Chapter 4
4
‘Have you seen Jess?’ Lisa walked quickly down the stairs towards Jess’s office, stopping to speak to one of the carers once she saw the door ahead of her firmly closed.
‘She said we weren’t to disturb her.’ The girl, who couldn’t have been much older than Sorrel and in the process of propelling two snow-white-haired residents towards the lounge, nodded importantly. ‘Got visitors.’
‘This early?’ Lisa, glancing at her watch, realised it was later than she’d thought. ‘I can’t find Eloise, and Bex said I should tell Jess.’
‘Have you looked in the garden? Would you mind? I’ve got my hands full at the moment. It’s bingo in ten minutes and there’s always a fight to get the best seats. You can’t miss her: she’s very beautiful.’
‘I heard.’ Lisa smiled back. ‘Shall I go out the front door?’
‘That’ll just take you onto the drive. She’s more likely to be out the back. That’s where she was yesterday.’ The girl – Stephie, according to her badge – pointed a finger down the hall towards the kitchens as the two women in her care tugged impatiently at her sleeve. ‘Servants’ and tradesman’s entrance originally – leads out to the gardens. Try going up through the old orchard and vegetable gardens. It’s a bit of a hike, but she seems to like going out there for some reason.’
‘Thanks.’
The cold January air hit her as soon as she opened the back door, but came as something of a relief after the overheated, cloying atmosphere of the inside of Hudson House. Lisa let out a little involuntary ‘Oh’ of surprise when she saw just how big the grounds were. Although, on closer inspection, not overly well kept. Not well kept at all.
‘Too much damned ivy,’ Lisa muttered, her expert gardener’s eye noting the leafless stems of climbing roses struggling to survive in the ivy’s unrelenting march forwards.
Summer seemed such a long way off and Lisa sighed as she clasped her frozen hands into two fists to bring back some heat into them. She needed to crack on if this Eloise was out here. She must be freezing, especially having not eaten breakfast. But which way to go? Who’d have thought Jess’s care home was situated in the midst of such a glorious garden? Certainly, as far as she could recall, Jess had never mentioned how spectacular Hudson House’s gardens were. Or, she saw, must have been in their heyday, years ago.
Lisa took the now overgrown path through a large orchard to her right, stopping every couple of seconds to take in and admire the different types of fruit tree, before exiting through the clearing ahead of her.
‘Oh?’ Lisa acknowledged the second surprise of the garden as she continued to search for the Grace Kelly lookalike. There, to her left, was a building. Well, not really a building, she acknowledged, but some sort of summer house.
Despite its size and apparent neglect, the summer house was quite stunning, its pale classical lines giving a heads up to an obvious Grecian influence. Recalling the Classics A level Adrian Foley – himself a Cambridge graduate of the subject – had made her take alongside maths and sciences, Lisa was easily able to identify the Doric fluted columns set into white marble. Blimey, this was a bit different from the Yorkshire stone of the main house. In fact, bloody daft; incongruous even. Who the hell had wanted a replica of the White House in their Beddingfield back garden? She wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen the Stars and Stripes unfurling merrily into the grey snow-laden sky. Fascinated, Lisa hurried towards it, slipping slightly on the wet grass as she did so, forgetting for a few seconds that she was here on another mission.
She walked up a couple of white marbled steps, green, wet and exceedingly slippery with lichen, old autumn leaves and dirt that the years had accumulated there. Icy drizzle was starting to fall.
Peering through the filthy cracked windows, shivering slightly as the icy drizzle caught in her hair and neck, Lisa knew she needed to return to the main house. Eloise didn’t appear to be out here in the garden. She was just about to turn and make her way back inside, hoping that the missing woman had made her way to the dining room to salvage what, if anything, was left of breakfast, when a small movement inside the summer house made her turn her face towards it. A tall, upright and unmistakably elegant woman dressed in a brown skirt and fawn sweater was leaning against the far wall, her eyes closed, arms wrapped around herself but not, Lisa saw, in what she’d first assumed to be a protective stance. Rather, as though she were in a passionate embrace.
Eloise presumably.
Lisa made her way round to the huge double doors and let herself in but hesitated, not wanting to frighten the woman. ‘Eloise. Eloise?’ she called gently. ‘Hello, I’m Lisa. You’ve missed breakfast. Why don’t you come back inside with me now? You must be freezing out here without a coat.’ When she didn’t reply, Lisa moved towards her, gently taking her arm.
Startled, the woman moved back slightly, staring at Lisa as if woken from a deep sleep.
‘Eloise?’ Lisa said again.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t hear too well.’ The woman’s voice was educated with no hint of the West Yorkshire accent that most round here spoke with. Lisa herself had not fully acquired the northern flattened vowels, having been brought up in Surrey until she was nine and then corrected at every turn by Adrian and Karen Foley if she ever dared to say bath with its shortened ‘a’ rather than barth with the elongated vowel.
‘I’m sorry, I disturbed you.’ Lisa said speaking loudly while making sure the woman could see her lips moving. ‘Look, it’s sleeting now. We need to get back inside.’
‘Just a moment.’ Eloise fumbled at her skirt with numb hands, seemingly looking for pockets. ‘I don’t seem to have brought my hearing aids with me,’ she said finally, almost accusingly, as though it were possibly Lisa’s fault that she was without them.
‘I bet you’re hungry,’ Lisa mouthed.
‘I’m rarely hungry.’ Eloise raised an eyebrow. ‘Especially now that he’s brought me back here of all places.’
‘Brought you back ?’ Lisa smiled, not understanding.
‘I’m not staying. You do realise that?’ Eloise glared at Lisa.
‘Come on, why don’t we get a coffee?’
‘The filthy stuff they call coffee, you mean? Once I’m released, I’ll order some from Fortnum’s.’
‘It’s not a prison, Eloise.’
‘I think you’ll find it is. Are you new? One of the warders? You’re not wearing the uniform.’
‘I’m Lisa. I’m actually Jess’s mum.’
‘Jess?’ Eloise followed Lisa as she made for the door. ‘Who is Jess?’
‘She’s in charge round here,’ Lisa said proudly. ‘This is only the second time I’ve been allowed to visit. Well, not visit as such; I’m actually volunteering. To be honest, I’m hoping there might be some work for me here.’
‘There’s always work in prisons like this. Crying out for staff, I believe.’
‘I don’t think, Eloise, that if this was a prison, there’d be gardens like this one.’ Lisa paused, thinking aloud. ‘I wonder if they’d let me work in it?’
‘You’ll have to ask Mummy…’
‘Jess d’you mean?’ They’d come back through the rose garden and Lisa opened the kitchen door, grateful now for the rush of warmth from within.
‘…she does most of the hiring and firing although Daddy, typically, always thinks it’s his job to take on new staff.’
‘Right.’
‘Oh, Eloise, there you are. We’ve been searching the whole house for you.’ Bex was in the kitchen as they walked through, loading a trolley with teacups and the huge institutional aluminium tea and coffee pots.
‘Shall I make Eloise some toast?’ Lisa asked. ‘She missed breakfast.’
‘Would you like that, Eloise?’ Bex said, not looking at her.
‘She hasn’t got her hearing aids in,’ Lisa explained when Eloise didn’t answer.
‘Again? Where’ve you put them this time, Eloise?’ Bex asked. ‘We spent a good hour looking for them yesterday, didn’t we? If you’d like to help serve morning coffee, Lisa, that would be great. I’ll make Eloise some toast but she’ll need to eat it in here or the others will all want toast instead of biscuits. Or think it’s tomorrow already and breakfast time again.’ Bex laughed at this. ‘Come on, Eloise, let’s go up to your room first and see if we can find those hearing aids of yours.’
* * *
Lisa spent the next hour helping Stephie and Azir with tea and coffee before taking the trolley back to the kitchen and stacking the huge dishwasher so that the kitchen staff could get on with lunch preparations. She should have volunteered to do this years ago, Lisa thought, relishing being useful.
Over the past few years, once her girls were at school, she’d had several little part-time jobs and loved them all. She’d been taken on a couple of days a week at the tourist shop and café in the village, which had been utterly perfect for her, fitting in around the girls’ schooling and Robyn’s and then Sorrel’s dance and theatre sessions. Beddingfield, having won Best Yorkshire Village 2018, was still dining out on its win, visitors stopping off to roam its streets and beautiful countryside as well as buying souvenirs and the now famous Beddingfield Brownies.
And then, as per usual, just when she’d really thought she was making a difference to Beddingfield, the village she loved so much, her condition had had her back in bed with fatigue or, more frightening, returned to hospital once again with seizures, leaving Jess to take care of Sorrel, and the employment given to someone else.
As if reading Lisa’s thoughts, Jess appeared at her side as she continued to load the dishwasher. ‘Mum, you’re doing too much,’ Jess warned. ‘You do this, think you’re OK and then wham, you’re back in bed again.’
‘Jess,’ Lisa said, ignoring the concern in Jess’s voice as well as the suggestion that she leave just when she was enjoying herself, ‘I’d like to work in the garden.’
‘OK, go home, then. But have a rest first.’ Jess frowned. ‘I can’t imagine what there is to do in your garden in January.’
‘No, this one.’
‘This one what?’ Jess was irritable.
‘This garden .’
‘Mum, we have gardeners here.’
‘Well, they’re not doing a very good job.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Jess shook her head. ‘We can never get them here and when they do put in an appearance, they spend time drinking coffee and chatting up the staff. Anyway—’ She broke off. ‘We shan’t be needing them much longer…’ Jess’s face crumpled.
‘What?’ Lisa reached out a hand to this eldest daughter of hers who rarely showed her feelings, but just got on with what life threw at her. ‘Jess, what is it?’
‘The place is being sold.’
‘What? This place?’ Lisa exhaled the breath she’d been holding in.
‘Hmm. Mum, what am I going to do? I’ve a mortgage to pay, a ten-year-old who already eats for England…’
‘Well, that’s because you feed her such delicious stuff…’
‘Mum, don’t be facile,’ Jess said crossly. ‘I really can’t be arsed going through all the rigmarole of signing on and looking for a new job.’
‘But surely, whoever’s bought the place will want to keep you on? You particularly. The staff respect you and the residents love you.’
‘Not convinced,’ Jess said somewhat mulishly. ‘Anyway, they’re knocking the place down.’
‘The new owners are? Oh, Jess.’
‘I’ve just had John and Ruth Richardson in…’
‘The new owners?’
‘No, no, they own the place now . Have done for the last twenty years or so. I think Covid and then a whole load of new health and safety regulations have finally made their minds up for them. Running care homes these days is not only hard work but sometimes just not viable. Anyway, they’re off to Benidorm to retire.’
‘Well, more fool them,’ Lisa said, pulling a face. ‘Costa del Sol when you could be here in Yorkshire and out in that glorious garden?’ She nodded towards the grounds beyond the kitchen window. ‘What will happen to all the residents?’
‘Their families will have to find other care homes for them.’
‘And what about those who have no family?’
‘Mum, I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Jess pulled a tired hand through her dark curls.
‘So, who’s bought it? Have there not been loads of people coming to look round it? Didn’t the Richardsons have the good manners to inform you first? Did you have no idea?’ Lisa found herself becoming crosser and crosser on Jess’s behalf.
‘The Sattar brothers,’ Jess said crossly. ‘You know, the Frozen lot?’
Lisa stared. ‘Oh, the brothers who’re after St Mede’s? Robyn was telling me all about them over tea last night. What do they want? World domination?’
‘Well, village domination at least.’ Jess managed a small smile. ‘Not the end of the world for me, Mum, whereas for the residents here, it will be the end of their little world. Oh bugger. Pass those biscuits, Mum. I need carbs.’