Chapter Seven
The room with the blue lady is actually a long room with high ceilings and bay windows that look down on the front entrance where my car is parked. The blue lady is actually a stained-glass panel over the door showing a lady is a ruffled turquoise gown reclining on pale green cushions.
The bad news is that it’s filthy. When Evan mentioned it needed cleaning he wasn’t joking. The floorboards are grey black with some stubborn ingrained dirt. Cobwebs fill every corner and the windows thick with the grime of ages. this place hasn’t been cleaned in a hundred years. Thank God for Wyn.
He’s a freckled, ginger-haired teenager who comes carrying a mob, a bucket full of brushes and other cleaning products and an eager expression. “I live in Kendric House and help out with everything,” he says as if cleaning is his favourite game.
Together we scrub the windows until they shine, wash the walls which prove to be an elegant off-white not a murky brown, and Wyn climbed a tall ladder and obliterate all the cobwebs. The floorboards are the main problem. An hour on my knees hasn’t made much difference.
“I think we need something more than just a cloth. Maybe a hard brush or a scraper?” I ask Wyn.
“Better ask Alex. He says if anything needs more than a soft cloth we have to ask him.”
“Alex the builder?”
“Alex?” Wyn stares at me wide eyed as he jumps off the last three steps of the lader and lands with a soft thump on the floor. “He’s not the builder. I mean he has some builders working for him but he’s like an expert.”
“Expert in what?”
“Mosaics, ceramics and historic building restoration,” Wyn says proudly. The big words sound like an official title.
“He’s all about antiques, has a big website. I can show you.” He whips out a smartphone and scrolls through to show me.
ALEXANDER MCLAVERTY
HERITAGE BUILDINGS RESTORATION
Wyn takes his phone back and dials a number. A moment later someone answers
“Alex, can Leonie scrape the floor with a brush or something to clean it. The dirt is not coming off.”
Wyn lowers the phone and tucks it away in his back pocket.
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t. He cut me off.”
“Why?”
In the next instant, a breathless Alex runs into the room. “Don’t touch it.” He holds a hand up to stop us. “Let me look.”
I rise from the floor and step back rubbing a hand over my painful knees.
Alex drops to examine the floor, then taking out a small bottle from his toolbelt, wets a corner of the cloth and rubs gently. He reminds me of a beautician cleansing someone’s face.
A little later, the wood begins to emerge from under the hard layer of grime. “I thought so,” Alex says. “All the bedrooms in this wing are the same.”
“What?” I ask intrigued by his attention.
“Come and look.” He beckons me closer. “This is Versailles tiling. It’s a kind of parquet which was very popular with Victorians.” He traces a finger over the intricate interwoven pattern of squares, rectangles and triangles that fit together like a puzzle. “But here they’ve used two kinds of wood. The lighter one is teak, and this is cherry. Alternating sequences.”
Now he’s explained, I can see how beautiful it is. “It’s like an art work,”
“Yes,” he says still rubbing gently to clean up more of the small section. “It’s a lost art.”
“I feel bad walking on it.”
“Don’t. It was made to last. But you have to look after it. I’ll get you some of this oil to dissolve the dirt, just rub it in and the tiles should be good as new.” He looks at me. I’d changed into an old pair of jeans and sweatshirt to clean the room. “Don’t wear anything you don’t want to lose, This oil stains forever.”
An hour later, the floor is indeed a work of art. Alex comes to check and gives his approval. He glances around the room which now it’s clean looks big and airy. “See you’ve got one with a dressing room.” He points to the arch separating the room into the two. You can use this side as sitting room or study.”
“I doubt I’d need either. I’m only here for three weeks. At most.”
He says nothing, just glances round the room. “Wyn, you’d better take her to the north wing.”
The north wing, when I finally see it, is a nightmare, one of those horror chambers you used to find at old fashioned fairgrounds.
Wyn laughs at me when we unlock the double doors and step into the wing. “Yeah, It’s full of crap.”
Crap indeed. The long corridors are dark with electric wires hanging from the ceiling and rooms piled high with furniture covered in sheets.
“When we cleaned the house last year, it was disgusting, you shouldo’ seen it. Dead animals and everything. The smell was” – he clamps both hands over his throat in a gagging motion – “and we had to wear masks and then Evan made us burn everything.”
“What dead animals?” I peer into the gloom, worried I might find skeleton of cattle.
“Oh, birds and rabbits. And, ” he says the last word with emphasis then his face splits in a gleeful smirk. “Did you know Evan is scared of foxes? He is like legitimately phobic. And they were nesting in the house. It was full of shit.” Again, he says this as if the more disgusting the better. “Yes, lots of shit. Fox shit and like pigeon shit on everything.”
I look down at the floor.
“Not here. It was most of it in the middle bit because the windows were broken and animals could get in. But the wings were all locked so nothing got there. Just dust and crap. We helped empty out all the rooms in the East Wing. That’s where your room is. It’s the best. The South Wing isn’t too bad. It was all locked up and like a museum. We’re not allowed in there. Evan says no one is to touch it until Alex and his friends check out if there’s anything like antiques, you know.”
“How long have you worked here?” I ask him while looking around for something to use in my temporary bedroom.
“I’m not working. I’m a volunteer,” he says as he leads me to the first of the massive rooms. “We’ll find beds in here.”
“You mean you don’t get paid?”.
“No.”
This can’t be right; he’s already spent several hours helping me. I can’t think of what to say, so I just follow him. There seems to be a kind of system. Different rooms are dedicated to different things. The first few have beds, all kinds of beds from four posters to small cots that must have belonged to servants. One of these would probably suit me, and it’ll be easier to carry to the other side of the house. But Wyn is a perfectionist. At his excited urging, we keep looking until we find a pretty brass double bed with a decorative headboard of swirling ivy in a free-flowing art nouveau pattern.
Now Wyn takes me around like a tour guide. And he’s a mine of information.
“How many people live here?” I ask hoping to nudge him into telling more about William Jones.
“No one lives in this wing, Or the West except Watson, he’s the gardener. He converted three rooms in the West Wing so he can be close to the back garden.”
Judging by what I’ve seen out of various windows, the back garden is a wilderness of dead wood. “He can’t have been here long,” I say.
“A couple of months but hasn’t done a thing. Alex jokes that he’s gardening online. And the professor calls Watson an expensive mistake who doesn’t like working with his hands. Neither does the professor, but he doesn’t have to.”
“How long has he lived here?”
“The professor? Ages.” Wyn makes an exaggerated arms-wide gesture.
“What’s he like?”
“He’s nice. He always pays me to clean up for him, but he says I’m not allowed to tidy up his papers.”
“Evan mentioned he had a father. Have you met him?”
Wyn gets suddenly animated. “Yeah. He was a millionaire, but he died long ago. That’s how Kendric Park came to him. His great grandparents used to live here. The family used to have a mine, a real silver mine. But it all ended, and they moved to England. Evan came back last Christmas.”
As soon as I can stop the rapid flow of gossip, I say, “I meant Professor Jones’s father.”
Wyn just shrugs. “Don’t know about that.” He points to a chest of drawers. “How about this?”
It’s made of some dark wood and needs a lot of polishing but is wide enough to have eight drawers.
“Are you sure we can carry all this” I ask him as he starts on another room full of wardrobes.
“Of course.” He sounds almost insulted that I dared to question his strength, “I can do anything you want.”
“Don’t you have school work to do?” he looks no more than fifteen or sixteen.
A cloud passes over his face. “No.”
Have I hit a nerve?
“Who else lives here?” I ask to change the subject.
“Oh the best is Llewellyn.”
“Who is he?”
“Llewellyn is a genius. He runs the business hub and lots of people from around here come to work because he has all this legitimately cool computer stuff and a super-fast internet. He says he will teach me IT and computer programming and in a few years I can have a really good job. Then I’m going to walk into the school and show them how I’m getting more money that all of them. Stupid teachers.”
Despite the bravado, there’s a faint but clear note of anger under his words.
“School can be difficult to fit into.” I offer to soothe whatever raw nerve has been triggered.
“They’re evil. They excluded one boy for nothing but stealing an ice lolly and now he’s going to be a policeman. I just want to see when they have a proper break-in and they ask him for help. I should make them beg. They don’t care about students. They exclude you even if they know your big loser arsehole stepdad threatened to throw you out of your home if you’re not going to school.”
I watch Wyn, all freckles and smiles, rummaging around cushions and bedside lamps. He seems very familiar with everything here, as if he lived here. Was he the boy kicked out of school and home? And not for any ice lolly. I remember what Welsh Hagrid told me about the tricks kids played in the village
“There’s a man who helped me find this house. I don’t know his name. He’s tall and big with masses of bushy hair and beard.”
Wyn gives me a blank look. “What’s his name?”
“No idea. But he looks like Hagrid.”
A gleam of recognition in Wyn’s eyes. “Like from Harry Potter ?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“No.”.
“You’ll need a hand carrying all this?” Alex calls to us as he comes out of another door. What did you get?”
Despite my earlier concern about taking advantage of Wyn, I did get lost in all the beautiful things under dust sheets and have chosen lots of things all stacked up just outside the double doors to the North Wing. The best is a lovely silver framed mirror, but I’ve also rescued two delicate bedside tables, and a silk covered chaise longue and, thinking about the precious antique floorboards, a rolled-up rug.
Without letting me object, Alex and Wyn grab one end of the bed each and they carry it together. I follow with the bedside cabinets, one under each arm.
The leave me to arrange the room as they go back and forth and bring all the pieces. Haneen has left me a stack of bed linen and towels.
“This is starting to look like nice boudoir,” Alex says at last when everything is arranged and the room does indeed look like a something from Downton Abby. “Wyn,” he turns to the boy. “Why don’t you take the cleaning bucket back to the kitchen.”
Wyn, surprises me by complying with out a demur.
“I’ve never known a teenager to be so well behaved?” I say after he’s gone.
“Don’t be fooled,” Alex walks around the room checking places in the wall where the paint needs touching up. “He can get up to all sorts and often did before Evan took him in hand.”
“Erm… Alex, I wated to ask you something?”
He turns around and fixes me with a very attentive look, it makes me feel like one of the antique Versailles floor tiles.
“I wanted to give him something for his work. He really—”
“Oh no,” He quickly interrupts me. “Please don’t. Evan is very strict about this. Did the boy ask you to pay him? He shouldn’t have.”
“No, no. He said he was a volunteer, I just don’t want to take advantage of him.”
“You’re not,” he says with such firm finality it makes me wonder if I’ve overstepped somehow.
So, I explain. “Sorry, I just didn’t feel right. There’s a lot of this kind of thing in my world, people willing to make you work for free. You wouldn’t believe how fringe theatre productions don’t pay, not even expenses. Because acting is so competitive, actors work for nothing just to get credits on their CV. Actors who spent years training, expensive training, find themselves working for nothing.”
“That doesn’t sound fair at all. But it’s not to the case with Wyn.” He takes off his baseball cap and ruffles fingers through fair hair before replacing it. “It’s actually a sad story. As a sixteen-year-old, he isn’t entitled to benefits help, he could so easily have ended up either sleeping on the streets or falling in with criminal gangs and drug dealing.”
I think about the eager face of the boy who worked so hard cleaning my room and wanted me to choose a beautiful brass bed. “He did mention something about …” I don’t want to say more because it was only a guess and anyway it’s his private story not for gossip. Alex must feel the same because he says. “To cut a long story short, Evan took him in hand, the boy has spirit and energy, he just needed direction. So the deal is he lives here and helps out. In return, he trains with Llewellyn in the Digital Business Hub, just down the corridor from the ballroom. He’s teaching Wyn computer programming but the deal is, Wyn has to prove himself honest, reliable and willing. The more hours he gives to helping others the more hours he gets with Llewellyn.”
Ah-ha that explains why he was so willing to give me most of the day, cleaning and carrying stuff.
“Can’t I at least give him a little something, like a treat?”
“Don’t give him money. You can help him by giving him jobs if you really have the patience, do what Haneen does and help him improve his language. When he first got here it was effing this and effing that every other word. You’re an actor aren’t you? Get him to practice speeches or something to make him more articulate.”
I think about this later when I’m in the shower. The bathroom, unlike the other rooms has already been renovated, so in addition to original features it has a modern shower which has it work cut out with me because the hot water runs grey for a long time before all the dirt is washed off me.
So, this is why I was offered a room, an exchange in kind. A free room in return for making it look nice and restoring the parquet flooring. And this boy, Wyn, lost and homeless gets a chance at a better future. In the process of helping, he picks up soft skills like reliability and communication skills.
I feel a little ashamed for having underestimated Alex. He clearly cares about Wyn and perhaps his random assistance is nothing to do with me but an attempt to keep an eye on Wyn to make sure he’s behaving.
Another thing about the people who live here is they seem to care about one another. Alex is aware of what Wyn might need beyond a roof over his head or job training. He wants Wyn to grow in other ways.
My feelings about Alex have improved a lot and when I go down to after my shower, I’m ready to make friends with him. Until I’m alone in the kitchen and overhear him talking.
“You’re far too young to be thinking about sex, least of all with someone like her.”
“I wasn’t honest.” Wyn argues. “I just said she was beautiful.”
Clearly they’re just behind the door, about to come in. I can’t walk away without passing them, so I’m stuck here listening to a conversation not meant for my ears.
“Shouldn’t you be looking at girls your own age.”
“What’s this?” Another male voice, lighter, gentler, asks.
“Alex’s got the hots for the new girl.”
“Woman not girl.” Alex corrects his wording but not the rest.
“You going to ask her out?”
“None of your business.” Alex chuckles lightly, but his tone suggests he’s more serious.
The other guy asks, “Would this be the blonde I just saw walk into the kitchen?”
“Fuck. She’s in there?” Alex mutters.
There’s a moment of fretful silence just behind the door. I slip as deep into the large kitchen as I can and pretend to wash up the single cup I find in the large Belfast sink. Inspiration comes to my aid and I fish my earbuds from my pocket and insert them into my ear just as the door opens.
“Hi” the new guy calls out, I pretend not to hear until he’s almost beside me then I do a very good – if I say so myself – jump.
“Did I scare startle you?” he asks. He’s another youngish man with dark hair. He looks just like his voice. Gentle serious, glasses.
I make a big show of taking the earbuds from my ears. “Sorry.”
“Hi, I’m Llewellyn.”
Behind him I see Alex’s shoulders drop in relief that I didn’t hear what they said about me. And before long the kitchen fills with people as dinner is ready.
I sit next to Haneen, pretending not to notice the chair next to Alex which he held out for me Everyone chats, it’s a happy noisy group tucking into delicious sausages and mash with lashings of rich gravy. But I’m uncomfortable.
It’s not him, it’s me, sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it?
He hasn’t done anything bad, there’s no harm in finding a woman attractive and nothing he said outside the door was in the least disrespectful.
Mum and Horrible Howard think my looks are the key to a good marriage, but every boyfriend has only wanted me because of my looks. Elegant, rich, successful young men who work in finance or management and a girlfriend to make their mates envious. My last boyfriend kept bragging My girlfriend is going to be starring as the bride in Paris Wedding with Jim Sturgess . He told everyone at a work party and never noticed me squirming beside him. What I had, in fact, told him as we drove to the party, was that my part didn’t even have a single line of dialogue. Paris Wedding is about a man who falls in love with his best friend and runs off with her on his wedding day. The bride, played by me, is just the pretty blonde in the veil who stands in the church waiting.
My acting jobs are all stuck in the same stereotypes. How I admire actors who dare to turn their backs on easy money and reinvent themselves as something other than pretty faces. Matthew McConaughey shaved his head, Dan Stevens grew a villain’s goatee, and George Clooney went grey and unshaven. If I shaved my heir a la Sinead O’Connor, would men treat me better?
I feel very ashamed suddenly.
Haneen beside me must sense my tension because as soon as the meal is over she stops me trying to help with the washing up.
“Meredith will help me,” she points to girl with curly dark hair who’s already up clearing the table. “You’ve had a long day, why don’t you go up to your room.”
“Already?” Alex says coming to take plates from my hands. “You’ll miss the professor. He should be here soon.”
Even more reason to go up to my room and try to collect my thoughts.