Chapter 26: Rachel - The Golden Hours

Rachel and Archie were smoking teatime cigarettes together on the western terrace. The vista rolled out, so you could watch the sun set over the lake, where the grey heron would be lurking, hunched and pensive. It was a golden afternoon, the faint smell of bonfire. The birds were beginning to line up on branches and power lines, clustering, getting ready to leave, like nervy soldiers soon to head off. The beauty of the gardens, the parkland and the wide country beyond almost made up for the great lump of the house.

‘This view,’ said Archie, inhaling, exhaling. ‘Do you still love it here?’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘All of it.’

Rachel truly loved the house, without apology or restraint. She couldn’t think why others thought it ugly. Its physicality, its peculiarity, the never-ending generosity of its sheer size and unknowability. The secrets! The amount and variety of jobs to be done! Though that could be a bit much, even for a woman who loved a job. But there was always something new.

She had developed a habit of searching through the dim corridors of the library for documents and books about the house itself, and if not Fakenham, then other great houses. She couldn’t bring herself to call them stately homes; it sounded so pompous. She would say it quietly to herself in a sort of archbishop voice. She had found quarto volumes of maps and site plans for Fakenham, none of which made sense: architects’ drawings on thick waxy paper which when unfolded took up almost the whole of the long mahogany map table which had belonged to Gerald’s great-grandfather. Rachel admired the wood; the Brig would have approved of the fineness of its grain and the rich depth of colour. It occurred to her that Cazalet’s had probably supplied it. Polly had smiled when Rachel mentioned that, and one rainy afternoon they’d looked through the heavy, fine-lined leather-bound account books, going back to 1880, in search of a feathery handwritten entry saying ‘Mahogany, Cazalet’s, 40 guineas’, or some such. Of course they found nothing. The table was older than much of the house.

She had taken easily to life here, ‘for someone who has never knowingly wanted anything beyond what she has’, as Archie put it. This current afternoon she had ventured down the curved York-stone staircase into the black hole that denoted the entrance to the shadowy labyrinth of the west-wing cellars, where among the puddles, iron wine racks, and ancient disintegrating cobwebby brickwork she had hoped but failed to find Pen’s old tricycle. She felt it would be just the right size for Buttercup. She did wish Simon would put things away in the courtyard outhouses rather than these drippy caverns with their hard earthen floors. She was certainly what people called ‘spry’ in a person of her age – no young person was ever called spry, were they? – but the stairs were uneven. And she was still what Sid had called, in her ‘I’m being funny but I’m not being funny’ voice, ‘a martyr to her back’. The idea of falling, down there, was terrible. To be honest, you couldn’t fall anywhere in this house. It could take days to find you.

‘Perhaps,’ she said to Archie, ‘that’s another reason why people in the country always have dogs.’

‘What is?’ he asked.

‘If you fall and break your leg in a distant upstairs corridor, they can wave your handkerchief under the dog’s nose and it will be able to seek you out,’ she said.

‘Is that your worst nightmare?’

‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘I had my worst nightmare this morning. They’re always worst if you let yourself go back to sleep having once woken up. Today’s was: I was on a rather modern bridge, on the edge of Venice – no, I’ve never been to Venice, but I knew, the way one does. Anyway, Venice was to our left, you were with me –’

‘Honoured,’ he said.

‘You won’t be,’ she warned. ‘A bridge, curved, concrete, narrow, swept ahead of us across the lagoon, anyway, we were to walk across it, and the sea around it was very deep, and a very deep blue, quite smooth, but as we started out I saw that the bridge led downwards into the water. I could see . . . Look, are you sure you want to hear my dream?’

‘Certainly,’ he said, quite truthfully. He was one of those unusual people who acknowledged sleeping life to be just as interesting and real as waking life, indeed often more so, and not to be scorned.

Rachel smiled. ‘People were walking down the slope into the sea,’ she said, ‘not worried at all, till the water was over their heads, and we were meant to do that . . . and I could see huge goldfish, narrow ones, ten or twelve feet long, gleaming under the surface. You seemed to think it was all all right, you were saying come on, and I was saying Archie, I can’t, I don’t even have my wellingtons, and you held out your hand, and we walked in up to our middles before I made you turn around . . . And then later on, we went back to where we’d parked the car and it was in the sea, sinking, and some men came and put it on a truck and took it away.’

‘Well that’s a cracker,’ he said. ‘Have you interpreted it?’

‘It must mean there’s something I want to do that I’m scared to do. Don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps something you want to go deeper into,’ he said.

‘Well, it’s not the cellars of the west wing, that’s for certain.’

‘And I was leading you,’ he mused. ‘Though actually I gather everyone in our dreams is an aspect of ourself.’

‘Part of me wants to, part doesn’t. Well, that’s normal. Anyway, it was quite unpleasant.’

Archie was silent.

Rachel’s eyes drifted across the hummocky lawns, the woods to the north, the haha, the swoop of meadow parkland towards the lake. ‘Repton said there should always be something living and moving in a view,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure a bird flying by is enough. There should be sheep, or cows. Or a deer.’

‘Well, they’re out there somewhere,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s just a hedgehog, or a worm.’

Wood pigeons coo-cooed, and after a moment of lull, Archie wondered if those delicious damsons in the orchard were ripe yet. Rachel said, ‘Weeks ago. You’re such a city boy. I’ve already made the jam.’

‘Saved some for crumble, I hope,’ he said.

‘Bottled, for damson Grasmere,’ she replied. Grasmere was crumble with ginger. His favourite. She was experimenting with growing ginger in the warmest glasshouse. It wasn’t a huge success, and anyway, how did one go from fibrous root to that fine dry powder? She’d almost worn her elbow out on the pestle and mortar. Much easier to get it from Norwich. Why do English people always talk about food? she thought. The weather, the journey, where do you want to sit, the view, something about food. Round and round.

‘What might you want to go deeper into?’ he asked, and she was so relieved. Sometimes she thought he’d changed the subject when actually he was musing, and would come back round in his own time.

‘Do you know, I was thinking about it all day, and I think it’s, well, life! I think I just wish I’d done more. Gone off more. I suppose it’s just about –’

‘Sid,’ he said kindly, so she didn’t have to.

She looked across to him gratefully.

‘But darling,’ he said, ‘you do know you’re not dead?’ She grinned. ‘And there’s time in life for all sorts of developments. I mean, if Clary and I can leave Mortlake . . .’

‘But Clary’s not even old!’ said Rachel. Then, ‘No, tell me about that. Did something go wrong?’

‘Oddly enough,’ he said, ‘some things went right. It was time to give Rupe and Zoë some space; I’ve been having a bit of success – you’ll come to the opening, won’t you? It’ll be in the new year, at the Evans Gallery. The school had basically run itself into the ground. The only problem is, with Clary in America, I’m rather too lazy to move house properly on my own – plus, I’d just put everything in the wrong place and it would all have to be moved again when she gets back.’

‘How are the children about it?’ Rachel asked.

‘Happy, I think,’ said Archie. ‘I mean, Buttercup’s too small to mind too much, Harriet’s glad because Laura’s staying with us, and Bertie’s pleased because it’s nearer his friends, and school. Laura probably feels a bit odd, her old house being invaded.’

‘Laura always feels a bit odd,’ said Rachel. ‘But I’m sure Clary will watch out for her.’ She was sure of no such thing. Rachel felt that Clary had the working habits of a man – including sometimes rather ignoring the fact that she had children. She’d headed off to California leaving Archie and Nanny to bring the children to Fakenham to be looked after till term started. She scarcely even asked Polly, who was of course delighted, but Rachel did worry about people taking each other for granted.

‘So what’s actually happening, in Hollywood?’ she asked. Nobody was above being curious about the glamour.

‘An American company bought out the UK company who’d originally wanted to do her play as a film, so now there’s lots of money, and they’d picked it up, and something in her contract said she had to be involved at every stage. So she’s been shipped out to watch while they try to make her very English story American. She’s having a lovely time, I gather. Sun, sea and starlets.’

Rachel was a bit shocked. ‘You hated that play,’ she said.

‘I hate it still,’ he sighed. ‘But –’

Rachel sensed that he, like her, was just too old now to let things breed unhappiness. If one could prevent unhappiness by just soaking it up, perhaps that was a duty.

‘But if they make it, and it’s a great success, if it wins Oscars –’

‘Then that would be wonderful,’ he said, only mildly reprovingly.

‘But –’

‘Darling, the days of my boyish pride are long over,’ he said. ‘And things change a lot in the writing. By now, it’s a made-up story about Americans. Our marriage is good.’

This was the first time Rachel had heard him admit that the story, of an extra-marital affair, was in any way based on truth. And he could only admit it because it wasn’t really true any more. The layers that grow over emotions, she thought. Scar tissue, she’d heard, has no feeling. So the older you get, the more thick-skinned and heartless you should be. Ha! How the past slips away . . . And at the same time, it’s for ever just over there – just behind that bush, hiding in that memory. She often feared that she would never have a strong feeling again. Some days she was grateful for that; some she could weep. Other days she yearned, as strongly as she had as a girl: for her mother, for a day when her back didn’t hurt, for her love, her Sid. Was it absurd, at this age, to imagine a change, a future?She couldn’t see one. She didn’t want any other woman. She didn’t think about sex at all, except intellectually. She certainly didn’t want a man. The idea of a job, or work, in this world, was equally unimaginable – though perhaps if Villy, of all people, had a job, then anything was possible. Rachel prayed every day that she could continue to be of use, to justify her presence in Polly’s family. Sometimes she remembered Dolly and Flo, who were of absolutely no use to anybody. Dear old souls. But do people need to be of use? Can’t they just be? Especially when they are old. She didn’t include herself, of course. But she was able to smile for a moment, remembering how furious Sid used to get about her inability to stop being helpful. She taught me a lot about myself, she thought. The continuation of that thought was usually, I wish I’d managed to learn the lessons earlier, but she didn’t need to follow it through every time. Some days she could just settle with gratitude for having been known, and loved, and shown her own self.

‘I’m glad,’ she said to Archie, who smiled and started searching in his pockets, so she changed the subject, and began telling him how the twins had been painting their ponies green and pink – ‘It’s art, apparently!’ she said – and how Villy (who she spoke to most Sundays, as she did also to Zoë) was terribly well, really having a new lease of life, working on the jewellery side now with Hermione, do you remember, with the boutique? No, of course not. Louise had happened to pop in, and there was Villy actually behind the counter, looking very smart and sorting through emeralds!

‘Good for her,’ murmured Archie.

And did he know Juliet had moved in with Louise? Terrible ructions with her landlady, apparently, and you know how protective Louise is, well she is. And Andrew was rather enjoying Oundle – Gerald had wanted Eton; Polly had desperately yearned for a day school for him, so a nearby boarding school was the happy medium. At least she’d managed to keep him home till he was thirteen. Rachel was with Gerald on this. A boy had to be normal, like other boys of his type. Other boys of Andrew’s type went to public school and unless you were in London that meant boarding. It would be the making of him. Andrew was . . . opinionated.

Gerald and Polly were, Rachel thought, rather too relaxed, perhaps, about discussing everything in front of the children. They didn’t seem to notice that little jugs have big ears. At lunch recently, during everyone’s half-term, Polly had jokingly suggested selling another of the Turners, as a solution to some recurring financial demand, and Andrew had announced that he would not allow it.

‘Thank you for your opinion,’ Gerald said mildly, while Polly smiled into her napkin. ‘So what do you propose?’ Gerald did actually enjoy the children’s suggestions, and even took them up from time to time.

‘I propose a vintage car museum, a miniature railway, and water sports on the lake,’ said Andrew. Then Laura, who adored Georgie, and would still watch Peter Scott with him on the television, said that water sports on the lake would be bad for the ducks, and she was pretty sure she’d heard a bittern down there this morning and nobody wanted to upset the bitterns, did they? Bertie, encouraged by the fact that Laura didn’t seem to notice that it was none of her business, or indeed Georgie’s (who wasn’t even there), said he thought it was a pretty bad idea to sell art as art was the most important thing. Polly said, ‘And what do you think, girls?’

‘A riding school,’ the twins said in unison.

‘With different coloured ponies,’ said Za.

‘And matching doves,’ said Janie. ‘And a choice of riding habits. Historical ones.’

‘With veils,’ said Za.

‘Oh yes,’ said Bertie.

‘We could have a caff,’ said Andrew, who had once had caff food, in an emergency in Ipswich: baked beans and fried eggs, chips and – oh, the wonder – a battered saveloy. ‘And guided tours of the house. We’ll conduct the tours. Of course you’d need to pay us. Most to me, because people will be impressed to meet the future Earl. The future Earl is better than mere ladies.’

Janie and Za rose above their brother’s attempted taunt. They knew there was nothing mere about them.

Gerald and Polly had not changed their minds about opening the house to the public. Weddings were one thing. They smiled.

‘Or you could sell this place and get a really nice big house in London,’ Laura suggested.

‘Market gardening?’ Simon said. ‘I’ve been thinking: Christmas trees, they do well on this soil and Lord knows we have the space. Also, and this is a bit of a funny one. We do weddings, but other people do all the wedding things, the cakes and the food and the cars – so couldn’t we provide a bit more of the extras ourselves? So, for example, obviously GUN 97 is absolutely the best car one could possibly want’ – (GUN 97 was Gerald’s father’s 1937 Rolls Royce 20/35, battered, black and beloved by all, especially the children who enjoyed putting their lolly sticks down the slot from which rose the partition, when the grown-ups wanted to cut themselves off from Tonbridge) – ‘but it does have ants, and perhaps we could do with something a little more, you know, snazzy? I was talking to one of the Yanks from the airbase, from Sculthorpe, and they’ve quite a few cars there, don’t want to ship them back to the US – bit of a unique thing, wouldn’t you say? A Hollywood car for your wedding? A Cadillac perhaps? Spray it white, or pink to match the ponies!’

‘Hmm!’ said Gerald, and looked to Polly. They’d all seen the vast cars with their tail fins and hood ornaments, skulking like sharks in the narrow Norfolk lanes, magnificently out of place among the rich hedgerows and arching cow parsley.

‘Simon, that’s absolutely brilliant,’ Polly said. ‘How much do they cost?’

‘Sounds pretty doable,’ said Gerald.

‘I have an idea,’ said Rachel, finally, as it had become a free-for-all. ‘Could I make confetti? From the rose garden? And if we could grow some other flowers, different colours, have some cutting beds, then it wouldn’t be just red, white and pink. Cornflowers and marigolds perhaps? We have plenty of lavender after all. We could make enough for all our weddings. And perhaps sell it.’

‘We don’t have a shop,’ said Andrew.

‘The weddings could go on the miniature railway,’ said Pen, who very much wanted to go on the miniature railway.

‘That would make a great photograph,’ said Simon, who was a good amateur photographer, but didn’t want to put himself forward. ‘Bride sitting on the engine! All that lace.’

‘There’s a joke about trains in there somewhere,’ said Gerald. ‘I just can’t quite find it . . .’

‘The Bridal Train!’ shouted Bertie delightedly.

‘You could be the resident wedding photographer!’ said Polly, but Simon felt he’d have his work cut out what with not just everything but also making new flower beds for Rachel’s confetti. Rachel was thinking about how best to dry the flowers so they didn’t become a compost project by mistake. On the Aga top, lids closed? Spread out good and wide on a tray or a rack. Or hang them upside down in the linen cupboards? No, of course, over the glasshouse boiler . . .

‘We could train Belka and Strelka to carry the rings,’ said Za.

‘Or tie the rings to the doves’ feet,’ said Janie. They had been reading about an Ottoman potentate who had cherries sent from Syria to Cairo by white fantail carrier doves, pairs of blood-red cherries dangling, high against a blue Levantine sky. The idea enchanted them, and they had been spending afternoons at the dovecote gaining the confidence of the birds with a view to recolouring them. They pictured the doves landing on their shoulders and, ultimately, running errands.

Rachel knew that Polly was half fascinated, half exasperated by her elder daughters. She’d hoped the weekly boarding might bring them into practicality, but they lived in a world of their own, where the only practicality was the horses. Their father’s froggy eyes, on them, instead of being comical and touching were glamorous in the old sense of the word: otherworldly, enchanting, spooky – like frog princesses from a Pre-Raphaelite fairy tale. ‘Arthur Rackham eyes,’ Polly said. They were already five foot seven at fifteen, and had suffered rather awful growing pains when their bones stretched. Where the height came from was a mystery. Polly was petite, and Gerald broad. There were, however, some moth-eaten fur coats in the back cloakroom which suggested that someone Edwardian had been a good six foot (the twins had dragged these monumental items out, and wore them as dressing gowns). Polly and Rachel would have checked the family portraits – there had been paintings by Boldini, Orpen and Sargent – but Gerald’s mother had sold them long ago. Polly and Rachel had taken the girls on a pilgrimage to see one at the National Portrait Gallery: a Lady Francesca Lisle, in scarlet on a black lacquer chaise longue, with gleaming white arms and one pink rose. Gerald’s great-aunt, they thought. ‘If only whoever had chosen the portrait painters had chosen the architect,’ Polly had whispered. Rachel liked being confided in, but felt a little embarrassed by it – she knew that Polly would never mock the family, however lightly, with Gerald. It was just one thread in the complex tapestry of her role at Fakenham. Once Polly had said to Rachel, ‘The thing is, a house like this, a family like this, needs more than one wife!’ Rachel had shrunk from the notion, but saw the practicality. Polly had created a glorious household, but there wasn’t always time for her to be individual, Rachel thought, with the children. She didn’t blame her at all. But compared with Polly’s own childhood, where dear Sybil had practically nothing to do except be sweet to children – and looking back to Rachel’s own girlhood too – really, she thought, a wealthy Edwardian childhood was a dreamland of perfection. Rachel had never been sentimental, but she found herself thinking, They don’t even have a real nursery. Not what the Duchy would call a nursery. Let alone nursery maids – though Eileen has proved remarkably adaptable – or nursery teas. So she had found another strand in her tapestry: giving the children small individual attentions. She it was who had listened to Andrew’s fear of spiders, taught Pen to read, cut up paper for the girls’ collages, sat by sickbeds, listened to particular dramas from school, knew which twin wouldn’t eat fish and why Za was attracted to Catholicism and when she changed her mind. She read to them when it rained, and took them to the beach. It wasn’t that Polly was inattentive. It was that there were a lot of people.

And every now and then a little blurt of regret came out of Polly, for things she might have done had things been different. ‘How shall I ever see Italy?’ she took to saying, after the Bank House Art School (and the families) had decamped to Rome that year. Gerald seemed to take it as a general expression, a cheerful acceptance of her lot. Rachel thought, You should see Italy. After Zoë and Rupert went to Venice, Zoë had talked about it endlessly. A few weeks later Polly had found a big book in Norwich, with colour plates of Venetian palazzos: their red-tiled floors, high beds, huge portegos and elegant loggias, barrel vaults and lancet arches. Other books followed: Florence, Siena, Rome, and then Arezzo, Turin, Palermo . . .

Hugh being here was an additional bind on Polly – though nobody would ever say so, or even think it.

Rachel recognised Polly’s need to keep everybody under her wing, and to keep her wing steady at all times. Like Clary, Polly had been so insecure during the war, losing her mother, moving around, that she just wanted everybody in place: at the table, in view, all right with the world. It was almost, Rachel thought, as if Clary was acting it all out with her characters, and Polly with her furniture and house guests. And how about Louise? Rachel asked herself. Well. She really didn’t know or understand Louise any more. She could see, now, that a person might have to leave a young, foolish wartime marriage – she herself had found Michael a little, well, overconfident – but to leave a child? And then produce no other boyfriend or potential husband?

Occasionally, she wondered if Louise might be, well, like her and Sid. That might explain the failure of her marriage. Juliet moving into Louise’s flat made Rachel think about it again: if the three of them were living in that two-bedroom flat, didn’t it mean that Stella and Louise might be sharing a room? Perhaps Louise was living a life . . . like that . . . in London, unable to bring it home. Of course, Fakenham was not Louise’s home, for all the echoes of Home Place, but it was family. So was Louise living with the secrecy that Sid had maintained for so long? Were things the same now? Even out here in the middle of Norfolk Rachel could see changes in the world, she read the paper and listened to the Home Service. But would – even now she couldn’t find a word she could bear for it – would IT ever be seen differently? If she saw it in a younger woman, say, if Louise were – even ‘that way inclined’ had a prissy, smarmy ring to it – or one of the younger girls, would she not speak to them about it? Tell them what she had learnt the hard way?

She could not imagine a situation in which it could possibly come up. If she couldn’t even find a word for it, how could she ever talk of it? But if, say, Louise and Stella had been living together because they loved each other – but surely not. There had never been anything in their public behaviour to suggest it. But then there wouldn’t be!

That said, Miss MacMillan and Miss Debenham in the village were completely obvious. Still in their tweeds from 1919, walking sticks, arm-in-arm, a corgi each.

Rachel felt old. Her dear brothers, all three back alive after the two wars, if not unscathed then not very scathed.

She went and made Hugh a cup of tea, strong with two sugars, the way he liked it.

* * *

Polly, seated at the head of the breakfast table under a faded square of wall of exactly the same dimensions as Lady Francesca Lisle, raised her eyes mournfully from a letter, and said, ‘I’ve been offered a job.’

‘How marvellous!’ said Gerald. ‘You must take it. What is it?’

‘Your friend Henry,’ she said. ‘He’s at the National Trust, and wants someone to help with restorations and how to make big houses work in the new world. Sort of an experienced researcher, he says.’

‘Well, pass it over,’ said Gerald, and as he read it his eyebrows seemed to sprout entire new hairs. ‘Well,’ he said, handing it to Rachel. ‘He makes you sound positively professional!’

Rachel read the letter swiftly. It sounded perfect for Polly. Calling on her qualities, acknowledging her areas of experience (reviving Fakenham) and of inexperience (not having had a job since 1949). Rachel had met Henry a few times: a man of about fifty, charming, if a little musty about the clothing. Glancing up, she caught Jemima’s eye. ‘How wonderful,’ said Jemima, with her habitual tone: supportive but non-committal.

‘Such a pity,’ said Polly, putting it back in the envelope.

‘But why?’ said Gerald, and Polly made a little moue.

‘Miniature railway,’ she said. ‘Confetti garden, pink Cadillacs. Water sports. Topiary animals. The east wing guttering. Four children. You, my dear darling.’

‘Hmm,’ he said, and she jumped up, smiling, saying something about the dogs.

‘I think,’ said Simon, having swallowed his last mouthful of egg and bacon, ‘that we could make the gardens so beautiful people would pay simply to see them.’

‘Jemima,’ said Hugh, ‘I think it may be time we sold Ladbroke Grove, and pulled our weight here.’

Gerald was saying how unnecessary this would be, and Laura was muttering basely about how dare they ruin her life, when the phone rang, and Rachel went to answer. ‘It’s Wills!’ she called. ‘He’s got leave, and wants to know when it would be all right to visit?’

Rachel went with Bertie and Pen, Polly and Simon to find a spot for a confetti bed to supplement the roses. As they strolled through the Knot Garden, Polly kept being diverted by the needs of her topiary menagerie. From the initial balls and pyramids (plenty of which remained; a garden needs architecture after all) she had graduated from bears to peacocks, swans on columns and unicorns, one of which was even standing up. Over the years each child (including cousins) had been assigned a bush, and often allowed the choice of creature: partly to amuse them, and partly to improve the enthusiasm levels of child labour for pruning and clipping. Never a day passed when one of the topiaries didn’t need a tweak or a snip or an adjustment of the cables and ties that supported its development. They were really coming into their own: lush in summer, stark and monumental in winter. In general Polly’s gardening style was rather looser and shaggier than most, amiably unmanicured – but topiary, everybody agreed, must always be sharp.

Simon was full of ideas: an old chap in the pub had been telling him how you can clear grass and hay, actually kill them off, by laying polythene down for a few months, which would save a mass of digging and trying to get rid of roots. ‘Or,’ said Polly, ‘we could take over part of the Walled Garden?’ – currently home to the vegetable garden, and some low fruit trees. That way they wouldn’t need to fence it off against the deer and the many, many rabbits. Simon thought he could finally do something about the third glasshouse, clear it out a bit and replace some panes, so they could have a longer growing season and perhaps set up Rachel’s flower processing plant in there.

‘We must speak to Gables, of course,’ Rachel said, dreading it. What was it about gardeners and drink? Oh, she knew. The war.

‘Actually, Gables loves flowers,’ Simon said. ‘He has a soft spot for speciality zinnias. That won’t serve our purposes, but I’m sure we can filch some of the marrow patch. Everybody hates marrows.’

‘I don’t,’ said Bertie. Rachel knew why: she had fond memories of him scratching his name into gleaming baby marrows with a pin, at the beginning of summer, and coming back in July to find a hardened scar signature five times the original size. He’d drawn simple pictures, fascinated to see how they turned out – but it took so long! And only one chance a year to do it. For years he’d done his best to be at Fakenham at the right time. And then if he missed his moment, someone would have picked it and made it into a horrible stew, or jam. Even Rachel drew the line at marrow jam.

‘I used to try to save them, you know,’ she said to him now, and he looked up, astonished. ‘I remember you did a beautiful sunset over puffy clouds. All those rays . . . but you do need a hot summer.’

Looking around, there was already plenty they could use. Roses of course; perhaps the wisteria? Hydrangeas: take the heads to bits and the florets would be perfect. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to use fresh petals in the summer? Rosemary, why not. Confetti should smell nice.

‘How’s your mother?’ Rachel asked Bertie, as they went to get a trug. If they picked some now, they could see how the colour faded, or not, over the winter. Hanging them upside down should keep them bright.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, a bit crossly. ‘She’s still in Hollywood. It’s been weeks!’

‘When’s she back?’ Rachel asked, though she already knew.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s all a bit moody with her away. I don’t really see why people get into couples. Zoë was moody when Grandpa was away, and Grandpa’s moody now he’s back, and Dad’s moody with Mum being away. I think you have it right, Aunt Rach. You never go away and there’s nobody to go away from you, so there’s nothing to get moody about.’

Well, that’s one way of looking at it, she thought. And, oh! To be so young that you never think about the great going away, the never coming back. She was sorry Archie was moody, though.

‘And Harriet?’ she asked. Harriet hadn’t wanted to come to Fakenham. The lure of London was too strong.

‘I think she’s all right. She doesn’t mind about the moving house. But Georgie’s going to miss us terribly. He was starting to plan moving his zoo – cardboard boxes for the reptiles, saucepans for the amphibians – because he didn’t realise he wasn’t coming with us.’

‘Will you miss him?’

‘Madly,’ said Bertie. ‘Sometimes grown-ups just don’t think things through.’