‘Oh? That’s a pity. It was a pretty thing. Did you ask him to fix it?’
‘No, I’ve not seen him this evening.’
‘Well,’ said James, ‘why should he trouble? More likely he’s propping up one of the gates, or mending a roof, or even chopping some bushes down. Wasting his time, whatever he’s doing. The whole place is falling to bits, and it would take more than Rob Granger to stop it.’
He spoke without bitterness, and quite without intent to hurt, but with some special seriousness in his voice that made me look searchingly at him. He met my look gravely, then took my empty cup from me and set it with his own on the flagstones under the seat. Then, as before in the schoolroom, his arm came gently round my shoulders, drawing me close. I could feel his heartbeat, perhaps a shade too fast.
‘Bryony, love, it’s time we had a talk, you and I.’
I waited, feeling my own heartbeat quicken imperceptibly to match his. I was very conscious of the beauty of the evening, the scent of the lilac and the song of the thrush and the lovely long planes of light on the lake in front of us.
My cousin cleared his throat. ‘You may be angry, and as a matter of fact I think you’re bound to be angry, but if you’ve any sense you’ll hear me out, and in the end, I hope you’ll help me.’ His fingers, cupping my shoulder, tightened a fraction. ‘You have to be on my side. You know that. You have to be. It’s the way things are.’
The thrush stopped singing, as suddenly as a turned-off tap. The heron, too, had decided to give up for the night. He must have done well, I thought; he was having trouble with his lift-off. I watched him in silence as he lumbered into the air, and flapped away.
‘Bryony?’
‘Yes, I’m listening. Go on.’
There was a short pause, while I felt him looking at me. I heard him take breath. ‘I’ll start at the beginning. And I may as well start by confessing the brutal truth. My father – we – the lot of us, are in a jam. A real jam. We’re desperate for ready cash and we have to find it some way, and find it fast.’
This was in no way what I had been expecting. I was startled, and showed it. ‘But surely? I thought Cousin Howard – your family’s always seemed to be doing so well. I mean – compared with us . . . And I thought you were riding really high now, with the Jerez office doing so well, and with the Pereira backing. I know Daddy thought the same. What’s happened?’
‘The trouble is, everything’s happened, and all at once.’ He stirred. ‘My God, that’s the truest proverb in the language; “troubles never come singly”. All the demands that we could have met if they’d come separately, and at the right time, well, they all seemed to come at once . . . I told you that my father will probably have to retire. If he does, there’s not much guarantee that Pereiras will go on backing us. Why should they? And the Bristol offices are hardly an asset; they’re mortgaged. If we had time – but the point is, we haven’t. This illness of Father’s has put a gun to our heads.’
And now, I was thinking, this has happened. Because of my father’s death, this huge liability, Ashley Court, has fallen on them, too.
‘But I thought Juanita had quite a lot of money of her own? Wouldn’t she help tide you over with a temporary loan, and give you the time you need?’
‘Ironically enough,’ and his voice held no irony, but only a rather flat distaste at having to talk about the matter at all, ‘the main part of her money is tied up in a trust, and can’t be touched. These trusts,’ said James, and left it at that.
I said nothing. The evening was silent and empty. The light had gone from the lake. The lilac’s scent had evaporated with the cooling air.
‘So,’ said my cousin, ‘my father applied to yours to see if he could help us.’
This time I really was startled. I sat up. ‘James, you can’t be serious! You must have known we were run into the ground.’
‘Oh, yes, we knew that. But you had Ashley.’
‘Ashley? But what on earth use is Ashley, when it comes to meeting a mortgage? It’s the biggest liability this side of the National Debt!’
‘As it stands, yes. It just pays for its upkeep and nothing to spare, we know that.’ His voice went flat. ‘What I’m talking about is the Ashley Trust.’
‘I see. You mean that’s what you “applied” to Daddy for? To break the trust?’
‘Yes.’
‘When was this?’
‘The first time was in November of last year,’ he said. ‘I never saw his answer to my father’s letter, but it must have given room for manoeuvre, since Father still seemed to have hopes he would consent.’
‘The first time? He asked him more than once?’
He nodded. ‘He wrote again recently, and he had a couple of telephone talks with your father. This was when Cousin Jonathan was in Bad Tölz, of course. My father didn’t want to press it, because he knew Cousin Jon ought to rest, but – well, things were getting desperate. The last time, Cousin Jon said he couldn’t even consider it.’ He was silent for a moment, his head bent. ‘I’ve been thinking about the reason for his change of heart, and I can’t really understand it. As you know, things have been sold in the past, and no one’s ever argued much about it. I think he must have been feeling so much better that he was planning to come back here, so he decided that as long as he could keep the place in some sort of order, he’d do just that. After all, it was your home.’
‘And his. He loved it. You’re not just talking about “things” this time, James? I take it you’re talking about the place itself. The land.’
‘Yes.’ He gave me a gentle look. ‘Didn’t you know anything about this?’
‘Nothing. Of course if there’d been any question of breaking the trust he’d have had to bring me in as well. I’d have to consent too, you know that.’ I thought for a moment. ‘It didn’t occur to anyone to try and break Juanita’s trust rather than ours? After all, she’s Cousin Howard’s wife.’
‘Well, of course it did. But the trust can’t be touched at any price. It goes to her children, or, if there aren’t any, it can be broken when she’s forty.’
‘Which is quite some time away.’
‘Too long by half. If it was only six months, it would still be too long for us.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘now Daddy’s dead, you come to me, and ask me to break ours.’
He was silent.
‘That’s what you’ve been leading up to, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you want?’
‘That is what we want,’ he said.
A pause. I said abruptly: ‘Did Daddy give any reason for being so dead set against it?’
‘No. He would hardly even discuss it. He really never mentioned it to you at all, even indirectly?’
Even as I shook my head, I realised, in a sudden moment of enlightenment, that he had. ‘Trust. Depend. Do what’s right.’ This was one of the things that had been weighing on his mind. Until I knew the rest, I could take no action.
I took refuge in a half truth. ‘I can’t say that he did. He may have thought that your money troubles were your own affair, and shouldn’t be broadcast, even to me. But of course he spoke about the trust generally, once or twice. I do remember his saying that Cousin Howard seemed to have put down roots in Spain, and didn’t seem to have the kind of feeling for Ashley that might bring him back to look after it. He didn’t say it as a criticism, why should he? He said it “wasn’t to be expected, but it was a pity”. That kind of thing. But I know he hoped that Emory or you might feel differently. You’d lived here, after all, with us. Do you?’
‘Are you asking me to speak for Emory?’
‘If you can. I know you said you couldn’t speak for him when I asked if he was serious about Cathy Underhill, but you must know how he feels about Ashley.’ I gave him an inquiring look. ‘And I would have thought the two might almost be the same. I mean, if he was thinking along the lines of marrying Cathy—’
‘He’d be able to afford to keep Ashley as it should be kept? I suppose so,’ sa
id James, ‘but the plain fact is, he doesn’t want to keep it at all.’
From beyond the lime trees the church clock tolled the half hour. It sounded remote and serene. The distant hooting of an early owl spoke of mystery and the coming night.
‘And you?’ I asked him. ‘No, James, it’s all right. I do understand. But I’ve got to know the truth. You said I had to be on your side, and that’s true. I am; you know that. We’re not talking about family now, or people, just about bricks and mortar and trees, which might mean a lot to one person, but don’t have to to another. So tell me. Do you want Ashley yourself, or even a part of it?’
He took his time. When he spoke at length his voice was quiet, but I could feel the tension in the arm that encircled me. ‘I think you know the answer, don’t you? When we were talking a while ago about the fishing cat, I said the place was rotten, and that’s true. You know it is. It’s been falling to pieces, bit by bit, for years. It’s a burden to the living, even if you count keeping it going as homage to the dead. That’s not the way to live now, when the dead can no longer supply the living with the means to keep their memorials going.’ He took a breath like a sigh. ‘I’m sorry, love, this is the wrong time to talk to you like this, but you asked me. I doubt if you’ve had the time to think about it yet, since Cousin Jon died, but you can’t seriously expect either of us, Emory or me, to go on running this – this National Trust reject, even if we did have the money to do it with? There are other things to do with money, Bryony. For us, anyway.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘All right, so Cousin Jon might have thought we should want to. But you’re a different generation, you know the score. These are the seventies, and the world’s wider than Ashley park. If there aren’t the means to save it, then it’ll have to go. We’ve got to face that.’
‘James, I’m facing it.’
His arm tightened, and he held me close. His cheek touched my hair, but he didn’t attempt a caress. ‘Well, I’ve said what I promised to say, and I’ll leave it. But you will think about it, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will. But Daddy only died a week ago, remember, and until I know what he wanted, and why—’
‘I know, love, I know. I’m sorry. This is a hell of a time to talk to you about breaking trusts and leaving Ashley, but when we started this we weren’t to know what would happen to your father. And now my own father’s ill, and worried half out of his mind, and things are pressing, and – well, hell, there it is.’
Another of those silences. The hammering had stopped. I thought of the fishing cat lying broken under the water, and, for some reason, of the pavilion with its riot of honeysuckle and the sagging walls of yew and Cathy’s voice asking: ‘Is that the table where he wrote his poems?’
‘Francis,’ I said suddenly. ‘How does Francis feel about all this? I thought he loved Ashley.’
‘He does,’ said James. ‘He’s a throwback, is Francis. Anyway, he wouldn’t notice if the place fell to pieces round him, as long as he could sit in the maze like William Ashley, making verses. What on earth did I say? You jumped.’
‘Nothing, really. Only you were reading my thoughts. Do you often do that?’
A pause, as long as four quickened heartbeats. Then he said, easily: ‘Twin and I do it as a matter of course. Shades of Bess Ashley, the gipsy, didn’t you know?’
‘It must save a lot of telephone calls,’ I said lightly.
He laughed. ‘Oh, it does. But you were saying about Francis. I doubt if he would refuse to help break the trust. The point is, even if we did break it, we wouldn’t have any designs on the house itself. That’s unsaleable, so one might as well make a virtue of necessity, and leave it alone as a corner of ancient England on its own tight little island. It’s that land that would have to go.’
‘For what?’
‘For whatever would bring the most money.’
‘Building land brings the most.’
He answered what I had not said. ‘Well, and why not? People have to have houses. And when they drive the new motorway across Penny’s Flats, we’ll be in Birmingham commuter country.’ He must have felt something in my silence, because he added, rather edgily: ‘Look, Bryony, you said you’d be realistic. Just because we played here as kids doesn’t mean our kids will ever have the chance, or my God, want the chance.’
‘I wasn’t. I was thinking about the other people involved. That must be what was making Daddy think twice. There’s the Vicar, for instance. What happens to the Vicarage? I suppose that would be safe enough, though I can hardly see Mr Bryanston hemmed in with semis, and without the garden. But there are the Hendersons, and Rob Granger. Would you sell their houses?’
‘Why not? They’d have first option to buy them themselves.’
‘The Hendersons might, but I’m sure Rob can’t afford to.’
‘Then he ought to. He had the farm, after all. If he didn’t manage to make a go of that, there’s no reason why we should be responsible—’
‘Be fair. His father drank every penny they ever made, and knocked Rob and his mother around on Saturdays for good measure. He left them in debt up to their necks, and if Rob hasn’t managed to save the price of a house since the old brute died you can hardly blame him. What’s more, if it weren’t for Rob this place would have dropped to bits a damned sight sooner.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, half laughing. ‘What have I said? Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve always liked Rob, and I know what he’s done for you and your father. And now I’ve made you angry when I want you to listen.’
‘I’m not angry. It’s not that I’m not on your side, James. I am. And I was listening. You were talking about commuter country. Well, all right, all being equal, that’s the way things might have to go. But had you thought? Ashley hasn’t an outlet to Penny’s Flats.’
His head turned, sharply. He stared. His eyes, in the close dusk, looked dark, gipsy Ashley eyes. I felt a queer little tingling thrill at the base of the spine, and looked away. He said, sharply: ‘Of course it has. That’s its whole value. This strip along the Pool runs right through the apple orchard to the road.’
‘Yes, but that’s not Ashley Trust. It’s mine.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He sounded amused. ‘Holding out, are you?’
‘For the present, yes. I’ve got to have a home, and I’m planning to stay here till . . .’
‘Till?’
‘Well, for a bit,’ I said, evading it. ‘James, let’s leave it for now, may we?’
‘Of course, if you say so. But—’
‘Yes? But?’
‘There was something else. As a matter of fact,’ he said, rather abruptly, ‘I haven’t even got to the hard bit yet. Look, would you like – shall I get some more coffee?’
‘No, don’t bother, for me. Go right on. What is the hard bit?’
‘Well, I was saying. After your father had refused to consider the Trust any further, my father asked Emory and me to do what we could, as quickly as possible. Emory and I talked it over, and we agreed to go to Bavaria and talk to your father. He must obviously have had reasons for his decision, which he didn’t want to talk about by telephone, and which might be too complicated to write. But before that it seemed only sense to – well, to take a look at Ashley itself.’
‘So then?’
‘I meant, take a look at it with the idea of a sale in mind.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Obviously, we wanted to get into the Court and find out, as a basis for discussion with your father, what there was in the way of quickly disposable assets. We didn’t approach your father about this because . . . well, damn it, it was a little difficult under the circumstances. He was ill, and he’d have thought we were being a bit previous. A foot in his grave, as it were. I’m sorry.’
I said nothing.
I could feel tension running through his arm. He said abruptly: ‘We didn’t get in touch with the Underhills either, because there was no need. I told you about that. By pure chance – it really was p
ure chance – Emory met Cathy at a party, and she asked him down.’
‘Convenient.’
I felt his look. ‘You sound a bit abrasive. Don’t you like her?’
‘From what I’ve seen of her, I like her very much. I’m just not sure that I like her being used by Emory.’
‘Did I say he was using her?’
‘Isn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’ But I thought he sounded uncomfortable.
‘That had better be true, you know. Jeff Underhill is what they call a tough cookie, and at a guess he adores his daughter. If she’s fallen for Emory, and I think she has, and hard, then Emory had better reckon it as serious.’
‘I imagine he does. I only said that he didn’t plan to live at Ashley on her money.’ He sounded thoroughly edgy now. ‘Damn it, do you have to assume he’s going to damage her in some way? If a girl like that falls for you, you’ve got to be a bloody plaster saint not to take a second look, at least.’
‘So you have.’
Somehow, almost unnoticeably, his hand had lifted from my shoulder, and his arm now lay harmlessly along the back of the seat. ‘It’s the James–Emory thing that gets you, isn’t it? You’ll have to take my word for it that nothing’s happened that Cathy would mind remembering, even if she ever found out we’d played that game with her. Which she won’t.’ He glanced at me again, but I made no comment. ‘Actually, I don’t like it any more than you do . . . There are things I’d rather be doing than escorting an eighteen-year-old who’s in love with someone else. I don’t think Emory ever would have started it, but in a way Cathy herself forced it on us.’
‘How on earth?’
‘Oh, there was one date they had made, and Emory couldn’t keep it. When he phoned, she was so mad that he thought she’d call the whole thing off, and this was just at the time when we very much wanted to get down to the Court, and if there had been a quarrel with Cathy we could hardly have come down, even through Emerson. So Emory soothed her down and got me to go instead. It never crossed her mind. It was a harmless sort of date – she and Twin hadn’t known each other more than a few days, so I didn’t have any soft lights and hot music to face . . . And today it was a case of coming down to see Jeff Underhill, rather than of making love to Cat. Believe me, I’ve no idea how far Twin’s pushed the boat out, nor do I want to. I wouldn’t bet on not giving myself away to Cat, and God help us all if that happened.’ I caught the gleam of a sideways, smiling look, and one finger came away from the seat back and touched my shoulderblade, a feather touch. ‘If you like, love, I’ll promise you here and now not to do it again.’