For Better for Worse

‘Oh, that doesn’t leave us much time to look over the grounds,’ Eleanor protested.

‘Well, actually you can get a pretty good view of them from the attic windows,’ he assured her.

As he held open the front door and stood back to allow them to walk inside, Eleanor caught her breath in pleasure.

The hall was large and rectangular with a polished wooden floor and a heavy carved wooden staircase with a galleried landing.

‘It is magnificent, isn’t it?’ The agent smiled as Eleanor turned to express her admiration.

Marcus was also examining the staircase, but when he turned back to face her he was frowning rather than smiling.

‘What’s wrong?’ Eleanor asked him.

‘I may be wrong, but I think I can smell damp,’ he told her quietly.

Damp! Eleanor stared at him, and the agent, who had obviously overheard him, stepped in quickly, saying lightly, ‘Old houses often smell slightly of damp, especially when they have been empty for a while as this one has, but structurally the building is extremely sound. The Georgians knew how to build. There might be the odd patch of damp, but it’s nothing serious.’

‘Serious enough to cause the skirting to rot,’ Marcus commented mildly, but he smiled at Eleanor when she looked across at him, and agreed with her when the agent opened the door into the sitting-room and she enthused on the amount of daylight that large windows to the front and side of the room allowed in.

‘Oh, look, Marcus, it’s still got all the original plasterwork on the ceiling, and the picture rails, and look how heavy these doors are. It will all need decorating, of course.’

In her mind’s eye she could see it already. Excitedly she turned back to Marcus. ‘It’s perfect, isn’t it?’ she whispered to him.

‘Mmm… We’ve only seen one room so far. How many bedrooms did you say it had?’

When Eleanor told him, he raised his eyebrows slightly.

‘It’s a very large house,’ he pointed out to her.

‘Yes, it’s ideal, isn’t it?’ Eleanor enthused. She turned towards him, her face alight with excitement. ‘It’s just perfect for us, Marcus. Of course I know it will need a lot of work doing on it,’ she added as they followed the agent into the large drawing-room, and from there into the dining-room, and then a further small sitting-room, which he told them had been Mrs Broughton’s favourite room, because it overlooked the long borders which had been designed and planted by Gertrude Jekyll. ‘But now that I’m not committed to going into the office every day, I’ll have enough free time on my hands to cope with that.’ She paused as she saw that Marcus was frowning again.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked him.

‘I was just wondering if it was going to be as easy as you imagine to oversee the kind of work that this place needs. You saw for yourself how long it took us to drive down here today. If you were having to make that kind of round trip several days a week… You said yourself that one of the benefits of working from home would be that you would have more time to spend with the boys, but with them at school…’

‘Hopefully we could time things so that most of the work can be done during the school holidays,’ Eleanor told him cheerfully. ‘That way they’ll be able to come with me.’

‘Go where with you?’ Gavin asked her.

‘Come here,’ Eleanor told him with a smile, touching the top of his head with gentle fingers, mentally imagining the pleasure and the fun they would have living somewhere like this… and not just them but Vanessa as well.

‘The kitchens, I’m afraid, are rather archaic,’ the agent announced as he led the way to the back of the house.

As he opened a door and they followed him inside, Eleanor realised that her dream of a large family-sized kitchen had been exactly that.

The reality was a collection of small dark rooms obviously designed in the days when only the servants inhabited such quarters.

‘Potentially this area could be converted into an excellent kitchen-cum-living area,’ the agent told them.

‘Potentially,’ Marcus agreed, wandering over to one of the windows and peering out.

‘Is that the kitchen garden?’ he asked.

Eleanor joined him at the window, staring excitedly through it to the walled area beyond.

Vegetables gone wildly to seed showed here and there among the weeds, and on the walls the once neatly espaliered fruit trees were beginning to burst into new leaf.

/> ‘Until the last few months of her life, Mrs Broughton employed a full-time gardener. He died six months before she did.’