The Hardie Inheritance (4 page)

‘I appreciate your candour, Miss Hardie. But an architectural photograph is quite a different matter from the sort of photograph illustrating interior design. It might even be an advantage to me if the rooms are empty.'

‘They're not empty. Just – well, neglected.'

‘Would you let me take a look?' he asked. ‘I could promise complete confidentiality.'

She continued to hesitate. ‘It's not that we're ashamed of the way we live,' she explained. ‘But I do recognize that the house deserves to be better treated. I feel I'm letting it down. Letting your father down, as well. This can't be how he expected his creation to look.' She began to walk forward again, her head bowed in thought. ‘The funny thing is that it's because I couldn't bear to part with the house that we're so short of money. In my father's lifetime, the property was financed by the family wine business. The House of Hardie; you may have heard of it.'

Ellis nodded. His modest home in London did not require the services of a firm which specialized in filling the cellars of gentlemen of good taste and deep purses, but he had read his
father's notes on the family for which Greystones was to be designed. He even knew the names of all the Hardie children who had been born before 1900, and the fact that two of them, David and Kenneth, were twins and would choose to share a large bedroom rather than to sleep separately. From studying those same notes he was even aware that the strong, healthy woman who had just raced him up the hill had once been a sickly child whose chronic ill-health was thought to be caused by Oxford's marshy setting. It was for her sake that the house had been built on a hill and for her sake, as well, that the tower had been designed to give her an airy bedroom. But none of this had anything to do with her present lack of money. He listened with interest to her explanation.

‘Well, you see, after the war one of my brothers wanted to use Greystones as security for a large loan to set the business on its feet again. Neither of us realized to begin with that the house belonged to me personally. But when I did find out, I refused to let it be put at risk. I'm very fond of Greystones, and I was afraid that if anything went wrong I might lose it. It made my brother very angry. He cut off our income just like that, as a sort of revenge. So I've held on to the house, but it does worry me that I'm not keeping it up properly.'

‘There's some damp on the roof,' said Ellis, who had noticed the tell-tale signs from the higher viewpoint.

‘I know. It's all a bit of a worry. There's enough land to sustain the three of us in a way that suits us, although it might seem odd to other people. But it doesn't enable us to build up the sort of fund that's needed for repairs. Still, to answer your question, there's no reason, since I've admitted all that, why I should prevent you from seeing the consequences for yourself. Yes, you can look round inside. We'll pick your daughter up first, shall we?'

They found Trish sitting on the cobbles of the stable yard, staring at her handiwork.

‘That's a fine animal to be sure,' said Ellis, not risking any more specific identification.

‘It's a cat,' Trish told him.

‘It's good.' Grace picked up the clay figure and stroked it under the chin before giving it back. ‘Would you like to take it home with you? Or if you leave it here I could put it in the oven next time I fire my own things, and then it won't crumble away.'

‘I don't want to keep it.' Trish squashed the cat between her two hands and rolled the clay back into a sausage.

The two adults stared at her in surprise.

‘I can make another one,' she told them. ‘The next one will be better. It's more fun making things than having them.'

‘But it's more fun making something that's going to last than making something which is going to be thrown away,' suggested Grace.

Trish shook her head in disagreement, ‘if you're going to keep it, you've got to get it right. But if you know it's going to be thrown away it doesn't matter if the ears are too big.' Already she had begun to model another cat, while Ellis laughed.

‘I can see we have a basic difference of philosophy here,' he said. ‘Trish, Miss Hardie is very kindly going to let me look inside the house. Would you like to come?'

‘Yes, please.' Trish scrambled to her feet and the three made their way out of the stable yard and into the larger courtyard enclosed by the wings of the main house. Grace opened a door into the back hall and led the way along a corridor and into the drawing room. She drew back the curtains from one of the five windows which reached very nearly from floor to ceiling.

‘My mother comes in here to play the piano, that's all,' she said, and waited in silence while Ellis looked around. Except for the grand piano, which had a cared-for and well-polished look, everything in the room was covered with dust sheets. Even the carpet was hidden under a drugget. But the plaster-work of the ceiling and cornices was in good condition and the wall coverings, although faded, were not tattered: they would not show their age in a black and white photograph.

Without making any comment he moved on through the library and billiards room: Grace pulled open one pair of curtains in each, but the rooms remained only dimly lit. So the contrast was great when, after returning to the corridor, he was shown into the high-ceilinged studio.

They had turned two corners as they walked, so that it was a clear north light which reflected off the white walls from a skylight. And this was clearly a room in constant use. At one end was a wide work bench, with shelves on the wall behind it and a row of oil lamps hanging above. A potter's wheel with a foot tread stood near to the bench, and another free-standing table in the middle of the room was fitted with a clamp which would hold a piece of wood steady while a carver moved around it. There was a brazier in the middle of the floor as well, suggesting that his hostess did not allow winter's cold to interrupt her work.

With a cry of pleasure and interest, Trish ran towards the far end of the room.

‘You're not to touch anything,' Ellis called after her. ‘Not anything at all.'

‘Trush Trist.' The phrase seemed set to become one of her long-running jokes. Ellis, although keeping an eye on her, turned towards Grace.

‘This – the state of the other rooms, I mean – is simply the way houses used to be left when a family moved off on holiday in the old days,' he said. ‘If you would trust me to deal with it, I would be very happy to uncover them, take my photographs, and put everything back exactly as I found it.'

He looked steadily into her eyes. Two hours ago they had been strangers, and yet there was a feeling of sympathy between them. It had something to do with honesty. Grace Hardie was a straightforward person. But there must be something more than that to make him hope so strongly that she would agree to let him return and do his work at leisure.

It didn't very often happen that Ellis liked a woman at first sight and felt a wish to make her a friend. Some women
frightened him; others he scorned. This one, whom most men might have dismissed as eccentric, was curiously to his taste. Perhaps it was because with her cropped hair and her boiler suit she looked and behaved more like a man than a woman. And yet there was nothing unfeminine about the smile she gave him as she made up her mind.

‘All right,' she said. ‘When do you want to come?'

‘I could do a little preparation today and come back tomorrow. Not because I want to hustle you, but to be sure that you really do leave all the uncovering to me, and don't start rushing around yourself. And I have got all my equipment in Oxford with me, though I didn't want to startle you by turning up on your doorstep with a full load.'

‘How long will you need?'

‘I shall need a whole day of good weather to do the outside, so that I can move round with the sun. And a second day for the interiors.'

‘Would you like to stay here for a couple of nights, then, with Trish? Not tonight, but after you return. If your wife can spare you.'

Ellis glanced towards the far end of the studio and saw that Trish was still there, out of earshot.

‘My wife – well, we're divorced – lives in Ireland. I haven't seen her for four years,' he said and then paused, amazed by an unexpected wish to confess to something he never normally talked about. It must have been Grace's own candour about her poverty which made him wish to offer a confidence in return. ‘We only married in order that the child should be legitimate. It was a mistake even before the wedding day.'

Even to someone whom he would like as a friend he was not prepared to give further details of the seduction – very nearly the rape – in which he had been the victim and not the aggressor. He had been mistrustful of women even before that appalling night, and ever since had felt nothing but disgust at the thought of their sexual avarice, their hot, fat, damp bodies, their possessive attempts to control the time and the actions
and even the thoughts of any man who fell into their power. Grace Hardie seemed to have little in common with Moira Murray, who had been so determined to become Moira Faraday; but she was a female and would take the female side of the argument if she were to be told the details.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I didn't mean to pry. I only thought – well, if you're free to do so, please do stay. All these bedrooms, and nobody except my youngest brother ever comes. All we need is a little time to see that they're aired.'

‘You're very kind. We shall be delighted. And now we've kept you from your work long enough. Trish! Come along, my darling. We're off now.'

‘There's one more thing,' Grace said as they made their way outside. ‘I don't know if it showed on the plans you've seen. But as part of the landscaping of the site your father designed a lodge cottage to provide a vista. I'll walk down and show you. I mean, it's a perfectly ordinary gardener's cottage inside, but there's a false wall on the north side, so that when you look from the house you'd think there was a kind of monument there. More like a temple than a lodge. You wouldn't have noticed it coming in from the road.'

How curious it was, thought Ellis as they once more took the short cuts between the curves of the drive, that a woman should be so completely lacking in self-consciousness. If she had felt the slightest awareness that she was oddly dressed in her overalls and rabbit-skin moccasins, she would have become ridiculous at once. It was because she was wholly at ease as her long legs strode down the path that her appearance seemed unsurprising. He had interrupted a workman – or rather, a workwoman – at a task for which she was appropriately dressed. No doubt she could dress the part of mistress of a grand mansion if she chose. It would be interesting to discover whether in fact she
did
choose to do so when he returned by invitation instead of appearing without warning. He rather suspected that she would not.

But even as these thoughts passed through his mind he
became aware of a change in his companion's attitude. Unexpectedly she
had
become self-conscious. Had she become aware of his appraisal, or had something else changed?

They were close to the lodge by now. Ellis could already see how its north wall had been designed to give a distant impression of pillars. He could also see that someone, a man, was sitting in the tiny garden with his head buried in his hands.

In that position, all that could be judged of him was that he had curly red hair. But as he heard footsteps approaching he first of all lifted his head and then raised himself slowly to his feet. He was a strongly-built man in his late thirties, with a freckled, worried face. He wore a suit so dark as to be almost black, but very much lighter in weight than was usually to be seen in England, even at the height of summer, so that he gave the impression of being foreign but at the same time at home.

‘Hello, Andy,' said Grace.

Ellis glanced at her in surprise. In speaking those two words not only her voice but her personality had for some reason changed. For the past two hours, as they talked, Grace Hardie, the mistress of Greystones, had been confident and happy. Now, for some reason, she was uncertain of herself, and embarrassed. The man, Andy, was embarrassed as well, if the flush on his face was a true sign. Yet as Ellis, although holding himself and Trish back out of the way, listened to their conversation, it appeared only that Andy had been sent for by his mother and that his father's condition had been described as very serious by the doctor who had called an hour earlier. There was nothing, surely, that either party to the conversation needed to blush for in that.

There was something between them, though – some exchange of emotion which could not be explained simply by a surprise meeting or a dying father. Earlier in the day Ellis had been affected by Grace's aura of straightforward friendliness and felt with pleasure that an immediate sympathy had been established between them. But the link between these two was
clearly of a different nature. Could it be that Grace Hardie was not quite as unfeminine as she had appeared at first sight?

Well, that was none of his business. Ellis apologetically interrupted the conversation for just long enough to say goodbye, thank Grace for her co-operation and confirm the arrangement they had made for his return. Then, taking Trish's hand, he went past the lodge and turned down the lane. But he could not resist glancing into the garden as he passed it from the other side.

They were no longer talking. At any moment the woman would extend her hand, to rest it on the back of the bench, and the man would touch it with his own. Yes, there was definitely something between them. There was a gossipy side to Ellis's nature which made him curious about other people's relationships and eager to hear or to make up explanations. He wondered if he would ever learn the truth about this one.