the colour of heather. Her shoes were buffed and the decorative buckles shone. Neutral hosiery gathered just perceptibly in creases around the ankle – like a ploughed field seen from a distance.
‘Mrs Fortescue, I’m Stella Hutton.’ And immediately, Stella thought, oh God, I’ve addressed her incorrectly already. ‘Lady.’ No! That sounded plain rude.
Lydia did not rise. Indeed, she sat motionless and expressionless. ‘I see.’
‘I’m here on behalf of Elmfield Estates.’
‘Yes.’
Should she backtrack and apologize for the botched greeting? Stella was unsure. She didn’t know what she was meant to do next. Sit, stand, talk, wait, what? She was being looked at, assessed; she could feel it. It was as nerve-wracking as the one time she’d been hauled in front of the headmistress at the age of thirteen. She felt hot and self-conscious. Did she appear suitably estate-agenty? Or was the fact that she really didn’t do the navy skirt-suit and court-shoe thing actually in her favour? She was today wearing slim-fitting black trousers and black suede ankle boots with a Cuban heel and a white shirt. Perhaps she looked too much like a waitress. Damn it! She’d been in the pale blue shirt first thing, but had changed at the last minute. Perhaps Mrs Lady Barbary-Fortescue was waiting for her to be a little more estate-agenty. Perhaps she should deliver the Elmfield Estates mission statement.
What Stella really wanted to do was to sink into one of the sofas and say, wow, what an extraordinary place, how long have you lived here, tell me about the house, who is the lady in the painting – is it School of Reynolds? The rug is Persian, isn’t it?
She was enamoured by everything: the carved frieze above the fireplace of cherubs apparently hunting down a deer; the wealth of photos from sepia, to tinted, to full colour, in a crowd on the grand piano, the thick velvet drapes, the Chinese paintings on silk. The glass-fronted book cabinet. The vast silk rug – yes, most certainly Persian – threadbare in one or two places but still magnificent, yet which went only some way in covering the impressive run of wide floorboards. Huge, heavy columnar curtains with flamboyant pelmets that reminded her of a theatre. More furniture than she, her brothers and her mother had between them. Finally, she noticed the archaic-looking electric bar heater standing in front of the capacious fireplace, trying valiantly to take the chill off the room and adding a warm down-to-earthness too. If there was so much to look at even in this one room, what delights could the rest of the house hold?
‘Let me look at you.’
Stella felt like Tess being summoned by Mrs d’Urberville. But then she thought she remembered Mrs d’Urberville being blind and suddenly she felt very self-conscious that she really wasn’t smart enough and why had she popped her slightly greasy hair into a hasty pony-tail when she’d had the time to wash and dry it? As she approached, Stella decided to polish up her vowels and use words like ‘frightfully’ and ‘splendid’.
‘You’re not as I expected.’ Lady Lydia sounded disappointed. ‘But then, Mercy Benton’s powers of description have always been limited. She described her own daughter’s wedding dress as simply a “nice frock” and her son-in-law as a “nice lad”. She said you were a “fine woman” and “everything one could hope for” in an agent.’ She paused, as if waiting for Stella to take the bait. But Stella just nodded with a wry smile in a ‘Gosh, well – you know Mercy Benton’ kind of way.
Lydia rose a little shakily. ‘You look like a girl – a waitress.’ She was not impressed.
‘That’s probably why my clients like me, Lady Fortescue,’ Stella said meekly. ‘I don’t boss them around. I take their order – be it for a house or a sale – and I deliver it to them.’ Stella thought about it. ‘With no spillage.’
The women regarded each other. Though Lydia was pretty much the same height as Stella, her aquiline haughtiness made her appear far taller. Or perhaps Stella just felt small in this grand room in this phenomenal old house and, for the first time in her life, in the presence of someone titled.
‘And have you ever been in a house like this?’
Stella was diplomatic. ‘There can’t possibly be another like it.’
Lydia looked at her as if she’d seen straight through her words. ‘Mrs Biggins, wretched woman – she never came with my coffee. Would you care for a sherry?’
‘It’s a little early for me,’ Stella said as if she didn’t take her sherry until after lunch. Lydia looked at her witheringly, as if she’d heard sarcasm. She walked over to the walnut drinks cabinet and inadvertently chinked the crystal stopper against the decanter and then the decanter against the glass. She took her sherry and walked to the sofa, spilling a little on her skirt as she sat herself down. She motioned to the companion sofa opposite and Stella sat. Lydia took a thoughtful sip. And then another.
‘I detest Asians.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘All agents – whatever their industry.’
Oh – agents.’ Stella’s relief was worn as an expansive smile which Lydia appeared to baulk at.
‘I am going to sell Longbridge,’ she said levelly, ‘or at least, you are.’
Stella felt herself sinking into the sofa, as if her surroundings were suddenly growing and she was shrinking under the weight of the realization that this is why she was here. This couldn’t be real – this had to be Lewis Carroll. A joke. A dream.
But Lydia was continuing. ‘I have been thinking about selling Longbridge for some time. Sometimes I stop thinking about it – but not because I’ve changed my mind. The whole concept is so very tiresome.’ She stared at Stella, who tried to nod purposefully and to stop gawping, wishing she’d said yes to sherry, just to have something to hold instead of her hands feeling like clodden sponges awkward in her lap.
‘I’m haemorrhaging cash in upkeep.’ Lady Lydia gave a little cough for emphasis. ‘It’s preposterous! All that money just to keep the rain out and the heat in.’
The look she threw Stella as she knocked back her sherry suggested she was waiting for a response.
‘I hope I don’t sound ignorant or nosy –’ Or obsequious, Stella thought to herself. ‘But would a house like this not be handed down to the next generation?’
‘There is no next generation,’ Lady Lydia barked before going heavily silent, staring into her sherry glass as if, usually, it refilled spontaneously. ‘I am the eldest of four girls. Cordelia died young. Anne never bred. She was a lesbian – still is, I believe, though at her age that’s quite unnecessary. Margaret moved to Connecticut and remained barren despite landing herself three American husbands in quick succession.’
‘You have no children – offspring?’ She shouldn’t have said that – it sounded intrusive, impudent.
‘I had a son,’ Lydia said quietly. ‘And I have a daughter. She doesn’t want to live here. She lives with the Welsh.’ She made it sound as though her daughter had converted to an extreme religion and was living as part of a cult in a compound.
What could Stella say to that? Though desperate to know more, she bit her tongue and looked at her hands. Lydia’s were bony and long; papery skin over navy veins like very old corduroy. A signet ring loose on the little finger of her right hand, an antique diamond ring and thin gold
