Rose Cottage Read Online Free PDF Page B

only half a house, is a frightful job.’
    ‘It is only half a house, anyway – less than half what’s there, I think. We made a list, and I’ve brought it for you to see, because she says she can’t remember just what was already there – belonging to the Hall, I mean, when they moved in. Things like the big press in the back kitchen, and the table and chairs – she’s leaving those anyway – and, well, here’s the list. That’s as much as she can remember of what’s hers. If you would look at it, please, my lady, and see if it’s right?’
    ‘I’m sure it is. There’s no need – very well, as you’ve gone to the trouble. Let me see it.’
    She took the paper. A brief silence as she studied, orpretended to study, the list we had made, and I looked around me at the familiar room. Pretty, washed-out chintzes and a Chinese carpet. A big bowl of flowers on a stand, and more in a vase on the mantelpiece, beside an assortment of fragile-looking china that I remembered all too well. Photographs everywhere, in silver frames. There were various ones of the children at different stages of growth, and of their mother, Mrs Drew, as a girl, as a debutante, and then as a bride. Beside her, on the bureau, was one of her brother, the dead son, Gilbert, young and smiling, in uniform, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Like me. Like an older brother. And indeed, he had been the nearest I had ever had to a brother; he had sometimes come down to the gardens when I had been there with Granddad, and I had been allowed to follow and admire him as his own sister never would – to retrieve the ball when he practised his bowling at the makeshift nets, to watch when he climbed the big cedar by the tennis court, to wait with the net while he fished the beck beside Rose Cottage …
    I tore my eyes from the photograph and my mind away from what I was thinking. Had thought before; had tried not to think. Lady Brandon was folding the paper and she handed it back to me. ‘Well, please thank your grandmother for letting me see this, Kathy. I’m sure it’s absolutely right. To tell you the truth I’ve quite forgotten what’s there, and I don’t know if an inventory was ever made, but please tell her that she’s welcome to anything she wants to take.’
    ‘And it’s all right for me to stay there while I’m seeing about the moving?’
    She assured me that it was, and I thanked her, and said how much Gran appreciated having her own place here in Strathbeg, and how well she seemed to get along with Kirsty, and then for some minutes more we talked about the new plans for Tod Hall, and what might happen to Rose Cottage. I gathered that nothing had been settled there; the cottage might simply be relet, if there was a ready taker, or even sold, ‘always providing that your grandmother doesn’t want to go back there. I know how one feels about a place that has been home for so many years.’
    I thought that there was some personal feeling there for her, but said nothing.
    She smiled at me, as if reading my thoughts, and added: ‘I don’t know if your grandmother knows, but we’re not leaving the place entirely. I’ve persuaded my husband to keep part of the south wing, the bit that overlooks the rose garden, and we’re having a kitchen put in there – you remember the old flower room? The joiners are working on that now. The main conversion is to be done by a big contractor, of course, but we did want to give our part of the work to local people, and the Pascoes always do such a good job.’
    ‘I’m sure the village will be pleased you’re still there.’ I said. ‘The Hall will be missed, I know.’
    ‘I have such memories,’ she said. There was a short silence, and I wondered if I should go, but then she smiled at me again, and said, gently: ‘I haven’t said, Kathy, how very sorry I was – we all were – to hear ofyour loss. It has been hard for you, I know.’ I made some sort of response, and then she asked me about my work