‘Hello, you’re early, Hester! What’s up?’
‘Matt’s had a letter from Mr Geraint. He’s coming up to see us on Nell’s birthday,’ Hester said, not mincing words. ‘I’m that shocked … I couldn’t believe it at first
when Matt read it out, then I just grabbed it and came straight up here. I can’t think what the old devil is up to, but whatever it is it bodes ill for us all.’
‘Oh come on, Mum, he was really kind to me when I was small,’ Nell said uneasily. ‘It’s no use looking on the black side, and anyway, we’ve worked hard and had fun and made a lot of money, if he wants a share …’
‘We wanted to pay rent,’ Snip said crossly from his perch on the stepladder. ‘Nell wrote ever such a friendly letter, saying how happy we were and suggesting we regularise things by paying rent. He never even wrote back to say he didn’t want it. But you put the money away, didn’t you, love? Only when we wanted to convert the stables and needed the money it seemed silly not to use it. So it isn’t there now, and if he demands back rent …’
‘He’ll get it,’ Nell said at once. ‘We’d find it somehow. But Mum, what do you really think? What does Dad think? That the old man wants to take it away from us, give Pengarth to his latest Dolly Frost? Is that what you’re afraid of?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hester said miserably. ‘I’m just afraid, love. The old man was always unpredictable – moody, difficult to pin down. I remember Matthew once saying that Mr Geraint would pick a quarrel because he was bored, being so much cleverer than the rest of us, and then he’d be sorry and try to make it up. I don’t know what I’m afraid of, except … well, except that he’ll change things.’
‘You and Matt call him the old man, but how old is he really?’ Snip asked. He finished the ceiling with exaggerated care, then descended his ladder and stood the bucket of whitewash down by the sink. ‘He must be getting on, I suppose?’
‘Pushing seventy,’ Hester said after a moment’s thought. ‘Old devil, coming back to make us miserable after all these years!’
‘You shouldn’t prejudge him, Mum,’ Nell said gently. ‘Is he coming alone? Did he say?’
‘No, he just says he’s coming and will it be possible to book him a room at a decent hotel in town, and meet the train. That means he isn’t driving and he is staying at least one night. Oh Nell love, I don’t want to think badly of Mr Geraint, but this is so unexpected! It worries me more than I can say.’
Nell, who was dying to read the letter, put the flowers she had picked into a simple white vase and headed for the back door.
‘I’ve got to take these up to the gatehouse room, Mum; do you want to come up with me, see how nice it is? You’ve never been, have you?’
‘No, I didn’t think … but I’ll walk along with you now.’ She followed her daughter across the yard, through the wild garden and under the big arch. Up the stone steps they went and into the gatehouse room. Nell put the flowers on the desk and looked round at her mother’s face, but it told her nothing. Hester’s eyes travelled over the big desk with the books scattered on it, several of them first editions of Geraint’s works. They flickered over the manuscript he was working on when he left, a pile of scribbled notes. They took in the fact that the desk was polished, the furniture kept clean and fresh, the walls whitewashed, the pictures dusted. Then, very slowly, Hester lowered herself into one of the comfortable armchairs.
‘The very first time I came in here I found you, hedged about by cushions, playing with a box of bricks whilst Mr Geraint watched over you,’ Hester said slowly. ‘Odd, it must have been a quarter of a century ago, but as I came through the door just now I glanced at the hearthrug, half-expecting to see my little girl there, smiling up at me.’
‘Then he wasn’t all bad, was he? I didn’t think he
could be,’ Nell said. ‘He could be kind, Dad says so.’
‘Your Dad is the kindest person in the world, he rarely speaks ill of anyone. And he and Mr Geraint were boys together from what I can make out, because Matthew doesn’t talk about his life in Sussex much. And yes, Geraint could be kind.’ Her voice was low. Her eyes travelled the desk again, then flickered to the windowseat beyond. ‘Nell, when you first came in here, did you find a – a red leather book? A sort of diary?’
‘No, nothing like that, worse luck,’ Nell said without having to think about it. ‘I didn’t know the old man kept a diary. It would have been worth a lot to us as an attraction. I wonder whether we could persuade him to sit in here and sign copies of his books for people?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Hester said wearily. ‘I don’t suppose he still writes books, and the ones he did write are probably all out of print.’
‘They are not! Goodness, Mum, the man was your – your friend and you haven’t followed his career at all, have you? He’s done awfully well. First his books were just sort of adventure, but they got better, deeper … the year before last he won some prestigious literary prize. That was another reason why we thought he wasn’t interested in taking a share of the money Pengarth was making, because he was very wealthy in his own right.’
‘Another reason? What was the first reason, then?’
‘Oh, that. Well, we thought that if he was my real father, perhaps he wanted me to profit from his home,’ Nell said uncomfortably. ‘I told Snip about Mr Geraint, Mum, because I had to explain about us leaving all those years ago. Besides, there’s no harm in it; Snip can see how much you love Matthew, he must know, as I do now, that whatever happened between you and the old man it didn’t include a wild love affair.’
‘I think I was in love with him,’ Hester said slowly. ‘It’s difficult to make you understand, but he was so – so
glamorous, compared with Matthew! Matthew was quiet and never argued or contradicted or insisted on having his own way, he let Geraint ride roughshod over him. Somehow I didn’t look beyond that to the kind and generous man inside.’
‘I do understand, because Dan was a bit like Mr Geraint. Tremendously good looking, popular, sought after by women … it used to make me proud to walk down the street with him, which just goes to show that most women are fools for a handsome face! In fact I suppose I’d be proud of him as a brother if I could acknowledge him, which I can’t.’ Nell sighed. ‘Oh Mum, we’ve woven some tangled webs in our time, you and I.’
‘Yes, and the spider at the heart of them is Mr Geraint. Take care in front of him, sweetheart, that’s all I ask. Don’t be impulsive, think before you speak and perhaps we’ll brush through it without too much bother. Matt’s going to meet him at the station and bring him straight back to the lodge for coffee, then we’ll come with him up to the castle. Can you give him lunch?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s the day we open the restaurant; can we give him lunch in there, do you think?’
‘Why not?’ Hester said, sighing and getting slowly to her feet. ‘He’s going to want to see everything. Matt will probably take him round the new milking parlour, the dairy, and so on. Though since Matt only draws a salary and Mr Geraint gets the profits, I don’t suppose the changes on the farm matter at all; it’s the castle I worry about.’
Nell’s twenty-seventh birthday was just like any other day, to start with at any rate. She was baking scones in the kitchen and Snip was taking a party of tourists around the castle when Mr Geraint came carefully in through the back door, flanked by Matthew, with Hester
hovering. He stood just inside the kitchen, staring across at Nell.
Nell stared back. She saw a tall, white-haired man with eyes so dark they seemed to burn out of his thin face. He had a high-bridged nose, a strongly cleft chin, and when he smiled at her his face lit up with mischief and wickedness and the little girl in her recognised him at once. Before she had thought she had flown across the kitchen into his welcoming embrace.
‘Oh, Mr Geraint, I’d have known you anywhere! You haven’t changed at all really, only your hair’s gone white. But how rude I am – do sit down! Mum has given you coffee, I know, but we’re going to give you lunch in the new restaurant … it’s your restaurant really, but you’ve never written to us or said what you wanted, so we’ve just pressed on.’
‘Little Nell, how you do prattle! You always were a child for chattering, I remember that very well.’ He turned in his chair to wave a hand at Matthew and Hester. ‘Thanks very much for bringing me up here. Perhaps you would call for me again in, say, half an hour, and we can all lunch in this new restaurant the girl speaks of? But I’d like to hear from Nell’s own lips just what’s been going on here.’
It was a dismissal, though charmingly put. Matthew turned at once, putting a hand on Hester’s arm when she seemed inclined to linger.
‘Right, Mr Geraint, we’ll go about our business now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll be back in forty minutes, Nell.’
Nell waited until the back door had closed behind her mother, then turned back to her guest. ‘You aren’t well.’
‘No, I fear I’m not in rude health.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nell hesitated, taking the seat opposite the old man. ‘Is that why you’ve come, after all this time? Because you’re not well and want to …’
The sheer tactlessness of what she had been about to say killed the words on her lips, but Mr Geraint did not seem to mind. He grinned and finished the sentence for her.
‘… to settle my affairs before I die? Precisely, Nell. Precisely.’
‘I see. Will this affect Snip and I very much, then? Are you going to take Pengarth away from us?’
He was watching her face, his eyes somehow wistful, almost hungry, as though he had wanted badly to see her and now that she was before him, was trying very hard to burn into his memory her looks, gestures, expressions.
‘It’s got to go to someone when I’m gone,’ he observed mildly. ‘Why should it go to you?’
She hesitated, looking across at him. ‘I – I thought I was rrelated to you,’ she said at last, unable to stop her voice from shaking a little. ‘My mother told me … when we left Pengarth and Matthew and the lodge she told me … you’d threatened her … you’d said …’ her courage failed her. ‘You’d said we were related,’ she finished feebly.
His eyebrows were still dark, as were the thick, stubby lashes round his narrowed eyes. Now his brows rose. ‘Did she believe it?’
‘She said it was possible.’
‘Ah. Possible, yes.’ There was an even longer pause while he looked down at his hands, lying on his knees. They were thin and paper white, the veins standing out, blue and knotted. A sick man’s hands, Nell thought suddenly. A man sick unto death. Perhaps she ought not to have said anything. She had not intended to speak of these matters but he was a man skilled in extracting information, turning a conversation the way he needed, she had been putty in his hands. ‘Possible. Well, now. Highly desirable, perhaps, but not actually possible.’
‘N-not …?’
He raised his eyes to hers, then looked towards the back door.
‘Your mother won’t be long now,’ he said conversationally. ‘She would never willingly leave you and I to talk but she couldn’t ignore Matthew, go against his wishes in such an obvious way. So she’ll pretend to go back to the lodge and then make her way quietly back here. In about thirty seconds, if my reckoning is correct …’
They both heard the footsteps, then saw the back door open. Hester slipped inside. She looked from one to the other, pink cheeked; she was breathing hard, she must have been running.
‘Well? What’s he said to you, Nell darling?’ She turned to face Mr Geraint. ‘Why did you want to see her alone? Oh John, you’ve made so much unhappiness, must you make more? We’ve been so content here, the four of us, if only it could just go on …’
‘You told Nell that she and I were related; does that mean that you truly believed I was her father? Because it couldn’t have been true, could it? I have no children. You must have known that she was Matthew’s child. Surely Mrs Cled told you that I’d had no brats, though I wanted children? The pair of you were friendly enough, always chattering of this and that, surely she mentioned it?’
Hester’s face flushed, the red mottling her neck. She shot an embarrassed look at Nell, then turned once more to face Mr Geraint.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, all I know is that you told me blood tests would prove Nell was your little girl and that you intended to use legal means to have some control over her future. Naturally, I believed you, why should I not?’
‘I’d have said
anything
to keep Nell by me – she was so full of life, so bright, affectionate. But I can’t imagine why you believed me so unquestioningly, didn’t think the
remark might be bluff. You knew I’d had mistresses, it wasn’t exactly a state secret, any more than it was a secret that I didn’t seem able to father a child with any of them.’
Hester frowned, biting her lip, but now it was Nell who spoke.
‘You mean you’ve never had a child of your own at all? Not even – not even Dan?’
‘
Dan?
For God’s sweet sake, Nell, he was my elder brother’s boy. I didn’t share my elder brother’s interests, he was the shy, bookish one, but I’d never have done the dirty on him, we were fond of one another. In fact I didn’t even meet the lovely Rosalie until Dan was three years old. What maggot got into your head to make you think that?’
Nell swung round and stared accusingly at her mother. Hester looked up at her, eyes bright, cheeks flying twin scarlet flags. ‘I told her, and I thought it was true! Folk said in the village … both the children had black hair and blue eyes, pale skin, similarly shaped faces, and then there was the portrait in the Long Gallery … you said yourself that Nell took after the lady in the picture, so what was I to think?’
‘That lady in the picture was Matthew’s great-grandmother too! Matthew’s father and mine were brothers, didn’t you know that either, Hester? You were such a bright, curious creature I was sure you’d have all Matthew’s secrets out of him before you’d lived at the lodge a month. The truth is my Uncle Frederick got a respectable girl pregnant, but she was only one of the tenant farmer’s daughters, so no one expected him to marry her. But Isobel – that was her name, Isobel Stewart – had strict Methodist parents and they couldn’t bear the shame of an unmarried daughter and her bastard child living under their roof, so grandfather married Isobel off to George Coburn and gave George a
good job and a cottage on the estate. Which makes Matt my first cousin, though he’s illegitimate.’