A Trick of the Light by Ali Carter (surface ebook reader txt) 📕

Lights flicked on and off as we were taken in and out of vast spaces, the atmosphere of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour reverberating in the architecture and its decoration. Pilasters, cornices, pediments and lintels were scattered throughout. But the painted ceilings, no matter what their colour – pale green, pale blue, pale peach, white, dark blue, dark green, dark red – cracked before our eyes, and with just a few remaining flecks of gold leaf clinging to various mantelpiece reliefs the splendour of the past was hard to grasp. The paintings, on the other hand, were in great order, cleaned and hanging in spotless frames. When I’d asked whether one particularly striking dog was a Gainsborough, Zoe replied, ‘As none of you have been here before, Fergus will, I’m sure, make allowances and give you his once-a-year tour of the pictures at some point.’

Louis, who’d been dragging his rather nice suede Derby lace-ups ever since the orientation tour began, made an effort to reach my side. I had assumed he was bored having seen it all before, but when he said under his breath, ‘I’d be interested in having a tour of the paintings too,’ I realised I’d judged him too quickly – he was here as a student not as a guest of the family after all.

As Zoe pushed open a door into the drawing room, it let out a musty exhale and in we went.

‘Fergus and I don’t often use this,’ she said, flicking a switch. Yellow light cast down from a dusty crystal chandelier, settling on various pieces of drab furniture. ‘But I thought I’d show you anyway.’

‘Not many paintings in here?’ came Rupert’s rhetorical question as he stared at the darker rectangular patches on the green walls. They were particularly noticeable in artificial light.

‘We recently moved them to some of the spare rooms,’ Zoe said. ‘Felicty, you’ve got a nice portrait in yours.’

‘Ain’t look like you ever use this room?’ said Shane.

‘Very occasionally,’ said Zoe. ‘That fire,’ her forefinger shot out towards a carved wood surround, ‘throws out the heat when it’s lit. But come on, no time to dilly-dally.’ We were shuffled back out the door and on into a pretty much empty adjacent room.

‘This one we call the music room, it’s where you’ll be drawing. I assure you these floor-to-ceiling windows let in a lot of daylight.’

I bet they do; there’s a string of them running the entire length of the mottled deep plum wall.

‘Easels and drawing boards are over there,’ Zoe’s head nodded at the opposite wall, ‘and as you can see we’ve pushed bits of furniture to one side.’

That’s all that’s in here, no paintings, no flowers, no side tables, no figurines, no magazines, no rugs, and despite my critical reaction to the similar un-homely effect earlier, I’m rapidly beginning to understand: the Muchtons don’t have the vast sums of money their surroundings demand. Keeping on top of maintenance in a house of this scale must cost a bomb – Zoe and Fergus’s coffers simply aren’t deep enough. No surprise they’re filling their house with strangers, running sign-up-and-pay courses to bring in a penny or two. But can money buy a remedy for the melancholy within these walls? And if so, they’re going to need an awful lot of it to achieve the revamp.

Zoe was striding towards the far end of the room. ‘Susie,’ she said as she thrust back a folding door, ‘you can expand into the billiards room if needs be.’

‘Billiards is another name for snooker,’ red-trousered Rupert translated to Shane.

‘But,’ said Lianne, ‘why’s that called a billiard room…’

‘Billiards,’ corrected Jane.

‘Billiards and this a music room if they ain’t got no snooker table or sound system in them?’

‘Once upon a time,’ recalled Zoe, ‘they had a billiards table and a piano in them and maybe one day in the future they will again.’ And with that ambitious thought we were all paraded into the library.

This room, or ‘snug’ as Zoe said they tended to refer to it, had bookcases lining the walls. A lovely old-fashioned arrangement. I couldn’t help tracing a finger along the complete works of Sir Walter Scott, the collected poetry of Robert Burns, and on into a selection of John Buchan’s rip-roaring tales.

Zoe caught me out of the corner of her eye and smiled. ‘You must all feel free to borrow books while you’re here but please remember to put them back before you leave.’

‘Thank you,’ I said as I helped myself to The 39 Steps.

The bookcases were interrupted by a little fire waiting to be lit, and set back from it, covered in dog hair, was a semi-circle of sunken soft furniture – I think Haggis likes to curl up in here.

‘More than a trace of cigars,’ scoffed Giles, proud at having identified the smell.

‘No smoking in the house any more,’ said Zoe. ‘But this is where you can watch telly and play board games. They’re in that chest over there.’ She pointed up the other end of the room towards the only window. To the right of it there was a tall, elegant, Victorian writing bureau with a carpet-covered trunk lying beneath it.

‘If you do light the fire, which you may at any time, please, please, always put the guard in front of it and make sure to shut the door when you leave.’

‘Does anyone play bridge?’ said Jane A(t)kinson.

‘Far too complicated for me,’ Rupert said, shaking his head.

‘I do, at Cotswold Ladies’ College,’ said Araminta, who apparently prefers to be called Minty.

‘I’m so pleased to hear they still teach you,’ said Jane, ‘it was part of the curriculum there in my day.’

‘You went to my school?’ said Minty.

‘Yes, I’m an OC.’

‘OC?’ Felicity was confused.

‘Old Cotswoldian, it’s what members of the former pupils’ network are called.’

Zoe took us out of the library (I can’t quite bring myself to call it a snug) and paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs. ‘Before we go