AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Fourteen
Minty and Jowan, Alone
‘Pfft.’ Minty swept a hand at the cobwebs in the Big House basement. She hadn’t set foot down here in months. ‘Is that flashlight working?’
Jowan, stepping carefully down the stone stairs, greasy with damp, turned on the heavy flashlight used once upon a time by Minty’s father for night-time rabbiting with his retinue of estate men.
Those fields, teaming with rabbits, had been sold off long ago, along with the entire village itself. All its cottages and the Siren’s Tail, the estate’s Victorian model dairy (long since gone), and historic herd of Red Ruby cattle, which had been in the family for generations, had all passed into private owners’ hands in the estate’s desperate bid to keep the Big House going.
Minty’s entire domain now consisted of her few rooms in the Big House, an overgrown rhododendron valley leading down to the crumbling chapel and what was once a pretty camellia grove behind it. She’d also retained the softly undulating lawns that the house sat in, along with the formal parterre and patio at the back of the property overlooking the Atlantic breakers. In total, only a few acres amid what had, in the middle of last century, been Clove-Congreve land for as far as Minty’s antique field glasses could see.
‘Would you look at this!’ Minty lifted a floppy leather folio from the top of an overflowing crate and opened it. ‘If we hadn’t sold off our library this would be displayed in pride of place.’
Jowan lifted the lamp to help illuminate the black-and-white photographs of the fine camellia grove.
Minty wasn’t really seeing them. Instead, she was picturing the old library in her mind’s eye; floor-to-ceiling leather-bound wonders from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the family had been thriving on tin mining, cattle farming, and clever investments overseas.
Young Araminta had spent hours in the library, which was always warm and dry, unlike the bedroom she’d shared with the string of au pairs who never seemed to stay very long, some packing up and disappearing while she slept. She hadn’t understood at the time how her father’s wandering eye – not to mention his hands – had chased them away, in much the same way as his tiresome behaviour had kept her mother away from home for months at a time.
Throughout it all, the library had been a constant source of comfort. Most of all, she’d prized her late grandfather’s globe that stood always in the window recess. How she loved to spin it on its smooth axis and trace with a finger all the places her wandering mother had told her about: Constantinople, Paris, Strasbourg, Cannes, Monaco, Venice and all the others! Places that sounded to young Araminta impossibly glamorous, wild and appealing, much like her mother appeared to her.
Mrs Clove-Congreve was rarely at home, and on the occasions she at last came sweeping in, unannounced, she’d bring crates of gifts and antiquities that Minty’s father would blanch at.
‘Think of the cost, Margaret, my dear. Please,’ he’d tell her, begging her not to venture out of Devon again until he’d accumulated some capital. He’d plant his feet and raise his chin, indignant with his wife, as if anyone truly believed he was about to turn over a new leaf. As if he wasn’t already well on the way to frittering away the very last of their money on horses and house parties.
Minty sighed, scanning around the cellar while Jowan pored over the pictures. ‘I remember those camellias,’ he told her. ‘T’was where I proposed to my Isolde. Whole grove smelled of lemon and anise.’
This drew Minty’s attention again. She didn’t have to say much to her old friend to let him feel her sympathy.
‘It did,’ she nodded. ‘It really did.’ A deep sigh escaped her.
Jowan knew where her thoughts were taking her. ‘Don’t be getting maudlin on me, Mint. You’re doing a fine job with the estate. If you’re not proud of the way you’ve kept it together, then letmebe proud for you.’
Minty wasn’t a sulker or a brooder. She was made of sterner stuff. Only here, amongst the damp relics of her old life, she allowed herself a little leeway. ‘Will it ever be a grand estate again, Jowan? Like we remember? Surely it’s too late for all that?’
‘Nonsense!’ Jowan turned the page again, revealing a picture from between the wars of a band of young toffs in Pierrot costumes and Venetian masquerade gowns, all exquisitely posing for the camera, louche, happy and carefree. ‘Well, perhaps you won’t be wantin’ to return to this sort of thing.’
Minty looked too and let out a sharp laugh. ‘Hah! Perhaps not.’ She folded her arms across her body with a shiver. ‘I’d like to keep the roof over our heads though, and keep my staff on, paying them properly, keeping their families away from the food banks that are springing up left and right. Don’t think I don’t see it, the decline. I’m not so much in my ivory tower I don’t know the whole world’s struggling.’
‘Never thought you were,’ he assured her in the dry, humorous tone he kept for her when she was feeling down. ‘You’re not like these ones. Livin’ for pleasure. You’re a new breed, Minty Clove-Congreve.’
This provoked another laugh. ‘Am I? Well good. Something needs to happen to shake this place up. Now the developers have helped clear all the estate’s debts, you could say we’ve a clean slate for the first time in three hundred years, but what to do with it? And the coffers almost empty.’
This made Jowan snap his head to hers. ‘Oh?’
Minty sighed once more and put her hand on the flashlight, lowering its glare to the earth floor. She didn’t want Jowan to see her when she told the truth. ‘You can’t tell anyone, but there’s only enough money to pay the workers until July. After that, I don’t know what we’ll do.’
Jowan frowned. ‘But Leonid’s residency depends on his having a job here, doesn’t it?’
‘Partly, yes. And there’s Izaak and his caretaker’s job, the undergardener and his trainee, Bovis and his two men in security, Mr Moke at the donkey sanctuary. They all depend on the estate making enough money from visitors to pay their wages, and with the last couple of years we’ve had, well…’ She shrugged, despairing.
‘We’ll think of somethin’.’
‘That’s exactly what my father used to say; went to his grave still racking his brains for what to do.’ Minty gave a wry laugh and closed the album. ‘Come along, let’s get what we came down for.’
Yet, Jowan stilled her hand upon the book with his own, hoping she wouldn’t mind his rough-skinned touch. ‘We will think of somethin’. You and I, and you can stop livin’ with all this worry. I make my promise to you, Mint, I won’t let you, my oldest friend, go through this alone.’
Minty stood frozen before him, her lips moving and eyes blinking like a malfunctioning machine. She only stopped when Jowan lifted his hand away and swept the flashlight around the room.
‘Right,’ he declared. ‘Let’s get these decorations down to the bookshop. You’re sure you have enough?’
Minty fought to regain her poise, straightening her bodywarmer with a firm tug and clearing her throat. ‘Goodness yes, there’s all manner of old baubles and bells down here. And Leonid furnished you with a decent tree, yes?’
Her clipped efficiency never left her for long. This was the old Minty that Jowan knew, fierce and capable. She only ever let her guard slip in front of him, and not all that often either. Only recently it seemed to be happening more and more. Perhaps the invasion of the builders last month had done it.
‘Yep,’ he told her. ‘Fine tree, ready for delivery. Do you want to help me take them down the slope? I’ll treat uz to a bite of whatever young Alex is making at the café.’
Even though Minty was rummaging through a box of threadbare tinsel and who only knew how many spiders, there was a note of girlishness in her voice when she agreed that yes, she’d like that very much.
