Chapter Nine
It might be too late to put things right with his old man, but Daniel still needed to put his own mind at rest. Achieve closure, as Miranda liked to say. She often wrote about the importance of achieving closure. Of course he must tread with care. In Brack, it would be as easy for a newcomer to put a foot wrong in conversation as to stumble off a fellside track in the fog. He and Miranda would have to work hard for a long time if they were ever to become part of this community. Bad enough to be an off-comer, far worse to be disdained as a ghoul.
Did they even want to become part of the community? As they drove to Brack Hall on the Saturday evening, Daniel asked Miranda and she had no doubts.
‘Of course. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Forsaking the city for village life.’
‘We’re a mile from the village. Days could pass without our seeing a single soul, if it weren’t for all the workmen tramping in and out.’
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘Not in the least. All I ever wanted was to run away with you.’
She put her hand on his thigh. ‘That’s a lovely thing to say, but I don’t want to be a hermit. Okay, we have our writing, but we can’t want to hide away from the world forever.’
‘Round here, it takes a generation before people really accept you as one of them.’
‘Relax, we can always bond with the other off-comers. How about the people in that mobile home park in the next valley?’
He grinned. ‘So this is our first toe in the water, so far as integrating with the community goes? A dinner party with the local squire and his wife. Very traditional. Except that he only keeps a farm as a write-off against tax and she’s a townie who plays at being an artist.’
‘Tash is in love with the Lakes. She rang up this afternoon, while you were outside, to check we were still okay to come. We talked for a couple of minutes and she told me she could never bear to leave. She was trying to persuade me that coming here was the best decision I ever made.’
‘Did she need to?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you sure?’
The hesitation before she replied chilled him more than any simple nostalgia for city life. ‘It’s just that — sometimes I wonder. What will we do when the cottage is sorted?’
They pulled up outside the electric gates guarding the Hall and he forced a smile. ‘Why worry? After everything that’s gone wrong this past few days, we’ll be old and grey before all the work is finished.’
‘Feel that wall,’ Simon Dumelow said. ‘See how thick it is?’
After greeting them with champagne, Tash’s husband had insisted on taking them for a guided tour. He was a bluff Lancastrian with an extravagance of grey hair, expensively cut. His black short-sleeved shirt and matching designer slacks probably cost twice as much as Daniel’s best suit. Daniel guessed he was in his mid-fifties, but he had the boyish enthusiasm of a kid showing off his model railway set.
First stop was the Virginia creeper-festooned pele tower that had once provided a refuge from Border raiders. Underground were the cellars, air-conditioned and lined with racks crammed with vintage wine. Now they had arrived in the tunnel-vaulted room occupying the ground floor. In the fourteenth century a windowless and fetid home to the livestock, today it was a games room with dazzling overhead lights. The only battles it saw were fought on a full-sized Thurston billiard table. A dutiful guest, Daniel thrust his hand against the stone and murmured with appreciation. The wall was undeniably solid.
‘Six feet,’ his host said. ‘Six feet of Cumbrian sandstone, would you believe? They don’t build them like this any more.’
‘Dumelow Properties don’t,’ his wife said sweetly, ‘that’s for sure.’
Simon Dumelow smirked at his guests and patted his wife on the rump. ‘She likes to bite the hand that feeds, does Tash. Keeps forgetting that without Dumelow Properties she wouldn’t be the lady of Brack Hall.’
‘It’s a wonderful home,’ Miranda said. ‘Like a castle.’
‘That’s exactly what it was,’ Simon said. ‘Pele towers were scattered on either side of the border in the days when the English and the Scots were always fighting. Come to think of it, have they ever stopped? Inside a place as well-fortified as this, you could withstand a siege if ever the Reivers came to call.’
Tash clicked her tongue, as if embarrassed. ‘Darling, aren’t you forgetting? Daniel is the historian, he’ll know far more about what went on in the old days than we do.’
Daniel felt, as he often did when history was mentioned, rather like a divorce lawyer expected to have an intimate knowledge of the subtleties of probate. ‘It’s not really my period,’ he said. ‘I’m a nineteenth century man.’
‘You look perfectly modern to me,’ she said.
Simon slipped an arm around her. ‘Hey, no flirting. Daniel’s a respectable academic. You behave yourself in company, do you hear?’
‘Okay, darling,’ she said, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Anything you say.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Anything?’
‘Behave.’
Simon opened a door that gave on to a flight of steps. Half way up, he tripped and barked his knees on the stone. He gave a brief cry of pain but rapidly assured his wife that no harm had been done. The first floor had been turned into a cavernous living space stuffed with antique furnishings. One wall was covered from floor to ceiling with expensively framed watercolours of lakes and mountains, bathed in endless hues of purple and orange. Next to the door, a longcase clock was chiming the hour.
‘Jonas Barber senior of Winster,’ he announced with pride. ‘One of his finest. Not often you find his clocks with a yew case. Of course, Tash chose the antiques, planned all the decor. She’s the one with artistic flair. Not only that, she painted all the pictures. Every single one.’
‘That’s Tarn Fold and the cottage!’ Miranda exclaimed.
Tash was no Turner. In fact, Daniel thought, her daubs were no better than average village art group standard, but she’d at least captured the tranquility of the setting, with the cottage slumbering under the midday sun and a gleam of water beyond. As they contemplated the picture, Tash lifted it from the hook and handed it to Miranda.
‘Take it, please. A housewarming present.’
‘Oh no, we couldn’t possibly…’
‘Don’t say another word, it’s yours,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll ask Jean to make sure it’s safely packed with lots of bubble wrap.’
‘Very determined woman, my wife,’ her husband said. ‘Knows what she wants to do and goes and does it. You may as well give in right now.’
The clock ticked relentlessly until the argument ended with the present being accepted with profuse thanks. As they headed up the stairs again, Miranda asked, ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Ten years.’ Simon spoke deliberately; he was taking special care not to miss his footing a second time. ‘I was coming out of my first marriage when I looked round this place. I’d always hankered after living in the Lakes, ever since I read Swallowdale as a kid.’
‘I suppose I liked Winter Holiday,’ Miranda said as they reached the next landing. ‘Wasn’t there a girl who liked making up stories and wanted to be a writer?’
Tash nodded. ‘Dorothea?’
‘You’re right. Pure escapism.’
‘Yes — well, anyway.’ Tash was blushing, as though the Ransome books were an illicit passion. ‘You two weren’t like Simon, were you? You never harboured a dream of moving to the Lakes.’
‘No,’ Miranda admitted. ‘We moved here pretty much on impulse. Another kind of escapism, if you like.’