7
ARCHIE STOOD LOOKING up at the roof, his hand shielding the sun from his eyes, as he watched the man from the roofing company assess the latest batch of repairs that were needed. He’d been hoping to delay it until later in the summer, but a deluge of rain the night before last had resulted in one of the bedroom ceilings bowing with the weight of the water in quite an alarming way. Luckily — or unluckily — it was his mother’s room so they had realised fairly quickly. If it had been one of the unoccupied rooms, they may have been dealing with a ceiling collapse which would have been a much more costly repair. As it was, he’d had to go up into the attics himself and scoop the water into a bucket using a dustpan to avoid that happening.
Simon the roofer stood in a gully between the points of the roof and called down to Archie. ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen, but you’ve got a couple of broken chimney pots up here. I’ll take some photos, show you when I come down.’
‘Thank you,’ said Archie, although why he was thanking the man for adding to the eventual bill, he didn’t know. His manners were automatic though, even when he felt far from being polite. And obviously it wasn’t this chap’s fault, but it didn’t help that Archie knew he was mentally rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of handing over an inflated bill just because of which house it was.
While he waited for Simon to be escorted down through the house by Ursula, Archie shoved his hands in his pockets and paced the lawn. Each determined stride helped the stress ebb away slightly, but these days he never felt relaxed. There was always something new to be worried about.
‘Some missing tiles, is it?’ Archie asked optimistically when Simon joined him.
‘And then some! You’ve got some flashing missing from one gulley. Looks like it’s been nicked.’
‘We had some of the lead stolen a few years ago and it was replaced with something else.’
‘Mmm. Inferior materials. Probably been blown off in a storm. They should have replaced it with lead since this place is listed.’
Archie nodded. ‘We always intended to replace it properly when funds allowed.’
‘You want the whole thing sorted now, or do you want a patch up job?’
‘Whatever you can do that isn’t going to bankrupt me.’
Simon laughed, assuming Archie was joking.
‘And here are the pots you might want to sort before next winter.’ Simon pulled up a photo of the damaged chimney pots on his phone. ‘If you leave them, the rainwater will get in the cracks and they’ll shatter.’
‘That’s rather dramatic.’
Simon shrugged. ‘That’s what happens with terracotta.’
‘If you could let me have a quote for the bare minimum, please. And a separate one for the chimney pots because they might have to wait.’
‘No problem, mate.’
Archie walked Simon back to his van which was parked outside the estate office, waved him off and went to find Seb who was doing something or other in his side of the courtyard.
‘Seb?’
‘Up here!’ Seb was standing on one of the rafters that ran across the roof. The roof space was open and he was planning to turn part of it into a mezzanine.
‘This roof is in better shape than the one at the house, apparently.’
‘Ah, you’ve seen Simon?’ Seb lowered himself down onto the top of a stepladder, which wobbled precariously until he had both feet on it.
‘Yes,’ Archie said glumly, perching on top of an old tea chest. ‘Looks like that’s where the profit from this year’s Christmas market will end up. It’s depressing that I’ve spent the money before we’ve made it.’
‘This Christmas, the market will be bigger and better than last, so at least you have an idea of what to expect.’ Seb sat down on an exercise bike and leant forward on the handlebars, all his attention on Archie. ‘Have you thought any more about opening the house?’
Seb had suggested the idea of opening some rooms in the manor house to the public. There was enormous interest locally, driven partly because during the Second World War it had been planned that the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, would have been sent to the Court if they’d had to evacuate London. There were rumours that all the things that had been sent to prepare for their visit were still stored in the cellars.
‘I haven’t found the right time to ask Mama yet.’ Because he knew what she would say. It would be a firm no. And he didn’t want to share with her how bad the finances were because he didn’t want her to worry. If she knew the truth, she’d give in and allow the public to visit, but he knew she’d see it as a failure on his part as well as a violation of her privacy and something unbecoming of the family name.
‘What about the swimming lake idea?’
‘I went down to the lake and met the woman. Her name is Nora.’
‘And what did she say? Does she know much about it?’
‘I’m not sure I asked,’ Archie said, casting his mind back to his brief conversation with Nora and finding that he couldn’t remember much other than how lovely she’d looked bundled up in her swimming robe, smiling and chatty once she’d realised he hadn’t been about to evict her from the lake. ‘She did say it was a very inviting lake, and she didn’t seem to mind that there are fish in there.’
‘So you didn’t exactly milk her for information.’ Seb said, shaking his head but grinning.
‘It wasn’t the right time. She was about to get in the water and I was holding her up.’
‘It’s your lake and she was trespassing.’
Archie winced. ‘Well, I hardly think it counts as trespassing, Seb. But I take your point. I’ll pop along with Tatty and see her on another morning. She swims every day.’
‘Does she? Perhaps I should come with you armed with a list of questions if it makes you uncomfortable to ask her.’
‘No need,’ Archie said, feeling that Seb’s presence might spoil the moment. Because now that he’d met her, she was forefront in his mind and he wanted to see her again. He certainly didn’t want to scare her away with an interrogation. ‘But if you could give me an idea of what may be useful to ask, I’m happy to.’
‘What’s she like then?’
‘Oh. I imagine she’s around our age. Pretty.’
‘I see. Pretty.’ Seb smirked. ‘And very friendly? You like her.’
‘I do like her,’ Archie said, missing Seb’s emphasis on the word like . ‘She was lovely.’
‘Arch. If I were you I’d go down there in the morning in my trunks. How often do you meet a woman who you could ask out?’
‘Hold on there. I’m not propositioning her, I barely know her. She’ll be married, I’m certain.’
‘Well at least find out before you write her off. It’s about time you had some fun. If I can’t drag you to the pub with me and Oliver, perhaps she can tempt you out of the grounds once in a while.’
Archie was well aware that his social life was a tragedy. He told himself that he didn’t have time to socialise. That it wasn’t fair to leave his mother alone when Ursula and Mrs Milton were off duty. She was quite capable of looking after herself, but with him out of the house during the day, he liked to keep her company in the evenings. But the reality was that his mother went out more than he did and he was desperately out of the habit of maintaining friendships. Seb was the first person he’d had a proper friendship with for years and Archie loved chatting to him. He enjoyed hearing Seb’s ideas, his mind constantly whirring with plans. If he could have sat in a pub with Seb, he’d feel quite comfortable that they’d have a pleasant conversation. But bring anyone else into the mix, like Oliver who Archie had only met a few times, who was confident beyond belief, successful and also friends with Seb, Archie knew he would feel small. He was protecting himself from it becoming obvious that he was the less interesting friend.
‘What were you doing up there?’ Archie said, changing the subject.
‘Just trying to get a good look at the space. I dumped everything in here in such a rush in the summer, it needs a good sort out. I was wondering whether to use the mezzanine for storage or for an office. What do you think?’
‘I think we might need to speak to someone at the Council if you’re thinking about having an office here,’ Archie said. ‘We’d need to apply for change of use.’
‘Let’s get a planning officer down here. See what’s possible because we could do something with the building on the other side of the courtyard too. It needs repairing but it’s wasted using all this space as storage. It could be another income stream if we put our minds to it.’
Seb would make a far better estate manager than he did. Archie blundered from one day to the next, feeling he had no time to look beyond what each day presented to him. ‘That’s a good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.’
‘It’ll take some sorting out and you’ve got enough on your plate worrying about the roof of the house, let alone the roof of an empty stable block.’
Archie nodded gratefully at Seb. ‘I’ll start looking into the lake idea properly,’ he said. It was the least he could do when Seb was taking care of so many other things for him. And it was the excuse he needed to see Nora again.
That evening, his mother was heading out to her usual book club. She had a standing arrangement to share lifts with two friends and because she didn’t drive, Archie acted as taxi driver every third month, which he didn’t mind at all. But not tonight. So he was planning to light a fire, pour himself a whisky and do some research on swimming in lakes.
‘I do wish you’d come to the book club, darling,’ his mother said over dinner. ‘I thought you’d enjoyed it after we did it at the festival in the summer.’
This was a standard conversation he had to sit through once a month on book club evening. Actually, he had enjoyed the festival enormously, but the idea of accompanying his mother to a book club seemed desperately tragic. Almost a confirmation of what his life had come to: tagging onto his mother’s social life.
‘I did enjoy it, but I never have time to read. Anyway, at Seb’s suggestion I’m doing some research tonight.’ Dropping Seb’s name in would give some credibility to what he was doing. His mother loved Seb.
‘Researching what, exactly?’
‘You know we saw that woman on the lawn the other morning? I bumped into her again and as it happens, she swims every morning.’
‘In our lake?’ his mother said indignantly.
‘Yes. I don’t think it matters,’ he said weakly, knowing that she wouldn’t agree.
‘Of course it matters, Archie.’
‘Seb thinks we could use the lake as a swimming lake,’ he said, not sure whether in this instance, even dropping Seb’s name in would help. ‘Charge people to come and swim.’
‘Well, I suppose if the woman’s swimming anyway, the least she can do is pay. Surely there’s no call for swimming in a lake. There’s a perfectly good municipal pool in Croftwood. And do we want to encourage people traipsing around the estate?’
‘The people who traipsed around over Christmas bought our new heating system, Mama.’
‘Don’t be impertinent, Archie,’ she said, suppressing a smile.
‘I’m only looking into it at this stage. Seb and I won’t do anything on the estate without talking to you first.’
His mother laid down her knife and fork and dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin. ‘Archie. You must run the estate as you see fit. It’s of no consequence what I think.’ She laid a hand on his and squeezed it. ‘I’m just a cross old woman.’
‘Mama…’
‘I must go. Penny will be here any minute.’ She kissed his cheek on her way past and left him to finish his dinner.