Chapter Two #2
If you take the road out of Upper Iffley toward Tippington, a ten-minute stroll will bring you to edge of the Langley Hall estate. From there you can stand on the pavement opposite and admire the crenelated walls and turret of the house, which make it look like a castle from a distance.
The original house was built in the fifteenth century, but all that remained of that were the walls of the great hall, which was now the entrance hall.
Subsequent generations had added to it, and it rose up and sprawled out, so that there were arched cloisters around the ground floor and more windows than I could count on the upper floors.
“Our ancestors lived there, Daisy,” my mum would say to me. “That’s why our surname’s Langley, after the hall.”
It gave me a fascination with the house.
Time after time I went to the mobile library that came to the village on Wednesdays and borrowed a book called The Story of Langley Hall, along with The Ghosts of Langley Hall, both out of print now.
I read about all the former residents, wondering which I was descended from.
When the books were withdrawn, Mrs. Harris, the librarian, gave them to me, tattered though they were.
After Lord Ashbury, the last lord of the manor, died, it was inherited by a very distant relative in Australia.
He didn’t fancy swapping Helios for heritage and promptly put it on the market, where it stayed for years, neglected and unloved.
A storm broke the windows and they weren’t repaired.
Tiles slipped from the roof and weren’t replaced.
The turret began to crumble. The house became somewhere local teenagers dared each other to visit at Halloween.
Then James arrived, incredibly rich and looking for a home in the country and a wife with which to found a dynasty.
He made a start at restoring it, and all the windows at least had glass now.
When he found me, of noble blood but impoverished, it seemed like a perfect combination, like days of yore when up-and-coming bourgeoisie would marry aristocrats who were on the way down, combining wealth with lineage.
But there was more work than he anticipated.
Progress stalled and his plans came to nothing.
From time to time we still had to chase teenagers away.
And in the end, James didn’t value old things; the fact of my ancestry meant less to him than I’d thought; he was only concerned with the future, and the original family tree was torn down and replaced with this barren shrub.
There was space on it for a football team of children and generations ad infinitum, but try as we might in the early years of our marriage, children never came.
We went to the best fertility specialists money could buy.
James passed his tests with flying colors, while I was poked and prodded and monitored and injected, but children didn’t come.
Heads were scratched and shoulders were shrugged.
I was taken on a luxury holiday, to see if something as simple as rest and relaxation would help, but still, children didn’t come.
Eventually, we realized we were throwing good money after bad, and I had failed in my purpose to continue the family line.
The tree remained blank, the paper yellowing and curling at the edges.
We stopped talking about it, then we stopped talking about anything.
James went out every morning and I stayed in.
Langley Hall and Mrs. Billings became my world.
As the years went by, James saw the last chance of a new line disappear and began to tighten the purse strings and create all sorts of rules.
I’d outlived my usefulness and failed to perform.
We began to sleep in separate rooms. He started monitoring the bank accounts to see what I was spending money on, and he halved my allowance.
He began watching what I ate, which had the effect of making me want to eat more and more.
He canceled my TV subscriptions so that all I could watch was basic TV or the shows I already owned on DVD, mostly whodunits.
Mrs. B knocked on the front door again. “Are you there, Lady Langley, love?” My name is not Lady Langley.
It is Daisy Dixon, née Langley, and I live in Langley Hall, but Mrs. Billings won’t be moved on the subject of how to address me.
I reached the front door, and with some heaving and ho’ing, opened it.
Every Monday and Thursday, Mrs. Billings comes to clean the rooms James and I live in, while Mr. Billings keeps the garden in order.
However, Mrs. Billings’s days were flexible, she came and went largely as she pleased, and that week she had moved it to a Tuesday so that she and Mr. Billings could go to an agricultural show over on the other side of Bristol on the Monday.
Every spring, contractors come to clean the chandeliers in the ballroom, in which James takes a particular pride, although we haven’t used it for years. The rest is left to fend for itself, other than the odd day, aforementioned, when I come over all domesticated.
Mrs. B entered, unraveling her headscarf and heading for the kitchen.
“Everything alright?” Her curly gray hair sprang out and she looked around her, as if seeing the house for the first time.
She was small and slight, her eyes were hazel, her nose was long, and with her head always forward from her shoulders, it sometimes made her look as if she were sniffing her way around.
“Fine thanks, just lost track of time,” I said, and I followed her to the old kitchen, a big room on the ground floor where, in days gone by, they served up elaborate banquets for the English aristocracy.
Apparently the Duke of Wellington had once visited.
Now, with a working sink, kettle, fridge, cooker, and microwave, it was primarily used by Mr. and Mrs. Billings and saw the preparation of tea and biscuits, or the occasional Cup-a-Soup.
The kitchen James and I used was a small modern affair on the first floor adjacent to our lounge.
“I suppose you’ll want me to get straight on?” Mrs. Billings said, looking at the kettle. “Thing is, I can’t stop to make the time up; we’ve got Silver Surfers after this.” Mr. and Mrs. Billings were midway through an adult education course teaching them how to make the most of the internet.
“No, that’s fine.” I filled the kettle, took two mugs from the mug tree, Miss Marple for her and Death in Paradise for me, and dropped a teabag into each one. “You go when you have to. Leave the vacuuming if you don’t have time.”
I poured hot water over the tea bags, and Mrs. Billings took a packet of ginger nuts out of her bag.
“My turn, isn’t it?” I said and she nodded, unpacking crisps and chocolate as well.
Her handbag was huge, more like an overnight bag—all the better for hiding things in.
I took my phone out of my pocket and transferred ￡10 to her account under the reference “Bits and Bobbins” so that James thought it was sewing supplies when he checked.
It was more than the snacks had cost, but the difference was never remarked on and I could afford it.
James gave me an allowance of ￡250 every month, which may sound like a pittance against the tens of thousands he was earning and was less than it used to be, but all I had to spend it on was sewing supplies, contraband treats, and knickknacks that Mrs. Billing pilfered from us on a weekly basis. Everything else was paid for me.
“I don’t know why you have to be so cloak-and-dagger about it,” Mrs. Billings said, as I took possession of the biscuits. “You’re a grown woman. You should just say ‘I choose what I eat and I choose to eat ginger nuts.’ Or Bourbons or Jammie Dodgers or whatever.”
I nodded and “Hmm’d” vaguely. Mrs. B wasn’t fully aware of the subtle nuances of James’s and my relationship.
We sat at the old refectory table. Mrs. Billings took a small container of sugar out of her bag and spooned some into her drink.
The previous year, the contractors cleaning the chandeliers had angered me and I’d swapped the sugar for salt.
Unfortunately, I forgot to swap it back after they’d gone and the next day Mrs. Billings became unintended collateral.
She would never forget the lessons of last year’s spring clean.
Next, she pulled out a carton of milk, broke the seal, and poured for both of us. That was the legacy of a much earlier faux pas.
We’d hardly started on our drinks when the back door opened and Mr. Billings entered. He stood on the mat and pulled one of his boots off.
“Sole’s coming away from the upper, Brenda. It’s letting water in,” he said to Mrs. B. She rose from the table and went to have a look at it.
“That’s done for,” she said. “You’ll need a new pair. That’s going to cost.”
Mr. B sighed heavily and I wondered if it would help if I offered him some overtime.