Country Plot Read online

  ‘True. So how did Ma know this cousin wanted help?’

  ‘It was Michael suggested it. He’d heard from a friend of a friend that Mrs Everest was thinking of selling some of the contents of Holtby House and needed someone to help with the inventory and so on. I rang Ma and put the fear of God into her. Ma rang Mrs E, Mrs E rang Michael, Michael rang me, I rang Ma again, Ma rang Mrs E again, and now all we’ve got to do is to confirm you’re going, and when you’ll arrive. It was as simple as that.’

  ‘Wait, wait. You’re going too fast. I need to think about it,’ Jenna protested.

  ‘What’s to think about?’ Oliver said. ‘Look, it’s live in, lovely house, gorgeous countryside, a little light clerical work and bags of time off to wander about the lanes and so on. You’ll get your keep, plus pocket money, fifty a week, cash. OK, it’s not a fortune, but frankly, there’ll be nothing to spend it on so you can stick it straight in the bank. And Michael’s got her to agree to a minimum of one month. So if you find there isn’t much of a job there, you can spin it out and enjoy yourself. And if it turns out that she needs someone permanent, Michael says he’d be glad if you’d help her recruit your successor, because he doesn’t want the old girl to get ripped off, or end up with some complete bastard living in her house.’

  ‘He likes her, then?’ Sybil said. ‘He wouldn’t be worried if he didn’t think she was nice.’

  ‘He says she’s quite a character. He thinks Jenna would get on well with her. Come on now, Jen, what do you say? Isn’t it the perfect solution? A real holiday in the country, with a little light work to keep you from getting bored.’

  ‘And as long as no one tells me where Holtby is,’ Sybil added happily, ‘I’ll be able to tell Patrick I’ve no idea where you are.’

  Patrick! Jenna had forgotten about him for a blissful moment. Memories came crowding back in. She needed to get away. It was too easy to think about him here in London.

  ‘In any case, even if you don’t like it, it’s only a month,’ Oliver said. ‘You can put up with that. But you’ll probably have a whale of a time.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Jenna said. ‘Thanks, Oliver. Where is this place, anyway?’

  ‘La la la,’ Sybil said loudly, putting her hands over her ears. ‘I can’t hear you. I’m going to put the children to bed. Wait till I’ve gone to tell her.’

  Jenna had mixed feelings about the countryside. When she was little, before her father died, they had had a country cottage for weekends and holidays in the depths of rural Buckinghamshire. She remembered wet weekends, when the cottage had a strange, mushroomy smell about it, and the bed sheets felt sticky with damp. The rain teemed down endlessly from a sky like the underside of a submarine – grey, dark and featureless. It dripped monotonously from gutters and branches and the eyelashes of morose cows in sodden fields. There was nothing to do, the sulky wood fire did little to mitigate the clammy cold, and even the cardboard of the indoor games went soft. Enforced walks were torture, for the mud stuck to your wellies in great joke clumps, weighing down your baby legs until you could hardly get along. You couldn’t even sit down and throw a paddy because the grass was soaking and it was impossible to get dry again.

  She remembered weekends for the tedium of packing to go down there – everyone had to help – and being crammed together in the car with bags of this and cardboard boxes of that, the biscuit tin never within reach, and the handle of Pa’s precious frying-pan, swathed in newspaper, sticking into your back. And then there was the doom-filled moment on Sunday afternoon when Pa announced it was time to pack to come home, and you knew the weekend was over and it was school tomorrow.

  But then there were the summer holidays, when cloudless days seem to stretch into a golden eternity, week upon glorious week. The meadow grass was waist high, patched with vivid wild flowers – poppies, moon daisies and cornflowers, scarlet, white, gold and blue – and the thick trees spread delicious cold shade under their skirts. Your hot skin smelled like biscuits, and you ran about barefoot in nothing but shorts and T-shirt day after day. There were ponies for riding and dogs for taking for walks. There was swimming in the cold-smelling river, and fishing for sticklebacks, standing calf deep in the little stream at the end of the field.

  There was the church fête, with skittles and guess-the-weight-of-the-cake and a game where you rolled wooden balls down a slope into numbered holes, and stalls selling home-made sweets. The vicar who smelled of mothballs came round selling raffle tickets and Ma got into an argument with him, saying raffles were the same as gambling and therefore not Christian, and hurt his feelings. There was the village sports day, with egg-and-spoon and sack race and heart-bursting running, barefoot over the baked ground, with the smell of bruised grass and the delicious, maddening whiff of hot diesel from the fairground just warming up for later. And most of all there was the heavenly do-nothing of childhood summer afternoons, when the stunned heat lay over the land and you were content to lie on your back on the grass and chew a stem of rye, stare up at the deep, deep, endless blue and wait for teatime.

  The strange thing was that in her memory both states, wet and dry, seemed to have been continuous, which was clearly impossible. The other permanency, of course, had been the presence of Pa, tall, balding, delicious smelling, his big hands always ready to whisk you up into the air and dangle you, shrieking with pleasure because you knew he wouldn’t let you fall; telling you fascinating things about insects and plants; showing you how to do an archaeological dig in the compost heap; standing at the stove in the dark little kitchen, experimenting. He loved to cook, and at the cottage was his only opportunity. One year he had collected a whole basket of fungi in the woods and fields and fried them in butter, and no one would eat them, because Ma said he didn’t know a mushroom from a toadstool and would poison them all. He had eaten them himself, and Jenna had been racked with torment because he looked so hurt and disappointed. Even now, years and years later, she wanted to go back and eat his ‘fungus feast’ with him and make it all right at last. When you were little you thought your parents would last for ever, like the sunny days; and when they were gone you remembered most of all the times you had missed a chance to make them happy.

  She was old enough now to know that a month in the country would not be either perfectly wonderful or perfectly horrible, and that was good enough for her. She was looking forward to it, and her first sight of the village of Holtby was encouraging. It seemed prosperous: near enough to the motorway to attract the well off, and far enough away not to hear it. It looked very pretty, with stone-built houses along the main street, a few interesting-looking shops, a snippet of village green with a row of handsome chestnuts and a stone horse-trough. She wound down her window and drove slowly, enjoying the afternoon air and the way the sunlight poured gold-green through the chestnut leaves. The horse-trough seemed to be full of water, which was unusual these days, and suggested a horsey local community. There was a handsome church and a nice-looking pub opposite it, The Crown and Cushion, with colourful hanging baskets and a sign saying ‘Home Cooked Food’ and ‘Garden at Rear’.

  The only problem was that she missed the turning for Holtby House on the first pass. Mrs Everest had sent her instructions but she somehow didn’t see it and found herself trundling out of the village at the other end into open countryside, and had to look for a farm gate to turn round in. She spotted it on the second pass – a narrow lane just past the post office that hardly looked like a real road – but too late to turn into it, so she had to loop round the village green and make a third run. After that it was quite straightforward and in moments she was pulling into a stable yard through big stone gateposts which bore small notices, one of which said HOLTBY HOUSE and the other DELIVERIES ONLY. The coach houses had evidently been turned into garages at some point in the past, but the stables looked intact – though sadly empty – and one side of the square was a small stone cottage, behind which rose the blank wall of the main house, to which it seemed to be attached.


  Jenna turned Florence and parked modestly at the side in front of one of the garages, and climbed out. The air was warm and still and smelled of grass, and somewhere nearby a blackbird was singing. She looked about her and felt a deep contentment stealing over her. She was glad to be here.

  A small sound made her turn, and she saw a woman coming in through a gate in the wall beside the cottage, through which she could see a glimpse of sunny garden.

  ‘There you are!’ the woman called in a glad voice, as if she had been longing for Jenna to arrive. She was small and spare, dressed in jeans and garden clogs and a T-shirt, and had a Boris Johnson-esque shock of unruly blonde hair. The overall impression was so youthful that Jenna said doubtfully, ‘Mrs Everest?’

  Only when she came close did it become apparent that the blonde hair was shot through with grey and silver and ash and the face was that of a woman of mature years. Even then it was remarkably smooth and unwrinkled, betrayed only by lines around the eyes and mouth; but she smiled with an energetic impishness, and her eyes were bright and intelligent. ‘Bless you for pronouncing it right!’ she said, putting out her hand. ‘But you must call me Kitty if we’re to live together. And I hope I can call you Jenna? What an interesting name, by the way.’

  ‘I don’t know what my mother was thinking of,’ Jenna said smilingly, shaking the lean, firm paw. ‘All the rest got perfectly plain, simple names. I think she’d run out of inspiration, or patience, or something, by the time I came along.’

  ‘Five is a lot,’ Kitty said gravely. ‘For a human, anyway. Dogs manage things much better. But Jenna’s a pretty name, and it must be nice to be different. There were six Katherines in my year at school. I’d lost touch with your mother before you were born, so you won’t remember me. Harriet was just a babe in arms, and Oliver a toddler, but I knew Michael and Rachel. But why are we standing in the yard talking? You must need a drink after your journey. Was it difficult?’

  ‘No, it was quite easy, except for missing the turning in the village.’

  Kitty put a hand to her face. ‘You know, I don’t know why I told you to come in that way. I suppose because that’s the way I always come in. You’d have found the front entrance much more easily. Never mind, you’re here now. Let’s grab your bags and take them in and dump them in the hall, and have a drink before anything else. I expect you’re gasping for a gin and tonic.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since I left the motorway,’ Jenna said.

  Kitty grinned. ‘I can see you’re a girl after my own heart! I can’t tell you how pleased I am you’re here. I know we’re going to get along famously.’

  ‘I think so too,’ Jenna said, and meant it. Anyone whose first thought for an arriving traveller was to get a gin and tonic down them was all right with her.

  Five

  They went through the gate in the wall and emerged on to a stone-flagged path that ran along the back of the house. Green spaces of lawn stretched away to a hedge and a distant vista of low, blue hills. On the left the lawn was bounded by a fringe of woodland and on the right by a stone wall, above which peeped the roofs of greenhouses. Of the house itself Jenna only gained a brief impression in that first moment: that it was oblong, built of pale grey stone, and had many windows – the tall rectangular sort, divided into small square panes, that said Georgian.

  Kitty, toting two of Jenna’s bags as if they weighed nothing, led the way through a door into a small stone-floored lobby, then turned right into a passage which led parallel to the back of the house and into what was obviously the entrance hall. There were black and white marble tiles on the floor and a graceful staircase of beautiful simplicity. Kitty put down the bags, beamed at Jenna and said, ‘Just dump everything here, and let’s have a drink before I show you your room.’

  ‘Great idea,’ Jenna said.

  Kitty led the way through a sitting room, crowded with furniture, paintings, ceramics, silver, clocks, and a number of eclectic items Jenna would have liked to stop and examine – like a painted ostrich egg in a glass case and a stuffed owl on a bracket halfway up the wall. They passed it all, however, and emerged into a large conservatory built on to the back of the house. It could not have been more of a contrast – lofty, light, airy and spacious, with Italian tiles on the floor, a few pieces of comfortable modern furniture in bamboo and Sanderson print, and a couple of gigantic parlour-palms in glazed pots. Beyond, the green lawns spread to the distant hills, and the late sunlight slanted in at the door.

  ‘Just the place for a sundowner,’ Jenna said.

  ‘Just what I always think,’ Kitty agreed, seeming pleased. ‘Now, you sit down. No, take that chair, it’s more comfortable. Gin and tonic all right?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Jenna said, sinking down and stretching out. ‘This is heaven.’

  ‘Attagirl!’ There was a glass-topped table furnished with decanters, glasses and ice bucket, and soon Kitty was making all the right clinking noises as she mixed G and Ts practically large enough to wash in.

  In from the garden wandered two black dogs, tails wagging ingratiatingly, heads low and friendly. Both were mongrels, one mostly Labrador and the other something like Rottweiler crossed with Alsatian, to judge from its bushy tail. ‘Ah, here are my boys. Are you all right with dogs? This is Watch, and that one’s Barney.’

  The dogs and the drink arrived at about the same time, and Jenna patted the former and then raised the latter in Kitty’s direction. ‘Well, cheers. It’s nice to be here.’

  ‘Down the hatch,’ Kitty said. ‘I’m thrilled to have you. It’ll be so nice to have someone intelligent to talk to.’

  ‘How do you know I’m intelligent?’

  ‘Oh my dear, you can tell from the first glance at a person’s face. So many people one meets nowadays are such cows.’

  ‘Cows?’ It seemed surprisingly condemnatory.

  ‘Awfully nice, but not much going on upstairs,’ Kitty elucidated.

  Jenna got it. ‘Well, I know what you mean. But aren’t there lots of nice people in Holtby?’

  ‘Nearly everyone’s nice, and quite a few aren’t cows. There are some ex-Londoners, moved down here in the migration of the nineties, a few commuter families, and quite a bit of county. One or two holiday homes, but we’re lucky to have a lot of local people still living here, which is the heart of a village.’

  ‘Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Me personally? About thirty years now – how time flies! – but my husband’s family has owned this house for a hundred and fifty years.’

  ‘It’s Georgian, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well spotted. About 1790, we think. The best period – not so austere as earlier Georgian, but still with the perfect proportions. By the time you get into Regency they can be somewhat blurred. I absolutely adore it,’ she said with what sounded like a sad sigh. ‘I still sometimes wake up and can’t believe I’m living here. I grew up in an ordinary, respectable Edwardian house in an ordinary respectable Edwardian suburb. My parents used to take me to look at National Trust houses on Bank Holidays, and I used to think it would be the pinnacle of posh to live in a place with a two-line address – you know, like Holtby House, Holtby.’

  Jenna said, ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘I’m sometimes afraid that was the real reason I married my poor Peter – the hope of living in this house one day. Of course, we had to wait until his father died. That’s the gruesome part of family inheritance. And we had his mother living with us for ten years after that – but she was no trouble really, in a house this size. She had her own suite on the top floor.’

  ‘How big is it?’ Jenna asked.

  ‘Three floors, nine bedrooms – four on the first floor and five on the second. It used to be eleven bedrooms, but Peter’s father put in a guest bathroom on the top floor, and then after Agnes – Peter’s mother – died, we sacrificed another on the first floor for two extra bathrooms. We did quite a lot of work then, including putting on this conservatory, which has
been a godsend. Peter took a bit of persuading that it wouldn’t spoil the look of the house, but once we had it he used it more than any other room. He loved the heat and lots of light. I think it reminded him of our years abroad – Africa and India mostly.’

  The mention of India made Jenna think of something she had been wanting to know. ‘I have to ask – I hope you don’t mind – is your name anything to do with the mountain?’

  ‘I don’t mind – everyone asks that. Yes, it’s the same family. Sir George Everest was Peter’s great-great – I don’t remember how many greats – grand-uncle. He was fiercely proud of the old man. Do you know about him?’

  ‘No, nothing at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He was a surveyor, and spent twenty-five years surveying the arc of the meridian that runs through Nepal. Tremendous work. He was knighted for it, and then the year before he died they named Peak XV, as it was known up till then, in his honour. It started out as Mont Eve-rist. How it got from that to Mount Ever-rest I’ve no idea.’

  ‘It’s a shame. I like the other better.’

  ‘So do I. More elegant. Never mind. Now when people see my name written down they think I’m from the double-glazing company. And so the world turns! I’ll show you Sir George’s portrait tomorrow. And the rest of the house, of course. But for now, it’s to be an evening of relaxation. Have you finished your drink? Would you like to see your room? Perhaps you’d like a bath before dinner?’

  ‘I hope you haven’t gone to a lot of trouble making dinner for me,’ Jenna said, heaving herself out of the downy embrace of the chair.

  Kitty laughed. ‘Bless you, I don’t cook! Never have been able to. I could burn water. I have a wonderful help called Mrs Phillips who comes in by day and cooks for me, and also puts my washing in the washing machine and takes my ironing away. She’s left everything ready for us.’ She stood too. ‘It’s a funny thing that although she’s worked for me for longer than I can remember, I can’t call her anything but Mrs Phillips. I think she’d die of shock if I called her Brenda. And she calls me Mrs Everest – or, if I’m particularly in favour, “Mrs Everest, dear”. That’s another reason you have to call me Kitty. She’d get quite the wrong idea otherwise.’