They couldn’t be that bad, surely.
‘Mrs D won’t be joining you today,’ Brenda had informed her again this morning. No explanation, or indication of when she might expect to see her host, simply, ‘More porridge? Did I tell you the honey’s from Bob Allsop’s hives and a sweeter concoction you won’t find anywhere.’
After breakfast Brenda said, ‘How about a little tour? Of the house.’
Whether this was at Freda’s prompting, or it was Brenda simply wanting to show the place off, Joely had no idea. It hardly mattered, since she was keen to find out what lay behind at least some of the closed doors she kept passing on the way to and from her bedroom.
And of course there was the mysterious third floor where no one ever seemed to go.
They began in the long corridor where Brenda opened up the room next to the kitchen first, turning on the overhead lights as they stepped inside so they could see where they were going.
‘I won’t bother opening up the shutters in here,’ Brenda said, ‘they’re a bit stiff and I can’t always get them closed again. Anyway, this is the “den” where Mrs D watches TV when she’s in the mood for it.’
It was an old-fashioned room with fading wallpaper and an eclectic mix of furniture including a large Oriental style cabinet beside the empty marble fireplace that presumably contained the TV.
‘She’s got a big collection of DVDs,’ Brenda boasted, pointing Joely to the built-in shelves either side of the hearth that were packed with movie choices. ‘She’s keen on old films and documentaries, but there’s a good selection of all sorts, some belonged to her husband, and some are her nephew’s.’
‘Does he visit often?’ Joely asked, skimming over titles: Doctor Zhivago, Out of Africa, Hangover III, Bridesmaids, King Lear, North by Northwest. All randomly placed, and giving no clear indication of ownership or character insight.
Brenda said fondly. ‘Not as often as he’d like, he always says, but he’s a busy man, being a lawyer, in London.’
‘What sort of lawyer?’Joely enquired. Brief Encounter, The Ides of March, I, Claudius, Mrs Miniver. The Killing box set.
‘I think he deals mostly in brands and intellectual something or other,’ Brenda replied, dusting off a stray DVD with her apron and slotting it back onto a shelf. ‘That’s him over there,’ she said, pointing to a row of photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘Looks a lot like a young Cary Grant, I reckon, or that’s what I tell him and he says I shouldn’t flatter him or it’ll go to his head.’
Picking up one of the photos, Joely studied it for a likeness to the movie star, and while she couldn’t really find one, she had to admit that the dark hair and strong jawline were impressive, and there was a certain ease about his smile that made him look friendly and fun. In fact he reminded her of someone, perhaps not as old as Cary Grant, someone more contemporary but for the moment she couldn’t think who it was. In the next shot she picked up he was younger and glowering at the photographer in a way that reminded her of a schoolboy being forced to do as he was told. The man with him had a hand on his shoulder, and was laughing as though he was sharing a joke with the photographer, one that a bad-tempered Edward might be the butt of.
‘Is this his father?’ she asked Brenda, holding up the photograph.
Looking at it Brenda said, ‘Yes, that’s the two of them together, bless their hearts. They look alike, don’t they, and you can see the family resemblance to Mrs D. Edward’s father was her brother.’
Joely placed the photo back on the shelf, and said ‘Are there any of Mr D?’
‘Not in here,’ Brenda replied, straightening up the frame. She walked back to the door and lifted a hand to the light switch. ‘There’s this room done,’ she declared, ‘let’s move on to the next, shall we?’
Keen to learn more about the family, especially Mr D, Joely followed Brenda along the corridor to the entrance hall where the housekeeper pushed open the set of double doors that had caught Joely’s interest the night she’d arrived.
Like the den it was in darkness, but in here Brenda unbolted and unfolded the tall wooden shutters allowing sunlight to flood into the room and Joely saw right away that it was all about music. She gazed around at the many instruments, an electric keyboard on cross-hatch legs, a collection of violins in cases, a cello, guitars, an African drum, a saxophone in a display case, and at the centre of it all a magnificent grand piano.
‘No one ever comes in here now except me to clean,’ Brenda told her sadly. ‘It was Mr D’s special place where he’d play and listen and compose, and the music would roll out over the meadow down to the sea when the windows was open … Magical it was, absolutely magical.’
Finding that easy to believe, Joely said, ‘Was he a professional musician?’
Brenda chuckled. ‘You could be forgiven for thinking so with all this, but no, he wasn’t. It was his hobby, well I suppose you’d call it his passion. Yes, it was definitely a passion.’ She walked across the room and slid open the doors of a cupboard that took up most of the back wall. ‘Have you ever seen a collection of vinyl like this outside a shop?’ she asked, seeming almost as proud of it as its owner had surely been.
‘They’re in alphabetical order,’ Brenda informed her, ‘and there’s everything from classical to pop to jazz and country and western. He loved all sorts he did. He’d shut himself away in here for hours and hours losing all track of time. Sometimes Mrs D would come in and they’d sing together or dance, and you never saw anything so romantic the way they moved together.’ She smiled fondly. ‘They was always ravenous when they came out from one of their listening sessions so I’d make sure to have something ready to go on the table. They used to eat meat back then and he was very partial to game pie or a goulash.’
Joely wandered over to the piano so polished it shone like a mirror. There was a music sheet on the brass stand – ‘While My Lady Sleeps’ (Phineas Newborne Jr) – and the stool was slightly askew as though someone had just popped out for a moment. She wished she could read music, or better still listen to someone playing this seemingly abandoned piece. ‘So what was his profession?’ she asked, feeling an urge to press the keys but not daring to.
Brenda nodded meaningfully towards the paintings that were hanging over the fireplace and around the walls. Having been so entranced by all the musical instruments Joely hadn’t noticed them until now, and as she gave them more attention, she began to frown in confusion.
‘Recognize them, don’t you?’ Brenda stated with satisfaction. ‘Monet, Bonnard, Cezanne, Matisse.’
Joely continued to study them, going closer to one that depicted a naked woman standing beside a chaise longue and half turned towards a French window. Surely all the great Impressionist works were in galleries and museums. Certainly the ones she was seeing here were.
‘He was a copyist,’ Brenda explained, ‘and a very talented one as you can see. If you look more closely at that one you’ll spot that the woman is a young Mrs D. He used to do that, just for them – paint her into famous pictures. The ones he sold were proper copies of the impresarios and people were willing to pay a lot for them.’