Chapter Thirty-Five
‘Your ladyship – cooee!’
Clem’s shoulders slumped. She had tried to slip into the castle via the tradesman’s entrance, but Mrs Belmarsh or was it Mrs Appleforth had clearly spotted her.
Be nice, be nice be nice, Clem whispered to herself. Despite telling Otto that she was going to be herself, Clem had spent the last three days biting her lip and trying to hide from her visitors.
After the first breakfast, Nick had phoned her up and had read her the riot act leaving Clem feeling defensive and miserable. Clem was letting everyone down. She wasn’t making any money and was expecting others to carry her load. Nick was particularly keen to point out that one of the guests was writing a piece for Vanity Fair, a good review could create further lucrative bookings.
All she wanted to do was work on her collection and think about Rory and that kiss; instead, she was playing nursemaid to a bunch of aliens. They were entirely beyond anything that Clem was used to. Around the castle they would stop any member of staff and request a cocktail be brought to them immediately, as though the staff had nothing else to do.
Duncan did his best mixing them, but in the end Clem had said that Ruacoddy Castle only offered whisky, champagne and espresso martinis.
After the first evening, Mrs Belmarsh declared she couldn’t get through another day without a paloma and, after their daytrip to a local distillery, her husband bought all the required ingredients and showed Duncan how to mix one. Duncan promptly renamed it Mrs Belmarsh’s Declaration to the applause of the guests and the utter delight of Mrs Belmarsh, who promptly offered him a job as her personal mixologist.
‘It’s not like I even know what that is,’ said Duncan later as he started slicing up yet another lemon.
‘Were you not tempted?’ asked Moira with concern. She wanted her boy to move out right enough, but not all the way across the water.
‘Too right I was when she told me the salary, but then she pinched me on the cheek and winked at me.’
‘She did not!’ Moira had been appalled, and Mrs Belmarsh was caught out by an unexpected amount of salt in her bowl of porridge the following morning.
When Clem had heard about that she laughed. The Americans had also loved their trip to Phoulhaig, where they took a thousand photos and Joshua and Lydia gave them a tour of the castle and charmed them in their authentic highland dress. After that, they drove over to the train station, where Clem had had a picnic area assembled by the banks of the river and the staff walked to and fro from the station buildings. Mr McKenzie had brought rods and waders and taught them the art of fly fishing. Clem had also hired a local piper who ran through a playlist of Scottish favourites. It had by all accounts proved to be a very successful day.
They had loved the train but not enough to buy it, but still it added to the drama of the day. Clem was relieved that the old cars had been hauled away, it gave them more space to inspect the big old engine. Mr McKenzie had arranged with the auction house to have them removed via a flatbed loader. Clem had wondered why they bothered, but so long as the sale covered the cost of the loader then she supposed it brought a few more pennies into the coffers.
For each excursion, one of the castle staff accompanied the party as Clem feverishly worked on her collection. She would only join them for dinner. Tonight being their final night, Otto and Moira had pulled out all the stops, serving nine courses. Last night they had piped in a haggis, which Clem had thought had been a euphemism until a piper came in ahead of a plate of a weird looking round, giant sausage. Mr McKenzie then read out a poem and at the end everyone clapped and cheered and continued to take photos.
Clem had watched in bewilderment but decided to play along as if this was a weekly occurrence. Whatever the haggis was, it was bloody tasty and she ate it with gusto.
There were cries for the chef to come and tell them what was in the food, and Clem was convinced as she heard the ingredients that it was more of this elaborate joke. Mr Quimby slapped his thigh and applauded Clem on her sense of humour. She winked back at him and downed her champagne.
It was only later, when Otto assured her that it wasn’t a joke but an honoured Scottish tradition, that Clem felt queasy. Who in the name of God had thought of stuffing a sheep’s stomach lining with offal and grain, then playing it a tune and reading it a bit of poetry?
And now here was Mrs Appleforth with her coo-ee.
‘Do you mind if I come in? I know you said no photos but I was hoping to take some pictures of the old clothes. That would be okay, wouldn’t it? I mean they’re not new or anything? But my word they are something, aren’t they? I mean they are older than our mansion back home. Imagine having clothes that old.’
Mrs Appleforth rabbited on and in a moment of weakness Clem agreed only on the condition that she be the one to take the photos.
Mrs Appleforth squealed in delight and insisted on standing alongside each mannequin. Clem told her she could only choose five, as she needed to get back to work.
Eventually she left, but fifteen minutes later Mrs Belmarsh and Mrs Dayton-Jones knocked on the door and walked in. Would Clem take photos for them as well?
Gritting her teeth, Clem took the photos and then moved all the mannequins back to where she had originally placed them.
Half an hour later all ten women walked in.
Clem stabbed herself in the finger and cursed loudly. The women looked shocked and tittered. Swearing was vulgar but she was a British lady, maybe it was acceptable?
‘Can I help you?’ asked Clem, licking the blood off her thumb.
‘Oh Lady Clementine,’ gushed a woman whose name Clem for the life of her couldn’t remember, ‘I sure hope you can. We saw Connie’s and Wendy’s photos and we thought what fun it would be to have a group photo with all the old clothes.’
While she was speaking, some of the women were already moving the mannequins and Clem had to rush forward to stop them.
‘No. Don’t. They’re fragile heirlooms. Tell me where you want them,’ said Clem with a sigh. As the women stepped away, Clem pressed one of the discreet little buzzers that linked through to the kitchen. In days of old, it was used to summon servants to come and remove the dishes. Now Clem hoped that someone would come running and remove the guests.
As she moved the mannequins into place, she had to repeatedly remind the ladies not to touch the garments, but when one of them picked up one of her new pieces, Clem roared at her to put it down.
All ten women stared at her just as Otto glided into the room.
‘Good afternoon, your ladyship. May I be of assistance?’
Otto might have been about to save the day, but Marylee had decided that the ballroom was altogether too full of negative energies and went to open a set of the large glass doors to let all those bad vibes out. Unfortunately, it was, in local parlance, blowing a hoolie and as she pushed open the doors, the wind howled into the ballroom, lifting Clem’s various pieces of cut patterns and throwing them into the air. In the ensuing chaos, the women rushed about grabbing at stuff and picking up weights and scissors to weigh down the collected bits of fabric, thereby letting all the bits that had been safely secured by the weights fly off into the room.
Within seconds the room was full of airborne fabric and paper and cries of gosh and golly as the women slipped on bits of patterns and knocked over mannequins and accessories.
Clem started screaming her own expletives – that had nothing to do with gosh or golly – at everyone to stop helping. She rushed over to the glass doors, telling Marylee that she didn’t give a fig about effing charged particles.
Otto quickly ushered the women out, telling them that it was now unlikely that there would be any group shot unless her ladyship opened the gun cabinet, and suggested that they might enjoy a morning cup of coffee in the solar before their day trip to Glencoe and a tartan mill. As they left, Clem was heard adding a few new Anglo-Saxon phrases to their collection of quaint British sayings, and Otto quickly closed the door behind her.
***
An hour later there was a knock on the door and Otto peered around. Clem put her scissors down and looked across warily.
‘Have they gone?’
‘Yes. They have gone to terrorise Glencoe. Do you want to take a break? I thought I might show you something.’
Clem looked around. She had managed to tidy up the mess, but she honestly hadn’t been able to restore her equilibrium. Maybe Otto’s diversion might help?
‘Very well. What’s up?’
Otto raised an eyebrow and Clem tried to be more gracious.
‘I’m sorry. What did you have in mind?’
‘It occurred to me that you haven’t seen my workroom. As I saw yours being messed-up, I realised how furious I would be if anyone even touched a canvas in my room.’
This intrigued Clem; she had now been in every room in the castle but hadn’t seen an artist’s studio anywhere, nor any signs of one. As she followed Otto, they headed up to the third floor where Otto’s apartments were, and she watched in disappointment as she opened the door to her rooms. She had been expecting something special, but the last time she had been here there hadn’t been a hint of an artist’s studio.
‘Come on, through here. I think you’ll enjoy this.’
Clem followed Otto into her bedroom and watched perplexed as she walked towards the door to her walk-in wardrobe.
‘Look.’
Curious, Clem joined Otto and gasped in surprise as she saw the back of the wardrobe behind the clothes was a little door.
‘It’s like Narnia!’
‘It’s better than that,’ said Otto with a small laugh. ‘Follow me.’
Otto pushed open the door, revealing a small servants’ staircase heading up. Clem climbed the wooden treads until she popped up into the end of a long attic room. Otto had stepped to one side so that Clem could see the whole space.
The attic ran the length of three rooms, with windows all along one side letting in a nice flat light. There were no curtains, and the bare floorboards were splatted with age-old paint. Stacked against the walls were canvases of all shapes and sizes, and various easels stood in positions along the room with paintings in various stages of completion.
Halfway along was an old stone sink, with pots of paint brushes lined up along the draining board. A wooden chair sat against a wall and a stool rested in front of one of the easels.
Clem walked forward and started to examine the room, smiling in wonder at the artistry on display.
‘These are incredible.’
Some pictures were in the old style, but she noticed others that she thought might be Otto’s own. As she walked along the room she spotted another flight of steps leading down. Pointing to them, she turned back to Otto.
‘Do they lead to that locked door that you don’t have a key for?’
Otto looked at Clem with an impish grin and shrugged her shoulders in a manner that made her look more like a naughty schoolgirl than an old lady.
‘It may be.’
And with a look, the two women laughed and began to chat about the various paintings, all the earlier frustrations with the Americans wiped away. Eventually the talk moved to the great picture swap and Clem began to feel anxious again. Otto and Aster both assured her on every occasion that everything was moving perfectly but Clem hated the entire scheme. Clem was black and white, she said what she thought and acted impulsively. Looking at Otto now coming alive as she talked about her art and her history, Clem saw her as more akin to Aster than she ever would be.