Wickham Hall, Part 2 (2 page)

‘Just me,' Benedict answered quickly. ‘Holly has got an
insurmountable
pile of work to do. In fact, we're on our way to the showground now. I need to familiarize myself with the site again. She's going to fill me in on what has been happening and I should have some new ideas by the time we get to the meeting.'

‘
New
ideas?' I said, meeting his gaze. ‘I'm not sure we should be introducing new ideas at this late stage. And to answer your question, Jenny, yes I am coming to the meeting.'

Jenny winked at me. ‘See you both later, then.'

She disappeared into the café, laughing softly to herself.

Ben and I carried on out of the courtyard and through the formal gardens. I could have quite easily dawdled and stopped to pick daisies in the grass, but Ben was a fast walker. I didn't mind; simply being out in the grounds on a beautiful sunny morning worked its magic and my spirits soared.

‘It must have been incredible to have all this as your back garden when you were a child,' I mused as we walked through the trees alongside the cascade that led to the parkland.

‘It was brilliant,' Ben said simply. ‘I had dens and hollow trees big enough to hide in, rope swings . . . We even made our own BMX track once.'

We emerged from the woods into the parkland and paused to look across at the fallow deer dotted across the grass in the distance.

‘I don't think I'll ever get tired of this view,' I said.

‘It is nice to come back to,' Ben agreed. ‘For a while, at least.'

I frowned, wondering what he meant by that, but before I could ask he began marching again. By the time we came to a halt on the wide path that led down towards the river I had enthusiastically filled Ben in on the highlights of this year's Wickham Hall Summer Festival.

‘Hard to imagine, isn't it?' said Benedict as we stood for a moment, surveying the site.

The showground was simply a five-acre area of grassland, which would be fenced off on three sides, the fourth side being bordered by the river. A second adjacent area would be fenced off as a temporary campsite for exhibitors to park caravans and pitch their tents. It was still unadulterated at the moment, but in two weeks' time, the contractors would arrive to set up all the marquees, exhibition stands and toilet blocks, turning the field into a little village complete with temporary roads and an electricity supply.

‘It is,' I agreed. ‘I've been here loads of times as a visitor but I had no idea how much work it takes to put the event on.'

The festival was a highly complex affair and from what I had seen so far, it seemed to be very well run. And it needed to be; there would be upwards of 23,000 visitors over the three-day show.

‘Oh yes,' said Ben, snapping his fingers as though he'd just remembered something. ‘I'd forgotten that the Summer Festival has a special place in your heart.'

‘Oh definitely.' I nodded. ‘I remember one year it was so hot that . . .'

My voice trickled away as I caught him grinning at me, his eyes twinkling. ‘Oh you mean
that
. Look, I'm really sorry you overheard me pouring my heart out to Esme yesterday.'

He held up his hands. ‘No, I apologize. I shouldn't tease you.' He took a deep breath and gazed into my eyes. ‘You mentioned about your mum going for treatment and whatever it is, I hope she's OK.'

I nodded. I was attempting to be swan-like but had a sneaking suspicion that I was erring more towards flamingo, i.e. a delicate shade of pink.

‘Thank you.' I cleared my throat. ‘Now, about this morning's meeting.'

I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the bright sun so that he couldn't see my face. ‘Radio Henley has already started their on-air campaign, the literature is printed and all the people entering show gardens have submitted their themes, including Nikki. Please,' I said, dropping my hand and meeting his eyes, ‘please tread carefully with new ideas.'

‘I hear you.' Ben nodded, smiling softly.

‘Phew. Thank you.' I sighed with relief, recognizing an olive branch when I saw one.

‘Come on; let's go back to the office, Holly. Do you realize it's nearly nine o'clock and you haven't made me one cup of tea yet?'

‘What!' My jaw dropped but he burst out laughing and draped an arm loosely across my shoulder. ‘Only joking, Miss High Horse. Let's go and see if Jenny can sort us out with some tea and toast.'

‘That's more like it,' I said primly, not even sure in my own mind whether I was referring to the offer of breakfast or to the tremor of excitement that had just run down the length of my spine.

By early afternoon Ben and I were back in the events office. Ben's first Summer Festival meeting had been declared a success and I must admit, it had been a lot livelier with him in the room than his father.

However, my jobs list had somehow doubled and I'd yet to cross anything off it, which was making me feel a bit jittery. Particularly as I couldn't find a single document that I needed following our office tidy and now a courier had turned up for Ben. The man had made several trips backwards and forwards to his van and had deposited some large mysterious packages that made Ben even more exuberant than normal.

The courier soon left and Ben began tearing into the parcels, humming tunelessly under his breath. I did my best to block him out and tried to get some work done.

I opened a blank page on my laptop and typed:
Thirty Things to Do at Wickham Hall
. This was first on my list of extra things to do following this morning's meeting.

Ben had blithely ignored my advice to go easy on new ideas. He'd spent the first half an hour of the committee meeting quietly building a tower with drinks mats. But then, as I was outlining my idea for a children's treasure hunt, he'd suddenly rocked back in his chair, linked his fingers behind his head and puffed out his cheeks.

‘It all sounds great,' he'd said, flashing a smile around the assembled committee members.

It was the first thing he'd said and everyone had stared. Andy had gazed adoringly and Samantha from Radio Henley had melted quicker than a Solero on a sunbed.

‘
But
I can't help feeling that we're missing an opportunity to celebrate all that my parents have achieved in the last thirty years at the hall.'

‘With respect, Benedict,' Sheila, who heads up the committee, had said, ‘Lord Fortescue has sat in on this committee every week until now and has never once mentioned your parents' thirty-year anniversary.'

‘Oh, he's too modest,' Benedict had said, flipping a drinks mat off the edge of the table and attempting to catch it. It dropped onto the floor. ‘Neither of them will make a fuss. It's up to us to do it for them.'

Jenny had agreed, citing how many people benefited from the Coach House Café that the Fortescues had built in the early nineties. ‘Not just customers, but staff, too. The café works closely with the catering college in Stratford; we've helped train hundreds of young people over the years, me included,' she'd said, twisting a strand of hair around her index finger. ‘I don't know what I'd have done without this place.'

‘And the gardens owe a lot to your parents, too,' Nikki had added, passing her phone round so we could see her latest pictures. ‘See how fantastic the maze looks this year? No offence, Benedict, but your grandfather was more interested in vehicles than visitors and the gardens were too basic to attract the public. The Italian sunken garden used to look like the forest out of
Sleeping Beauty
from what I understand. And the rhododendron was rampant.'

At this point, I'd had a sudden – unwanted, I might add – image of my mum and A. N. Other furtling in the rampant rhododendron. I'd grabbed my glass of water and taken a long drink before anyone noticed my pink cheeks.

‘Holly, your hidden treasures campaign is great, very imaginative,' Ben had said, nodding.

I'd coloured a bit more and mumbled my thanks.

‘But I think we can go further.'

Sheila had looked at her watch pointedly. ‘What did you have in mind?'

‘So much of what is special about Wickham Hall is down to old Hugo and Beatrice, and I think we should pay tribute to that in some way.' Ben had looked directly at me as I looked up from my diary having just scribbled out ‘make treasure hunt clues'. ‘Any thoughts, anyone?'

Andy, who'd been saving a seat for Ben when we arrived, had wriggled to the edge of his seat as close to Ben as he could be without actually sitting on his lap. ‘Why don't we have a series of thirty-themed activities? Like, for instance, I could do a “gifts for under thirty pounds” range in the shop?'

‘Ooh, yes!' Samantha had waved her hand. ‘We could get people to phone in to the radio with their memories of the festival and give away thirty pairs of tickets to the best ones.'

For the next few minutes everyone had shouted over each other with their thirty-themed suggestions: Nikki was going to create a flower bed in the shape of a three and a zero out of white geraniums and position it at the entrance to the show; Jenny would work up a special thirty-pound set menu for the outdoor restaurant that would be set up in the showground and I had come up with a series of press releases entitled ‘Thirty things . . .' to send out to the press.

And so here I was. Writing my first press release.

I had to admit Ben had a point. The Fortescues were too modest to make a splash; well, Lord Fortescue was anyway. And so it was up to us to honour them. It was really sweet of Ben to suggest it and his parents would be thrilled that it was he who had come up with the idea. And also, I realized, there was something about the way he talked about Wickham Hall that hinted that he had a real love for the place. Like me.

So there was something we could agree on. Unlike the paint-speckled wooden easel that he was in the process of unpacking and setting up under the window in our office.

I watched him stack pots of paintbrushes onto the newly emptied shelf above the printer. Surely he wasn't planning on painting in here? And when was he actually going to do any work? So far all I'd seen him do was exercise his delegation skills. He was very good at that.

‘You're an artist, then?' I said, brushing away the flakes of dried paint that had fallen from the pots of paintbrushes onto my desk.

‘Yes, landscapes mainly.'

Ben uncovered a canvas and held it away from him to inspect it. He cocked his head to one side, grunted and set it against the wall. I was dying to see what it was of but the painted side was facing the wall.

‘So, if you don't mind me asking, why take Pippa's job?'

‘Mum and Dad have got a bee in their bonnets about me learning the business. You probably know they want me to take over in five years.'

I nodded, remembering our thwarted press conference. ‘And you don't want to?'

He frowned and I wondered if I'd overstepped the mark. ‘I'm not ready to commit to that yet.'

‘So why are you here now?'

He grinned sheepishly as he unpacked a blank canvas and set it on the easel. ‘I forgot to renew the lease on my London studio. I've been evicted. I've got a new space sorted but it won't be free until January. So this stint back at the old homestead has come just at the right time.'

Ben was leaving at Christmas. I wondered what Lord and Lady Fortescue would think about that. And, more to the point, how did I feel . . .?

‘Oh, good,' I said, in lieu of something more meaningful. ‘About you getting a new studio, I mean, not that I want you to leave.'

Oh crumbs, now he was chuckling at me again.

‘Right.' He installed himself at Pippa's old desk for the first time that day and pulled the telephone towards him.

I heaved a sigh of relief; finally it looked as though he was going to get on with something.

He flicked a sideways grin at me. ‘Now stop chatting please, I've got loads to do.'

‘Me chatting? Oh, you are so irri—'

‘Irresistible?' he offered, searching through his desk without looking up.

‘No,' I stuttered, ‘Irri—'

‘Oh, Holly,' he looked at me this time, pulling a comical sad face, ‘don't say irresponsible, please, look how hard I—'

‘Irritating,' I tutted.

He mimed zipping his own mouth and I felt my own mouth lifting in a smile. A bit irritating, perhaps, but in an irresistible way.

Half an hour later I'd given up all pretence of trying to work. Ben was simply too distracting to work with. Not because he pursed his full lips when he was concentrating or because the sun was casting shadows across his face in the afternoon light or because there was a lively citrusy scent that got stronger every time he came near me, but because he seemed to be having problems doing . . . whatever it was he was doing and had taken to grumbling to himself, tutting and slamming the phone down.

‘Benedict,' I said, using his full name for once. I closed the lid of my laptop to give him my undivided attention. ‘What is it you're trying to do, exactly?'

His chin was propped up in his hand and he was drumming his fingers on an empty notepad.

‘I thought as all the team were doing something special for my parents' thirtieth year I should contribute too.'

‘Good idea,' I said, pushing myself up and heading over to the coffee maker. ‘Coffee?'

‘Please,' he said, stretching his arms above his head. ‘It might perk me up.'

I spooned fresh coffee into the filter and turned the machine on.

‘I thought of doing a sort of photographic “retrospective”: a look back at thirty years of the festival. I thought we could mount it as a display in one of the marquees.'

‘Nice idea,' I said, ‘we haven't really got anything arty going on. So what's the problem?'

I left the coffee to gurgle and splutter away, perched on my desk and crossed my ankles.