they attempted to move the books out of the way of the medicines and necessary equipment. At one point Maud, threatened by what she saw as Agnes’s indulgence, snatched up
In the lucid moments that were left, John chose to say the things that Agnes already knew but wanted to hear again.
‘I’m glad the house will be yours, Agnes. It is right. No one better.’ The breath was measured between each word.
As the last surviving Campion, Agnes had known that she was to inherit Flagge House, since her uncle explained the position on her sixteenth birthday. It was a trick of fate and fertility that continually brought her up short.
There was another struggling pause. ‘I’m glad we’ve always agreed on what needs to be done. But you will have to find ways. I’ve told you, there is no money.’
Agnes’s mental image of the house grew hazy, and reassembled in sharper detail so that the defective roof and rotting windows were observable. For a second or two, she was shaken by doubt. Then she touched her uncle’s cheek with a finger, willing him into peace as he laboured on. ‘It won’t be easy, Agnes.’
Inheriting an historic, if smallish, manor house was tricky at any time, and a rather vexed subject in the world in which Agnes had chosen to make her career. But she had thrashed that one out with herself. She had been lucky and others were not and, if the golden apple had been tossed into her lap, it was best to make the most of it – precisely because others suffered and had no luck. Anyway, there were her feelings for the house and she loved her uncle.
She bent over to kiss him. ‘I promise to do my best.’
While John fought his last battle, she sat on through the bleak January afternoons and silently said goodbye to the security of their relationship. Resting on the sheets, John’s hands were almost as white as the cotton and, occasionally, they clenched in pain. She stroked them, anticipating the time when he would not be there. No longer would his place be laid at the table; his key would remain on its hook in the hall; his voice, having joined the voices of the dead that crowded the husk of the house, would not be heard.
What a stealthy thief Death was, and what a dark and private business dying was. She had encountered it and its effects in her work more than once. They were lucky in the West: the span between the green light and the red was usually reasonable and, very often, by the time the latter flickered, you were aching and ready to go. She glanced at her uncle. That was true in his case but it did not make the passage easier.
Agnes squeezed out a cloth in warm water, to which had been added a drop of lavender oil, and bathed her uncle’s face and wrists.
‘Uncle John…’ she whispered, but longed to say ‘Father’. ‘Thank you for everything. Thank you for looking after me all those years.’
He turned his head towards her. ‘You were my daughter,’ he said simply.
He shut his eyes and fell into one of his lightning dozes. Outside, in the dark winter world, the wind rattled frozen branches. It was grief-stricken weather: wild, moody and battering, which was only fitting. Slowly the sun abandoned the short day, leaving Flagge House and the water-meadow to the gloom. Complete and turned into itself, the house and the land settled for the night.
‘Are you frightened?’ she asked, when he woke with a start. She thought she saw that his features had sharpened.
He stirred and grimaced. ‘I lost God a long time ago.’
Agnes did not bother him any more but sat, quiet and watchful. Slowly, infinitesimally slowly, John Campion raised his hand and traced the shape of the books he could no longer read.
When she woke the next morning, still exhausted from her late-night watch, Maud appeared in her bedroom and told Agnes abruptly that her uncle was dead.
The phone rang. ‘Julian,’ said the clever, faithful Angela, who was today dressed in purple Spandex, ‘it’s a Mrs Maud Campion. She says she lives near Lymouth and she met you at the Huntingdons’ cocktail party.’
Julian was in his office at the Portcullis Property headquarters in London which, as chief executive, he had occupied for the past seven years, worrying over the figures which, for the first time in those seven years, were behaving unpredictably. ‘Put her off.’
‘She’s been sitting on the phone for ages. And Kitty has also rung asking if you would call her back about arrangements for the weekend. She says…’ Angela’s pause was wicked ‘… she says that if you’re not home in good time tonight there will be trouble. She did not specify what.’
There were many strands to knit into a day, strategic, financial, Kitty, the staff, the figures, but early on Julian, who had been born with an unquenchable curiosity and a capacity for risk-taking that had both pushed him to the top of his profession and, from time to time, got him into trouble, decided never to pass by on the wrong side of the road. Also, and this was an intellectual discipline, he refused to downgrade his experiences, especially the bad ones. Each one was useful and added a layer, another facet, polished up the idea of what he wished to be.
Sometimes this philosophy was tested to its limits. There was only so much that could be crowded into a day. He sighed but said therefore, ‘Put her through and, Angela, could you ring Kitty and tell her I promise to be home on time?’
He turned his attention to the phone. ‘Mr Knox, we met briefly at Vita Huntingdon’s at the Conservative do, and since your work is well known in the area I thought I would get in touch. My husband died last week…’
The voice was both confident and strangely muffled, as if the speaker did not wish to be overheard. Julian searched his memory for a Mrs Maud Campion. The call did not surprise him for he was used to approaches such as he assumed this one to be. Profit was a great dismantler of barriers and, because he lived there and knew it, Portcullis had quite a few projects under way in the Lymouth area. ‘Is it to do with a property?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I’d be delighted to discuss it and then I think it would be better if I put you through to the office that deals with the properties. I occupy a less important role. I merely run the company.’ He spoke with his customary lightness, laced with irony, which made the less confident take fright. The word ‘run’ resonated in his head. Phone hunched on his shoulder, he tapped another key on his laptop.
‘That’s quite all right, Mr Knox. I prefer to deal directly with the top.’
The tone was old-fashioned. Julian raised an eyebrow at the hovering Angela, who had embarked on the grim task of getting him to a meeting on time. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what you had in mind.’
Agnes felt in her dressing-gown pocket for her handkerchief which, not surprisingly, was damp, because she had done nothing but weep since John’s death – secret tears that convulsed her between making the arrangements and seeing people, and which left her exhausted.
It’s because I’m so tired, she told herself. Fatigue flays you open, and bullies you into thinking that you cannot survive such a loss. But I can. She thought of John’s key hanging on the hook and his empty place at the table. She remembered looking up at him as he had taken her round the house, and the manner in which he had placed his arm around her shoulders and told her that her bad times were over. She had found her refuge and a place in which to grow up.
It was dawn, the day after the funeral, and Agnes, run ragged by the demands of her aunt and the organization of the details, had abandoned her efforts to sleep. In the frozen moment before dawn, she had pulled herself out of bed and crossed over to the window. Her feet left smudges on the floor and the darkness was as thick as velvet.
Out there in the meadow, the river clattered icily over the stones.
During the past four years, she had grown used to sleepless nights –
