Chapter Ten #2
We fish out another photograph, this one showing a young Arabella with a boy and a girl of about the same age, all of them dressed in Shakespearean-style costumes: the girls with wide skirts and ruffs, the boy in hose.
Arabella has her face powdered white, her lips slashed dark with paint.
They are outdoors and, from the props scattered around them on the grass, I assume they’re putting on a theatrical performance.
‘Ah,’ says Arabella, ‘that’s Dotty Gaskell and Dicky Manvers. The children of family friends. The three of us were such good chums, once. But then they went and fell in love.’
‘With each other, you mean?’
A grimace. ‘Dotty and Dicky. A ghastly combination of names, isn’t it?’
‘What are their children called? Dilly and Dolly.’
‘And a dog called Dippy.’
We both laugh at this for longer than it deserves, and I can’t look away from her face, the way it glows with joy. That’s because of me, I think, my heart floating light. Eventually, I place the picture back down. ‘Is that when you lost touch with them, then? When they took off together?’
Arabella pulls a face. ‘To tell you the truth, I had gone to bed with each of them on different occasions in the past, so I was rather cross when they chose one another over me. Oh, I see that’s surprised you—’
It’s so easy to forget that Arabella wasn’t always such a recluse. Of course, I’d assumed I wasn’t her first love affair, but I’d never thought much on the details of who’d come before me.
For my part, there was a girl in the laundry when I was fourteen.
Not one of the other sorters, as I was at the time, but an assistant in the receiving office, who I caught only in glimpses at first. Later, I worked up the courage to ask her name, and soon enough we thought we were quite in love, until she left to go into service.
After her, I had a couple of moments with Gladys in the Land Army.
Thought there might be something there. I’d always liked the contrast of her husky voice with her exaggeratedly feminine style.
Then she met Lou, of course, and that was that: anyone could have seen they were perfect for one another.
Unlike with Arabella and her friends, we three never let this come between us.
Used to laugh about it, in fact. Something like: ‘When Vee took me dancing, she paid for my ticket.’ To which Lou might say, ‘Really? I’ll ask her instead of you, then! ’ I wish they weren’t so far away now.
‘Do you miss it?’ I ask Arabella. ‘Your life before, I mean. It sounds like you were a firecracker.’
At first I think she hasn’t heard me as she doesn’t respond, but at last she sighs, rubbing her neck.
‘Of course I do, but it hardly feels any longer like that was my life. It’s as if all those wild stories happened to another girl, and I have just heard about them second-hand.
As if she could even be out there still, free of all cares, having the most brilliant fun. ’
‘Well, I can see her right here,’ I say, worming out a finger to prod Arabella in the chest. ‘And this cleaning up is the first step to getting her back.’
‘Do you really think so?’
I kiss her on the cheek in response.
Putting aside Arabella’s photographs, I flip through a book of cheque stub receipts next – these fairly recent, from the past couple of years.
Several of them are missing even so. Mice again?
But I’ve noticed something similar a few times now.
Gaps in the accounting. Ledgers missing pages.
Records of land sold, but no evidence of money coming in on the banker’s statements.
And of course debts to the rafters – not all of them explained by the materials in hand.
Perhaps the relevant papers are just hiding in other, as yet undiscovered spots around the house.
Anyone’s guess how Reacher keeps track of them all when they’re in such disarray.
Still, hard to believe he’s never spotted these curiosities.
It makes me wonder … But I don’t have the best head for mathematics. Must be missing something obvious.
Arabella and I escape the study at lunch for a walk in the brisk, fresh air.
The snow has come to Harfold, and the gardens look straight out of an enchanted winter kingdom.
A crisp blanket over the lawns, disturbed in places by our passage: Tom’s heavy tread, my long stride, Mutton’s erratic dance of paw prints.
Arabella and I head through the statues first, laughing at the piles of white that have settled on them – a lack of dignity in it.
Albert the gargoyle’s arse has collected a hefty drift, what with all that surface area going spare.
The poor nude woman – Peggy’s favourite – looks positively hypothermic.
When we reach the lake, it’s full ice from bank to bank, a dark shadow at the centre hinting at frigid water beneath.
I wouldn’t risk it. Mutton’s not so worried, though: I can see his tracks where he’s been running over it.
No fear of death on that hound. At the edges, though, the ice looks solid as bricks.
Tom and I will cut some up soon to stock the ice house.
Arabella turns away from the lake, looking out over the lawns.
The tip of her nose has turned red as a cranberry, and I have to fight the urge to lean over and kiss it.
She has a distant expression, thoughts far off somewhere beyond the cold.
Wonder if she’s thinking of her parents – the drowned Lord and Lady Lascy forever haunting these waters.
‘I haven’t a clue about money,’ she says, almost to herself. ‘You may have noticed.’
I make a diplomatic decision not to answer this.
‘As soon as any of the stuff comes in, it has to go back out right away, and yet it still doesn’t seem to make the tiniest dent in our debts.
How can that be the case? This house is an endless cash-hungry pit.
I have given up on knowing what to do about it.
’ She sighs, her breath puffing white. ‘It can’t continue like this for much longer. ’
‘Would you ever leave?’ I ask.
She shakes her head, loose hairs shushing over her shoulders where all the morning’s work has pulled them from her braid.
‘All of my memories are here, my heritage. Generations of Lascys have been born and have died in those rooms. I can’t abandon that.
’ Her tone regretful, as if she would like to, if only it were possible.
The same answer as Tom; the weight of history a web they’re both caught in.
‘Well,’ I say, nudging her leg with my boot, ‘it will end with you and Reacher anyway, won’t it? If your predictions are true.’
She considers this. ‘Yes, there is always that.’
‘So why not end it on your own terms? Sell up and move away. It’s all the same in the end, surely.’
Another shake of the head. ‘This place is probably worth less than the cost of selling it. There’s simply too much that needs doing, between the damp, the rot, the subsidence. It’s falling apart more and more each day. You would be better off knocking it flat to start again.’
It’s true that Harfold has seen better days, but she must be exaggerating here.
Someone with cash to spare could fix its flaws, make it grand once more.
Or you could get the National Trust in: open up the lands to the commons in exchange for their help to preserve the building.
‘Can’t you get a bank loan to tidy it up? ’ I wonder aloud.
‘Morry and I are up to our eyeballs in unpaid loans already,’ Arabella says, watching a wren as it hops over the lawn. ‘They wouldn’t lend me a pot to piss in.’ She sighs again. Then, after a moment, frowns. ‘Now, I have just had a thought. But it may be nonsense …’
‘Promise I’ll tell you if it is.’
She moves closer to me, and her hand snakes over to touch my elbow. ‘I was thinking, they won’t give me or Morry any more money. But they might loan a little to you …’
‘Me? Have you gone daft?’ I scoff, scaring away the bird. ‘They don’t go round giving out great wads of cash to gardeners, Arabella!’
‘Not as a gardener, of course. I meant if you owned Harfold.’
‘Oh, I see, and I’ll call myself the Queen of Sheba while I’m at it, shall I?’
But Arabella presses my arm tighter. ‘No, I am serious, Vee. If I signed Harfold over to you – don’t look so alarmed! Just on paper, temporarily – then you would have all this collateral against the loan. The bank would have to accept your application.’
A nervous laugh bubbles in my throat. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works, Arabella.’
‘Yes, the details are more complicated than that, I know, but I am speaking in broad strokes. Daddy used to do a similar thing all the time. It’s really just your name that I need to borrow.
The solicitors can sort the rest of it out for us – don’t worry, I hardly expect you to grasp all the finer points of property law. ’
I don’t think she intends this to be mean, but there’s an implied dismissal in it that I don’t appreciate hearing. ‘I’m sure not,’ I reply, a little waspish, and turn away from her. ‘Anyway, I’m getting cold. I’m going back in.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that, Vee.’ She comes creeping up behind me, pressing up to my spine and placing her lips gently against my shoulder.
‘I didn’t mean it in that way.’ Winds her arms around me and squeezes.
Her breath tickles the nape of my neck, sending a thrill right through me.
‘Would you just think about it, at least. As a favour to me?’
My body melts by reflex in her embrace and I’m helpless against her. ‘All right, I’ll think about it.’ The plan has no hope of working, but if it brings Arabella a sense of security in the meantime, why not let her believe it might?