Page 12 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

‘Thank you,’ she said, from the heart. Then, ‘Can I see the rest of your animals? Have you still got the goshawk?’

‘He’s long gone. But I got three baby hedgehogs. You can help me feed ’em.’

Crooks hurried from the church and round to the side door to catch the choir as it left.

The tall figure and sunburst hair of Axe Brandom stood out above the lesser heads like a beacon, but he was striding away, and Crooks, panting, ‘So sorry . . . ! Excuse me . . . ! May I come through?’ had to thrust his way past impeding bodies to try to get to him before he was out of sight.

Bursting free of the press like a cork surfacing, Crooks saw his quarry turning down Back Lane, the narrow road that ran alongside the graveyard to the sexton’s yard at the back.

He didn’t like raising his voice in a public street, but decided running was even more undignified at his age, and called Brandom’s name.

Axe stopped, turned, and waited for him, looking a trifle put out. ‘Morning, Mr Crooks.’

‘There you are,’ Crooks said, coming to a halt and catching his breath. ‘Are you quite well? I was worried about you.’

‘I’m very well, thank you, sir,’ Axe said stolidly. ‘Hoping you’re the same.’

‘But you weren’t at church last Sunday, and you never miss.

And then I – I went to your cottage, and you weren’t there.

It was all shut up, as if you’d gone away.

So I was afraid you might have been taken to the hospital, or some terrible accident had occurred.

’ He hadn’t liked to go enquiring of Mr Rowse at the forge, but that would have been his next recourse, had Axe not appeared this morning.

Axe didn’t speak, seeming to be unsure what to say. He looked away, over Crooks’s head, and his Adam’s apple bobbed awkwardly.

Crooks prompted him. ‘ Have you been ill?’

Axe cleared his throat, and though he addressed Crooks, his eyes were fixed on a spot over his shoulder.

‘Truth is, Mr Crooks, I gotter new job, and I don’t live at the cottage any more.

Last Sunday, ’twas the only day I could manage with moving my things to my new place, and Rector and Mr Arden said I could be excused church for the once. My brother-in-law helped me move.’

‘A new job? And a new house? You didn’t tell me.’

The reproach was in the words, not the tone.

Axe felt guilty, but the fact was he hadn’t known how to tell the old gentleman, who had been helping him with his reading, that their lessons must end.

He knew that, for some reason, Mr Crooks valued them as much as Axe had – if not more.

‘It’s quite a step away, the new place, up at Motte Woods,’ he said apologetically.

‘Motte Woods? That is a distance,’ Crooks said, dismayed. It was too far for him to walk there, as he had walked to the cottage at Ashmore Carr.

‘I was meaning to write you a letter to say thank you when I’d got settled. And to send you back the book you kindly lent me, about the time machine.’

‘Oh, but I didn’t lend it, that was a gift,’ Crooks said.

Axe reddened. ‘That’s a deal too good of you, sir. You shouldn’t’ve spent money on me.’

‘It was my pleasure, my dear boy. But surely there’s some way we can continue with our little sessions?’

‘My new job will keep me much busier, sir,’ Axe said firmly, ‘aside from it’s too far away.

But I’m reading much better now, thanks to you, and I don’t think I shall slip back.

I’ve the Good Book at home, and the time machine one, thanks to you, and I reckon they’ll keep me going.

I shall never forget what you’ve done for me, Mr Crooks, and I do thank you, from my heart. ’

He offered his hand and Crooks shook it, bemused, then had his own hand given back in what was plainly a terminal manner. Before he could summon up any further argument, Axe had resumed his hat and was striding away down the lane towards the yard.

Crooks started disconsolately towards home.

The brake that brought the servants to church would have gone by now: it didn’t wait for laggards.

He walked along to the stile a little way down past the church, which gave access to the footpath that cut off a corner and joined up with Cherry Lane – a pleasanter walk back to the Castle than the main carriage drive, and a less steep hill.

At the stile he paused before mounting, looked back, and saw Axe come out of Back Lane driving a heavy wagon drawn by a chestnut carthorse.

For a moment his imagination leaped to the offer of a lift, a pleasant, slow drive up the hill, and perhaps during the conversation some way discovered that the lessons could continue.

But Axe turned the other way, and did not look in Crooks’s direction.

He was sure Axe hadn’t meant it, but he felt snubbed. And sad. A brightness had gone out of his life.

Early April was all that April should be: sunny, breezy days, refreshed by short showers; blue skies and dazzling white clouds; dancing catkins, stotting lambs, and heartbreakingly tender new greenness everywhere.

It was indeed pretty country, Nina agreed, gazing from the train window on the journey from Northampton to Market Harborough.

It was quintessentially English, she thought: gentle rolling hills – as if a counterpane had been shaken and halted in mid-billow; a patchwork of fields, divided by trim hedges; neat small woods, little villages and farms tucked snugly into the folds.

A grey church spire; white sheep and brown cows; black rooks circling a distant coppice.

Here and there a man with a dog, or a horse and cart, or a woman hanging out washing caught her eye briefly as she was borne past, reassuring her that life was carrying on and the world was in good order.

Trump stood on her lap, forefeet on the narrow sill, and stared in fascination out of the window, making the occasional muted wuff of surprise.

Mr Cowling had the newspaper open, but Nina suspected he was only pretending to read, while actually watching her for her reaction.

He was still nervous about the visit, fearing she would find the house too uncomfortable – despite the message he had despatched to Mrs Deering to spare no expense.

Mrs Mitchell had been very much put out by the whole plan, especially, Nina imagined, as Mr Cowling had made it clear from the beginning that she wasn’t required to come, which denied her the pleasure of refusing to do so.

They took a cab from Market Harborough station (‘Though it’s no distance at all – you could walk it,’ said Mr Cowling), and there were a couple of streets of nice old houses before they drove right through the market square, with shops and stalls set out, a glimpse of interesting backstreets, a strange old Tudor building up on wooden arches in the middle, and a pretty church.

Leaving the square at the further end they came at once to a high red-brick wall on the right, and Mr Cowling said, ‘This is it. This is the house.’

‘But it’s right in the town,’ Nina exclaimed.

Mr Cowling looked anxious. ‘Aye, I know. There’s no rolling acres and long drive like at Dene Park.’ This was the country estate where they had first met.

‘Oh, but I like it,’ Nina said. ‘It’s lovely to be close to the centre. I could just walk to the shops any time I wanted.’

‘Is that the way you see it?’ he said, sounding a little reassured. ‘Well, here we are, here’s the gates.’

They were tall and wrought iron, set in the red wall, with a carved stone plaque beside them which said Wriothesby House. Nina tried to read it. ‘However do you pronounce it?’

He looked pleased. ‘Aye, I had a job getting my lips round it at first. But it’s just pronounced Robey. It’s a joker! Something to do with some family that lived here long ago, but I don’t know why they had to put in all those extra letters, except to flummox folk. Ah, here’s Deering.’

A spry old man was opening the gates for them. He must have been on the look-out, Nina thought, told by Decius which train they would take and warned to be on hand. He was thin and old and weatherbeaten, but upright, and he took off his cap as the cab passed, then hurried after them.

There was no drive – the gates gave straight onto the wide gravelled area before the house – and as they pulled up, Decius was there to open the door and help Nina down.

Behind him was the long facade of the house, three storeys high, in warm red brick, with a very simple white stone porch on Ionic pillars in the centre, and a white stone parapet hiding the pitch of the roof.

The windows were tall twelve-paned sashes.

It was all quite plain but, because of the proportions, elegant and satisfying.

‘Well, what d’you think, love?’ Mr Cowling asked, hurrying round from his side to read Nina’s face. ‘It’s not much of a place, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s beautiful ,’ she said, with feeling.

He looked as though he couldn’t believe her. ‘But it’s plain as bread, with a face as flat as a pancake! Never a bit of decoration – not a turret or curlicue or bit of fancy stone work about it! Not even a bay window!’

‘I think it’s lovely,’ she said again. ‘Is it Georgian?’

‘A bit earlier,’ Decius supplied. ‘Queen Anne, though there’s a part at the back that you can see is even older. There was probably a house here as far back in history as you like to go. The stables are more modern – about thirty years old. They’re round the side.’

He gestured in the direction they had been travelling, where the gravel courtyard became a carriage path and turned the corner of the house.

‘And the grounds are on the opposite side to this, running along beside the road behind the wall. There’s a walled kitchen garden, a pleasure garden – small, but rather nice – and some lawns and shrubberies, all leading down to a lake with a Greek temple by way of a gazebo.’

‘A lake and a temple – not really? It sounds as if it has everything!’

‘A rather weedy lake, and the temple needs repair, but still,’ Decius qualified, enjoying her pleasure.

‘Can you really like it?’ Cowling said wonderingly. He shook his head. ‘Ah, but wait till you see the inside. You’ll be begging me to take you straight back to Beechcroft.’

Nina laughed, and put down Trump, who was wriggling, and watched him scurry round in happy circles, nose down. ‘I bet I don’t,’ she said stoutly, and that made Mr Cowling laugh.