Casting Off (45 page)

While he was out of the room, she examined it. It had a very high ceiling, and the walls had beading on them in panels that were painted green with the beading in a paler shade. The chimneypiece was grey marble and there was one very tall window that looked on to a further courtyard with the third pink brick tower; this was crowned by a cupola below which was a clock whose hands registered twenty past four. The curtains were an oatmeal linen with a pattern of acanthus leaves sparsely embroidered in green wool, and there was a glass-fronted bookcase crammed with a set of dark blue books all bound in the same manner. A wireless, its front fretted like a setting sun, stood on one of the several small tables that were dotted about, beside the sofa, beside each of the two armchairs, in one of which she sat, and beneath a large glass case of dusty stuffed birds. It was all surprising – and rather exciting – she thought. And if the house was as full of furniture as this room, they could have a very enjoyable time choosing things for his flat.

He came back with the sherry, closely followed by an elderly woman in a flowered overall with a tray. ‘Now, then, Mr Gerald, you don’t want to go wasting the young lady’s time with drink. You know what it’s like getting hot food along these passages – your soup’s none too warm as it is.’ She put the soup on the table and cast a shrewd look at Polly. ‘Good morning, Miss.’

‘We could put some sherry into the soup,’ he said.

‘Oh! You do as you please, your lordship! The bird is resting. I’ll bring it in ten minutes.’

When she had gone, he poured sherry into glasses and said, ‘She’s always bossed me about. She means no harm.’

‘I thought any minute she’d call you Smarty-boots.’

‘I could get her to say that simply by answering her back. Nannies’ habits die hard.’

‘She was your nannie?’

‘She was. She’s always been here. She’s spent practically her whole life looking after us. That’s another thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I must look after her now.’

The soup was tinned mushroom and they both put their sherry into it.

‘After lunch, I thought we’d go over the whole place,’ he said. ‘There are some rooms that I’ve practically never been in, and I should think a lot of it’s in a pretty awful state.’

‘I suppose that might make it difficult to sell.’

‘Sell? I can’t sell it. It’s been left to me through some awful trust that means I can’t get rid of it.’

‘Oh!’ She began to see why he’d seemed so abstracted.

‘Perhaps something like the National Trust might help?’ She’d heard Caspar talking about them.

‘They wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole. It’s not only in a frightful state, it’s frightful anyway.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. It depends on – things. I haven’t decided.’

The next course was roast chicken with bread sauce and mashed potatoes and swedes.

‘When people talk about white elephants,’ he said, ‘I think how much nicer it would be to have one of them.’

‘Wonderful lunch,’ she said to Nan, after a slice of Bakewell tart, and was rewarded by a smile.

‘I do like to see a nice clean plate,’ she said.

‘We’re going to look at the house now, Nan.’

‘Mind yourselves with the ballroom floor. And don’t go trying to open any of the windows. You can call me when you’re ready for your tea.’

‘Might as well do the ground floor first as we’re on it.’

He led the way. Another passage with glass-fronted doors opened on to a vast hall from which rose a double staircase with a stone balustrade, and a pair of glass-fronted doors that led to the main entrance. To the left of these was a drawing room, the walls upholstered in damask silk which had faded badly since there were gaps on the wall where pictures had hung that were almost garish pink by comparison. The furniture was mostly covered with dust-sheets; a dead starling lay on a heap of soot in the fireplace. Two doors, one each side of the fireplace, led to the ballroom, the long wall of which had four large windows that looked on to a conservatory. The roof was largely broken: great splinters of glass lay on the floor, which was paved with tiles. A fat rusty pipe, like a python, ran round the room about a foot from the floor. Earthenware pots and glazed urns were full of dusty soil and dead ferns. In one of these she saw a tiny pencil with a silk tassel, the tassel faded to a dirty white. Windows on the outside wall looked on to the wreck of a formal garden and, beyond it, a low brick and stone balustrade.

‘This must have been marvellous!’ Polly said, as they walked past an ancient camellia whose topmost branches had literally gone through the glass roof. She caught his eye when she said that, and thereafter was conscious of his casting many anxious, enquiring glances.

The next room was what had been the library. The shelves were still there, and it was about half full of books. One wall was decorated by a rather jazzy black and white fungus and the room had a strong mushroom smell. And so on. Two more sitting rooms, a study with a wallpaper so dark that it was almost black, and a vast partner’s desk littered with papers. Unlike most of the rooms they had seen this showed signs of fairly recent occupation: there was a smell of pipe tobacco and the fire was freshly laid. ‘My father used to spend a lot of time in here,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better tackle the next floor. The other rooms here are just gun room, boot room, pantry, telephone room and lavatories – that sort of thing.’

‘How many bedrooms are there?’ she asked, as they went up the staircase from the main hall.

‘I don’t know. We could count if you like.’

At the top of the staircase was a very wide passage that ran in both directions, lit by a regularly placed series of round windows set almost at ceiling level. The ceiling was vaulted in a Gothic manner. The bedroom doors were mahogany with small brass-edged frames pinned at eye-level to the wood. In one of them a card was slotted. ‘Lady Pomfret’ was written on it in beautiful copperplate. ‘For weekend parties,’ he said, ‘they used to put the visitors’ names on the doors so that people knew where they were, and other people knew where they were. Edwardian high jinks,’ he said gloomily. ‘My mother simply loved talking about that sort of thing. When she married my father it was still going on.’

The bedrooms were all much the same. Many had dressing rooms adjoining that each contained a single bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a smaller fireplace. Again, dust sheets prevailed; many of the carpets were neatly rolled and tied with tape. There were fifteen bedrooms on that floor and two bathrooms: the lavatory pans were blue and white porcelain. Two of the bedrooms had basins.

‘There’s an attic floor as well,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you’ve had enough for one day?’

‘Oh no! I’d like to see it all.’

So up they went.

‘I suppose the things in the house belong to you?’ She wondered whether the mother would come and take anything nice.

‘Oh, yes. Every single thing.’ He sounded so despondent that she nearly laughed.

The attics were clearly where the servants had slept – a good many of them, judging by how many attics there were. But in one of them she made a discovery. They very nearly hadn’t gone into it, the light was fading and the rooms were all drearily alike. He suggested going down for tea, but there seemed to be only two doors left unexplored, so she said, ‘We might as well finish the job.’

The first was exactly like the others: a small window facing the battlements, thus concealed from public view, and an iron bedstead, the mattress gone, a hard chair, a painted chest of drawers, a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, the faded flowered wallpaper, the tiny grate never used . . .

‘Last one,’ he said, as he opened the door. It was exactly like all the others except for one thing. The walls were four deep in very small watercolours, widely mounted and in identical gilt frames. This was so surprising that she went to examine one. It was a sunset over a stretch of wild seashore, and it was somehow familiar. She looked at others. They were all full of skies and light at different times of the day: of landscapes, seascapes, their weather and their seasons, storms, sunrises, thundery winters, sunlit summers, balmy autumns – all by the same hand. She took one off the wall and carried it to the window. ‘J. M. W. Turner’ was clearly discernible in the bottom right-hand corner.

‘Come and look!’

‘It’s rather good, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘My mother loathed watercolours unless they were done by her, so I suppose she just bunged all these in a maid’s bedroom to be out of the way.’

‘Have you noticed the signature?’

He looked, and then looked at her. ‘Good Lord! The chap we saw in the Tate! What an extraordinary thing!’

‘You’ve never seen them before?’

‘Never. They must have been here for ages. It’s a good thing, because if my mother had realized about them she’d have sold them like a shot. She sold all the good pictures – whenever she needed money, in fact.’ He watched her put the picture back on the wall, then he said: ‘I suppose they’re all Turners?’

‘You could take one to London to find out. I should think that if one of them is they all will be.’

‘How many are there?’

They both counted.

‘Forty-eight,’ he said.

‘Fifty-two. There are four behind the door.’

‘He must be awfully valuable,’ he said; he seemed rather dazed.

‘Yes.’

‘So – if I sold them, I’d have some money?’

‘Of course you would. Only – won’t there be death duties?’ She’d heard her father talking about them when the Brig died.

‘I don’t think there will. When Mr Crowther read me the will, it turned out my father left the house and all its contents first to my brother, and then, when he died, to me. He never told us. And, anyway, it’s all tied up in some ghastly trust, so it can’t be sold or blown up or anything like that. I suppose, actually, these pictures would be worth thousands of pounds?’

‘Thousands.’

‘Enough to repair the house, do you think?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know. I should think so.’

‘But probably not enough to do that and live in it,’ he said.

As they were leaving the room, he suddenly said, ‘Have one!’

‘Have what?’

‘A picture. Choose one. Well, do it tomorrow, when you can see them better. Choose the one you like best. You found them, after all.’

‘I can’t possibly. It’s very kind of you,’ she added, ‘but I don’t think you’ve taken in how – well, how valuable they are. And you need the money.’

‘I suppose I do. A bit of me would quite like to sell the Turners, buy Nan a cottage and just lock the doors here and never come back. What do you think of that?’ They had reached the main staircase now. He said, ‘Would you mind awfully sitting on the stairs while I talk to you about something? If we go down, Nan will interrupt us with rock cakes.’

‘All right.’

‘First, I really do want you to have a picture. If you won’t choose one, I’ll have to, and I’ll get it wrong.’

Before she could answer, he said, ‘Otherwise, what do you think of what I said just now? About leaving the house, and all that?’

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly – she was trying to imagine being him – ‘it depends whether you love it at all. Because if you do, and you abandon it, it might haunt you, rather.’

‘If you were left it, what would you do?’

‘Oh, I think I’d try to live in it. I’d make bits of it, at least, comfortable, and then I’d see how it went.’

‘Would you?’

She remembered then his saying something like that on the telephone to her – and just in the same way. This time she could see him. He was fixed upon her, earnest as well as tender. ‘Then I must take the plunge, would you live here with me? Would you marry me and do that? Would you at least consider it?’

‘I don’t need to consider it,’ she said, discovering how little she needed to do that.

‘You mean it? You really will actually marry me?’

‘I want to marry you.’ It seemed to her then that she had always wanted to marry him – had never had a single doubt.

‘I’ve wanted to marry you from the moment I saw you,’ he said. ‘And then, the more I saw you, the more I wanted to. But I didn’t think I had a hope. And then, just when I was beginning to hope that I had a hope all this happened about my father dying and getting saddled with this place and not having any money . . . I thought you ought to see it all . . . and then the Turners . . .’

‘I would have married you without a single Turner.’

‘Would you?’

When he had kissed her – a sweet and long kiss – and they had drawn a little apart she saw how his radiance transformed him.

‘Your eyes are like stars – like those sapphires that have a star in them,’ he said, as she put her arms round his neck.

They spent an unknown amount of time on the stairs in a state of joyful ease, not saying very much until the dusk had become dark and they were interrupted by the distant booming of a gong.

‘That’ll be Nan with our tea.’ He took her hand and they crept carefully down the staircase to the door that led on to the passage where he felt for and found a light switch. Weak yellow light illuminated the passage that led back to the room where they had lunch; the fire had been made up and the table set for tea.

Nan appeared at once as if by magic. ‘I took the liberty of calling you because as we all know drop scones won’t wait for anyone,’ she said. She had given them one shrewd glance, and then busied herself with a covered dish and a silver teapot on the table.

After one long look at Polly, he said, ‘We’re going to be married, Nan, and you’re the first to know.’

She straightened up from setting the table and wiped her hand on her overall. ‘I did wonder,’ she said, and shook Polly’s hand. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy,’ she said. ‘I’ve known him since before he was born and there’s not an ounce of vice in him.’

‘You make me sound like a horse!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Your young lady can see you’re not a horse.’ She turned to Polly. ‘You have your nice tea if his lordship will condescend to pour you a cup. You can call me when you’re finished.’

‘She approves of you, my darling Polly – may I call you Polly, by the way?’