Caroline Akrill: Christmas with the Rushbrokes (paperback)

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An extract from chapter 13:

‘Ah, the Angel Gabriel.’ Vivian had tottered down the brick passage wearing an ancient dressing gown and dusty monogrammed slippers. ‘Some woman to see you. Got a card out of the post office apparently.’ He flopped onto a chair, wheezing.

‘You should be in bed,’ Anna said severely. ‘Doctor’s orders. You can’t get up until next week.’

‘Bloody doctor. What does he know? Can’t do this. Can’t do that. I want to see what’s going on. My house you know. My land.’

‘Of course it is.’ Anna took him by the arm. ‘And as soon as the doctor gives you the green light you will be in the thick of it. They have started to strip the tiles off this wing already. It’s too cold for you to be wandering about in just your pyjamas. I’ll take you back to bed. Would you like a hot drink?’

‘Wouldn’t mind a whisky.’

‘You know you are not allowed whisky. It’s bad for your heart.’ Anna looked at his downcast face and her own heart melted. This was, after all, her own drowned man; the old man she had rescued from the mere; the man who had gripped the sides of the wheel barrow and quoted the Old Testament: Cast me not off in the time of my old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. ‘I tell you what, if you go back to bed, I’ll bring you some brandy and warm milk.’

Vivian got up from the chair with what might almost have passed for alacrity in a geriatric patient. ‘I’ll tell her you’ll be five minutes then. Fine figure of a woman, I must say.’ He added hopefully, ‘Nurse, is she?’

‘In your dreams,’ said Anna.

‘You can forget about the warm milk.’ Vivian tottered off down the brick passage. ‘Just bring the brandy.’

*

‘Mrs Sholto, if you will forgive me for saying so,’ said Anna a little warily, when they were safely seated at the plank table and Sir Vivian was back in bed sipping brandy with honey and hot water. ‘You don’t actually look like a gardener. To be perfectly frank, you are not at all what I was expecting.’

Mrs Sholto, whose high-heeled sandals had barely survived the brick floor of the passage, wore a full-skirted floral print dress topped with a cardigan of breath-taking whiteness and three rows of fake pearls. Her extravagantly large spectacles had flamingo pink frames and the generous curls of her hennaed hair were held in check by two diamanté combs. She was about forty years of age with a trim figure and quite striking in her way, but it was true that she was nobody’s idea of a gardener.

‘I expect I’ve overdone it a bit, as usual,’ she said apologetically. ‘I did so want to look nice for the interview and I expect I’ve gone right over the top. I try too hard, Miss Gabriel, that’s my trouble. I put in a lot of effort. My Arnold always said “Mavis, you never do anything by halves; with you, it’s all or nothing,” and he was right, he really was. I particularly wanted to make a good impression today because the stars are with me, Miss Gabriel, Mars being in Aries. I’m a great believer in the stars; we’re all governed by the planets whether we like it or not, and when I saw your card in the post office it hit me like a bolt from the blue, it really did. Mavis, I said to myself, this is it. This is you. You’ve done all you can with your own little plot and this is fate giving you a chance to spread your wings. I put a lot of trust in fate, Miss Gabriel, although fate is determined by the stars, it quite definitely is. I’m a student of astrology, you’ve probably guessed it, and when I saw your little card I just knew it was heaven sent.’ Mavis Sholto leaned over the plank table in a confiding manner. Her scent was overpowering and her lipstick applied with a lavish ferocity. ‘I must confess to having a little potter round the garden on my way in and from what I’ve seen you certainly need a gardener to sort you out, Miss Gabriel, you really do.’

‘We do,’ agreed Anna, who had decided that plain speaking was the best way out of an awkward situation, ‘but to be honest, Mrs Sholto, I was expecting a man. This garden needs restoration. Nothing has been done here for years and there is a lot of heavy work involved. I am not talking about a bit of light digging and planting, I am talking about cleaning out ditches, scything banks, repairing walls and rebuilding glasshouses. I am talking about earthworks, about mowing acres of grass with heavy machinery, about clipping yew hedges twenty feet high. I am talking about hard, physical labour. I am not talking about woman’s work.’

‘Oh, I realise that, Miss Gabriel,’ Mavis Sholto said confidently, ‘that’s why I’ll be bringing Barry.’

‘Barry?’ enquired Anna faintly.

‘Barry from the village, Miss Gabriel. He’s mute, I’m afraid, and not quite all there in the head due to being partially asphyxiated at birth, but put him in front of a mower or a pile of bricks and he’s as happy as a lark. Oh yes, Barry will deal with all your scything and your earthworks and glasshouses, there’s no problem about that and he’s yours for four pounds an hour as long as it’s cash in hand and no questions asked. He’s ideally suited to the rough, Miss Gabriel, and the rougher the better; you’d be doing him a favour, you really would. He does love to mow and he’s rather run out of work down in the village; well, you’ve only to look at the churchyard and the cricket pitch and the verges mown nearly into Earl Soham to appreciate Barry’s work, and if you want a reference for my own gardening skills, number twenty-five The Glebe is all down to me and it’s the show garden of the village, even though I do say it myself.’ Here, Mavis Sholto paused for breath, but before Anna could utter a word, gripped her by the sleeve and looked at her imploringly. ‘The thing is, Miss Gabriel, that since my poor Arnold departed, I’ve taken to gardening in a big way; I see it as my salvation; I’m very keen. I subscribe to Gardener’s Weekly and I’ve been to Wisley and Kew. I never miss a gardening programme on the television. I know a lot about gardening, Miss Gabriel, I really do. My hanging baskets and my petunias stop people in their tracks, you can take my word for it.’
‘But Mrs Sholto,’ Anna struggled to find suitable words with which to explain the difference in scale and style between a modest plot in front of a modern bungalow and the large, formally landscaped ground of a grand country house without causing offence or sounding superior, and failed. ‘Mrs Sholto,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘these gardens are simply enormous. The gardens are huge.’
‘I need a bigger canvas to work on, Miss Gabriel.’ Behind the flamingo pink spectacle frames Mavis Sholto’s eyes were beseeching and her words were heartfelt. ‘I need something enormous. I need something huge. My Arnold going like he did was a catharsis for me. It freed a lot of repressed emotion. It released a lot of latent energy. These days I’ve far too much energy for my own good. I’ve got all this newly discovered talent and dynamism and I see your garden as a golden opportunity, I really do. I’m meant to come here, Miss Gabriel, you can believe me absolutely when I say that everything is predestined. I’ve drawn up my own astrological birth chart and you would be amazed at what it revealed about my future, you really would.’
‘I probably would, but Mrs Sholto, without wishing to offend you in any way, I really don’t think…’ Anna’s attention was momentarily diverted by the ringing of a telephone in the office next door to the kitchen, where Rupert had set up a makeshift desk constructed out of two bales of loft insulation material and a slab of chipboard.
‘I’m afraid you will have to excuse me now, Mrs Sholto. I have to answer the telephone.’ Anna made an attempt to rise from the table only to be forestalled by hands too pale and delicate to belong to any gardener, the perfectly manicured nails of which flamed with a deep vermillion varnish.

‘I can see you’re doubtful, Miss Gabriel,’ Mavis Sholto said in a deeply understanding tone, ‘and I don’t blame you one little bit, I really don’t. You don’t know me from Adam, and if you’ll forgive me for taking the initiative, I’ll make a suggestion: we’ll come for a week and work for nothing, Barry and me, and we’ll see how we get on. That way, if we don’t suit, there’s no harm done at all. I think that would be the best way round it.’

‘Well, I’m not altogether sure…’ But Anna was hesitant, the telephone caller was persistent, and the most unlikely gardener in the world had a will of steel.

‘That seems to be settled then.’ Mavis Sholto gathered up her immaculate little straw handbag and her white lace gloves and got to her feet. ‘Now there’s no need to show me out. I can find my own way. You go and answer your telephone and I’ll make myself scarce, Miss Gabriel, I’ll be on my way. We’ll see you on Monday morning come fair weather or foul, it makes no difference to Barry and me, rain or shine, it’s all the same to us. We’ll start at eight, if that’s all right with you; I’ve always been an early riser, six o’clock and I’m wide awake at the first stroke. My Arnold used to say, “I’ll never need an alarm clock whilst you’re around, Mavis,” and he was right, he definitely was. I’m at my best first thing in the morning; ready to take on the world and a mind like a rapier. It’s all to do with when the planets rise in your star sign, but I’ll take you through it on another occasion when we’ve more time. Until Monday then, Miss Gabriel, and it’s been a pleasure to meet you, it really has.’

As Mavis Sholto’s high-heeled sandals clicked their way down the brick passage, Anna ran into the office and grabbed up the telephone.

‘Well, it took you long enough, I must say,’ said Henry Lamb amiably. ‘I was just about to hang up. I’ve been given your number by the Crown Hotel at Framlingham and I would like to make an enquiry about a possible Christmas break. There would just be the two of us; just myself and my very dear wife, Penelope…’

Sir Vivian Valentyne Rushbroke of Rushbroke
Lady Lavinia Rushbroke
Nicola Rushbroke
Francis Sparrow
Anna Gabriel
Rupert Sparkes
Len Sparkes
Mavis and Yvonne Sholto and Barry
David Williamson
Clarissa Maitland-Bell
Harry Featherstone
Henry and Penelope Lamb
Norman Simkins
Tony, Mary, Emily and Tom Pomeroy

The Last Baronet