The Hardie Inheritance (44 page)

‘I'm not really a country girl,' she said to Rupert as she had to Grace. ‘That feeling of Mother Nature waiting to smother you if you take your mind off her for a second! And I wouldn't ever want to be
possessed
by a house, like Grace at Greystones and you at Castlemere. I mean, what you merely buy, you can sell.' A house inherited would carry the burden of being a house which must be cherished and eventually bequeathed. Poor Rupert was caught in exactly that honey trap. ‘How's Castlemere?' she asked.

‘Sinking oh so beautifully under the weight of debts and tax and deathwatch beetle and dangerous wiring and inadequate heating.'

‘Isn't there any sort of grant you can winkle out of the government?'

‘Oh yes. A very generous one, I don't think. If we spend money on repairs we can put in a Capital Expenditure Tax
claim against our Schedule A assessment. The catch is that we have to find the money before we can spend it, and we don't get it back in cash, only in tax relief on our income over the next ten years. This government simply doesn't care what happens to a house like ours. They don't see it as part of the national heritage. To them it's a symbol of privilege. They close their eyes to the fact that for hundreds of years it's been the centre of a community, giving employment, encouraging craftsmanship. If we go down, a lot of smaller people will go down with us.'

‘This government can't last long,' said Trish. The general election earlier in the year had returned Labour with only a slender majority.

‘Our lot may not be much better. We can't lay ourselves open to the charge of looking after the most privileged of our own kind first. So I've finally decided to surrender to what I've been fighting for years. We're going commercial.'

‘You mean, opening Castlemere to the public?'

‘That's one option, but not one that's as simple as it sounds. It would need a huge investment to put the house in order and make the contents secure before we could take a penny in admission charges. I've only just, this week, decided to do
something
. I haven't yet decided what. Any other ideas?'

Trish came to the end of her prepared section of wall, sat back on her heels and wiped her hands on her apron.

‘There's nothing I like better than making suggestions for other people to do something about.' She was silent for a few moments, thinking. ‘You might not need to open the house regularly or to the public generally. You could hire it out for special occasions. And capitalize on the fact that Castlemere looks so French. Get dress designers to have fashion shows there. Find out if anyone's making a film set in France, and suggest that you could provide a more convenient location. Encourage people to run courses there in speaking French or appreciating art or antique furniture. Let it out for wedding receptions or grand balls or chamber concerts. You could have
performances of plays or operas which were written for the French court. Choose the plays which are being set for exams, and schools would bring their sixth forms along. I had to do Moliére's
L'Avare
for Higher, and never had a chance to see what it looked like acted.'

‘My, my!' Rupert patted her hand appreciatively. ‘Julia's reaction, whenever I raise the subject, is along the lines of “over my dead body”. But you come up with more suggestions in the first two minutes than – you wouldn't like a new job, I suppose? Castlemere promotions manager?'

‘Sorry. Not my line at all. Organizational ability nil. Chucking ideas around is one thing. Doing the donkey work is quite another.'

‘Don't run yourself down. You're a marvellous girl.' He paused as though struggling to hold back words which in the end proved too strong to restrain. ‘I should never have let you go.' The intensity in his voice, which until then had remained light and teasing, startled Trish, and so did the tightening of his grip on her hand. She was tempted to comment that he had never exactly had her, but was allowed no time to interrupt. ‘I should have realized that I needed someone like you to stop me getting stuck in a rut. Is it too late, Trish? For you and me?'

It would have been easy to reply at once, but more than just the wish not to be unkind made her pause. Once upon a time those words would have made her heart turn over. Now they only made her sad – sad for Rupert.

‘Yes, it's too late,' she said at last. ‘You've got Julia and I've got Terry.'

‘I'm not sure that I have got Julia. Not for much longer, anyway. And you – you're not married to Terry.'

‘Good as.'

‘It can't be the same, otherwise you
would
marry him.'

‘What's the point of someone like me getting married? If I had any sort of tribal instinct, yes, then I would, because babies deserve to have two parents. But I haven't, and that's that.'

‘Don't you ever want to have children?'

‘Everything I've ever created I've sold, given away or thrown away. I couldn't do that with a baby. And I don't want to get involved in the inheritance game. Acquiring, passing on.' She looked Rupert steadily in the eyes. ‘I suppose you could say that I'm living as a loose woman, but really I'm very strait-laced about marriage – other people's marriages. Your babies certainly deserve to have two parents, Rupert.' In the five years since their marriage Julia had given birth to three baby girls. No male heir – was that the reason his marriage was breaking up?

In the silence which followed, Rupert was the first to drop his eyes. His face showed his disappointment. Trish searched for something to say that would be light and casual, a definite but friendly change of subject.

‘Tell you something I
could
do if you go commercial. Stock you up with souvenirs. So that everyone who visited Castlemere could buy something to take home. Did you see my Domes at the Festival of Britain?'

It took Rupert a moment to withdraw his hand. Then he shook his head. ‘I went to the exhibition of course, but I don't remember –'

‘Well, they were for children mostly. Big sheets of cardboard, printed in colour. You cut the shape out and glued it in place and found yourself with a miniature Dome of Discovery. There were little windows to look through, with something different to be seen through each one. And as well as that I made a Festival stencil and printed it on the backs of children's blouses and shirts. People like to have some kind of memento of a visit, and if it's useful, all the better. So whatever you decide to do at Castlemere, you ought to have a shop.'

‘Terry's still running The Shed, I gather?' Rupert stood up and moved away, pretending to study the painted wall from a distance.

‘Yes. He's worked out a theory of shopping. Based on how fed-up people are with having to queue for everything they want and then being bossed around by rude shop assistants. I
don't suppose you ever go shopping for food yourself, but it's awful If I go to our local grocer and want to buy butter, bacon, and cornflakes, I have to queue at three different counters. So as soon as food rationing ends, he's going to develop the system that he already uses for clothes and household things. Fill the shelves and let the customers help themselves instead of asking for each item individually and waiting while it's fetched.'

‘People like service,' said Rupert doubtfully.

‘Maybe they do in villages, where they know the shopkeeper and are glad of a chat. But in the towns, they just want to make their own choices and buy things as quickly as possible. Well, we shall find out one day whether you're right, or Terry. No point in starting until there's enough to sell. But we have a lot of fun working out the best way to organize it. I draw designs and Terry scouts around looking for sites with lots of houses around and no decent shops.'

‘Yes, I can see you're having fun. I only wish I were. Well, Trish, I didn't really come here intending to say any of this. I wanted to ask you whether you'd seen Grace lately?'

‘Not for …' Trish had to stop and think. As a rule she reckoned to visit Greystones every five or six weeks, but the Festival had been such a commitment that the present gap must have stretched for longer than that. But they had kept in touch by telephone. ‘We've talked, but I can't have seen her since Easter, I suppose. Six months; heavens! Why do you ask?'

‘She invited us all over to tea on Sunday. Pretending she wanted to see the girls. But I know she hasn't any real interest in small children. It was all a bit mysterious. I had the feeling that it was money she wanted to talk about.'

‘She's not short, is she?'

‘No, it seems to be the other way round. She wanted to find out how things stood with me, and whether she could help. But the thing is, Trish, she's ill.'

‘How? Did she say?'

‘Not a word. She didn't have to. You've only got to look at
her face. I know she's always been pale, but now she's gone grey. Not just her hair: her skin as well. And she was terribly tired. She admitted it, which isn't like her. It was the oppressive weather, she said. I think she's stopped working.'

‘She can't have!' Grace not working was Grace not living. Trish froze as the implication struck home. ‘I'll go down tomorrow,' she said.

At first sight there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. The door of Greystones was never locked during the day. Letting herself in, Trish went first, as usual, to the studio and – as usual – found Grace working there. Rupert had been wrong about that, then. She was sitting down; that was the only difference.

‘It's me,' Trish announced. ‘With apologies for long absence. I've come to see how you're getting on with the skull. But –' she moved nearer – ‘you don't seem to be getting on with it at all. It's positively dusty. Tut!'

‘Abandoned.' Grace did not turn round at once. ‘Just a moment, Trish dear, while I get this right. The skull, I fear, will never be finished. I seem to have developed a phobia about knives. Can't bear to cut into wood or stone in case it screams at me. Nothing could be more inconvenient for a sculptor. Luckily, there's clay. There, that's done.' She turned slowly on her swivel chair and smiled. ‘Glad to see you, Trish.'

Round her dark eyes were black circles of tiredness. All the flesh seemed to have vanished from her face, leaving the colourless skin crumpled. Her cheeks had fallen in, making the cheekbones appear gaunt and over-prominent. Her body, too, had shrunk inside the familiar overalls. Before leaving London Trish had promised herself that she would show no reaction; would pretend that all was well, however justified Rupert's warning proved to be. But now that the moment had come, she could not hold back a gasp. ‘Oh Grace, why didn't you tell me?'

‘Nothing to tell.' That was what the old Grace would have
said. But this Grace merely shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing to be done about it,' was what she said instead. ‘And I almost hoped that you wouldn't ever see me like this. It's an odd sort of pride – feeling afraid that the sight of a miserable old hag will drive out the memories of all the happy years we had together.'

‘You let Rupert see. You deliberately invited him.'

‘There's a difference. I like Rupert, but I love you.'

The old Grace would not have said that either. Hardly ever in the past had she expressed her feelings in words. Trish rushed forward to embrace her.

‘You're too thin. You're not eating properly. Mrs Barrett ought –'

‘It's not her fault. I've no appetite. And what's the point, anyway?'

‘What is it, Grace?' She asked the question although she was already sure of the answer.

‘Cancer.'

‘Where?'

‘I should think everywhere by now. In the blood, being pumped around. Rather like something dirty or sugary in the fuel tank of a car, moving through the tubes for a time until it reaches the engine and stalls it. You're not to be upset, Trish. I'm on terms with it.'

‘I'm coming back to live here. You can't stay here alone.'

‘Two answers to that. The first one is that I like being alone. Always have; you know that. Living or dying, no difference. The second is that in fact I'm not alone because I have Mercy.'

‘What do you mean, you have mercy?'

‘My nurse. A marvellous name for a young woman, isn't it? Dr Murray found her for me, when I refused to go into hospital. Her main job is to push pills or stick needles into me at all hours of the day or night. To keep the pain away. Sometimes I make her stop, when I want to be sure of being clear-headed, but it's nice to know that she can always start again. She keeps me comfortable and bullies me into eating. And in her spare
time –' Grace's mouth widened slowly into a skeletal grin – ‘in her spare time she models for me.'

‘I didn't think you ever used models.'

‘Never have before. Started for her sake, really. She simply didn't know how beautiful she was. Shouldn't think she'd ever looked at her own body. Religious family, very strict.'

‘I'm surprised she agreed to model, then.'

‘Under instructions from the doctor to do anything to make me happy. But there are limits. I let her keep her knickers on. Look behind the screen.'

Trish moved the screen and pulled off the damp sheet which covered a clay model. Half life-size, the nude figure stood on tiptoe, her body strained backwards in a curve, with her hands, above her head, pointing down towards her heels. The design resembled one of Grace's abstract shapes, but there was nothing abstract about the tight round buttocks which were balanced by the firm round breasts.

‘That's marvellous!' she exclaimed sincerely. The tension of the piece was breathtaking. ‘But it must have been a painful pose. So stretched.'

‘I've exaggerated it, of course. Odd how the beauty of the human body never occurred to me before. Female body, not male. This is supposed to be unfinished. Very important, the doctor says, for someone who's dying to have something which must be completed before she goes. Apparently it's the best way to keep alive. So I go on fiddling with this. Paring it down and smoothing it again. My Mercy gets thinner every week. But really she's finished. Ready for the foundry.'