And then Joe replying, “Nay, Mother, what yon lass needs is a shot of good scotch whiskey, not tea.”
Hilary tightened her grip on me as we started up the stairs. “Can you make it all right?” she asked worriedly.
I nodded.
Once we were in my bedroom, she went to run me a bath.
I stripped off my muddy clothes, threw them on the floor, and put on a dressing gown. I limped into the bathroom.
Hilary looked around as I came in and said, “Shall I put some of these Epsom salts in the bath? They’re good for aches and pains.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” I answered, sitting down on the bathroom stool.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes with the tea and the whiskey,” Hilary said, walking over to the door. “I’ll leave it in the bedroom for you. Oh, and I’ll put a bottle of aspirin on the tray.”
“Thanks, Hilary. Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome,” she murmured and closed the door behind her.
I sat soaking in the hot tub for a long time, enjoying the heat of the water, feeling myself thawing out. The Epsom salts did help my bruised body and my ankle; and even though this was badly sprained, I was now certain it was not broken.
But it was quite obvious that I had had a lucky escape.
When I had gone for a walk earlier this afternoon, I hadn’t told anyone where I was going, and it was only by chance that I had seen Wilf in the orchard as I had walked past. He had waved. I had waved back, and then I had gone on down the path into the woods. When the storm had started and I had not returned, he must have been the one to sound the alarm. I experienced a stab of guilt as I thought of the way Andrew and I had always characterized him as stupid—gormless, as Andrew said.
Andrew.
I closed my eyes, concentrating, picturing my husband in my mind’s eye.
Had he really spoken to me this afternoon? Freezing cold, in pain from my ankle, frightened that I might not be found before nightfall, that I might easily be lost on the moors, might I not have simply imagined it? Might I not have conjured him up for comfort?
I did not know. Just as I did not know whether I had dreamed that Lissa had slept in my arms all those months ago at Indian Meadows.
Was there such a thing as an afterlife? Certainly religions have preached for thousands of years that there is. And if there is an afterlife, then there must be ghosts, spirits of the dead who come back to this physical plane for a reason. To comfort and calm those loved ones left behind grieving? To show themselves as guardian angels?
Suddenly I remembered a book I had seen the other day in the library. It was about angels and ghosts; I had leafed through it quickly. Later I would look at it again.
“You’ve been very lucky, Mrs. Keswick,” Dr. Gordon said, putting his stethoscope away in his bag. “Very lucky indeed.”
“I realize that,” I responded. “I could have broken something, not just sprained my ankle.”
“Very true. But what I meant is, you’re fortunate you’re not suffering from hypothermia. You were out in that wretched storm for over two hours, and one’s body temperature drops very quickly with that kind of exposure to the elements. And when hypothermia does occur, a person can be in serious trouble.”
“But Mrs. Andrew is all right, isn’t she?” Hilary asked, her concern apparent.
“Yes, she’s fine.” He glanced from Hilary back to me. “Your temperature is normal, and you don’t seem to have suffered too much damage. Even the sprain is not that serious. A couple of days, you’ll be all right. But do be sure to keep that ankle of yours bandaged.”
“I will, Doctor, and thank you for coming over.”
“I was glad to pop in, and if you have any problems at all, please don’t hesitate to ring me.”
“I will. Thanks, Dr. Gordon.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Keswick.”
“Bye.”
Hilary jumped up.
“I’ll see you out, Doctor,” she said and hurried after him. Turning back to look at me from the doorway, she asked, “Do you need me for anything else, Mrs. Andrew? Shall I come back and help you get dressed?”
“Thanks, Hilary, that’s sweet of you, but I can manage.”
Left alone, I took off my robe, put on a pair of gray flannels, a russet-colored silk shirt, and a matching wool jacket. Sitting down on the bench at the bottom of the bed, I pulled on a pair of white wool socks and slipped my feet into a pair of suede moccasins.
Picking up the walking stick Parky had brought upstairs for me, I hobbled out of my bedroom, went along the hall and down the staircase, taking steps very carefully, walking sideways.
The library had become my favorite room at Kilgram Chase these past four months, and knowing this, Joe had turned on the lamps and started the fire earlier, whilst I had been with the doctor.
Even though it was May, the great stone house could be chilly at night, especially this room, with its high-flung ceiling and overscaled proportions. The fire blazing up the chimney and the warm glow of the lamps gave it a cheerful ambience on this rainy evening.
Once I had found the book about angels and ghosts, I went over to the fireplace and sat down in the wing chair. I would look at it whilst I waited for Diana. She was driving up from London tonight instead of tomorrow, so that she could spend the evening with me; she did not want me to be alone for my birthday. She was due in about an hour, and I was glad she was coming.
A memory of my last birthday insinuated itself into my mind, and I couldn’t help recalling how happy it had been. My mother had given an early dinner at her apartment, and Lissa and Jamie had come with me and Andrew and Sarah. There had been champagne first and a cake after dinner, and the twins had sung “Happy Birthday” to me. Andrew had given me mabe pearl earrings; the twins had painted their own special cards for me and saved up all year to buy me a pretty silk scarf.
My throat tightened, and I felt the tears sting my eyes as the memories came rushing back. I pushed them aside, took hold of myself, leaned back in the chair, and closed my eyes. Eventually the pain of yearning for them passed.
I began to leaf through the book about angels and ghosts, and I soon found the section I was looking for, the references I wanted.
I read that angels were considered to be messengers of the divine, that they only ever brought good news and aid to those in need of it. People who had seen them said they were filled with goodness and warmth and were surrounded by light, that frequently they were vividly and brilliantly colored, and that a special kind of radiance emanated from them.
Other people interviewed for the book said that when they had seen an angel, or several angels together, they had felt themselves filling with joy, bursting with happiness; some said they had filled with sudden laughter.
The section on ghosts came next, and I read that they were the spirits of the dead, and always took their own form when they materialized. The idea that ghosts did exist was apparently found in every country and culture, and that in general most people agreed on how they actually looked. They were misty, cloudy, transparent, and floating.
Usually, ghosts came to help their loved ones, according to the book. They brought messages of hope and love and frequently materialized in order to tell us that everything was all right. Seemingly, ghosts were attached to the physical world, our world, by their longing for those they had left behind.
The book said there were also bad ghosts, evil spirits who could do harm and who sometimes took demonic possession of a person. I began to read about the Roman Catholic church’s attitude toward evil spirits, and the exorcisms which were performed by priests. I found this a bit frightening and closed the book. I did not want to know about evil spirits. I had experienced enough evil to last me a lifetime.
After returning the book to its place on the shelf, I went and sat in front of the mullioned window, staring out at the moors. They were a peculiar blue-black color at this twilight hour, rain-swept and formidable, and a shiver ran thr
ough me as I thought of being out on them in this weather tonight.
And yet, curiously, I had been close to Andrew up there this afternoon in the storm, closer than ever, and at one moment I had felt his presence most acutely.
Was this because he had always loved storms? Because he had wanted to go out in them when he was a boy, had wanted to become at one with his ancestors riding out to fight their enemies?
I smiled inwardly, thinking of him with such love. My heart was full of him. Unexpectedly, I experienced a feeling of great calmness. It was flowing through me, suffusing my entire being; it was the kind of calmness I had forgotten existed.
I sat there for a long time, looking out the window, thinking about Andrew’s words to me today. My birthday. Had he spoken to me because it was my birthday?
I sighed to myself. I was still not sure what had happened out there this afternoon, whether his voice had been real or simply inside me, conjured up because of my yearning for him.
“Here’s to you, darling,” Diana said, touching her glass of white wine to mine. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we can spend your birthday together.”
“So am I, Diana.”
Placing her goblet on the coffee table, she picked up the small gift-wrapped package she had brought into the library with her a few minutes ago. Handing it to me with a smile, she said, “This is for you, and it comes with all of my love.”
“Thank you,” I answered, taking it from her and unwrapping it. The small black leather box I held in my hands was worn, a bit rubbed on one side, and when I opened it, I let out a little gasp. Lying on the black velvet was an antique cameo, one of the most exquisite I had ever seen. “It’s beautiful, Diana, thank you so much.”
Rising, I went over to the sofa and kissed her on the cheek, and then I pinned the cameo onto the lapel of my jacket.
“My mother-in-law gave it to me years ago, for one of my birthdays,” Diana explained. “I thought it was a nice idea to pass it on to you, since it’s a Keswick heirloom.”
“You’re always so thoughtful, so loving,” I murmured, going back to the chair and sitting down. “You spoil me.”
“There’s something else I want to talk to you about,” Diana went on. “And now is as good a time as any.”
She sounded suddenly rather serious, and I looked at her questioningly. “Yes, of course.”
“It’s about this house, Mal.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re my heir now . . .” She paused for a moment, and I saw the emotion crossing her face. But she recovered herself immediately. “My only heir, and I just wanted you to know that I have had my will redrawn. I’ve left Kilgram Chase to you, and everything else I own, actually.”
“Oh, Diana, I don’t know what to say . . . thank you, of course . . .” I was at a sudden loss and couldn’t find the right words to express myself.
Diana said, “You’re young, Mal, only thirty-four today, and much of your life is still ahead of you. And one day I’m sure you’ll remarry, perhaps even have children again, and I like to think of you being here with them.”
I gaped at her. I was aghast. “No!” I exclaimed. “I won’t remarry—”
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, interrupting me. “I know how you feel at this moment, and perhaps I was wrong to bring the subject up tonight. So I’m not going to continue this conversation. Certainly not now. However, I do want to say one thing, and it is this, Mal darling. You must go on. We must all go on. Life is for the living, you know.”
I had a strange affinity with Lettice Keswick.
I felt curiously drawn to her, and yet she had been an ancestor not of mine, but of Andrew’s. Nonetheless, I did feel oddly close to this seventeenth-century Yorkshire-woman, dead now for several hundred years though she had been.
I had grown to know Lettice through her writing—those two diaries covering two years of her life in Stuart England, her cookbook full of recipes for food and wine, and her enchanting, illustrated garden book.
As I sat in the library at Kilgram Chase this morning, leafing through those various books again, I could not help thinking that Lettice had been a lot like me, in many ways. A homemaker, a cook, a gardener, a painter, a woman interested in furnishings and all those things which made a home beautiful. And she had been a devoted mother and an adoring wife, just as I had.
Basically that was my problem. I had not known anything else after college; certainly a few months in an ad agency didn’t count. And without my husband and my children, I had no focus, no purpose. Certainly I had nothing to do, and that was not good, not good at all, as Diana kept pointing out. A job was essential.
But what kind of job?
That old question came back to nag me, as it had for some months.
Sighing under my breath, feeling suddenly impatient with myself, even irritated, I pushed back my chair and went outside. I also felt the need for some air before lunch.
I found my steps were leading me toward the walled rose garden, always a favorite spot of mine. But perhaps more so of late, since I knew it had been designed almost three hundred years ago by Lettice. It was exactly the same today as it had been then.
Opening the oak door which led into the garden, I walked down the three steps and stood looking around for a moment or two. It was not a large garden, but it had a special kind of charm, due in no small measure to its ancient stone walls and paths covered with moss and chamomile, two sundials, and various wooden garden seats placed here and there.
Lettice’s design was simplicity itself, but that was the reason it worked. There were hedges of shrub roses, ramblers climbing the ancient walls, rectangular beds of floribundas, and circular beds of hybrid tea roses. My favorites were the Old-Fashioned roses, a variety raised before the twentieth century; I liked to think these resembled the roses planted by Lettice so long ago.
It was late May, and since most of the roses currently planted bloomed in June, the garden was not as beautiful or as colorful as it would be then and through the rest of the summer. But because the walls gave the garden shelter and the sun shone on it in the afternoons, a few of the June roses were already starting to flower.
I sat down on one of the garden seats, my mind still focused on a job. I had no idea what I could do or what I wanted to do. I had decided weeks ago that I did not want to work in an office, and of course that limited my choices.
Last weekend, when my father and Gwenny had come to stay with us, he had been in favor of my going to work with Diana at her antique shop in London. And she herself was all for it, was waiting for an answer, in fact.
“You should be with people, Mallory,” my father had said. “That’s why a shop’s ideal. And in this instance, it’s the perfect shop for you, loving antiques and art the way you do.” Gwenny and Diana had agreed, and all three of them had tried to talk me into the partnership she had so generously offered.
I thought about this idea one more time, assessing the pros and cons. Perhaps they were right. I did care about antique furniture, objects of art and paintings, and I had quite a wide knowledge of them. Though I didn’t want to decorate for people, I wouldn’t mind selling things to them. Actually, the thought of being in a shop appealed to me.
Except . . .
Except what?
I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that was making me balk.
Then it hit me. I had a moment of truth, of such extraordinary clarity of vision I was momentarily stunned.
I didn’t want to work in Diana’s shop or become her partner because I didn’t want to stay in England.
I wanted to go home.
Home to Indian Meadows. My home. The place Andrew and I had so lovingly made ours. I missed it. I was homesick. I needed to be there in order to get on with my life.
Everybody had been telling me I must do that, but I hadn’t been able to make a move. I had been stationary, marking time here, because England was the wrong place for me at this juncture of
my life. I loved it; I would always come back to Yorkshire. But now I must move on. Immediately.
I must go home. Whatever my life was going to be, I suddenly knew that I wanted to, no, must live it in Connecticut, in that old house. I needed to be in its lovely cool rooms, to be close to my old apple tree and my barns. I longed to see the horses in the long meadow, the mallards on the pond. I wanted to be with Nora and Eric and Anna.
Indian Meadows was mine. Andrew and I had created it together, made it what it was. I felt right there, at ease. I had fled Indian Meadows in January in search of Andrew. But I no longer had to look for him here in his childhood home. He was with me always, inside my heart, part of me, just as Jamie and Lissa were part of me. And would be for as long as I lived, for all the days of my life.
But if I were to keep my Connecticut homestead, I had to earn a living.
I could open my own shop. Right there at Indian Meadows.
This thought took me by surprise.
I pondered it, realized at once that it was not a bad idea at all. Except that there were innumerable antique shops in the area, stretching from New Milford and New Preston all the way up to Sharon.
But it didn’t have to be an antique shop, did it?
No. What kind of shop, then?
A shop for women like me. Or rather, women who were married with children, the way I had been once. Homemakers. Mommies. Besotted wives. I could sell them all of the things I knew about, from the days when I was a wife and mother: kitchenware, cooking utensils, and baking tins; beautiful pottery for beautiful tables; herbs and spices, jams and jellies; potpourri, fancy soaps, and beeswax candles. All of these things women had loved since Lettice Keswick’s time.
Lettice Keswick. Now there was a name to conjure with. I could call it Lettice Keswick’s Kitchen. That had a nice ring to it. No, I preferred Indian Meadows. Why not keep that name? It had always meant a lot to us. It was the name of the house, but there was no reason why it shouldn’t also be the name of the shop.
My shop.
My very own shop. Indian Meadows. A Country Experience.
That also had a nice ring to it. But why was it a country experience? It would only be a shop, after all. But it could be an experience if something special happened there. It could be a café as well. A small café in the center of the shop, serving coffee, tea, cold drinks, soups, small snacks, and quiche.