Chapter Twenty

IN THE END it was Connor who supervised the Brownies and the Cub Scouts. And Hetty was the only one who thought his motive was not so much to do with a desire to be helpful as it was to do with Caroline’s insistence that the most practical garment to slap paint around in was a bikini.

‘I got it out of Superwoman, honestly,’ she told Hetty smoothly. ‘It’s easier to wash your body than to wash clothes. And it’s hot work.’

‘You’re all practicality, Caroline,’ said Connor.

Connor and Hetty were still not speaking. Hetty couldn’t forget how dreadfully unreasonable he’d been, and was working on hating him. If she tried hard enough, she should manage it eventually.

Connor cooked, Hetty cleared up. They said ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’, ‘good-morning’ and ‘good-night’ – but nothing much else. This should have suited Hetty. There was now no longer any danger that he would say something high-minded and embarrassing about their night of thwarted passion.

For Hetty, it was perhaps unfortunate that Phyllis and Connor had become firm friends; and even Peter, who was working closely with Connor on the conversion of the barns, had started to think better of him. Which somehow again left Hetty with no one. Caroline had always been on Connor’s side.

All that time when she was defending Connor against Peter and Phyllis, she had felt as if she had friends even if he hadn’t. Now she felt alienated, as if it was her who planned to bulldoze the house and deprive the village of their heritage.

All anyone could talk about in the village was the ruby wedding. Everyone was involved in it, if not directly then they knew someone who was. The catering ladies, whose group had swelled to quite a team, all chattered away, and gave Hetty progress reports on the availability of sheet gelatine in the village shop, or raised-pie moulds in town.

The florists, numbering only two, and quieter, discussed twisted willows and sphagnum moss when they met Hetty walking the dogs.

The champagne, which had started out as vintage, been demoted to ordinary and on down to white wine, had recently been reinstated. Alan Brewster ecstatically told her the various stages of play.

‘When her husband found out we were down to Chardonnay he was furious. Said if he couldn’t give his guests a decent bit of fizz he might as well sell up.’

‘Oh. Well, I am pleased. There must be quite a mark-up?’

‘Yes, well, I’ll give him a pretty good discount – don’t want him finding he can buy it cheaper at his supermarket. But my wine merchant will love me.’

It occurred to Hetty, walking home on that particular day, that everyone was being like she had been at thirteen, planning her first teenage party with her friend. They’d made countless lists, what food, what drink, what music, what games, and who should or shouldn’t be asked. But it was her parents who actually got it all organized; who made it happen. Now, she felt like a single parent with a houseful of teenagers.

The loan also isolated her. Only Connor knew about it. She had been forced to accept his right to add the money that he earned to the fund, but she was determined that he wouldn’t have to sell his car. It would have been preferable not to have to touch any of his money, but such high ideals were beyond her price range. She’d had to dip into the account quite deeply for the ruby wedding, and they wouldn’t get that back until after it was too late. She also needed to find out exactly how much was added. Connor would know, but he was the last person she could ask. She would have to find out by more devious means.

She waited until the house was empty of visitors, and the rain seemed set to keep it empty, and rang the loan company. With a few lies and a bit of deviousness, she managed to get the information she required. The sum was considerably lower than she had feared – Connor had obviously managed to pay off quite a bit of the backlog – but there was still going to be a shortfall. And given that the ruby wedding was only the day before the loan was due to be paid, she had a problem. She couldn’t expect Mrs Makepiece to pay immediately, and, even if she did, she would need time for the cheque to clear. Even if she could have asked for the money in advance, they would still be a few hundred pounds short. It wasn’t a huge amount: if only there was something else they could sell. Her gaze flicked speculatively over the Meissen figurines. If she thought they were properly insured, she’d have broken one.

Two days before the party, the barn was finished.

‘As long as the whitewash stays white, and on the walls, until after the party, it can all drop off afterwards.’ Hetty was sweeping the floor with a broom with a two-foot-wide head, which Phyllis called a ‘bumper’.

‘I don’t suppose it’ll stay on much longer than that,’ grumbled Peter from behind a trestle table he was carrying. ‘Those kids won’t have prepared the surface properly.’ He lowered his burden. ‘Where do you want this?’

‘I want one up that end, across the way, as a top table, and the others all end-on to it.’ She picked up the end of the table. They were too heavy and too long to be handled easily by one person. ‘There’s rather a lot of these tables, shall I get some Cub Scouts to help you?’

She was only half teasing. Some strong, if unskilled, labour was needed to help him get them all set up, and at the moment she was the only candidate. And, unskilled though she may be, she was also extremely busy. She glanced at her watch. She had to cycle back down to the village in a minute to check if there were enough young people detailed to serve, sweep, fetch and carry.

‘The Cub Scouts are all at school,’ said Connor, appearing in the doorway. ‘I’ll give you a hand, Peter.’

‘I’ll leave you two to it, then.’ Hetty escaped and climbed on to Phyllis’s bike, trying hard not to feel resentful.

She called in on Caroline on her way home, for a sneaky cup of coffee and a rest.

‘So, how are things?’ Caroline shoved a packet of biscuits in Hetty’s direction. ‘Will it all come together in the end?’

‘I hope so. I’ve managed to borrow enough little round tables for the cabaret.’ She’d been so absorbed in arrangements, Hetty had almost forgotten who or what the cabaret was. ‘There should be enough trestle tables, though some people might be awfully squashed. The barn looks lovely.’

‘And who’s doing flowers for the barn? Presumably you haven’t asked Mrs Willbury and her friend?’

‘No, they’re doing them in the house, but when I suggested they might like to try something freer, for the barn, they looked put-upon and declined.’

‘So, will you do without flowers?’

Hetty had a mouthful of Hobnob so she shook her head. ‘There are all sorts of hooky things on the wall,’ she said when she’d swallowed. ‘I’m going to hang jamjars on them and fill them with something frothy and informal to decorate the walls.’

‘“Frothy and informal”, eh? Like what?’

Hetty shrugged. ‘Dunno, whatever comes to hand on the morning. Cow-parsley probably.’

‘And the food’s all sorted?’

‘Yup, enough to feed the starving millions and have leftovers. The drink’s all at the shop, cooling. So we don’t have to fill our fridge with it. I’ve borrowed knives and forks and plates from the WI. I’ve had to buy some more, but I’m sure they’ll come in useful. What else?’

‘Chairs?’

‘Chairs?’ Hetty thought. She knew there was something about chairs that was worrying her. ‘I know. I’ve got to pick them up.’

‘How are you going to do that? You won’t get many on the back of a bike.’

‘I know, but for some reason the firm I’m borrowing them from could only lend them if I collected them. Damn.’

‘Peter’s pick-up would take a few, but how many are there?’

‘Two hundred and fifty – or at least I hope there are. I only asked for two hundred, but dear Felicity has invited yet more people.’

‘Will there be enough food?’

Hetty nodded. ‘According to my catering team, the more people you have the less people eat. It’s something to do with not being able to get at the food, or manouevre your elbows once you have.’ Hetty regarded her friend thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose you know a friendly farmer with a cattle-truck?’

Caroline pulled out a file marked Brownies. She rummaged through sheaves of paper, badges, innumerable forms and several copies of the Brownie Handbook. At last she found what she was looking for. ‘Cattle-trucks. Bill Jones. Want me to ask him?’

‘If ever you need a kidney or anything just ask me, Caro. I owe you at least one.’

Hetty had hoped to slip up to her room unnoticed. She wanted to run through her lists again and would do it better if half-a-dozen people didn’t keep interrupting her, wanting her to do something else. Connor caught her, by the wrist, and pulled her into the sitting room, which happened to be empty.

‘Hetty! It’s no good avoiding me. We’ve got to rehearse! You seem to have forgotten we’re putting on a show for these people.’

Not forgotten, just pushed to the back of the attic of her mind, behind a lot of other junk. ‘I haven’t time!’ This was true, she hadn’t. But it was also an excuse. ‘I’ve been practising.’ This was less true. She had done a few exercises, her voice was more or less in trim, but she hadn’t decided what songs to sing, and therefore, had only sung a random selection.

‘We have to rehearse together! Come along. There’s only a few people setting up tables in the hall now.’ He took her arm and she found herself going with him.

‘I can’t practise in front of all these people,’ she hissed.

‘They’re all helpers. There are no members of the public likely to hear you. And think how much worse it would be to not practise before playing in front of two hundred paying customers!’

‘Two hundred and fifty,’ she muttered, knowing he was right.

Hetty found it very difficult to sing when she was out of sympathy with her pianist. That time, a lifetime ago, when they had sung and played together well had been so wonderful, so natural. They were such a team, instinctively interpreting each other’s intentions, moving and flowing like fish in a stream.

Now, Hetty could barely open her mouth. Her voice was tight, her jaw was tight, her breathing shallow and unsupportive. Connor’s playing – curse him – was just as relaxed and instinctive as ever.

‘This isn’t working,’ said Hetty. ‘And neither am I. I’m sure it’ll all come together on the night.’

‘Liar. If you were sure, I’d let you get away with it. But you’re nervous as hell, you just won’t let yourself think about it.’

She wanted to say, ‘Whose fault’s that?’ but this was one she couldn’t pin on him. There were two hundred and fifty other people in the queue for blame.

‘Sing something you know really well.’

‘“Good King Wenceslas”?’ She was flippant because she was nervous.

‘“Summertime”, with not too high a start.’ He played a few bars of introduction.

Hetty got through it, and it sounded better towards the end, but it was still not right. ‘That was OK. Now, I must go.’

‘It couldn’t have been much worse and still be recognizable,’ said Connor, but Hetty was already half out of the room.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t keen to put on a good performance – she was, desperately – but she didn’t think there was any point in her rehearsing with Connor just at the moment. Her mind was too full of other things. She couldn’t sing well unless she was totally involved in the music.

The day of the party dawned magically fair. Hetty saw it from her bedroom and decided that Phyllis was definitely a witch, a white one of course, who had again concentrated her efforts and produced perfect weather for momentous occasions.

She got up, knowing she needed a little time before anyone else was around to check on the final details, do the flowers for the barn, and a thousand other things she couldn’t foresee but knew would need doing.

She took the dogs for a long walk. They didn’t need a long walk but she did, and together they followed the same route she had taken when she had first arrived, when winter had held the countryside in thrall.

Now there was mist in the valleys, promising a scorching day, spiders’ webs glistening from every blade of grass. Dew covered everything, and from time to time a drop would sparkle like a prism, all the colours of the spectrum in a tiny sphere. When she was little, Hetty always thought of these drops as fairies. Some part of her still did.

The woods were cool, would stay cool, alive with birdsong, pungent with the smell of wild garlic where before there had been bluebells. Twigs crackled under Hetty’s feet and she had to restrain herself from picking them up for kindling. She would no longer be at Courtbridge House when fires were needed again. It would be Connor’s job to gather kindling.

For Hetty had decided, without even being aware that she was thinking of anything other than bowls of potato salad and bunches of cow-parsley, that as soon as the debt was paid, she would leave.

Her work would be done. Connor was here, for the foreseeable future. He and Phyllis and Peter were all best buddies now and could run the house on a day-to-day basis. And if there were more bookings after tonight’s event, there was a whole team set up to deal with them.

Samuel didn’t need her. He was going to have a handsome barn conversion, level, convenient, with wide doorways and every aid to disabled living invented. And he might not even end up in a wheelchair. All this preparation was Connor’s way of getting him home. Connor’s argument was that if they had somewhere sensible for him to live, and paid outside nurses to care for him, give him physiotherapy and get him on his feet, he’d recover far more quickly than he would in hospital. He’d told Samuel of his plans, and Samuel was now working hard on getting stronger.

Connor had got a loan to pay for the conversion quite easily (she had learnt via Peter), and this knowledge galled Hetty unbearably. Maybe he could have got a loan to pay off Samuel’s debt quite easily. Unless, which seemed more likely, he had convinced the bank on the grounds that the barn conversions were an investment. Paying Samuel’s debts wouldn’t be seen like that – not by a bank anyway.

And nor did the dogs, Islay and Talisker, need her. They were happy to walk with anyone who’d take them, sleep with or on anyone who’d let them. Even Clovis, whom she searched for every morning, dreading finding him dead, had Connor on his side. He was the only one who hadn’t declared the animal should be put down for sanitary reasons.

And Connor certainly didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone, nor, indeed, ever would. He hadn’t so much as touched her since his return. At best, what had happened before must have been caused by lust. And now he had that well under control.

It was only by concentrating hard on the beauties of nature that Hetty managed to keep from weeping with self-pity. Fortunately, the beauties of nature were abundant.

She had hardly been back long enough to take off her wellingtons when her mother rang her. It was still only seven o’clock. ‘I hope I haven’t woken you, dear?’

‘Oh, no. I’ve been up since five.’

‘Just thought I’d ring and see how things were getting on before you got busy.’

‘I’ve been busy all day so far, Mum. How are you?’ This was a hint to her mother that she didn’t want to chat.

‘Fine, dear, but what I really wanted to say is, do you want a job? A paid one, I mean?’

Hetty realized she really didn’t give her mother enough credit. ‘Yes I do. What sort of job?’

‘Only temporary, I’m afraid, but you might love it and then who knows?’

‘What sort of job?’ Her mother may be wonderful but she wasn’t perfect.

‘Running a hotel. In Shropshire, right on the Welsh border. So the owners can have a break.’

‘But that sounds rather beyond me. I’m only a glorified typist, you know.’

‘You are not! You’re running a stately home single-handed! You’re an Events Director, a Catering Coordinator, all sorts of things.’

‘Not actually single-handed, Mum.’

‘Nor will you be in Shropshire. There’s plenty of staff, just no one to co-ordinate them.’

‘I’m not sure –’

‘Darling, you must capitalize on your assets. Think of what you’ve learnt at Courtbridge House? All those skills you never knew you had. I’ll tell these people you’ll do it, shall I?’

‘I really ought to look for my own job –’

‘Yes, but they need you as soon as possible. You wouldn’t want to let them down.’

‘Why not? I don’t even know them. Why should I care?’

‘The woman’s a distant cousin of your father’s, dear.’

That seemed to settle the matter.

Hetty called the dogs, found the kitchen scissors, and went out of the back door to the fields. She had to pick flowers for the barns and this might be her only opportunity, even though there was a risk that they would have flopped before the party. She made her way across the field-cum-parking-lot to where the cow-parsley grew high and thick.

As she cut, she thought about her mother, and wondered why she felt obliged to solve everyone’s problems, using Hetty as her solvent. Of course she should refuse to run this hotel in Shropshire. Working for distant cousins had proved itself to be thoroughly dangerous.

On the other hand, she did accept that the thought of going back to London to work in an office didn’t seem very appealing. And it was not only because she was surrounded by a golden June morning. When she first came here it was still winter, and bitterly cold. She had still learnt to love the place.

God, how miserable she’d been then. How heart-broken, how bereft of any self-esteem. Well, she might still be heart-broken, but at least this time it was for a man worthy of it. And in every other way, she was wiser, stronger and braver. She’d done so much growing up, taken on so much responsibility. In fact, she should almost be grateful to Alistair for putting her in a position where her mother could manipulate her. If she hadn’t been jobless just when Uncle Samuel was going into hospital, she would never have come to Courtbridge House.

She gathered her dew-soaked armfuls and made her way back to the house, her jeans and sweater drenched. Leaving Courtbridge House, Samuel – everyone – would be devastating. But not to have ever come would have been a real tragedy. ‘You know what they say,’ she said to Islay, who was frisking round Hetty’s feet with her head on one side. ‘“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” And no, I didn’t bring a ball.’

By the time she had finished her flower-arrangements – huge and dangling, looking like shields of hedgerow attached to the walls of the barn – the house was seething with people.

She was making herself a quick bacon butty in the kitchen when Connor came in. ‘Hetty!’ He swooped on her from behind. ‘Come with me.’

Hetty plonked the second slice of bread on top of the bacon, found a plate and followed. He led her into a little room that had previously been full of junk, but which, since the revamp of the house, had become a little sitting room, its pretty bay window a perfect place for two low chairs and an occasional table.

‘We need to sort out what we’re doing tonight.’

‘Not nervous are you?’ inquired Hetty through a mouthful of bacon and Mother’s Pride.

‘No, but we need to know what we’re doing if we’re not to look like a pair of complete amateurs.’

‘Which is what we are.’

‘But we don’t want to look like amateurs, or we’ll have to give the money back.’

Hetty swallowed. ‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ve made a list.’ He put his hand in his pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper.

‘So have I.’ Hetty rummaged in her jeans and found a used envelope, equally crumpled.

They swapped papers, then their eyes met.

‘Well,’ said Connor, ‘it seems we agree on something at last.’

Hetty looked down. She had only made the list the day before, in a rare spare moment. ‘Coincidence is a funny thing,’ she said.

Connor nodded. ‘But total humiliation isn’t. We must practise.’

Knowing he was right didn’t make Hetty one jot more willing to follow him. She had decided to leave Courtbridge House when the debt was paid, which should be fairly soon. Part of the leaving process was detaching herself emotionally from Connor.

Their rehearsal did not go well. She was tense, she couldn’t get her jaw to relax and her breath came in short, panicky little puffs.

‘I’ll be better tonight,’ she promised.

Connor closed the lid of the piano. ‘I hope so.’

‘I’m just going upstairs to check the Ladies’ cloakroom is in order,’ said Hetty and abandoned the party of cleaners who were polishing a floor – more, Hetty was sure, for the pleasure of being in such a companionable band than because it needed doing.

Hetty actually had no intention of checking the cloakroom. She knew that the bedroom with the four-poster was in order. She was going to grab a quick shower and a hair wash while she had the chance. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell the other women, who were working so hard, that she was going to do something so unproductive.

Caroline had lent her the black dress she had worn to Felicity Makepiece’s dinner party. She had a little boxy linen jacket to wear over it for most of the evening, but would wear it uncensored for the cabaret. Knowing she would have very little time to change later, Hetty put on Caroline’s bra and black tights under her jeans. She put on some make-up and fluffed up her hair. Now all she would have to do was strip off her outer garments and put on the dress.

It was just as well. The first fifty guests arrived before she had had a moment to get out of her jeans.