Netherwood (44 page)

‘Oh! Yes. Sorry,’ Eve said, blushing helplessly. ‘I was just, erm.’ Truly, she didn’t know how to proceed, because she didn’t know what she was doing.

Mrs Carmichael raised one eyebrow, an unnerving trick which she’d put to good effect on many an occasion. It conveyed scepticism, disbelief and ridicule, with just one economical adjustment to the features.

Eve tried again. ‘I was just explorin’,’ she said. ‘I meant no ’arm.’

‘Whether or not you meant any Harm,’ said the cook, with a pointedly capital aitch, ‘is neither here nor there. The fact is, you’re snooping about my kitchen. Spying, for all I know. I would thank you to keep your nose out of what doesn’t concern you.’

She turned and stalked away, angrier than she had any cause to be. Eve, shaking a little, stood rooted to the spot. Her second encounter with the cook, and it had been another unmitigated disaster. Now she was suspected of espionage, though quite which dark authority Mrs Carmichael thought she could be working for, Eve was unsure. She considered trotting after her and trying to put things right. Then she considered storming after her and raising merry hell. Instead, she turned and walked in the opposite direction, down a corridor which brought her to a plain wooden door, which she pushed open and found herself able to step outside, on to the cobbles of the courtyard she recognised from yesterday’s arrival. With an idea that she might find Samuel, she pulled the door behind her and crossed the yard.

Down in the cutting garden, Daniel MacLeod was thigh high in delphiniums and foxgloves, and apparently impervious to the anxious drone of bees all around him. He had come to
cut blooms for the house, Mrs Munster having informed him – unnecessarily – that the family would be arriving tomorrow and flowers were needed for the front and back hallways, the morning room, dining room and drawing room, and for the ladies’ bedrooms. At this time of year, before the summer’s heat could leach the colour from the petals and the moisture from the soil, the cutting garden was bountiful, and it was child’s play to fill the willow trugs and have them sent up to the house to be arranged. At other times of year, everyone’s creativity was challenged; berries, variegated leaves and some of the prettier seedpods had to do, with celosia, gypsophila, statice and lavender, carefully dried in his small greenhouse, interspersed through the foliage. Of course, only when the family was in residence did these standards have to be maintained. At other times the vases and rose bowls stood empty, and the flowers bloomed and died with only Daniel’s appreciative attention upon them.

He was almost finished in his task, with two baskets loaded and resting in the shade, when Eve appeared within his view, though from her unselfconscious manner she clearly thought she was unobserved. He had the luxury of watching her pass along the terrace closest to the house, then choose a path through the plats and down on to the
parterre.
She was wearing a striped apron, blue – like the delphiniums – and white, and a white blouse with sleeves that stopped just above the elbow, showing slender forearms. Her long hair was off her face, held back in some clever way known only to women. Remove one or two pins, and down it would fall. Even from this distance, Daniel could see that she looked melancholy. He watched her, and wondered at the response she provoked in him. He was nearly forty years old, he thought to himself, with no shortage of experience of women and the world, yet she made him feel like a boy of sixteen, desire flooding his body in that same unannounced and afflicting way that it had when he was young.
It was with the greatest effort that he pulled himself together and, bending down to harvest the last of the flowers he needed, began to whistle. He knew she might bolt, but he wanted to give her the choice; he felt like a voyeur, watching her when she believed herself to be alone. At least this way, he reasoned, if she chose to stay in the garden, it would be in the full knowledge that he was here. One, two, three purple foxgloves he snipped at their bases, then three more, from the crop of white ones. Next, unhurriedly, three delphiniums, snip, snip, snip. He forced himself to keep his eyes averted until he had laid all nine stems gently on one of the trugs, then he straightened and looked to see where she was. Wonderful sight. She was walking towards him.

He introduced her to the ancient Greeks: Aristotle, Socrates, Plato; it seemed only polite, since they were there too. To Eve, they all looked alike – bearded and serious in their separate alcoves – but Daniel seemed to know them all and was almost fond of them, said they were his only company on many a day. Their conversation, once it began, came easily. She’d come out looking for the coachman, she said, but as the stable yard was deserted she’d wandered into the garden instead. He said he was glad she had. He asked what her favourite flower was, and she said probably lily of the valley, though she could only rarely find them at home. They talked as they walked through the cutting garden, and he told her the Latin names for the flowers and asked her questions about Netherwood, probing gently for the information which finally emerged: that there was no longer a Mr Williams. He was very sorry, he said, but inside, he rejoiced. He told her he was from Montrose, on Scotland’s east coast, and that he hadn’t been back there since he took up his post at Fulton House twenty-one years ago.

He’d love to go back, he said. With you, he thought. Then they sat for a short while in the sunshine on a lichen-covered stone seat, facing the house with the garden spread out before them. Eve admired it, said she’d never seen the like, even at Netherwood Hall. Daniel thanked her, but the last thing he wanted to talk about his handiwork, so he took the first opportunity for a conversational turn.

‘So. How’s it going, down in the engine room?’ he said.

‘Couldn’t be worse.’

She expected sympathy, but he laughed. ‘Beryl Carmichael, what a right royal terror. She’s very territorial.’

Eve said nothing. She wasn’t interested in excuses for the cook’s ill humour.

‘It’s just insecurity. She’ll be feeling threatened by you,’ he went on.

‘Well, there’s no need. I’m not after takin’ ’er place. I ’ave a life in Yorkshire, and a living to make there.’

Shame, he thought.

‘I’ll speak to her, if you like,’ he said. ‘Let her know you’re just passing through.’

She listened to the cadence of his voice as much as what he was saying. It struck her that other than his name and birthplace, she knew nothing about him, then it struck her further that it could all be discovered, if she wished it. How odd, she thought, that she should know this to be true, and that she could sit so comfortably by this stranger. She turned to speak, but found him looking right at her and it threw her off her stroke. When she looked away, he wanted to stop her, take her chin in his hand and turn her to face him again because he’d seen a connection, he was sure of it. Now though she was all confusion, and she stood up to leave.

‘Ah, don’t go,’ he said, smiling at her, standing up too. She was flustered, and he wondered what was passing through her mind. If convention and respectability didn’t forbid it, he would
kiss her and perhaps make matters a little clearer for them both.

‘No, I shall,’ she said. ‘I have pastry to bake. Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘Oh, well. Being kind, I suppose. And don’t talk to Mrs Carmichael. I shall speak to ’er myself, else she’ll always see me as a wet lettuce.’

He laughed again.

‘Can’t have that,’ he said.

She set off through the garden without a goodbye.

‘Come and find me again,’ he called. ‘Any time.’

Then she turned and smiled a thank you, which felt, to him, like a gift.

Eve Williams, he thought to himself. Eve Williams.

At the very bottom of the garden were two majestic cedars of Lebanon and he walked into the shade created by the flat plains of their branches. Growing there, among the parma violets which he had planted for the countess, was a cluster of fragrant lily of the valley, which he had planted for himself. Tenderly, he cut twelve stems of the delicate white blooms and tied them together into a modest bouquet. Then he walked up to the house where he found a housemaid willing to run up to Eve’s attic bedroom and leave the flowers there in a small, glass vase. He paid her sixpence not to gossip.

E
arly on Monday morning, as soon as staff breakfast was over, Field Marshal Munster made a final inspection of Fulton House. She had a gimlet eye in matters pertaining to housework, and her small army of staff understood that nothing slipped her notice. Even Mr Munster, who was the butler and as such vied with his wife for supremacy in the staff hierarchy, quaked at the sound of her step on the parquet floor. She spoke in stern Victorian maxims – ‘Idleness hath clothed many with rags’ and ‘If you hope to obtain favour, endeavour to deserve it’ – which she delivered with not even the shadow of a smile. But, in fact, she rarely had need to preach, because it was a matter of honour to the household that whenever the family descended on them, they should feel instantly glad to be there. Most of them had never been to Yorkshire, let alone Netherwood Hall, but nevertheless the place loomed in their imaginations as a pinnacle of fine living. Therefore, they felt, their absolute duty was to maintain a London residence which, while unavoidably smaller than its country cousin, was nevertheless of equal grandeur and sophistication. It wasn’t exactly a competition, but they would have been perfectly happy to be judged.

In these last hours before the family arrived, it was as if the building and everyone in it held their collective breath for fear that they might disturb the perfect fold of the drapes, or set loose a petal to drift to the floor. The dining-room table was elaborately set for a late luncheon, with a silver bowl of early roses at its centre. Half an hour before the meal was served, the flowers would be lightly sprayed with water, to give the impression that the morning dew still clung to the petals. Rugs had been beaten and swept, wardrobes dusted and lined. Alice, the still room maid, had prepared muslin sachets stuffed with a heady mix of cloves, cinnamon, dried lavender and cedar shavings, and these were placed in the drawers of every upstairs room. For the gentlemen, crystal decanters were loaded with port and malt whisky, while the ladies, presumed to be less in need of a stiff drink, each had a tiny, precious vial of ottar of roses, made to a traditional eastern recipe by the same Alice responsible for the muslin sachets. Elsewhere in the house, inkstands were refilled, stationery replenished and new candles placed in every candlestick. The house was poised in readiness, polished and primed into perfect order.

At half-past eleven, Samuel Stallibrass set off for the station. There was a short debate in the stable yard between himself and Mrs Munster about the necessity or otherwise of two carriages, given that all of the family were arriving in London today. But Samuel, who was one of the very few people who had no fear of the housekeeper, knew best and would concede no ground; if Dickie and Lady Isabella rode with him up top, as he knew they both preferred to do, then there was ample room for everyone else in the carriage. In any case, he said, the earl and young Lord Fulton would very likely be dropped at White’s. Why put two more horses and an under-coachman to the trouble, if one carriage would easily suffice? Mrs Munster, whose remit really didn’t extend to matters outside
the house, was forced to retreat. But she had no real cause for concern; she could see for herself the effort Samuel had put into the cleaning of the carriage brasses and the blacking of the harnesses. If King Edward himself were suddenly to demand the use of Samuel’s landau, he would find it fit for purpose.