Charlie was doing her usual trick of asking what the “agenda for the day” was as we were towelled off after showering - so as to better take control of my wardrobe!
‘We need to settle on a strategy for dealing with the contents of the Villa.’ I replied.
‘Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?’
‘What can you mean?’
‘Well shouldn’t you be in secret session with Brinkley and Merriweather deciding the fate of the Villa first?’
‘Well, the thing is, you remember the first time I took you there...’
‘I mean it should be a piece of cake for you to get as much time as you want to sort the possessions.’
‘Well, yes...’
‘There, jeans, tea shirt, leather jacket, trainers - ideal for dusty sorting, box carrying etc.’
‘You think we should be making a start today?’
‘For a few hours. Look, you don’t really know what there is yet, what the significance of what there is, is. You won’t know what can go, until the very end. Even sorting one room at a time. I mean as soon you hit on a document concerning anyone, you’ll have to stop and read it to know whether it has implications for everything else!’
‘Point taken.’
‘Besides. You’re a bit emotionally distracted now anyway. You may need weeks to take it all on board when it comes to your father’s stuff, as well as your Aunt’s. You’ve just got to feel your way around, at your own pace. However long that turns out to be.’
‘But there must be an efficient way of doing it.’
‘May be, but it’s not really about a house clearance is it, least not for you. It’s a learning process, you want the history to use, think of it like acquiring a skillset.’
‘Oh, right. So speaks the voice of the sports scientist, you mean take a thin-slice through each room...’
‘Try several.’
‘Then start to make links, so as to make one chunk, of the whole. Then make other chunks elsewhere.’
‘You just have to decide what the game is, if it is a game? If there are any rules at all!’
‘Well, the game is obvious - it’s archaeology.’
‘What?’
‘Digging up the past.’
We were sat in the kitchen of the Villa. Taking a break. Charlie, improvising a lunch from the Aunt’s well stocked freezer. ‘Why don’t I persuade the Trust to allow you to rent this place or better still buy a long lease, cheap? It would give you some long-term security. Then you could afford, with a loan or two, to remodel the place however you liked.’
‘With respect sir, for someone so smart, you have an amazing ability to miss the bleedin’ obvious.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘For a start that’s your fantasy, not mine. In your grand scheme of being master of all you survey at Checkley, with this as the town house, presided over by yours truly, you’re ignoring reality. Pandemic aside, if you inherit the gentleman’s manor house, realistically it won’t be for another twenty years or so!’
‘Possibly, possibly.’
‘You’ll be seventy! You’ll be like your uncle is now, trying to take it easy and keep-up at the same time. You won’t have the energy for any grand plans or schemes. If you want an ancestral home, this is all there is. A four-bed detached, thoroughly middle-class home with pretentions - which is what you really are! Take it, transform it into whatever state you want, then ask me whether I’ll join you. And be prepared for the reply that it is not within the terms of employment of a valet, sir - to be housekeeper and cleaner in a place of this size, thank you very much.’
‘I see, this is you putting your foot down is it?’
‘Sometimes I think you’ve got me completely back to front. I’ve been reading up about real val-ets, they only really existed between about nineteen hundred and nineteen thirty, and there weren’t that many of them! Yes, they were at the top of the tree, in that they had the same pay and status of a butler but without the drudgery or responsibility for others - freedom in other words. If they had the sense to let their employer set the pace, they could slip-stream behind and enjoy an unprecedented quality of life for someone of their background, a dozen country-house weekends every year, a car, a couple of foreign holidays and a transatlantic trip every few years. The opportunities for tips, were out of this world! But their freedom, their power, came from being able to walk away at a moment’s notice, knowing they could go work for any number of other people, who they already knew all about!’
‘I think I see where this is going.’
‘Amaze me, Holmes.’
‘Something about not being able to appreciate a butterfly if you try and hold it in your hand.’
‘I live in the here and now. If I’m content, I’ll still be here tomorrow.’ Then, eyeball to eyeball; ‘Love is found in the moment, like joy - it has to be remade every day.’
It wasn’t long before one of our sessions at the Villa coincided with one of Mr Murchison’s half days in the garden. ‘Good afternoon young man.’
‘How are you, sir’ I asked, as if he were a kindly schoolmaster or the vicar.
‘So far so good, staying out of the way of almost everybody.’
‘Charlotte’s here too, we try and put in a couple of hours sorting most days.’
‘I told Elisabeth she was becoming obsessive about family history, “who will care about all this?” I’d challenge her. “My nephew did read history Kenneth; he’ll know perfectly well what to do!” Ha! Just for the record, she never ran you down to other people, in case you ever wondered.’
‘Thank you. I understand you’ve spoken with her executor.’
‘Odd chap, still, seems I’m to carry-on, but consult with you about the future, I understand you are the Trust now.’
‘Well, the way it works is I come up with a proposal, then the lawyers and the accountants tell me whether I’m allowed to do it or not! The burning question of the hour is, do I want to live here, or do we rent or lease it to someone else. If I did move in, well I remember this garden the way it was forty years ago, I’m wondering whether it’s possible to bring it all back?’
‘Follow me.’ Murchison proceeded to the shed, took out a spade and with surprising ease, cut a section about sixty centimetres deep into the fallow veg garden. ‘So, what do you see?’
The soil was grey to black. ‘It’s not red!’
‘Now the borders aren’t quite as good, gets worse towards the house, but nonetheless. The house foundations are on the Meadfoot, but someone has shipped the soil in from somewhere down the road that’s Heavitree stone. A century of digging and composting. Elisabeth once brought out a couple of, well, Edwardian photos I suppose they must have been, they’d been found by Thomas Hayward somewhere. Find them, and you’re away. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!’
‘Come on then, give me the full tour, bring me up to speed, and I’ll fix it for you to have tea on the patio with Charlotte.’
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