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‘It’s a free country. He can think what he likes, same as the rest of us,’ said Len Hilton who ran the pub. ‘But there’s no need to bellow it at the Vicar.’ And he added an uncomplimentary remark about penny-pinching weasels.
But no pennies had ever been pinched where Fiona was concerned, thought Tavy. After she’d left one of England’s most expensive girls’ schools, there’d been a stint in Switzerland learning cordon bleu cookery, among other skills that presumably did not include being pleasant to social inferiors.
However, Fiona had been right about one thing, she thought, easing her T-shirt away from her body as she remounted her bike. She was indeed melting. However there was a cure for that, and she knew where to find it.
Accordingly when she reached a fork in the lane a few hundred yards further on, she turned left, a route which would take her past the high stone wall which encircled the grounds of Ladysmere Manor.
As she reached the side gate, hanging sadly off its hinges, she saw that the faded ‘For Sale’ sign had fallen off and was lying in the long grass. Dismounting, Tavy picked it up and propped it carefully against the wall. Not that it would do much good, she acknowledged with a sigh.
The Manor had been on the market and standing empty and neglected for over three years now, ever since the death of Sir George Manning, a childless widower. His heir, a distant cousin who lived in Spain with no intention of returning, simply arranged for the contents to be cleared and auctioned, then, ignoring the advice of the agents Abbot and Co, put it up for sale at some frankly astronomical asking price.
It was a strange mixture of a house. Part of it was said to date from Jacobean times, but since then successive generations had added, knocked down, and rebuilt, leaving barely a trace of the original dwelling.
Sir George had been a kindly, expansive man, glad to throw his grounds open to the annual village fête and allow the local Scouts and Guides to camp in his woodland, and whose Christmas parties were legendary.
But without him, it became very quickly a vacant and overpriced oddity, as his cousin refused point blank to offer the same hospitality.
At first, there’d been interest in the Manor. Someone was said to want it for a conference centre. A chain of upmarket nursing homes had made an actual offer. A hotel group was mentioned and there were even rumours of a health spa.
But the cousin in Spain obstinately refused to lower his asking price or consider offers, and gradually the viewings petered out and stopped, reducing the Manor from its true place as the hub of the village to the status of white elephant.
Tavy had always loved the house, her childish imagination transforming its eccentricities into a place of magic, like an enchanted castle.
Now, as she squeezed round the gate and began to pick her way through the overgrown jungle that had once been a garden, she thought sadly that it would take not just magic but a miracle to bring the Manor back to life.
Over the tangle of bushes and shrubs, she could see the pale shimmering green of the willows that bordered the lake. At the beginning, volunteers from the village had come and cleared the weeds from the water, as well as mowing the grass and cutting back the vegetation in front of the house, but an apologetic letter from Abbot and Co explaining that there was no insurance cover for accidents had put a stop to that.
But the possibility of weeds was no deterrent for Tavy. She’d encountered them before in previous summers when the temperature soared, and all that mattered was the prospect of cool water against her heated skin. And because she always had the lake to herself, she never had to bother with a swimsuit.
It had become a secret pleasure, not to be indulged too often, of course, but doing no harm to anyone. In a way, she felt as if her occasional presence was a reassurance to the house that it had not been entirely forgotten.
And nor was the Lady, who’d been there for nearly three hundred years, and therefore must find all these recent months very dull without company, standing naked on her plinth looking down at the water, one white marble arm concealing her breasts, her other hand chastely covering the junction of her thighs.
Tavy had always been thankful that the statue hadn’t been sent to the saleroom, along with Sir George’s wonderful collection of antique musical boxes, and his late wife’s beautifully furnished Victorian doll’s house.
You had a lucky escape there, Aphrodite or Helen of Troy, or whoever you’re supposed to be, she said under her breath as she took off her clothes, putting them neatly on the plinth before unclipping her hair. Because the lake wouldn’t be the same without you.
