Ghosts of Winter (5 page)

Smiling at my achievement and my enthusiasm refreshed, I left the bathroom, keen to see the rest of the house. A small door led from the antechamber outside towards the rear of the property. I opened it tentatively consulting my plan. I found myself at a landing of a narrow stone staircase which went both up and downwards. This was the servants’ staircase. I stopped in my tracks: I owned a house with a servants’ staircase. It was astonishingly difficult to believe, even as I stepped onto the staircase in question. The plan told me that downstairs was the old kitchen and upstairs I would find a doorway onto an upper landing.

I peered down towards the kitchen and saw nothing but shadows and cobwebs. I shivered and decided I would wait to explore the bowels of the house for a day when I felt more comfortable here. I didn’t have to see everything today, after all, and I wasn’t sure my fragile optimism could take a dank abandoned kitchen. I had a lot of time to become familiar with Winter. Instead I followed the narrow staircase upwards. I reached a doorway which opened onto the first floor and went through gladly. The stairs continued upwards, to the attics, but that prospect was no more tempting than the downstairs kitchens. I didn’t believe in haunted houses but I wanted to feel more confident in myself before I made my way into the gloomier parts of Winter.

I emerged from the narrow doorway and found myself on one side of the landing at the top of the grand staircase, in a sort of upstairs hallway. The nearest doorway took me into the Red Bedroom. Surprisingly, the bed still stood in the centre of the room, with its tapestry canopy intact and a stained yellow pillow crumpled against the headboard.  The idea it had been there since someone had last slept here, at some point in the early twentieth century, was unnerving.  Forgetting entirely it was kindly Auntie Edie’s family who had lived here, I indulged visions of Byronic lords and swooning heroines. Next to the bedroom was a small dressing room. I peered through the doorway, caught a glimpse of my reflection in a dusty full-length mirror on one of the walls, and retreated.

Most of this floor was taken up by high ceilinged bedrooms—twelve in all—and adjoining dressing rooms. An exceedingly functional lavatory, bathtub, and washbasin were fixed in one of these rooms and another small toilet and basin in one of the corner rooms. There was no other furniture in any of the rooms. In the eastern part of the house the ceilings were stained and in various stages of collapse, as Anna had warned me. The culprit was the damaged roof and it was here the most serious structural repair was needed. It did not look to be an insurmountable challenge.

The bedrooms were mostly located towards the back and sides of the house. Along the front was a large room with many windows. The Long Gallery. I smiled, admiring the pride of whoever had named it, for the room was only long in relation to the other rooms in the house. I’d been in plenty of grand stately homes, with real long galleries, and this did not even begin to compare. Still, it was one of the easier rooms in which to imagine the inhabitants of former times admiring the portraits of their ancestors on the walls. The hooks and uneven colouring of what remained of the wallpaper showed clearly where such pictures had once hung.

There was something wistful about that faded, patchy wallpaper, the shadows of the portraits which occupied these walls. It was such a simple consideration in a house with so much to discover, but it moved me. I wanted to pause for a moment, stop my exploration and think over what I’d learned already, consider my feelings for my new house. The windows in the Long Gallery each had a broad window seat. I perched on one and cleared a small patch of the dirty glass so that I might see out over the parkland.

The sky was a heavy grey and the daylight had taken on an oppressive yellow quality. I wondered if it was going to snow. I looked out at the bare-limbed trees, jagged and black on the horizon, and at the dull green of the grass. The meadows sloped down to where a small river flowed through the park. Somewhere out there was a bridge over the river. A flock of crows flew past, ignoring the house entirely as they swept by. It struck me at once, as I stared, nothing had changed at all since my arrival yesterday. This house had stood here for hundreds of years, at first glorious, then decaying. As much a part of the landscape as the river and the stark trees. I was nothing in that great scheme of things. But I had to make a mark, I owed that much to Auntie Edie and to this building. It wasn’t really such a big house, as country houses went, but it was as proud as any other, with its Long Gallery, grand staircase, and high-ceilinged Saloon. Winter Manor still aspired to something, even after all the years it had seen come and go. It wanted to be more than it was, it remembered what it had once been. I could empathise with that. I wanted to help it to be all it could be again. Maybe there was a chance I could find my own way to being all I could be in the process.

My thoughts strayed back to my visitor of earlier that morning. The jury was still out on whether I liked Anna or not. I chose to entirely blank the nagging part of me that insisted on pointing out just how attractive my architect was. Those thoughts were neither appropriate or helpful. So what if I still tingled slightly where her fingers had pressed mine? I wasn’t used to being on my own yet, I was bound to have moments where the most unlikely women appealed to me. They were most emphatically not feelings I should act upon or consider.

However much more Anna thawed, whether she became a friend or stayed as just the architect, I wouldn’t let myself think about her in any other way. She was married and I was an emotional mess. Two good reasons right there.

That the restoration of Winter was mostly in her hands I was pleased about. I already trusted her abilities and her work ethic. Though with my turbulent emotions and hazy self-confidence I didn’t relish the idea of her coming to the house again and intruding into my refuge, a confusing presence. She made me feel judged, though she had done nothing to provoke it. Just recently I’d felt the whole world was finding me wanting in one way or another. As I established myself at Winter I wasn’t sure another visit from someone so wonderfully competent would help. But maybe calling in to her office in the city wouldn’t be so bad.

I thought back to our parting conversation. I hoped she hadn’t found my reticence when it came to the topic of my employment rude. I didn’t want to discuss it with anyone, let alone someone who trailed clouds of professional capability in her wake.

Professional achievement had always been one of my aims in life. I’d considered myself reasonably successful only this time last year in, fact. I was looking good to be deputy head of year. Now I was sitting in a dusty window seat of a run-down manor house, avoiding conversations about my job. Truth was, I tried to avoid too many thoughts about it. I leaned my head against the window frame and let my eyes drift out of focus. How did I get to this point? One moment I’d been fulfilling a vocation, the next I was unemployed. Maybe if my mother’s cancer hadn’t been diagnosed too late. Maybe if I’d gone straight back to work after all those weeks caring for her. Maybe if I’d given more thought to my relationship with Francesca before Mum was sick. There was a chance I’d be in an entirely different place now. But
maybe
was a futile word and I knew it. I was here, be it by fate or accident. Perhaps Winter Manor was the answer to finally erase all the sentences beginning with
what if
?

Tears stung my eyes. I wiped at them and found that my fingers were freezing cold. I dragged my gaze away from the window and the view of the Winter parkland, and back into the spacious, shabby room. Would this really be the step forward I needed? On my own in a rotting house, relying on somebody else’s money to revitalise a legacy that was really nothing to do with me. Surely it was the ultimate in running away? I sat on the edge of the window seat and looked around me pensively.

Suddenly Winter Manor was very large and full of shadows. I could lose myself here in a way I’d never intended. I ran my fingers over the wood of the seat I sat on, grooved and warped in places, the varnish flaking. Looking into the gallery I tried to envisage the paintings on the walls, the ancestors who were really nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t find my history here in this isolation. In taking on this project, was I really grasping at straws, hoping fate had thrown an answer my way, when I wasn’t sure which path to take next? A wave of heavy sadness, such as I’d not felt since immediately after my mother’s death, enveloped me. The sheer depth of it disturbed me and I rose quickly to my feet, shaking myself, hoping to drive the melancholy away. I had to look forward to the future now, stop lingering in the past. Easier said than done, when the route into that future was so unclear and apparently more subject to the whims of chance than any decisions I could make.

I heard a distant ringing. At first I thought I was imagining it. Seconds later the bell sounded again. It sounded like a doorbell. I turned back to the window and looked down to the front of the house. Sure enough, parked there next to my car was another, small and blue, a model I couldn’t distinguish from above. The bell rang once more. It had to be the doorbell. I hadn’t noticed there even
was
a doorbell.

I hurried over the uneven floorboards of the gallery, across the landing outside, and down the grand staircase. It struck me how the stairs and entrance hall were already beginning to feel familiar to me, as though they belonged to me. Or, at least, as though I could be at home here. That was a hopeful sign.

I jogged across the tiled floor to the door, wishing, as I opened it, I’d thought to take care of my appearance instead of exploring the house. I’d not planned on any more visitors, and frankly, I wasn’t really in the mood for this level of social interaction. So far Winter Manor had not been quite the retreat I’d hoped it would be.

Standing on the top step and already smiling at me as I opened the door was a woman I put to be in her early sixties, maybe a little older. Her hair, scraped back and secured with pins at the back of her head, had once been chestnut but was mostly fading to grey, and her hazel eyes were framed by a web of fine lines. She wore a purple waterproof coat which was fastened tight over a rather large bosom. She was holding a foil-wrapped package in her hands.

“Hello there, pet,” she said. Her words were heavy with the warm accent of north-east England.

“Hello.” I couldn’t help reflecting her smile. Difficult to resent a smiling intruder.

“I’m Maggie Potter, pet, your neighbour.”

“Ah, you’d better come in then,” I said, curious since I’d not noticed any nearby buildings and slightly alarmed by the prospect of a friendly neighbour. That was really more social pressure than I wanted. She came into the hallway and I closed the door behind her, glad to shut out the December air, growing colder as the day progressed.

Maggie Potter looked around at the entrance hall, as if she expected me to have transformed the house completely in just a day. “It’s a fine place.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m in awe of it actually. You said you’re my neighbour? Where do you live?”

“Oh, we’re not close neighbours, hun, it’s about two miles to my house from yours, longer by road. But the land to the east of yours is mine too.”

“To the east?”

“Yes, and a little to the south too. It’s mainly pasture, for the cows.”

“You’re a farmer?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my tone. Why shouldn’t she be a farmer, after all?

“Well, I’m a farmer’s wife really, pet—or girlfriend, since we didn’t marry, quite a scandal we caused at the time you know—but my Jack moved on two years ago, so that leaves me as a farmer now.”

I couldn’t tell if she meant her partner had died or left her and didn’t like to ask, so it was hard to choose an appropriate reaction. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be. I miss him but I know he’s in a better place.” I assumed she meant heaven and not the arms of another woman. “And I enjoy running the place. It was my parents’ farm, so I’m used to it. I’m converting us to organic.”

“You are?”

“Yes, pet, should be certified by this time next year.”

“Well done, that’s no small undertaking.”

“No, but it’ll be worth it.” She paused and I was acutely aware that this conversation had really gotten ahead of itself. She clearly concurred, asking in her next breath, “So, pet, what do I call you?”

“I’m Ros. Ros Wynne.” I held out my hand and she shook it warmly.

“Good to meet you, Ros.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Well, hun, when I heard Edith Burns had passed on, I wanted to know if we were going to have any problems with the new owners. You know a lot of the old houses and parks up here are being made into hotels and golf courses, or being demolished and built on. They’re not the sort of neighbours I want. So I contacted the lawyers and they told me she’d left the place to a family friend who would be moving in about now.”

“I guess that’s me then.” I shrugged, unsure what else to say.

“You’re younger than I expected,” she told me.

“I’ve just turned thirty.”

“When you’re seventy-five like me, pet, you’ll think thirty is young.” She looked serious for a moment, and I considered a comment about how she looked at least ten years younger. Before I could make it, she laughed lightly. “Anyway, look here, I brought you a cake.” She passed me the foil package, which was surprisingly heavy.

“Lovely, thank you.” I was genuinely touched by the kindness. I peeled back part of the foil and caught the scent of spices and dried fruit. “What sort is it?”