mornings generally, unless there’s a party or visitors. She does the beds and towels Wednesdays and Fridays—they go to the laundry, though there’s a machine out through the back, if you want it. Grace does any other washing as required, and the ironing. Other than that, when she’s vacuumed through and done the kitchen floor and the bathrooms, she’s no time for anything else. In fact, I reckon it’s all getting a bit much for her; she’s not as fast as she used to be.’
‘I think it’s amazing she does so much!’
‘She’s not as old as she looks. I keep telling her all them cigarettes she smokes make her look like a living mummy and wheeze like a piano accordion. I’ve never smoked and we’re the same age, but I’ve got the complexion and figure I had at thirty to show for it.’
Leaving Mrs Lark knitting and Charlie sleeping, I took a quick look at the stillroom, Aunt Hebe’s domain, where racks and bunches of anonymous vegetation hung everywhere and the scent of attar of roses and rush matting vied with other, stranger, odours.
A small table with a chair each side stood near the side door to the shrubbery: Aunt Hebe’s consulting desk for furtive evening customers?
Gingerly (and guiltily!) opening a cupboard, I found myself nose to nose with a row of glass-stoppered jars and bottles, all bearing labels written in a spiky black gothic hand: ‘ORRIS ROOT’, ‘HOLY WATER (Lourdes)’, ‘FULLER’S EARTH,’ ‘POWDERED GINGER’, ‘GROUND BARN OWL BONES (Roadkill 1996)’.
Ground owl bones?
‘LIQUORICE EXTRACT’, ‘POWDERED AMBERGRIS’, ‘DRIED BAT WINGS’.
I shut the door hastily, deciding not to open any more cupboards—then immediately did, thinking it was the way out. This one contained shelf after shelf of much smaller bottles and jars with fancier labels. Pinned to the inside of the door was a hand-written price list. ‘Number 2 Essence: A sovereign remedy for restoring the joys of marriage,’ I read, ‘Two pounds fifty.’
After all these years without even a word from Rory, it would take more than an essence to restore my marriage! The next remedy was clearly aimed at all those exhausted wives with priapic elderly husbands, pepped up on Viagra: ‘Number 5 Essence: The tired wife’s friend. Two drops in any liquid given to the husband near bedtime will ensure an unbroken night’s rest. (Do not exceed dose.) Three pounds.’
It looked like Aunt Hebe had gone into production on a large scale.
I popped my head back through the kitchen door. ‘Mrs Lark, do Aunt Hebe’s remedies actually work?’
She looked up. ‘Well, no one’s ever asked for their money back to my knowledge.’ She cast on a couple more stitches and added, ‘Or died from them, either.’
‘That’s a relief,’ I said, and went back to my tour, though I hesitated before opening any more doors. But luckily the next one merely gave on to a passage with the narrow backstairs going up from it and the cellar entrance. There was a warren of rooms beyond it, many of them unused except for storage (one of them was stacked practically floor to ceiling with what looked like empty florist’s boxes), but this area looked very familiar to me. I had been allowed to play here and to ride my red tricycle up and down the flagged floors. How I’d loved that trike! The chipped skirting boards were probably my doing.
Feeling nostalgic I wandered on until I came to another passage, across which a fairly new-looking door had been installed. It was unlocked and when I passed through I saw that it had a sign on the other side saying: ‘PRIVATE! NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT.’
Here, by removing the door between two rooms and throwing out a little glassed-in conservatory overlooking the top terrace at the back of the house, a tearoom of kinds had been created. There was a counter topped with a glass food display cabinet adorned with dust and dead flies, and a collection of mismatched pine tables and chairs, varnished to the deep orange shade of a cheap instant suntan.
It all looked terribly half-hearted and uninviting, though perhaps in summer when they opened they gussied the place up a bit with bright tablecloths and flowers.
The visitors’ loos were off the further room and a brief glance told me were of Victorian servants’ quality, though I suppose at the time it was the height of luxury for the staff to have indoor toilets at all.
I retraced my steps to the warm kitchen, where Mrs Lark ceased knitting long enough to look up and smile at me. Charlie didn’t appear to have moved an inch since I left.
‘Did you remember your way around, lovey? You played out there all the time when the weather was bad, making dens out of old cardboard cartons, or riding that little trike of yours, though in the summer you were always outside. You used to run round and round the maze like a mad thing, with your granddad’s spaniels all chasing after you, barking their heads off.’
‘It’s all coming back to me—I remembered my way around this wing perfectly, despite a few changes. What are all those empty boxes in one of the rooms for?’
‘Mistletoe. Winter’s End is noted for it. But I don’t suppose you remember the mistletoe harvests before Christmas, when the gardeners gather it and it’s packed off to London?’
I shook my head.
‘Perhaps you were kept away, for the berries are poisonous. The boxes used to be stored in a shed, but the mice got at them.’
‘I suppose they would,’ I agreed. ‘The tearoom is a bit rough and ready, isn’t it? And the toilet is inadequate, I should have thought, especially if there’s a coach party.’
‘It was the staff toilet until Sir William put in that nice cloakroom under the backstairs, and the teashop used to be the laundry and brewhouse. But we don’t need a laundry now we’ve got the utility room, and the only brewing is what Miss Hebe does next door, and better not to ask about most of that,’ she said darkly.
‘Definitely not,’ I agreed. ‘When we’re open, who does the teas?’
‘The Friends serve them, but I cook the pastries and scones.’
‘That must make a lot of work for you?’
‘I like to do a big bake, and Grace comes in extra and cuts the sandwiches, but we don’t get so many visitors.’
‘I’m surprised you get any, because there isn’t much of the house open to see, is there?’
‘No, but they come for the garden mostly. It’s a picture in summer, though Seth says the terraces are still a work in progress. Gardening clubs and so on—they like to keep coming year after year to see how it’s going on.’
‘Surely it must be nearly finished by now? They’ve been at it for years, from what Mr Hobbs was saying!’
‘Oh, yes, I think there’s only the bottom terrace to do, though it seems to me they spend as much time maintaining the garden as they did making the thing in the first place—all these grown men snipping and clipping! Miss Hebe seems able to manage the whole walled garden on her own, apart from getting one of the gardeners to do the heavy digging, or clean out the hens, which makes Seth mad. He thinks of nothing but his blessed restoration scheme and your granddad was just the same.’
‘I’ll look round the garden as soon as I’ve got the chance, but it sounds as if it’s had
