Chapter One #3
I’m met with a flurry of barking, followed by a large, grey blur. A dog hurls itself at me, forepaws ramming into my chest so it’s all I can do to keep my footing. Hot, meaty breath in my face. Tongue flopping out. I shove its snout away.
The singing cuts off. ‘Mutton! Get back here, boy!’ The woman has the same countryside accent as Tom.
The dog plops back on to four legs, but otherwise ignores the order.
He’s a massive thing, above waist height.
Scruffy face with a downward muzzle and big blob of a nose.
Two alert brown eyes. His legs are strangely spindly, greyhound-ish, holding up a broad, muscular body.
Oversized paws. Stubby tail wagging – at least that means he thinks he’s being friendly.
‘That the gardener?’ calls the woman. She must be Mr Allen’s wife. Nora, I think he said.
I snatch my fingers out of licking range, seeing as I’ve just washed them. ‘Yes.’
‘Mind you clean your boots.’
I obligingly knock them a bit on the scraper, then step in.
The corridor is white-washed, lined with coat pegs and a shoe rack on one side.
A stark drop in temperature where thick walls have kept the heat at bay.
The dog pushes past me, skittering through to where I assume Mrs Allen can be found. I follow.
A dim kitchen, lamps not lit at this time of day.
There’s a rectangular wooden table, sturdy and functional, and wooden sideboards too.
Cupboards, a deep basin of a sink, an enamel oven in front of which the dog has flopped down.
Mrs Allen is stirring a pot on the stovetop, but turns when I enter.
Like her husband, she’s a sturdy build, with greying curls and soft, droopy cheeks.
Blue flowers patterning her dress, under a grease-specked wrap-around apron.
‘Afternoon – Mrs Allen? I’m …’ I gesture back out the door, in the direction of the cottage. ‘Miss Morgan. Vee.’
Mrs Allen nods to the table, where three places are already set out. ‘Won’t be a minute.’ Doesn’t invite me to call her Nora in return. Well, I can’t charm everyone right away … As soon as I sit, Mutton is up again, pressing his head into my lap.
‘Watch your food with him, he’s a greedy sod.
’ Mrs Allen has her eyes on the kitchen clock.
Although nothing in particular has passed between us, I sense that she doesn’t want me here; a stiffness in her shoulders.
There’s none of the warmth that her husband has offered.
She goes back to stirring, ignoring me. The dog, on the other hand, won’t let me alone, but I’m quite happy to ruffle his ears.
His wide, glistening eyes have a certain appeal.
He’s got a powerful aroma to him, though.
‘Is Tom not joining us?’ I ask, after a while.
‘He’s just bringing her Ladyship her lunch.
’ She jerks her head in the direction of a set of service bells on the wall – a reminder of our mutual employer.
‘She likes to have it sliced up for her first. He’ll be back in a tick.
’ A saucepan lid chugs out steam in a clack-clack echo.
Mrs Allen lifts it to let a cloud escape, then places it back.
I wonder at the detail about Tom slicing up the food.
Whether there’s a reason Lady Lascy can’t do it herself, or if it’s simply the level of service she expects from her staff. ‘Does she eat alone, then?’ I ask.
‘She doesn’t have much choice.’ Mrs Allen wipes her hands on a rag, then hangs it over the oven rail.
‘She won’t have anyone else inside the house these days.
Just us and Mr Reacher. That’s her cousin.
’ I hadn’t realized the estate manager was a relative of Lady Lascy.
Another silence. Mrs Allen doesn’t resume her singing.
A shame – it wasn’t bad. I’m about to ask how long she’s worked here at Harfold – just to stave off the boredom – when a door closes somewhere beyond.
Heavy footsteps. A few seconds later, Tom comes in through a side entrance.
He still has his work clothes on: flannel shirt and braces.
Must have waited table in them. I can’t picture it, Tom placing food down daintily in front of a lady.
Can’t picture yet who this lady must be.
Mrs Allen serves up. Joint of pork, small potatoes, broad beans and a celeriac mash. A little ale, malty on the tongue. The food is under-seasoned, all texture boiled out of it. Not a patch on Mam’s cooking.
Now that Tom’s here, the conversation is easier, picks up a natural flow.
He acts as conductor, pulling me into an account of the morning’s work, then summoning Mrs Allen to help deliver an anecdote about the cows up the road.
It’s possible Mrs Allen’s earlier chilliness wasn’t personal after all – with Tom for a husband, maybe she doesn’t need much social skill.
You get that with couples sometimes. Mam and Dad are a bit like that: Mam’s a chatter, Dad’s a touch more introspective.
Though that might be from what happened during the war.
Anyone would come back quieter after that.
‘So what brung you here from Cardiff, Vee?’ Tom asks. ‘No gardens out that way?’
I give a slight shrug of the shoulders. ‘I just needed a change.’ The Allens are waiting for me to elaborate, rattle off the usual lines about the grime of city living, wanting to spend time out in nature.
I impale a particularly firm bean with my fork.
‘When you’ve been in the same place your whole life, it can feel a bit small, can’t it? ’
All those whispers. The people who thought they knew me, thought they knew everything about my story. The turned heads when I walked into the grocer’s. The little boy who spat on my shoe that time.
Tom winks at his wife. ‘That’s not me, is it, Nora? I was born in the Prescotts’ place up the village and I’ve stayed here ever since. Oh, I could never leave.’
Mrs Allen sets her cutlery down with a light clatter. ‘It’s a long way to come, though,’ she says, not satisfied with my answer. ‘Do you not have family back at home?’
‘My mam and dad moved away.’
‘But you must have other relations?’ she presses. ‘Or friends, at least?’
I try for a winning smile. ‘I’m sure I’ll make some new ones.’
Mrs Allen sniffs. ‘There’s not much in the way of social life out here.’
There wasn’t for me in Cardiff, either, in the end.
I’ve been staying with a couple of pals the past year: Gladys and Lou, the only ones who stuck with me.
A camp bed on their kitchen floor, that cold in winter I’d had to sleep with my coat on.
Clatter of train tracks out the window. Smell of cooking fat.
Mice bold as anything – too clever for the traps, but I could never bring myself to poison them, hated to think of their little bodies in spasms, froth at the mouth.
I’d been forever throwing slippers at the bloody things.
Not that it was fair for me to complain.
Lou and Gladys never said anything, but I knew what they were risking, taking me in.
Two women living together like the pair of them, it only worked as long as nobody was looking too carefully, and people haven’t been able to look away from me this past year. I’d known when it was time to move on.
Mains finished, Mrs Allen dollops out four helpings of a gooseberry fool.
Sets one of them aside under a cheese cloth.
Hands the others round. Passes Tom the sugar bowl so he can deposit four heaped spoonfuls over his serving.
For my part, I relish the tart burst of flavour after a rather bland meal.
Tom is telling a story about Reacher, how he’s exploring investments in the capital.
‘You’ll see him come by soon enough, I’m sure.
He’s hard to miss.’ He raises his eyebrows, inviting me into a confidence.
‘A committed bachelor, if you catch my meaning. But I expect you’d know all about that sort of thing?
’ His expression is casually blank. I must have misheard.
I know that other people can read me as a committed spinster myself – I walk only the finest line of plausible deniability, after all – but this older man from a little farming village isn’t the type I’d expect to state it outright.
And in such a neutral tone … A strained silence stretches out, then Tom’s expression is suddenly swept with embarrassment, and he stammers, ‘Being from the city, I meant. I imagine there’s all sorts there. ’
Now it’s my turn to look embarrassed. ‘Right you are.’ But it’s too late to shake off the misunderstanding.
‘I’ve always liked Mr Reacher,’ says Tom, in some kind of olive branch. ‘It’s never bothered me that he’s …’
The strained silence is back. Mrs Allen clatters the spoon noisily in her pudding bowl. Mutton, as if sensing a change in our mood, thuds his tail on the floor tiles.
Sudden shrilling. One of the servants’ bells has gone off, its brass mouth still trembling with the memory of the noise. Tom and Mrs Allen both stand at the same time, a wordless conversation passing back and forth between them.
‘I’ll go,’ says Mrs Allen, plucking up the last portion of fool. She half turns to me with a sharp nod. ‘See you tomorrow, Miss Morgan.’
I rise from my chair too. ‘I shouldn’t come and introduce myself, should I?’
Panic flickers in Mrs Allen’s eyes, but then disappears again so quickly I can’t be sure I didn’t make it up. ‘Oh no,’ she says, ‘her Ladyship won’t want that.’
‘She doesn’t want to meet me, then? Check me over?’ Can’t help but press the point – I’m curious about her now. Want to see for myself what kind of person lives in this grand old house all by herself.
‘I told you earlier,’ says Mrs Allen, ‘Lady Lascy is very particular.’ She closes the side door firmly behind her.
As I head back across the east lawn, I feel the bulk of the manor at my back – a single window lighted on the ground floor, even in the middle of the day.
A creeping, prickling itch as if I’m being watched.
I glance over my shoulder. Can’t spot anyone.
But even as I enter my cottage, shutting the door tight behind me, that call bell continues to echo like a voice in my ears.