That Would Be a Fairy Tale, Page 2

  A few minutes later he was sure of it. He was in the village no longer, but heading out towards open countryside. There was nothing for it. He would have to turn round and try again.

  He drove more slowly this time, his eyes searching for any sign of the Manor. It was barely visible from the road, his agent had said, but a lodge and a pair of fine gates gave evidence of its position. At last he saw the Lodge, a low, square building, and began to edge the Daimler forward more confidently.

  Yes, that was it.

  He reached the gates and turned into a long drive which wound between acres of verdant lawns. Despite himself, he was impressed. Although he may not have bought the Manor with the intention of making it his home, he still could not help admiring the sweeping lawns, the venerable trees and the herd of deer that grazed peacefully in the dappled sunlight beneath them.

  Another bend of the drive and he caught sight of the house itself. It was far more sprawling than he had imagined, and presented a hotch-potch appearance, as though successive generations of Haringays had added to it, each in the style of their own era. A Tudor wing adjoined the main section, which appeared to be in the Georgian style, whilst a turret at the corner rose fantastically into the sky and spoke of the recently-departed Victorian age. But despite its hotch-potch appearance - or perhaps because of it - it had a warm and welcoming feel.

  In another few minutes he pulled up in front of Oakleigh Manor. His eye wandered up an impressive flight of steps that led to the front door.

  At the top of the steps was his younger brother, Roddy.

  Roddy ran down the stone steps and cast his eye over the Daimler. He was twenty-four years of age and was fashionably dressed in a jacket and a pair of trousers with knife-sharp creases. His hair was sandy and his face good-humoured.

  ‘What kept you, Alex? Car trouble?’ Roddy asked. ‘You were supposed to be here half an hour ago.’

  ‘The motor’s fine.’ Alex got out of the car, closing the door with a satisfying thunk! ‘I had a slight accident, that’s all.’

  ‘You haven’t scratched the paintwork?’ asked Roddy anxiously, running his eyes over the bodywork.

  Alex raised one dark eyebrow. ‘What do you take me for? Strictly speaking, I wasn’t the one who had the accident - although I didn’t escape unscathed,’ he said as they walked up the steps. He glanced down at his trousers, which were wet and muddy round the bottom of each leg.

  ‘If not you, who then?’ asked Roddy, taking in Alex’s wet trousers with amusement.

  ‘It was a young woman. A bicyclist. She came careering down the hill by the forge and almost crashed into me as she rounded the corner. It was only by some efficient manoeuvring that she managed to avoid the car . . . ’

  Roddy breathed a sigh of relief. ‘No harm done, then.’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite say that,’ laughed Alex, taking off his driving gloves as they went into the Manor. ‘She ended up in the duck pond!’

  ‘Not hurt, I hope?’ asked Roddy.

  ‘Would I be laughing if she was? No, of course not. The only thing she hurt was her pride. Of which she seemed to have more than her fair share.’

  ‘I hope she wasn’t anyone important. The success of our scheme lies in your being accepted here. You need the goodwill of your neighbours, don’t forget. They have to want to attend your gatherings, and more than that they have to want to attend them decked out in all their finery. Otherwise there will be nothing to tempt the thief to strike again.’

  ‘Which is our only hope of catching him. I know.’ He thought. ‘She didn’t look important,’ he said. He divested himself of his car coat, which had protected his narrow trousers and jacket from the dust of the road. ‘Fine grey eyes, a determined chin, and a tantalising figure. Probably just a girl from the village.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Roddy. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked, changing the subject, as he looked round the empty but beautiful hall.

  ‘It’s a fine old place,’ said Alex. He, too, looked round the hall. It was light and bright, and with its cream walls it had a pleasantly cool and spacious feel. Although it was at present bare - no paintings or portraits lined the staircase, and no console tables or other items of furniture took away from the emptiness - the proportions were elegant, and the tall windows let in plenty of daylight.

  He turned round slowly, taking it in. An imposing staircase led upwards. He let his eyes return to the ground floor. A number of doors, half open, led into different rooms. He walked across the hall, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. He threw open the first door. A large, high-ceilinged room was revealed, with windows looking out over the front of the house.

  This room was not entirely empty. A few pieces of good furniture - an impressive mahogany dining-table and chairs, and a mahogany sideboard - remained. Alex looked enquiringly at Roddy.

  ‘Miss Haringay had to let some of the furniture remain with the house,’ he explained. ‘She did not have room to take it all to the Lodge.’

  Alex nodded. He cast his eye round the room once more. ‘It’s very impressive,’ he said, before wandering back into the hall and looking round again. ‘My agent chose well.’

  ‘I still think you should have looked it over yourself before buying it.’

  ‘What for? I have an efficient agent who knew what I was looking for: an imposing residence in the right area. It’s not as though I wanted to call the place home.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Roddy. ‘It needs modernising, of course.’

  ‘It does. But as I don’t propose to live here permanently that isn’t a consideration. What matters is that it’s of the right stature, and it’s in the right place.’ His glance ran round the hall once again, and then suddenly his voice took on a steely quality. ‘Once it’s baited it will make the perfect trap.’

  Cicely propped her bicycle up against the wall of the Lodge. Much of the mud had been dislodged on the journey home, and she knew that a good dousing with the watering can would restore it to most of its former glory. The handlebars she had already managed to bend back into shape. They had not been badly damaged, fortunately, and it had been an easy matter to put them straight.

  She went down the garden to the shed and fetched the watering can and then cleaned the bicycle herself: Gibson had enough to do, without cleaning her bicycle as well.

  Having successfully carried out her task she left her bicycle drying in the warm June sunshine and went into the house. Avoiding Gibson, her butler, who had refused to leave her service no matter how impecunious she had become, she made her way up to the bedroom where she stripped off her wet things.

  Her short black boots were first, followed by her fawn gaiters, which she unbuttoned with the help of a button hook. Then came her divided skirt, her drawers, her shirt and her chemise. They would have to be cleaned, but that was a problem for later on. Right now, she wanted to clean herself.

  She ran a bath, thankful for the fact that the Lodge had had plumbing installed in one of her father’s rare bursts of enthusiasm for something other than his beloved bicycles. But she noted with a sigh that the range must not be working properly as the water was not very hot. Nevertheless, it would have to do.

  Slipping into the tepid water she gave both herself and her hair a thorough wash, rubbing her hair dry with a towel before dressing herself in fresh, clean clothes.

  Unlike most other young ladies of one-and-twenty, Cicely did not have a maid, and in fact had never had one. Her dear father had had very little idea about a young lady’s needs, and her mother, alas, had died when Cicely had been a young child. And since her father’s death, Cicely had discovered that his unworldliness had resulted in a mountain of debts, so that she had been unable to hire one. As a result, by dint of choosing the most suitable clothes, she had grown proficient in the art of dressing and undressing herself.

  She slipped on a clean pair of lace-trimmed knickers. After them came her bosom amplifier. She loved the pretty camisole with its row upon row o
f tiny frills sewn across the front and as she fastened it, her body began to take on a fashionable shape. She followed it with her lace-trimmed petticoat and glanced at the whalebone corset at the back of her wardrobe, but without assistance it was impossible for her to put on.

  Looking through her clothes, she pondered what to wear. After some thought she decided on a white blouse with a lace corsage and a lilac skirt. She put on the blouse and then slipped into the skirt, smoothing its long, flowing lines over her hips and tweaking the short train which trailed behind it.

  Having dressed herself, she arranged her damp hair and, looking in the mirror, was not dissatisfied. Knowing their poverty, she had bought a few good clothes and, with care, they would last her for years.

  She heard a sound outside and caught sight of Alice walking down the drive. Within minutes Alice, a childhood friend who came and went as though she were one of the family, entered her bedroom.

  ‘Such news,’ said Alice without preamble, throwing herself down on the bed. ‘You’ll never guess – goodness, Cicely, what happened to your clothes?’ she asked, seeing the muddy clothes in the corner.

  ‘I had an accident. I fell off my bicycle.’

  ‘That’s not like you,’ said Alice.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Cicely’s desire to confide in her friend overcame her pride. ‘I was coming down the hill by the forge and I’d just turned the corner when I saw a motor car right in front of me. I had to swerve to avoid a crash, and I ended up in the duck pond.’ It was too much. The memory of the accident, now that she was dry and fresh and safely back at the Lodge, was so ridiculous that she had to laugh.

  ‘Oh, Cicely, how awful!’ laughed Alice. ‘You must have looked a sorry sight!’

  ‘I was drenched. There was water everywhere. And pond weed. It was sticking out of my hair. And when I rescued my hat and put it on –’

  ‘Don’t tell me. The water poured down your face! Oh, Cicely! How dreadful. I wish I’d been there!’

  ‘I’m glad you weren’t! It was bad enough that that man –’ she stopped short.

  ‘Man?’ Alice looked at her enquiringly and then broke out laughing again. ‘You don’t mean to say that someone saw you like that?’

  Cicely pulled a face. ‘The driver of the car.’

  ‘How awful!’ laughed Alice, torn between amusement and horror. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything. He laughed at me!’

  ‘What a cad.’

  ‘I know, and you may believe I told him so, in no uncertain terms. “Had you been a gentleman you would now be apologizing for causing an accident and doing everything in your power to make amends, but as you are obviously nothing of the kind I will have to help myself.”‘

  Her mouth twitched.

  ‘Oh, Cicely, you didn’t!’ Alice collapsed into laughter again.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You mean, you didn’t laugh?’ asked Alice, pulling herself together.

  ‘Of course not – although at one point I was tempted. But I was too cross.’

  Alice’s face was sympathetic. ‘You poor dear. Did anyone else see you – apart from the monster, that is?’

  Cicely had a brief vision of the owner of the Daimler: dark hair, athletic build, long legs and an infuriatingly mocking smile. A monster? No, he hadn’t been a monster. Unaccountably, the strange sensation she had experienced when he had put his arms round her, the tingling feeling, which had made her body feel strangely alive, came back to her. She shook herself in an effort to drive it away.

  No, he hadn’t been a monster, she thought again. More was the pity. Because if he had been a monster, his laughter would have been so much easier to bear.

  ‘No one else, thank goodness,’ she said, answering Alice’s question. ‘I was sure I would bump into someone in the village, but fortunately I managed to get back here without seeing a soul.’

  ‘That’s a relief! If the village boys had seen you, you would never have heard the end of it. But now, tell me, how did the rest of your afternoon go?’

  Cicely sank down on the bed. She felt deflated suddenly, as though the events of the early afternoon had finally caught up with her. Rousing herself, she said at last, ‘As well as can be expected. I cycled over to Oakleigh and signed the final document as arranged, and then I cycled back again.’

  ‘It was very brave of you to sell the Manor,’ said Alice. She put her hand consolingly on Cicely’s arm. ‘I don’t think I could have done it.’

  Cicely sighed. ‘I had no choice, in the end. The debts were too large. Selling the Manor was the only way to pay them. Father was a dear, but he was very absent-minded. I always knew it, but I didn’t realize at the time just quite how bad he was. I’d always assumed he paid the bills, at least, but when he died I realized he hadn’t paid anything for years. He always meant to, I’m sure, but he simply forgot about them five minutes after they’d arrived.’

  ‘His head was always full of some enthusiasm or other - usually bicycles,’ said Alice.

  Cicely smiled. ‘Yes, his beloved bicycles. Not that I was ever allowed to call them that, I had to call them “velocipedes”, although "boneshakers" is a better description, if you ask me. He loved riding them, collecting them, inventing them . . .’ She gave a sigh as she thought of her dearly loved but completely impractical father. Then she rallied herself. ‘But it’s done now. The Manor is sold and the papers are signed. Never mind, at least I have a few weeks to adjust to the idea of the Manor having a new owner before Mr Evington takes possession.’

  There was a pause in the conversation. Alice stood up and strolled round the room. She stopped in front of Cicely’s dressing table. She picked up Cicely’s silver-backed hairbrush, before putting it down and picking up the hand mirror, then putting that down and picking up the hairbrush once more. Without looking at Cicely she asked nonchalantly, ‘How would you feel if the new owner arrived earlier than expected?’

  ‘Earlier?’ Cicely’s eyebrows rose. ‘How much earlier?’

  ‘Oh . . . ’ Alice hesitated. Then she put down the hairbrush with a clatter. ‘The thing is, Cicely,’ she said in a rush, ‘it turns out he’s already here.’

  ‘Mr Evington? Here? Oh, no. He can’t be,’ she said in dismay. Suddenly, losing the Manor was even more real. But one look at Alice’s face convinced her it was true. ‘Are you sure?’ she demanded, wondering suddenly whether Alice could be mistaken. ‘He’s not meant to be here until the start of next month.’

  Alice nodded. ‘Quite sure. He changed his mind about waiting, that’s all. But he’s definitely here. Mrs Sealyham’s seen him, and she told me all about him.’ She added nonchalantly, ‘He’s young, handsome, and charming, she says.’

  ‘Mrs Sealyham thinks every bachelor is young, handsome and charming,’ said Cicely.

  ‘Even so.’ Alice paused. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he really is?’

  ‘Why?’ asked Cicely.

  ‘Because . . . because then you could marry him, and you could go back to the Manor and raise your children there, as you always wanted to,’ said Alice with a sigh.

  ‘That wouldn’t be real life, that would be a fairy tale. And besides, he is the last man in the world I would want to marry. He isn’t like us, you know, he doesn’t have a heart and soul. He’s a brash businessman who sees everything in terms of profit, loss and investment. He didn’t even bother to look at the Manor before he bought it.’

  ‘You might change your mind once you meet him,’ said Alice.

  ‘And pigs might fly!’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Ready to face the Gorgon in her lair?’ asked Roddy with a twinkle in his eye.