Wedding Tiers. Trisha Ashley

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       Chapter Seven Gathering In

       By the end of October all was safely gathered in, as the old harvest hymn has it. Or almost all. My elderly neighbour helped me to make a beetroot clamp and then store away the last of the carrot crop in layers of sand, and I’m still pickling and chutney making. I’ve also dug over the pea and bean beds, set out Brussels sprout plants and divided clumps of chives.

       Throughout all this, the Artist could be seen in his studio, working on a new series of three-dimensional paintings. He had to be coaxed out from time to time to help with heavy jobs, like chopping logs into firewood and hefting sacks of henfood about; but I expect it did him good.

      ‘Cakes and Ale’

      Now Ben was home, life should have settled back into the cosy, comforting, uneventful round of cooking, dog-walking and gardening, but I found that I still felt vaguely uneasy.

      Of course, the even rhythm of our former existence was bound to change once Libby exploded onto the scene like a demonstration of chaos theory in miniature. But actually, that didn’t bother me in the least, for I was used to Libby and very happy that she was going to be living in Neatslake again. No, it was just a feeling that something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was…

      Ben, too, seemed even more abstracted than usual and had thrown himself into finishing his latest series of paintings. He tended to work on five or six simultaneously, and I never knew what to call them: paintings, installations, constructions, or just artworks. They all started as flat canvases, but then things began to burst out of them, because two dimensions simply weren’t enough for Ben and couldn’t contain his imagery, which dripped, oozed, sidled sideways or simply exploded into 3-D.

      His original inspiration came from our shared love of thrusting, exuberant and earthy nature, full of flowers, rampant foliage and small living creatures. I’d always considered him a brilliant artist and I still did, even though what had been emerging more recently was much darker and (though I hadn’t, of course, said so) rather nasty. I hoped it was just a temporary phase.

      As I worked in the garden I noticed that he was getting an awful lot of calls on his mobile, which seemed to make him cross, but then, if he didn’t want to be disturbed he should have switched it off!

      Once the woodworm treatment at Blessings was done, and the rooms aired, Libby and I returned to our dusting and cleaning, keeping one room ahead of the specialist painters. I was amazed at Libby’s stamina. I was only helping out for an hour or two in the afternoons because of all my cake-making and other commitments, but she seemed to be working dawn to dusk.

      When we took the old curtains down they pretty well fell to pieces, but she had surfed the internet and found a firm who sold medieval-style crewelwork curtains and fabric by the metre, all curly foliage, birds and rabbits—lovely, though very expensive.

      Dorrie brought her friend Miss Hebe Winter (who is my friend Sophy’s great-aunt), to look around one day while we were working. The room we were in was a bit gloomy and for a minute we thought we were seeing ghosts, because they walked in wearing Elizabethan dress. Miss Winter, who is tall, grand and aquiline of nose, is a dead ringer for the Virgin Queen, and even Dorrie was transformed by a wide ruff and full skirts, despite having kept her beret on.

      It turned out they’d been to a historical re-enactment society meeting in Sticklepond. Lots of the members help out as volunteers at Winter’s End in full costume, when it’s open to the public. They are very big on the Elizabethan over there, especially since the discovery of that Shakespeare document.

      Miss Winter had come out of sheer curiosity to see Libby, I think, the plebeian marrying into the Rowland-Knowleses, and, like Dorrie, she found her not at all what she expected.

      I left them having tea (it was lucky I’d taken Libby an apple upside-down cake), passing Hebe’s little white Mini car on the drive. How does she get behind the wheel in a farthingale?

      Moorcroft, the gardener, was very ready to take a golden handshake and retire, which would be much more economical in the long run than paying him to cut the grass and hide out in the garden shed, making endless cups of tea on a Primus stove.

      Tim and Dorrie, full of plans and enthusiasm, began to try to get the grounds into some kind of order and create a fruit and vegetable patch. Tim came over a couple of times to ask my advice—or Ben’s, if he caught him out of the studio, which was pretty rare at the moment.

      ‘Tim’s passionate about gardening. He’s even more dotty about it than you are,’ Libby said one day, when we were taking a break from cleaning out what had once been the old kitchen, but was now a kind of storeroom. She straightened up with a groan; she’s only about five foot two without her stilettos, so even standing on a stool she’d found, reaching up with the feather duster, was quite a stretch.

      ‘I think he loves flowers and shrubs more than vegetables, Libs, like Dorrie.’

      ‘Yes, but now you’ve infected him with the self-sufficiency bug he’s determined to follow suit.’

      ‘Well, that’s OK, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, as long as he doesn’t expect me to start digging and jamming and making pies…though when Gina’s here I expect she’ll be quite happy to cook what he grows. It will save us money too, which will be a good thing, because I hadn’t realised quite how high the cost of restoring and maintaining a place of this age would be. I know I’m well off, but really, we need to find some way of increasing our income, unless I sell one or both of my other homes. But Tim loves Italy, so apart from our honeymoon being in Pisa, I hope we’re going to spend a lot of time there—and it’s handy having a pied-à-terre in London.’

      ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I’m starting to think that’s what we could do with, though at least Ben hasn’t been so eager to rush back to London this time. He’s very engrossed in his paintings.’

      ‘Tim hates being a solicitor, so it’s a pity we can’t find some way of making Blessings pay for itself. But it’s a bit too small to open to СКАЧАТЬ