‘We haven’t got that much choice,’ Philip, the oldest removal man says. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to take an alternative route in.’
‘And there’s an alarm,’ I add, ‘because of the museum. The instructions are here but the keypad is inside the front door. I doubt you’d get there in time.’
‘The only certain thing,’ Philip says, ‘is that we can’t stay here all night.’
‘My tent is in one of the boxes,’ Leo offers, both helpfully and hopefully.
‘We won’t get all these boxes in your tent, mate,’ says Frank. ‘Even if we could find it.’
The wide grounds in front of the house are edged with railings rusted with age and weather. Once upon a time, they would have been painted an elegant white, now they are bent brown rails running around the edge of an overgrown field. I try to imagine the field full of carriage horses, resting their soft muzzles over the top rail, keeping the grass neat and clipped with their slow snuffled chewing. It’s a million miles away from the reality. I don’t know what I was thinking of, coming here, how I thought this could possibly be the answer to our homelessness, me losing my job. And now we are here, we can’t even get in.
‘Well?’ says Frank, looking up at the window, two floors above us.
‘I don’t think you ought to.’ I don’t know what my alternative suggestion is. ‘What about Health and Safety?’ Years of school-teaching have left their mark on me.
‘Beauty of working for yourself,’ says Phil. ‘And no witnesses.’ He nods towards Frank, who starts to climb onto the wide green windowsill.
Leo spins round and round on the spot, his arms above his head. ‘Frank’s a superhero,’ he shouts. ‘Can I go up too?’
I can see Leo won’t even be able to heave himself up to the windowsill that Frank now stands on, body flat against the window, arms splayed like a tightrope walker, so at least that’s not one of my worries.
Frank reaches above him. There is a wisteria clinging to the front of the house, its twisted trunks long-dead and past flowering; twigs and wizened leaves drop down as Frank tries to get purchase over the window frame. The noise he makes as he heaves himself from the windowsill to the flat porch roof of the portico is loud in the silence of the drive. This really is the countryside; the absence of cars, people, sirens, all remarkable on the still air.
‘Go on!’ shouts Leo as Frank bicycles his legs for momentum, his top half lying flat on the portico.
‘You’re nearly there, lad,’ Phil says, and we both will Frank’s upper body to weigh more than his legs or he’s going to crash back down onto the drive in a way that he’d be lucky to survive in one piece.
Below, Frank’s white trainers waving in mid-air, the door opens. It doesn’t open wide, like someone is welcoming us with expansive gestures or enthusiasm. It opens slightly, with suspicion and unease.
‘Can I help you?’ The welcome isn’t gracious but I’m overwhelmed with relief that there’s someone here.
‘Miss Buchan?’
The sunshine is thrown onto her face in the gap of the doorway. Her eyes wrinkle up against it. Her hair is short and steel grey, her face unlined and powder soft. She is small, thin, and angular.
‘How nice to meet you properly,’ I say, recognising one of the moments when one must tell slight untruths.
‘How do you do, Mrs Lyons-Morris?’ She has the tone of someone who is being inconvenienced.
Above her, Frank’s legs have stopped flapping, his trainers are peaceful, side by side, to the left of her head. It is not a good start.
I’m sure Frank and Phil are hoping as hard as me that she hasn’t noticed the legs, or the man on the porch roof.
‘We dropped the Lyons,’ I remind her. ‘And this is Leo, Leo Morris.’
‘Hello, Leo,’ says Miss Buchan and steps out of the door-way. ‘You look just like your daddy.’
I try to put an exact age on her but it’s difficult: her clothes are tight and tweed, a short necklace of pearls sits neatly on her neck. She holds her slim hand out towards me, ready to shake my hand. She is somewhere between forty-five and seventy-five but then, so am I.
Her hand looks tiny in mine. My fingers wrap round hers and I feel like an oaf. I compensate by shaking her hand vigorously and she looks at me as if she’d rather I let go.
‘You may call me Araminta,’ she says in a cold flat voice and nods her head to show that she means both of us. ‘I take care of the house and museum.’ She says that mainly to Leo.
‘I live here,’ shouts Leo. ‘And Frank. And Phil.’
As he says it, Frank lets go of the porch roof and half-slithers, half-falls into the drive next to Araminta.
‘We couldn’t get in,’ Phil and I say at the same time, leaving a gaping void of silence afterwards.
‘I lost the . . .’
‘We were unloading . . .’
We sound like children and both stop trying to explain.
‘Well, you’re here now,’ says Araminta, in a voice that shows how much that displeases her. ‘Shall I show you to the apartment?’
‘Are we going in my house?’ asks Leo, and Araminta breaks the straight line of her grimace for the first time.
‘Yes. This is your house. And it was your daddy’s house too. He lived here when he was a little boy.’
I open my mouth to argue, to say that, no, Richard never lived here. His grandparents lived here but he hated the place and seldom came near it, but something in her face makes me stop. There’s a sudden softness – directed at Leo, definitely, but more than that, beyond that. I wonder if she is old enough for it to be a memory of Richard.
I look at Leo standing by the door and imagine Richard on the same steps, his hair sticking up in the summer breeze, like Leo’s does. I picture a boy-Richard running through the paddock opposite, climbing the iron-railed fences, swinging up the huge oak tree that spreads its green branches wide over the field. And, if he did come here often, will he have left any of himself behind?
Chapter Three
Inside, the house is grand. A staircase leads the eye away from the front door and breaks into two galleries running away from each other and around the top of the hallway. Hallway isn’t really the right word – our whole flat in London would have fitted in this space, upstairs and downstairs – perhaps it won’t be so bad after all. Maybe it has improved since Richard last came here.
The galleries that run out from the stairs like twin branches are – Araminta says as she rushes us through – open to the public. She didn’t have to tell me: you couldn’t possibly mistake this for a home, there are ‘exit’ and ‘fire door’ signs everywhere, red rope cordons hang on bronze pillars either side of the stair carpet. Nothing about it is homely but it’s certainly grand. I can see portraits and antique furniture, display cases and statues. This is the worst of all environments for Leo: Leo who dances with his headphones on; Leo who runs headlong everywhere; Leo who loves football.
A door on the landing is marked ‘private’, it leads into a far narrower corridor. We pass door after door, but Araminta does not pause until we see a smaller staircase going up to the next floor. I can only assume this would have been the servants’ quarters, once upon a time. The first two floors, or what I’ve seen of them so far at any rate, have oak-panelling along the lower halves of the walls and patterned paper above that. These walls are dark, mostly painted and, here and there, sections of some sort of hessian or sacking stuck up instead of wallpaper. Phil, following with the first box, whistles through his teeth.