Six months later, on the wettest August day for fifty years, Declan O’Hara moved into Penscombe Priory to the feverish excitement of the entire county. It rained so hard that on ‘Cotswold Round-Up’ James Vereker caringly warned his viewers about flooding on the Cotchester-Penscombe road. But perhaps, being Irish, reflected Lizzie Vereker the next morning, the rain made Declan and his family feel more at home.
Lizzie’s children had gone out to friends for the day; her daily Mrs Makepiece was due later; Ortrud, the nanny who had replaced Birgitta in April, was upstairs no doubt writing about James in her diary. Lizzie had a rare clear day to work. But she was halfway through and very bored with her novel. Outside the downpour had given way to brilliant sunshine and delphinium-blue skies. From her study Lizzie could see the keys on the sycamore already turning coral and yellow leaves flecking the huge weeping willow which blocked her view of the lake. There wouldn’t be many more beautiful days this year, reflected Lizzie. Overcome by restlessness and curiosity, she decided to walk up the valley and drop in on the O’Haras. As a moving-in present she would take them some bantams’ eggs and the bottle of champagne an adoring fan had given James yesterday.
The trees in the wood that marked the beginning of Rupert’s land were so blackly bowed down with rain that it was like walking through a dripping tunnel. Emerging, Lizzie wandered up the meadows closely cropped by Rupert’s horses. In the opposite direction thundered the Frogsmore stream, which ran along the bottom of the valley, hurtling over mossy stones, twisting round fallen logs, shrugging off the caress of hanging forget-me-nots and pink campion, and occasionally disappearing altogether into a cavern of bramble and briar.
Coming in the other direction was Mrs Makepiece, who worked mornings for the unspeakable Valerie Jones and who was bursting with gossip. The four Pickfords’ vans bearing the O’Haras’ belongings had nearly got stuck on Chalford Hill, she told Lizzie, and Declan’s son — well, the image of Declan, anyway — had been sighted in the village shop, asking for whisky, chocolate biscuits, toilet paper and lightbulbs, and was quite the handsomest young man anyone had seen in Penscombe since Rupert Campbell-Black was a lad.
‘Will they be bringing their own staff from London?’ asked Mrs Makepiece wistfully, thinking it would be much more fun working for Mrs O’Hara, who probably paid London prices and wouldn’t slave-drive like Valerie Jones. Lizzie said she didn’t know. Mrs Makepiece was an ace cleaner, a ‘treasure’. Even the exacting Valerie Jones admitted it. Annexing ‘treasures’ was a far worse sin in Gloucestershire than stealing somebody’s husband.
Lizzie wandered on. Having had no lunch because she was on a diet, she kept stopping to eat blackberries, which didn’t count. Up on the left, dominating the valley, Rupert’s beautiful tawny house dozed in the sunshine. The garden wasn’t as good as it had been when Rupert’s ex-wife Helen had lived there. The beeches she’d planted round the tennis court were nearly eight feet tall now. Rupert should fly a flag when he was in residence, thought Lizzie. One couldn’t help feeling excited when he was at home.
Half a mile upstream, the village of Penscombe, with its church spire and ancient ash-blond houses, lay in a cleavage of green hills like a retirement poster promising a happy future. Lizzie, however, turned right, clambering over a mossy gate into a beech wood, whose smooth grey trunks soared like the pipes of some vast organ. Following a zig-zagging path upwards, which three times crossed a waterfall hurtling down to join the Frogsmore, Lizzie finally stumbled and panted her way to the top.
Across a hundred-yard sweep of lawn, which was now almost a hayfield, rose the confusion of mediaeval chimneys, pointed gables, gothic turrets and crenellated battlements that made up Penscombe Priory. On either side with the sun behind them like a funeral cortege towered great black yew trees, cedars and wellingtonias. To the left of the lawn, where once, before the dissolution of the monasteries, the nuns must have strolled and prayed, grew a tangled rose walk.
Poor O’Haras, thought Lizzie, as she hurried along it. After divorce and death, moving house is supposed to be the most traumatic experience. But, as she skirted a large pond overgrown with water lilies, round to the front of the house which faced into the hillside for shelter, she was suddenly deafened by pop music booming out of two of the upstairs turrets, and opera, she thought it was
The old oak front door, studded with nails, was open. On the sweep of gravel outside a van was still being unloaded. Peering inside, Lizzie noticed some very smeary furniture (the O’Haras
Sprawling over the front porch was an ancient clematis which acted as a curtain for the bathroom window above and covered the doorbell, which didn’t work anyway. Inside Lizzie called ‘Hullo-oo, hullo-oo,’ in a high voice.
Next minute a very plain, self-important black and white mongrel appeared, barking furiously and wagging a tightly curled tail.
Turning right down the hall into the kitchen, which was situated in the oldest, thirteenth-century part of the house, Lizzie found a woman, whom she assumed must be Declan’s wife Maud. Ravishing, but inappropriately dressed in a pink sequinned T-shirt, lime-green tracksuit bottoms, with a jewelled comb in her long red hair, she was very slowly unpacking china from a tea chest, stopping to smooth out and read each bit of paper it was wrapped in, and drinking whisky out of a tea cup.
On the window seat, training a pair of binoculars on Rupert Campbell-Black’s house, knelt a teenage girl with spiky short pink hair, a brace on her teeth and a pale, clever charming face. In her black clumpy shoes, wrinkled socks and black woolly cardigan, she looked like a tramp who’d just changed into his old clothes. Neither of them took any notice when Lizzie came in. But a very tall girl in jeans and a dark-green jersey, with a cloud of thick black hair, strange silver-grey eyes, and a smudge on her cheek, who was quickly unloading china, looked up and smiled.
‘I live down the valley,’ announced Lizzie. ‘I’ve brought you some eggs and a bottle. Don’t open it now. It’s a bit shaken up. Put it in the fridge.’
‘Oh, how really kind of you,’ said the dark girl. She had a soft deep slightly gruff voice, like a teddy bear’s growl. She looked very tired.
Maud, having finished reading her piece of newspaper, glanced up and gave Lizzie the benefit of her amazing eyes which were almond-shaped, sleepy, fringed with very thick dark red lashes, and as brilliantly green as Bristol glass. Deciding Lizzie was worthy of interest, she introduced her daughters Taggie, short for Agatha, the tall dark one, and Caitlin, the little redhead.
The sink was crammed with flowers still in cellophane. Sidling over, Lizzie noticed one lot was from Tony and Monica Baddingham, wishing the O’Haras good luck in their new house and a long and happy association with Corinium.
‘All the nation’s press tramped through here yesterday in the mud trying to interview Declan,’ grumbled Maud. ‘
She extracted a mug wrapped in a page of
‘It’s a glorious house,’ said Lizzie, raising her mug to them. ‘Welcome. We’re all wildly excited you’ve come to live here.’
‘After yesterday’s deluge, we’ve discovered it leaks in half a dozen places,’ said Maud, ‘so we shall probably have to have a new roof as well.’
‘We’re thinking of letting our grounds to some cows,’ said Caitlin, putting down her binoculars and helping herself to a chocolate biscuit, which she proceeded to share with the black and white mongrel who was drooling on the window seat beside her.
‘Moving’s very disorientating,’ she went on. ‘Daddy’s trying to work upstairs, and he’s frantic because he’s lost his telephone book. Taggie’s lost her bra.’
‘Caitlin!’ The tall girl blushed.
‘And I’ve lost my heart,’ continued Caitlin, training her binoculars back on Rupert Campbell-Black’s house. ‘Will you introduce me?’
‘He’s not here that much,’ said Lizzie. ‘But when he is, I’m sure he’ll introduce himself.’
‘It’s not fair,’ moaned Caitlin. ‘I’m going to bloody boarding school next week, and I won’t get first crack at
