Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

She had returned to her house, and as she entered the hall, she smiled at the familiar furnishings, the bright grin of her maid as she took her shawl. She shook the sadness off her shoulders like rainwater, and went to her library to begin her express to Mr Crowther. Let him and his friend see if they could bring this lost man home.

Now she continued her letter to her husband who would be fussing over his vines in the heat of the Portuguese summer. To her description of her new guests, and their thoughts on the snuffbox, she added a description of Harriet’s fan.

My love, the image made me think of nothing so much as dear Casper Grace, though he is no musician, of course. And if Casper wanted he could sleep in a warm bed every night and feast all day. He has the Black Pig, and I know he is well paid for the services he gives to the people, yet he wanders the hills in plain cloth and takes Mr Askew’s pennies for his carvings. I mention it because I have heard rumours that our good Mr Sturgess has had some piece of bad business and that his housekeeper hardly dares ask for further credit from the butcher. Mr Postlethwaite told me even this morning that he has sent both housekeeper and maid away to save on their wages. Do you think we might be able to offer him some assistance without causing him embarrassment? He has been a good neighbour to us since he arrived. How strange to think a smart gentleman like him rides about on his own horses without the money to buy good meat, while a man who might buy his own house and furnish it sleeps in the old charcoalburners’ lean-tos like a beggar. Do tell me what you think, my dear, in your next. For the moment I shall continue to invite him to our table as often as I can. Now there is Mr Gribben coming up the path to ask me any number of questions on the arrangement of the tables, and Miriam I know has a dozen questions from Cook .

They had left the breakfast room together, and as they stepped out of the house, Harriet thought she felt Crowther flinch at her side. She could see nothing to alarm them, only the broad sweep of the landscape rearing up on the far side of the lake, and the lawn being prepared for the party. A number of trestle tables were being set out, and the large man Harriet recognised as the coachman of Silverside was setting up an archery target by the lake. ‘What is it, Crowther?’

‘Nothing,’ he said with a frown, but then lifted his cane to point towards a place on the flank of the far hills. ‘Only, when I was a boy there were woods there. Great oaks. There were more at the head of the lake in Crow Park. When I was very young the village boys could cross from one side to the other without touching the ground. My father sold the timber shortly after he purchased it. It was strange, but for a moment I expected the woods to be there again.’

‘Did you play there with your brother?’

He lowered the cane to the gravel path in front of them with a snort. ‘No, madam. I do not remember ever playing with Addie. Though once or twice he forced me to act in some nonsense play. I refused once, and he tore up some drawings of mine of which I had been very proud. Luckily I was no actor, so he did not ask again. We did not ever have a close bond, even at that time.’

‘You were a solitary child.’

‘I cannot believe that surprises you, Mrs Westerman. The events of 1750 did not change me. They simply confirmed in me what I was.’ He looked down at her with a slight smile. ‘I hope you have not been imagining all this time I was the sort of creature my nephew appears to be, until my father’s murder and my brother’s execution drove me into my current reclusive character. You are not so foolishly romantic.’

Harriet almost blushed. ‘No. But having heard you say that. . Crowther, was there a sense of freedom when you sold the estate and sent off your sister to Ireland? Were you relieved? Did you ever have any love of this place at all?’

The haze in the atmosphere seemed to soften the light, though the heat of the day was already building. It gave even Crowther’s face a glow, and he closed his eyes for a moment as if to drink it into himself.

‘Addie was always the favourite with my parents. Then they doted on Margaret as the youngest child. I had some friends of a sort here, and there are places of which I was once fond, but my wish was always to escape. I became myself when I could leave Cumberland, so perhaps yes, I sold the estate in both anger and relief. There was even a certain pleasure at throwing it all to the winds. I never thought I would return.’

He began to walk towards the old brewery again, and Harriet followed him, deep in thought. Crowther might believe that returning to this house, meeting his nephew for the first time, and his sister after thirty years meant little to him, but he had never said so much to her before about his upbringing and the relations within his family.

They were met at the entrance to the old brew house by Miriam, the fair-haired and cheerful-looking maid Harriet had met the previous day. She dropped them a quick curtsey and a broad smile. Her face was rather red.

‘The range in there is well built up now, Mr Crowther, as you asked, and the coppers bubbling away. They took some finding today!’ She began to flap a breeze into her face with the corner of her apron. ‘My, but that is warm work on a day like today. It’s like Hell itself up by the fire. Though of course they say that is coming to us all now, the sun being all shorn and the meat spoiling on the day it’s butchered, my lord.’ Here she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I’m sorry, I mean to say, Mr Crowther, sir.’

Harriet looked down and smiled. Crowther said, ‘I prefer the name Crowther, if you would be so kind, Miriam. What was that you said of the sun?’

‘Shorn, sir. Does it not look to you as if its beams have been cut off?’ They all three turned towards the east. Harriet found she could stare straight at the sun without pain. It was dull red, like the last embers of wood in a winter fire.

‘It does,’ Crowther agreed. ‘But the world will not end today, Miriam.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that, sir. For it would be a shame to spoil Mrs Briggs’s party. Nor tomorrow?’

‘Not for at least a hundred years. I have it on the best authority.’

Miriam looked considerably cheered and there was a skip in her step as she headed back to her duties in the main house.

‘You were kind to that girl, Crowther.’

‘I am practising better manners with my servants. I cannot stand firm under Mrs Heathcote’s stern stares any longer. Who can say? Perhaps I shall become a civilised old man after all.’

Harriet cast a look at the heavens and pushed open the door to the old brew house.

It was a large structure with few signs as to the business that used to be done there, other than its name. She supposed that Mrs Briggs had her beer brought in from the village now. She did the same, and at Caveley too there was an outbuilding that had once been full of the yeasty smells of the weekly brewing for the table. The interior walls were roughly plastered and the earthen floor was beaten into an uneven but solid surface by years of use. At the back of the room, a simple stone fireplace had been well stacked with fuel, and there was a healthy fire under it. Harriet was about to ask why Crowther had requested it on such an oppressive day when, as her eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, she noticed an open coffin on the long table on the westerly wall. It was made of unpolished planks. A utilitarian object. The sight of it chilled her. She was at once back in the house where her husband had died, watching him being laid into his own coffin and the lid nailed down. The hammers had seemed unnaturally loud.