Summer Of The Raven

Antonia shrugged casually. ‘If she disapproves of you, then she’s less likely to start asking awkward questions, and I thought you’d prefer that. She can be like the Grand Inquisitor when she gets going. That’s one of the things I’ve always disliked about her.’

Rowan gave her a long look. ‘I don’t mind her questions. I’ve got nothing to hide. The three years discrepancy in my age was your idea, not mine, although I’ll never understand what possessed you to say such a thing.’

‘Can’t you?’ Antonia sat down on her silk-covered dressing stool and took her lipstick out of her bag. She began to outline the full curves of her mouth with elaborate care. ‘It’s quite simple really. I’ve been saddled with this stepmother bit, but I don’t have to like it. And while a child is one thing, a grown woman’s quite another. Besides, Carne doesn’t know everything about the terms of Vic’s will. I had to tell him you were in my care. He wouldn’t have swallowed that if I’d told him your correct age—so—–’ she shrugged again.

Rowan said softly, ‘Just as long as we’re not still here in two years’ time when I become twenty-one, because then I shall be off, Antonia, and you’ll have to tell your Cousin Carne any story you please.’

‘Don’t worry, darling.’ Antonia replaced the lipstick in its gold case. ‘If I’m still here in two years’ time, it will be because I’m Carne’s wife, and you’ll be free to go, just as soon as that joyous day arrives.’

‘Then I have a vested interest in making sure it does arrive,’ Rowan said bitterly. ‘You can count on my support, Antonia.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. It seems there’s cold chicken and a salad waiting for us in the refrigerator this evening, but from tomorrow we’re on our own—literally. Just before Sybilla left me, she informed me that no other help is kept. It seems there used to be, but now there isn’t—illness in the family or some such thing. So we have this great barracks of a house to look after between us, honey child.’ A glint of rare humour appeared in Antonia’s eyes. ‘I’m beginning to think bankruptcy might have been easier after all.’

Perhaps it might at that, Rowan thought soberly as she went back to her own room. Antonia seemed confident that she could ultimately wind Carne Maitland round her little finger, but he was calling all the shots at the moment. Her heart sank. All the cleaning, and the cooking as well! There would be no end to it, and she did not even dare contemplate what would happen if the guest rooms Sybilla had mentioned began to fill up.

That blasted boutique, she thought crossly. I wonder how much money Antonia owes him altogether? Surely she could have repaid him in some other way than this. I’ve a feeling he’s going to expect his pound of flesh and some over.

Rowan saw no reason to change her opinion as the first fortnight at Raven’s Crag pursued its tedious way. The house was as labour-saving as the ingenuity of twentieth-century man could make it, but it was large, with vast expanses of glass and pale surfaces which needed constant attention. Antonia’s constant grumbling did not help either, and nor, for that matter did Antonia herself for much of the time. She talked a lot about how much there was to do, and she was quick to notice if any thing had been overlooked, but her activities were largely confined to a little desultory dusting and flower arranging in between sporadic visits to Keswick, the nearest large town to Ravensmere.

One of the more obvious disadvantages of the deception over Rowan’s age was that she was unable to drive the car, even though she had passed her driving test while she was in the Sixth Form. She had assumed, of course, in the circumstances that she would accompany Antonia on her visits to Keswick, but this was far from being the case. There always seemed more perfectly good reason why her stepmother preferred to go alone. Rowan was disappointed. She would have liked to have a look round Keswick, and seize the opportunity of buying some fresh food while she was there too. Antonia seemed hellbent on filling the large freezer in the walk-in pantry which led off the kitchen with convenience foods, and she ignored Rowan’s protests.

‘I don’t intend to do any more cooking than I have to,’ she declared disdainfully.

Rowan could have replied that Antonia did the minimum as it was, but she bit back the reply. It would only lead to a quarrel, after which Antonia would sulk, and as they had no company but each other that would be a disaster.

Sybilla had kept her word about not intruding upon them. Indeed, she kept almost religiously out of the way, which made Rowan feel uncomfortable. She doubted whether Sybilla had confined herself so rigorously to her own quarters prior to their arrival on the scene. And after all, this was her home.

But it will never be mine, Rowan thought sometimes as she prowled restlessly through the immaculate rooms, waiting for Antonia to come back from one of her shopping expeditions. I’m only here for a few months, just passing through.

Sometimes she was tempted to go and knock on Sybilla’s door and ask if she could talk to her, but she had the uneasy feeling she would not be very welcome. She had encountered Sybilla a few times in the garden, and the older woman’s greeting, although courteous, had been distant. Rowan knew why, of course. Antonia’s careless words had done their work well, and she had to bear the burden of Sybilla’s unspoken disapproval as a consequence.

Rowan supposed she was a fool to allow it to matter. Sybilla was a complete stranger, not even a relation, so her opinion shouldn’t really bear any weight, and yet the realisation that Sybilla regarded her as an awkward teenager, even a drop-out, was oddly hurtful, and at the same time it was part of the ring of deceit which Antonia had deliberately enclosed her in.

Again she asked herself, why? She had always known that Antonia was touchy about her age, and had never liked being saddled with an adolescent stepdaughter, but she had never dreamed that she was prepared to go to such lengths to preserve her image of eternal youth. If it was as simple as that, Rowan thought, but what other explanation could there be? She was under no illusion that physically she could be any threat to Antonia’s plans for her future.

The future. Whenever she thought of that, a small sick feeling began to well up in Rowan. If everything worked out for Antonia eventually, Rowan would be quite alone in the world, her last tenuous links with the happier past severed totally, and it was a daunting prospect even for someone older and more mature than Rowan. She had always been sheltered in a way, she supposed. Her father’s money had taken care of every thing for most of her life, and then there had been boarding school. Perhaps Victor Winslow had thought he was extending that protection until his only daughter was safely launched on adult life. Maybe he had even imagined that his wife and daughter would draw together in mutual need after the sorrow of his death. Looking back, Rowan thought ruefully that her father had never been one to take a very practical view of relationships. Antonia had been coldly furious when she heard the terms of the will, but although she had recovered herself swiftly, Rowan had never been left in any doubt that she was simply making the best of things. Antonia had always made the best of things, or at least the best for Antonia. That was really why they were here. After all, her stepmother could have got a job of some kind and arranged to repay Carne any money that was owing to him out of her earnings, but instead she had chosen what she hoped would be a softer option. Rowan could only hope for Antonia’s sake that she had chosen correctly. She couldn’t imagine Carne Maitland being soft in any way.

And certainly he had upset all Antonia’s preconceptions by absenting himself without a word. Rowan knew what her stepmother had been daily expecting a letter, or even a card, but the postman’s visit brought only mail addressed to Carne, and the usual bills and circulars. The telephone remained silent too, although occasionally they heard the sound of a distant bell ringing, and guessed that Sybilla had her own private telephone in the flat. But if Carne was among her unknown callers, then there were no messages for the newcomers in his house, and Antonia was becoming increasingly restive. She had evidently been expecting a very different reception.

Perhaps Antonia had made a mistake when she had regarded Carne as the young man who had once been in love with her. Had she forgotten how people could change? Rowan could not imagine Carne as any woman’s slave. She remembered the cool, silver eyes, and the small scar which twisted his mouth when he smiled. He was no one’s idea of a lovesick swain, she thought wryly. He was hard and sexy and diabolically attractive, and he would take anything and everything life had to offer with both hands.

Rowan thought suddenly, ‘I was mad to come here. I should have stayed in London and shared a bed-sitter with someone. I’d have managed somehow. I could have worked as a waitress in the evening and studied during the day. I could have done something. But I’m no better than Antonia. I decided to come here too for all the wrong reasons, and now I have to live with it, and perhaps I should be glad that Antonia has told him I’m only a child, whatever her motives were.’

Her discomfiting reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Antonia herself, elegant in an Italian hand-knitted two-piece, a reminder of the boutique’s heyday.

‘I’m going into Keswick to do some shopping,’ she announced. ‘Is there anything you want?’

‘Into Keswick again?’ Rowan felt impelled to remonstrate. ‘But I thought you’d done the shopping on Tuesday when you went in to cash the housekeeping cheque. And we were supposed to be tackling the bedrooms today.’

‘All right, so I’m going to have my hair done,’ Antonia said petulantly. ‘You don’t grudge me that little luxury, I hope.’

Rowan held on to her patience. ‘I hope I don’t grudge you anything. I’ve certainly no right to do so.’

‘Then what’s the argument?’

‘There isn’t one,’ Rowan said defeatedly. ‘I’ll do the bedrooms. You don’t have to worry about them.’

Antonia shrugged. ‘I shan’t, sweetie. The last thing I try to think about is this benighted hole, believe me.’

‘Don’t you like the house?’ In spite of herself Rowan was curious.

‘If it were elsewhere, it might be tolerable. But I don’t like being perched halfway up a mountain, and I certainly don’t care for the climate. Do you realise that it’s rained every day that we’ve been here?’

‘I suppose it has, but everything’s so green and beautiful here. And we’ve had a lot of sunshine as well.’

‘You sound as if you’re trying to sell me the place.’ Antonia checked through the contents of her handbag, looking slightly amused. ‘It won’t work, you know. When Carne and I are married, I shall persuade him to sell this place and move to somewhere more civilised and accessible. God knows what possessed him to buy this site, when he could have lived anywhere.’

Rowan thought of the morning sun touching the remaining patches of snow on the crowding fells with pink and gold. She thought of the glimpse of turquoise which was Ravensmere far below them, and the moist cool scent of the garden where plants were showing green spikes through the rich dark earth, and she thought she could understand why anyone would choose to live here.

But not Antonia, of course, who thought anywhere more than a taxi ride from Harrods was the beginnings of outer darkness. And possibly not Carne Maitland either. The house had an untouched, unlived-in air about it, for all its shining luxury, as if its worldly, sophisticated owner had thought better of the whim which had brought it into being.

She heard Antonia’s car drive away, and with a sigh went along to the utility room which opened off the kitchen to fetch dusters and polish and the vacuum cleaner before commencing her onslaught on the bedrooms. It was a day when the outdoors beckoned. Early rain had given way to puffs of white cloud scudding across a pale blue sky, and although Rowan knew perfectly well that the weather could change in a moment with mist and heavy cloud coming down like a blanket, she wished she was out somewhere on a hillside lifting her face to the soft wind.

She began on their own rooms. Hers was relatively tidy, except for the small table which she had moved under the window and which held her typewriter and papers. She had started another story, and for her the creative process demanded a kind of organised chaos in the immediate environment.

She remade the bed, shaking up the quilt with deft flicks of her wrist, and changed the fitted sheets with their matching pillowcase for another set brought from the first floor linen room, where all the bedding, towels and table linen needed for the household were kept.

Antonia’s room was a different story, and Rowan gave a soundless sigh as she looked about her. Cosmetics, many with their tops and fids off, were strewn across the vanitory unit, which was coated with a faint film of spilled powder. Soiled tights and undies were draped across the dressing stool and the bedroom floor, and the dress Antonia had worn the previous evening was flung in a crumpled heap across the bed.

She thought, ‘I hope Carne Maitland can afford a lady’s maid for her, because she surely needs one!’

She was hot, sticky and cross by the time she had restored order, and was ready to move on to the guestrooms. These fortunately only needed a light dusting, and she opened the windows to let in some of the spring sun and air and get rid of the unused smell. She would take her lunch into the garden, she thought, and find a patch of sunlight to sit in. She wasn’t sure exactly how much of the land belonged to the house, and much of the garden was overgrown and in need of attention. It needs someone to live here and care about it, just like the house, she thought sadly.

She took her crispbread and lettuce and cottage cheese and found a flat stone under a tree which seemed dry and moderately sheltered. The April wind still held a nip, reminding her that there was still snow on the surrounding hills, and could be more, even this late in a golden spring. When she had finished her brief meal, she leaned back against the tree and let the sun warm her face. She felt wearied by her rather tedious morning’s work, and disinclined to start again, especially as her next port of call was Carne Maitland’s luxurious suite of rooms in the other wing of the house. Today was a day for working in the garden, she thought, for cutting back briars, and uprooting nettles and dandelions and dockweeds, and pulling away handfuls of the goosegrass which seemed to be encroaching everywhere under the roses and shrubs. Not that she knew a great deal about gardening. The garden of the cottage in Surrey had been very different from this one, with herbaceous borders alive with colour, and smooth lawns to the front and rear, and Mr Pettigrew from the village to look after it.

There was nothing smooth or ironed out about the garden at Raven’s Crag. Apart from the clumps of ubiquitous daffodils, any colour was planned for later in the season, and the general effect was bleak and rather stark like its surroundings. You couldn’t transplant the pretty traditional cottagey flowers they had grown in Surrey to this place, Rowan thought, but you could create a setting for the house which would be equally satisfying. But at the moment, the wilderness seemed to be taking over again.

She brushed the crumbs from her jeans and rose reluctantly. She probably didn’t need to clean Carne’s rooms. No one had so much as set foot in them since she had cleaned them last time, nor would do until she cleaned them next time, but she was determined that Carne Maitland should have no cause for complaint whenever he chose to honour them with his presence.

The door from the corridor led straight into a dressing room, and his bathroom and bedroom both opened off from this. It was a reasonably sized room, with one wall entirely occupied by fitted wardrobes and drawers, yet he didn’t have a lot of clothes, because she had looked. What there were, of course, were gorgeous—silk shirts and cashmere sweaters, and a leather coat as soft and supple as velvet. There were few toiletries in the bathroom, but those few were expensive and Rowan, sampling them out of curiosity the first time she had cleaned the bathroom, approved his taste.

The bedroom was something else again, with a carpet so thick that her feet sank into it as she walked across the room, and a king-sized bed, which was invariably made up with brown silk sheets. When they had first inspected the room Rowan had seen Antonia give the bed a long look, before she turned away without comment, and Rowan herself had felt hot with inexplicable embarrassment. Antonia, of course, was used to a bedroom of her own, and not merely since becoming a widow; however, Rowan doubted whether she would find the man she had chosen to be her second husband as mildly acquiescent to this as her first had been. There was a narrow divan in the dressing room, but Rowan could not imagine Carne Maitland being tamely dismissed there. Besides, a bed the size of the one in the master bedroom was for sharing, not for solitude.

There were blankets on this bed, instead of the duvets used in all the other rooms, and a dark brown satin quilted cover, all very restrained and masculine. The bed faced the windows which reached from floor to ceiling, giving a panoramic view over the valley to the fells beyond.

The sunsets would be fantastic, Rowan thought, and grinned to herself, in self-mockery. Anyone using this bed that early in the evening would probably not be staring at the sunsets, unless they’d used the ploy ‘Come and see my sunset’ instead of ‘Come and see my etchings’. Carne, she decided, could probably use either line and make it a winner. Probably had, as well, and very likely was at this very minute, whatever time it was in Barbados.

There was a full-length mirror on the wall, and she gave its surface a brisk rub with a clean duster, viewing herself with detachment as she did so, and deciding that she looked totally out of place in this room with her faded jeans and elderly sweater shirt with the sleeves pushed up. A satin dressing gown is what I need, she thought, the corners of her mouth lifting in derision, one that fastens at the waist and nowhere else, in a colour to harmonise with the dusters. She gave the mirror’s frame a final, cheerful flick and turned away, moving her shoulders wearily. She had worked hard, and she was tired. She deserved a shower and a rest before Antonia returned and it was time to start preparing the evening meal. She pushed the sandals off her aching feet and walked across the carpet relishing its softness. She leaned across the bed, straightening its already immaculate cover, testing the firmness of the mattress with a tentative hand. Then she said, ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ and jumped into the middle of the bed as she had been longing to do since she first entered the room. Forbidden ecstasy, she thought, bouncing up and down on other people’s beds, and how many years was it since she’d done so? She had been seven and not enjoying a stiff tea-party at Sally Armitage’s, until, when tea was over, she and Sally had discovered that the double bed in Mrs Armitage’s bedroom made a superb trampoline, and they’d bounced and leapt with undiminished energy until the arrival of a scandalised nanny had put a premature end to their game. A childhood incident she had not even given a moment’s thought to until now. And the Armitages’ bed had not been nearly as wide and opulent as this one. That’s what this house needs, she thought. It needs children, to fill up the empty rooms and climb the trees in the garden, and even bounce on the beds. But it wouldn’t get them. Even if Antonia was willing to have a child, which Rowan doubted, she couldn’t imagine Carne Maitland opting for that sort of family life.

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