The Quiet Heart (2 page)

CHAPTER II

IT was a day in late November, and as Leydon Hall had been built in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and successive owners had either not possessed the wherewithal to stand up to the excessive cost, or had disliked the thought of installing some form of central heating, the atmosphere was distinctly chilly as they set forth along the ground floor corridors to explore the house.

Alison’s small suite of apartments was contained in what was known as the south tower, and there at least the temperature was equable. There was always plenty of wood to be found about the estate, and she had permission from the estate office to help herself, and was thankful because she was always able to maintain good fires. But in the main part of the house, despite enormous fireplaces, one generous wood fire would have made little difference.

She noticed, as she trod submissively behind him, that Mr. Leydon turned his coat collar up about his ears as he strode forward. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors of the corridors, and when they reached the great hall the echo was like the clattering of many pairs of iron-shod hooves.
Leydon looked up at the gallery, and the portraits of his many ancestors that lined the walls. There were gentlemen in curled perrukes and elegant eighteenth-century gentlemen, as well as a beauty-chorus of females. One or two of the latter were tight-lipped, and the jewels that smothered their throats and partially concealed their exposed bosoms had the same wicked brightness as their watchful glances.

With one or two exceptions the men were all dark, but most of the women were fair, with generous curves and rose-leaf complexions that had survived despite the alterations in pigmentation throughout the slow passing of centuries.

The hall was magnificently panelled, and the staircase uncurled like a fan until it reached the gallery. It was an innovation put in by a Regency Leydon, who was also responsible for the enormous window divided by stone transoms that lighted one end of the hall. Through it the bleak sunshine of a November day filtered, and lay in primrose patches on the floor.

Alison saw Leydon glance at the fireplace, a mammoth affair that needed half a tree to keep it going once it was alight, and apologised faintly for neglecting to do anything about a fire.

“I know it would have looked cheerful,” she admitted, “but I didn’t think you would be spending much time in the hall.”

Leydon said nothing, and Mr. Minty glanced at her sympathetically. In the wake of the new owner they swept into the dining-room, the drawing-room, the library, the small drawing room, the Oak Parlour or breakfast room, the late owner’s den where he kept his fishing-rods, guns and an extraordinary collection of un-nameable objects, and then—although she hadn’t really believed he would want to see them—they proceeded to the kitchens. Not one kitchen, but half a dozen, apart from sculleries, butlers’ pantries, housemaids’ closets, cold-storage larders, etc.

Mr. Minty made a feeble joke about trying to find the staff to work in them as they filed through, but Alison, who was watching for Leydon’s reaction, thought he barely seemed to hear. Certainly he made no comment himself, and his expression struck her as curious.

There was neither interest, gratification, surprise, pleasure, or indeed displeasure ... and the only thing that happened to him was that his lips seemed to grow a little more thin, and his eyes more remarkably colourless.

By the time they had explored the entire ground floor of the house, including outbuildings, stable yard, etc., Alison was beginning to wish she had wrapped herself in a warm coat. She was wearing only her slim navy-blue dress with the little white collar, and her appearance was gradually becoming pinched. But still there were numberless bedrooms to be visited, and she steeled herself for the ordeal.

Behind her, in her little sitting-room, the girls would be drinking hot coffee and devouring ginger biscuits, but she had to remember that the lease of their flat was granted to them in exchange for her services, and the new Sir Charles Leydon looked as if he would demand value right down to the uttermost farthing, and he hadn’t even noticed that she was without a coat.

They climbed to the roof. There were steep staircases leading upwards through attics, and they emerged amongst a forest of chimney-pots and one solitary television aerial to view the surrounding countryside from that altitude.

For the first time Leydon’s expression altered. It would be untrue to say that it softened, but it altered. The tension of his mouth relaxed, a suspicion of brightness invaded his eyes. He leaned over a dangerously low parapet and looked out across the leafless trees of what, in summer, would be a truly magnificent park.

Serried row after serried row they grew ... beech, oak, ash, elm. The elms contained colonies of rooks, the straight trunks of the beeches rose like the pillars of a cathedral to the washed-out blue of the sky. Beyond the extensive parkland, where a species of deer still grazed, the purple heights of the moors could be seen, and beyond the moors was the sea.

Nearer at hand, almost immediately below them, in fact, were the gardens of the Hall. In summer they were a blaze of colour, and carloads of tourists arrived to be shown over them. Twice a week, in August and September, they paid half-crowns to wander at will amongst the glory of the roses, to admire the ornamental shrubs, the magnificence of the herbaceous borders, the sunken Italian garden, the parterre, the lake with its little island floating in the middle of it, the seemingly endless shrubberies.

They chattered over the peach houses, the vines, the blue-black grapes, the acres of glass that protected rare plants and forced along horticultural prizes. They lost themselves in green alleys and yew-bordered secret places where the emerald turf was like velvet, and arbours smothered in white roses and jasmine waited at the end of the walk. And afterwards they bought postcards in the great hall where Alison showed them cases of medals and her stepdaughters served them tea on the terrace—if they wanted it.

But that was in the summer, when the air was at least clement even if the sun didn’t always shine. But now it was drear November and the winter solstice was approaching, and the very thought of having tea on the terrace caused one to shiver ... as Alison was beginning to shiver uncontrollably while the man who was viewing his property for the first time actually discovered something to comment upon in the view that was spread out before his eyes.

“Now that,” he exclaimed, eyes continuing to kindle, “is something!” He flung out a hand. “The best of England ... the England everyone wants to see! But even that will vanish before long.”

Mr. Minty ventured to protest.

“Surely not,” he said, as if he was genuinely shocked.

Leydon turned from the view and regarded him disdainfully.

“Have you any idea of the pace of progress nowadays?” he enquired. “It no longer crawls, as if the world can wait and people starve while the few with the right to make changes endeavour to bring their minds to the task. The world nowadays is changing its very shape because the people insist on it and progress is proceeding at an alarming rate.”

Alison and the solicitor exchanged glances. They were both labouring under the delusion that Charles Leydon was an immensely rich man. Even before he inherited Leydon Hall and its various sources of income he had made a lot of money of his own as a highly successful architect. In London there were several edifices in the strictly modern idiom that reared their heads as a fairly lasting memorial to him, and he had created at least one cathedral and any number of blocks of flats, offices and shopping districts.

As Charles Leydon he was well known, and he was also known to have advanced ideas ... But to talk of England’s green and pleasant land disappearing beneath a sea of bricks and mortar and concrete because the people wished for it was a statement that Alison at least found it difficult to accept when the man who made it had just inherited a very large slice of one of the most delectable corners of England. Having spent the last five years of her life amongst Yorkshire farmers she did not think they would be happy to see their land go for other purposes because the shape of the world was changing.

Whatever Charles Leydon might know about the subject, in that part of Yorkshire it was changing very slowly.

Striving to prevent her teeth from chattering while she hugged herself with her slim arms against the cold, she heard herself say in a tone of some surprise:

“But I don’t think Leydon Hall will alter very much in the next few years. People love coming here to see it too much to wish to see it changed.”

Her new landlord regarded her with open contempt.

“My dear Mrs. Fairlie,” he said, contempt quivering in his voice, “don’t you know that ‘people,’ in the mass, have little idea of what is good for them? If I decided to pull this place down and replace it with a township it would be more to their advantage than coming here to gape at an archaic survival that at the moment is doing literally no good to anyone.”

She gaped at him.

“But you’d have to have permission to do that. Planning permission!”

“I know. I have no intention of asking for it.”

“Then why ...?”

He glanced at the forest of chimney-pots. “It’s an idea,” he remarked, helping himself to a cigarette. “Just an idea.”

She bit her lip.

“Last summer,” she told him, “several hundred people came here and really enjoyed themselves, wandering in the grounds. Many of them came from towns where they can only read about places like this. The money that we took in entrance fees went to a very worthwhile charity in which the late Sir Francis was particularly interested. We don’t have a large staff here at Leydon now, but we do have gardeners and under-gardeners, who would lose their jobs if you decided to pull Leydon down.”

She thought that his eyes mocked her.

“And I don’t suppose you’d like it very much, either, would you, Mrs. Fairlie?” he said, as if he was reasonably certain she was thinking of herself when she mentioned gardeners and under-gardeners. “You’ve probably found it very pleasant living and working here, and it might not be entirely simple running something similar to earth if a situation arose that rendered you temporarily jobless and homeless. For I’ve no doubt you’d find something to suit your taste in time.”

Alison, who had been dreading this day for weeks, and had been very much afraid that once it had come and gone her threadbare security would have been seriously threatened, felt as if the whole inside of her mouth and throat dried up. She felt as if already the worst had happened to her... and for one moment she was inclined to panic.

Then she told herself, sternly, not to be ridiculous, because these things happened. They had happened to her before, and the world had steadied. The shock had evaporated, things had worked out, a miracle had occurred ... and she and the girls had survived. Poor Roger had died, but even he had lived long enough to know that his family had found some sort of a niche. It had been a tremendous relief to him.

But now, apparently, they were once again in danger of losing that niche ... depending upon the whim of a man who could afford to indulge his whims, and judging by the quiet look of satisfaction on his face as he stood opposite her and surveyed her very frequently did. She stammered:

“I wasn’t thinking of myself.”

“Weren’t you?” The flicker of contempt was back in his eyes again, and it affected her with a sensation of being powerless. He cast his half smoked cigarette off the roof-top, turned the collar of his coat up higher about his ears, apparently became aware for the first time of the stinging wind, and suggested that it might be a good idea to go below again. “It’s not particularly clement up here,” he observed.

“It certainly isn’t.” Mr. Minty’s voice was sharp and displeased, and it was rather bold of him as this was one of his most valuable clients. “Poor Mrs. Fairlie looks as if she’s chilled to the bone, and we really ought to have insisted that she fetched a coat.” He actually sounded so concerned that she was afraid he was going to offer her his own coat. “We can’t have you catching pneumonia, Mrs. Fairlie,” attempting a joke that misfired.

Alison reassured him at once.

“Oh, I’m very tough, I really am!”

But she looked so slight, and her eyes were watering so noticeably, and the tip of her nose was such a delicate shade of harebell blue, that Charles Leydon’s expression underwent yet another change, and he frowned.

“Why on earth didn’t you tell us that you were feeling the cold, Mrs. Fairlie?” he said sharply. “And it certainly would have been more sensible if you’d put on a coat.”

She attempted to defend her stupidity.

“I didn’t think ... I mean, it didn’t occur to me that you might wish to come up here—”

“Why not? I said I wished to see over the house, and even a house the size of Leydon has a roof. The roof is a very important part of a house.”

“Yes, of—of course.” She felt she was guilty whichever way you looked at it.

“We’ll go back to your rooms and you can give me that cup of coffee you offered me before. You’d better have one yourself, too ... and Minty here, of course.”

“I think Mrs. Fairlie had better have a glass of hot whisky and lemon,” the solicitor stated it as his opinion, a trifle peevishly. “It will be better than coffee.” He could have added, “And I think I’d better have one, too!”

And then he sneezed violently, several times. The cosy, panelled room which Alison called her sitting-room was empty when they returned to it, and someone had removed the coffee-tray and made up the fire. She suspected Mrs. Davenport, who was hovering in the corridor when they made their appearance, waiting for the small remuneration which she received every Friday. Alison had forgotten that to-day was Friday, but she also knew Mrs. Davenport was an obliging soul.