The Hardie Inheritance (34 page)

‘Just what I needed!' exclaimed Rupert, squeezing her shoulders for a second time. ‘Someone decisive. We'll go back this afternoon and look at them again. And you can tell me what colours would be best.'

Trish shook her head. ‘Julia will want to choose for herself,' she said. ‘And your mother would like to be consulted, I'm sure. But actually I think you need professional advice. For an ordinary sort of house someone like me can play about and learn from mistakes. But everything here is on such a large scale that you can't afford to waste time on second thoughts.
You ought to look for someone who knows exactly how to make a room look smaller or larger or lower or higher, and what goes with what. Besides …'

‘Besides what?'

‘Well, you know me, always wanting to change things.'

‘You mean you'd want to burn all the Louis Quinze furniture and fill the drawing room with Bauhaus designs!'

‘Not that, of course. I wasn't talking about the grand rooms. I do recognize that a house like this has always got to look like a house like this. But even with the bedrooms, looking at them through Miles's and Julia's eyes would be a big effort for me. Whereas people who do it for a living presumably start by finding out just what their clients want and then providing it.'

‘I suppose you're right,' agreed Rupert. ‘But if I find someone like that, I'd still appreciate it if you'd come round with me and him. Or her.'

‘As someone else – like you – who's never going to live in the finished result?'

‘You've hit it. To remind me that there's a life outside Castlemere. The world of the second son.'

His arm was still round her shoulders and now he turned her to face him, holding her close as his mouth widened in a warm smile and his eyes danced with the light-heartedness which she remembered from before the war. Trish found herself stirred by his closeness and pleased at the invitation. Often during the past few weeks she had regretted not helping Rupert in his election campaign. Now he was offering a second opportunity of working companionship.

She smiled agreement. ‘Though I'll be in London during term time,' she reminded him.

‘So shall I, Monday to Friday. And hoping to find someone there to be frivolous with. All those years in the army, looking forward to a bit of carefree social life, and now I'm up to the neck with family business here and the affairs of the nation in Westminster. What I need more than anything else is an art student who'll invite me to Bohemian parties and let me take
her out for the odd meal in return. It's well known that all art students live on the edge of starvation. Are you on?'

Pulling her even more closely towards him, he kissed her lightly on the lips. Often in the past he had kissed her cheek or forehead, but this was the first real kiss.

It was over in a second, before she had time to put her arms around him and tell him that she loved him. Perhaps it was part of being frivolous that he should pretend a kiss to be only a careless gesture, of no significance. She must show herself to be a sophisticated adult, a London art student, by accepting it as lightly as it was offered.

‘I'm on,' she agreed.

Trish had left her bicycle at Oxford station. As a rule she found the four-mile ride back to Greystones steep and tiring, but today the pedals seemed to turn without effort. She was strong and confident and unusually conscious of the whole of her body, instead of just the artist's eye that observed and the hand that drew. She was in love.

Gordon had not yet left England, but she had forgotten him already. Forgotten, too, was the schoolgirl crush which she had had on Rupert for almost as long as she could remember. She had thought she loved him before; but now, overwhelmed by the true emotion, she recognized her years of childish adoration for what they were. Her real love for him dated from today.

It was because Rupert's attitude towards her had changed that she could recognize the change in herself. He was seeing her now as an adult, an equal partner. Before too long he might begin to think of her as a lover. Had they been strangers, he would have kissed her more passionately today. It was because he was already accustomed to hug her affectionately that such a small change as a kiss on the lips instead of the cheek or forehead was really an important gesture. For almost the whole of her life she had been waiting for the moment when Rupert would love her, and at last it had arrived.

She did her best to conceal the nature of her happiness as she made her way to the studio, intending only to put her head round the door to announce her return. But Grace, standing at her work bench, demanded to be told the day's news and – always sensitive to other people's emotions – seemed to guess
at once that the day had held some special significance.

‘How's Rupert?' she asked. ‘And Castlemere?'

‘Castlemere's awful.' Trish described its neglected and depressing condition. ‘I suppose it will start to look better when all the pictures and furniture are back in place. But Rupert's terribly worried about money. For death duties and repairs and redecoration, everything.'

‘And how is Rupert apart from that?' Grace had not seen him during his brief Sunday visit.

‘Oh, fine. Not as jokey as he used to be before the war. More serious. But probably that's only because of all these responsibilities. Once Miles gets home …'

‘He – Rupert, I mean – must be at least thirty now,' said Grace. ‘And whether or not he managed to enjoy being in the army, he must have the feeling of having lost six years out of his life – of having to start again, in a sense, at a rather more advanced age than usual. It's understandable that he should be serious.'

‘Yes.' Trish searched for a question which would change the subject. Only when she heard herself speak the words did she realize how much she was giving away.

‘Why did
you
leave it so late to get married, Grace?' she asked. ‘I mean, it's not unusual for men to wait till they're thirty, but for a woman … Was it all because of the first war?'

‘No. From choice.' Grace turned back to work as she talked, cutting and bending thick wire to form an armature. ‘I had the chance to marry – I was engaged – when I was your sort of age. But I ran away. For all the wrong reasons, at the time. But, as things turned out, with the right result. If I'd had the sense to sit down when I was nineteen and work out how I wanted to spend my life, I might well have come up with exactly what I've got. As it is, things have fallen into my lap. I've been lucky. Not something one can count on. Nobody ever takes advice on this sort of thing, so I've never bothered to give it. But I do feel quite strongly that it's important for anyone of your age to start off by settling what she wants to do with her
life before even considering who she wants to do it with.'

‘I don't get you,' said Trish.

Grace put down the wire cutter and studied the skeleton she had made with a critical eye for a moment. Then she gave Trish her full attention.

‘Right, let's get personal, then. You're a very attractive girl, and any moment now you're going to be loose in London and under siege from any number of young men. If you very sensibly recognize, as you did with Gordon, that love without marriage holds pitfalls, sooner or later the idea of love inside marriage is going to seem extremely tempting. All I'd say is, don't let yourself drift into marriage just because you see everyone else of your age doing it, without first stopping to think whether a particular marriage would suit you.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, if all you want is to sit at home and bring up babies, then falling in love is as good a start as any other. But you may feel that you've got more in you than that – and a good many husbands actively dislike the idea that their wives should work. That means that if you've set your heart on having your own career, you must either decide not to marry or else look for a husband who'll back you in whatever you want to do. And whose way of life is compatible with it. Marry a farmer, and you'll be expected to work as a farmer's wife. You can't expect to combine that with managing a bank, say.'

Trish laughed at the idea of herself as a bank manager, but she saw what Grace meant.

‘You're saying that I ought to marry a way of life rather than a man.'

‘I didn't mean it to sound as cold as that. Just to be aware what way of life goes with the man, and see whether you'll be happy with it.'

‘Suppose I just want to paint. Well, I do. I could do that with anyone.'

‘Then you need to consider your own character. As a rich man's wife you might use financial security to achieve exactly
what you wanted without needing to please the market; or you might lose incentive and just produce the occasional watercolour to give to your mother-in-law. Marry a poor man and you could find yourself either spurred on or commercialized by the need to sell your work – or forced to give up in order to earn a living some other way.'

‘How very complicated you make it sound!'

‘Well, it's a big thing, Trish. An important time of your life, with choices to be made which may have consequences far beyond what you realize at the time. Some girls have neither talent nor ambition. It may not matter what they do. And some girls – like me in my twenties – have such a strong sense of vocation, whatever it's for, that the idea of marriage is always going to take second place. All I'm saying is that it's just as important to know yourself as it is to know a man you might fall in love with.'

‘You make it sound as though it's possible to stop yourself –'

Grace interrupted her. ‘Of course it is, if you put the brake on early enough. You found that out for yourself, with Gordon. You didn't want to spend the rest of your life on a vineyard in Australia and so you let him go.'

Trish was silent for a moment. Had it been her decision or Gordon's that their brief romance should never be anything more than that? It was true, though, that the parting had not broken her heart.

‘So you thought all this out, years ago, and decided that you'd rather be a sculptor than an ordinary wife.'

‘No. I told you, I was lucky. I'm trying to persuade you to be more sensible than I ever was. And I'm sure you will be. But you know, these films you enjoy so much in the cinema. So often they seem to finish with a man and a woman getting married, as though that were the end of something, when really it's only the beginning. You've had a childhood life here at Greystones and that's coming to an end, one way or another, whatever you decide to do in the future. You have a period of freedom ahead. On the day you get married you'll start a new
way of life, from which it will be extremely difficult to escape and which it may not be easy to change. So it's important not to make a mistake.'

‘Noted.'

Grace laughed, but then raised her eyes to look steadily into Trish's.

‘I like Rupert enormously,' she said, with a directness which made Trish flush. ‘Nothing I've just said was intended as any sort of warning in that direction. Although –' As though surprised by her own thoughts she bit her lip and began once more to work on the armature, pressing clay around the wire. ‘Although there is one big difference between you. You're a creator, I think, like me – and at the same time, wicked girl, a destroyer of creations. Always looking for something new. Rupert is a preserver. He's in love with Castlemere. Something you should never forget.'

‘Castlemere isn't his home any more.' Trish made no attempt to contradict her stepmother's assumptions. ‘It's like you said earlier, he's got to start from scratch now, making a new life. So anyone he marries will have a hand in the making.'

‘Yes. Well.' Grace smiled at her affectionately. ‘Thank you for listening so patiently and letting me perform my stepmaternal duty. I was sure even before I started that I could rely on you to be sensible.'

Trish grinned back. ‘Trush Trist,' she said.

The view of Castlemere in winter was even more beautiful than in summer. Snow smoothed the gentle contours of the park, outlined the bare branches of the chestnut avenue and clung to the northern side of each pencil-sharp turret roof.

‘It's ridiculous!' exclaimed Trish, who had been invited over for the day as soon as the Christmas vacation began. ‘A French chateau in the middle of England. The idea that any ordinary person should actually
live
in it –'

‘Is becoming more and more remote,' said Rupert, drawing to a halt in the Morris which, chosen for the modesty of its petrol consumption, was so inappropriate a vehicle for someone who had always enjoyed sleek and expensive cars. ‘It's a totally impossible situation. Almost all the indoor servants have disappeared. Moved away, married, discovered the delights of earning a factory wage and living within reach of a dance hall. Even if we could get them back, they'd want higher wages than we could afford to pay. And a house like this is entirely dependent on servants. Dozens of them.'

‘Grace and Grandmother and Philip managed without at Greystones, before Ellis and I came along.'

‘By acting as servants themselves and closing up most of the house. Three of them working non-stop to keep themselves warm and fed in only half a dozen rooms. Greystones may be a large house by ordinary standards, but Castlemere doesn't come into ordinary standards at all. We need a small army of housemaids carrying buckets of coal just to stop the house freezing up, let alone to keep it warm.'

‘Perhaps you should have let the school stay on for one more winter.'

‘Perish the thought!'

‘Then what
are
you going to do, Rupert? Or I suppose I should say, what is Miles going to do?'

Rupert switched off the engine. ‘Let's get out for a moment,' he said. They stood side by side in the peculiarly intense silence of a snow-smothered landscape. ‘This is something you need to know before you see Julia. What Miles is going to do is to die.'