Newton Abbot, having seen Posy off on the train, Maudie was just in time to snatch up the telephone receiver.

‘Yes?’ she said, in her usual faintly peremptory manner. ‘Hello?’

Selina sounded slightly breathless. Maudie’s telephone manner always irritated her but this evening she could not allow herself the luxury of irritation.

‘Oh, Maudie,’ she said brightly. ‘How are you? Is Posy with you?’

At the other end of the line Maudie smiled evilly to herself It was a good ploy but she knew a trick worth two of that.

‘Long gone, I’m afraid, Selina,’ she said cheerfully. ‘So sorry you’ve missed her. You’ll catch her later on this evening, I expect.’

The finality in her voice, the implication that she was about to replace the receiver, hurried Selina into speech.

‘Oh, right. OK. I’ll do that. But how are you, Maudie? Have you had a nice weekend together?’

‘Very nice. It’s such a treat to have Posy to stay.’

Even if it means having to put up with Polonius. The sour words rose to Selina’s lips but she bit them back.

‘It was good of you to take Polonius.’ She couldn’t resist a tiny, tiny dig; a hint that she knew exactly why Maudie had given a home to the wretched animal.

‘It was a ruse on my part.’ Maudie had no intention of letting the
insinuation go unremarked. ‘He’s my bribe. But you suspected that, didn’t you?’

Selina gritted her teeth together. ‘Nonsense.’ She laughed lightly. ‘You’ve never needed bribes where Posy’s concerned. She’s always adored you.’

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ Maudie invited Selina’s bafflement. ‘And in the face of such determined opposition, too. Anyway, never mind all that. What can I do for you, Selina?’

Selina, who had hoped to work round to Moorgate by degrees, having invoked Hector’s memory and passed on to happy holidays and family loyalty, glared at the telephone receiver.

‘I was thinking about Moorgate.’ She abandoned any hope of subtlety and went straight to the point. ‘I’m really serious about buying it, Maudie. I’m hoping you’ll be prepared to talk terms with me.’

‘Are you selling the London house?’

Selina frowned at such a blunt question. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I … We did think about it but decided against it. No, we want to keep Moorgate as a holiday home. As it was for us when we were children.’

‘But it wasn’t, Selina. Not as we think of holiday homes now. When your mother was alive the tenants were prepared to let you use it for a few weeks each summer and later on there was a gap between long-term tenants. Moorgate has never been a holiday home. You know very well that if it’s not lived in it will be damp and uninhabitable in a matter of months. Anyway, forgive me for being impertinent, but how on earth could Patrick afford to buy it and run it on his salary?’

‘It would be difficult,’ said Selina stiffly, ‘we realise that, but we think it’s worth the sacrifice.’

‘Whose sacrifice? His or yours? What sacrifice will you be making, Selina?’

‘I really don’t see that it’s any of your business. I’m simply asking if you will take it off the market while we get our act together. I don’t think that it’s too unreasonable given that really you have no right to it at all.’

‘Oh, not that again, please,’ said Maudie wearily. ‘The answer is no. If you haven’t been able to sort yourselves out since last November I can’t see why you should now. And I have no intention of allowing you to drive yourselves into the ground with such a burden round your necks. Your father would never have approved of it. If you want to sell up and live on the edge of Bodmin Moor that’s one thing and I can’t stop you. If
you do, then you shall have every opportunity to buy Moorgate. Otherwise you’d be committing financial suicide and you know it. Or if you won’t accept it, Selina, I’m sure Patrick knows it.’

‘So you won’t help us?’

Maudie sighed. ‘I thought that that’s exactly what I was doing. Very well. I’d like to speak to Patrick.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Patrick’s the breadwinner. I want to hear how he plans to finance this operation. I want to see figures before I consider it. Is he there?’

‘No,’ she answered sulkily. ‘Anyway, I speak for Patrick.’

‘Oh, I know you do,’ said Maudie. ‘But just this once I want to hear him say it and I want to see how he plans to achieve it. Your father would have needed to be certain before he was a party to this, Selina, as well you know. So ask Patrick to call me when he gets in, will you?’

She winced as Selina slammed the receiver on to its rest and replaced her own rather thoughtfully.

‘I behaved badly,’ she told Polonius remorsefully. ‘I intended to be much nicer to Selina but she always rubs me up the wrong way.’

As she hung up her jacket, filled the kettle with water and opened the stove, she remembered her good intentions. Posy’s feelings about Patrick had opened her eyes to the way the young Selina might have felt and she couldn’t quite shrug off her feelings of guilt, despite Daphne’s words of comfort. Whether Hector was a widower or not, Selina had probably found the whole idea of his relationship with Maudie quite repugnant and it was specious to be sympathetic to Posy’s reaction without giving some retrospective thought to Selina.

‘Oh, guilt! Guilt!’ she cried angrily, thrusting logs into the glowing embers. ‘How tiresome it is to feel responsible for people.’

Polonius watched her anxiously. He’d grown used to a peaceful tenor to his life and Maudie’s sudden burst of frustration reminded him of earlier, unhappier days. Sensing his anxiety, she paused to pull his ears.

‘I’m a selfish old woman,’ she told him. ‘I like to have my own way. Well, who doesn’t? But I was going to be nicer. I was going to be friendly to Selina. To try to make up for being thoughtless all those years ago. But now I see that it was doomed to failure and I feel mortified by my lack of will.’