The grass, while too wet to be comfortable, was soft enough. On principle, Annie kept her eyes shut, hoping the world would just disappear, or at the very least, allow her to wake up from a dream/possible nightmare that had begun over a month ago with the arrival of the first, initially distrusted, letter.
‘Miss? Are you all reet? Got a bit of muck on your clothes there, just a few droppings and some mud, but we can probably find something up at the house. Sorry about the lassies. Got dinner coming up so they’ve got their bees in their bonnets. Always get excited by a stranger too. Honestly, sometimes I think I could chuck a ball and half of them would run off to bring it back.’
‘I’m dead,’ Annie said, staring into the blackness at the back of her eyelids.
The man chuckled. ‘Ah, I’m hoping you’s not, otherwise I’ll have to go and fetch the cart and one of them’s wheels is playing up. Canna really leave you lying about for the rats now, can we? The buggers’ll get excited. Bad enough to have ‘em chewing on me own toes. I think they like the hard bits, so as long as you do that filing thing, you should be all reet.’
Annie’s eyes snapped open. ‘Rats?’
‘Ah, nothing a decent cat wouldn’t fix, but her up there, she’s got a bit of an allergy. At least, so she says.’
Annie stared at the man. Cherry red cheeks suggested he enjoyed a dram a little too often, but his eyes were bright and his smile kind. Beneath the battered cap, grey hair frizzed out at right angles. Sideburns hung around the corners of a jowly chin like the ends of a scarf he had forgotten to take off.
‘Is this the way to Stone Spire Hall?’ Annie said, wondering what else she could say. The man was staring not quite at her, but just over her shoulder, as though recalling a series of fond memories. As she spoke, he gave a little shake of the head, his eyes focusing on hers.
‘Just round the corner,’ he said.
‘People keep telling me that. Um … do you live around here?’
‘In the cottage.’ He stuck a thumb back over his shoulder. ‘The one by the gatehouse.’
‘What gatehouse? I didn’t see any gatehouse.’
‘Ah, they moved it. After they drowned the old village for the reservoir.’
‘After they—’ Annie gave up trying to make sense of things. The man reached out a hand and Annie let him help her sit up. His hand was like a lump of warm, gnarled wood.
‘Crossing the fells?’ the man said. ‘This here’s private land, but no one much cares as long as you don’t start no fires. If you’re heading for Windon Fell, cut through the woods here and follow the new path round the lake. Aren’t no signs, but there’s only one path, so you won’t get much lost.’
Annie shook her head. ‘I’m looking for Stone Spire Hall.’
The man chuckled. ‘Not many as trying to do that.’
Annie winced. ‘You see … apparently I own it. My name is Annie Collins. It belonged to my grandfather, Wilfred, who died a few weeks ago. I actually didn’t know he was still alive, so when I got a letter informing me that I had inherited a country estate, I was just a little bit surprised, not to mention sceptical.’
As soon as Annie had said her name, the man’s whole demeanour had changed. His jovial smile was replaced by a look that bordered on reverence. He took a step back and removed his cap, revealing a shiny bald strip between the remnants of his hair. For a moment Annie thought he meant to take a knee, then he turned as one of the reindeer got too close and swiped at it with his cap.
‘Mistress,’ he said. ‘We wondered if you’d come. Me name be Les, but you can just call me Mr. Fairbrother, if it suits you. I’m the estate’s caretaker and grounds keeper, like me father was before me, in the service of the Collinses for three generations. It’s a pleasure to serve.’
‘Ah, thanks. Please put your cap back on, you must be cold.’
‘Born out of the woods, will no doubt die in the woods,’ Mr. Fairbrother said, somewhat cryptically. ‘I do apologise for the fright the lassies caused you. If you’d like me to build an enclosure, give me a holler.’
‘They run free? How many do you have?’
Mr. Fairbrother smiled and started counting on his fingers in what Annie could only assume was a local dialect.
‘Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera….’ After a few more which left Annie hopelessly lost, he looked up and smiled. ‘Couple of dozen. Your grandfather, they were his pleasure.’
‘And they don’t get lost?’
‘Aye, from time to time. Usually come home again when they’re hungry. And everyone round here knows where they’re from.’ He gave a chuckle and smiled off into space. ‘There was this one time one got into Bob Slater’s garden, chewed through half his cabbages. Guy was spitting fire, but your grandfather, he sent old Bob a couple of bottles from the cellar, and that shut him up.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah, your grandfather, he was a wonderful man.’
Annie just nodded, not wishing to contradict him with her own opinion of a man she could remember meeting—and even then only briefly—no more than a handful of times, and not at all since her tenth birthday. Twenty-seven years later and she’d all but forgotten that he even existed.
‘So … the house? It’s near?’
‘Just round the corner. I’ll show you if you like.’
‘Please.’
‘All reet. This way then.’
Mr. Fairbrother shouldered his fork and wandered off, checking over his shoulder to see if Annie was following. A few of the reindeer still stood nearby, and as Les moved away they snorted, shook their antlers and began to move closer, as though the order to feed had been given, so Annie hurried to catch up with the old man.
‘Don’t worry, they’s just curious,’ Mr. Fairbrother told her, giving a little chuckle. ‘Your grandfather, from time to time he’d let ‘em in the house, and I think they smell him on you.’
‘We’ll have to talk about a fence,’ Annie said, eyeing the animals wearily, convinced that she was about to discover that her great inheritance was nothing more than a cattle shed in the middle of a field. Trees still hemmed them in on both sides, and the meandering drive refused to give up its secrets. As they crested a low rise, however, up ahead, the trees began to thin, and the lake came back into view.
‘Ah, nearly there,’ Mr. Fairbrother said, adjusting his cap with one gnarled hand. ‘Does seem this old drive is getting longer as me own days get shorter.’
The drive cut back to the right, turning out of sight beyond the tree line. The lakeside came into view, a little wooden jetty extending out into the water, a couple of rowing boats tied up at its end. Just a little way offshore, a small island poked out of the water, topped by a stand of trees. She was still staring at it, trying to make out a bird sitting in the higher branches of one of the trees when Les said, ‘Ah, there she is. The old homestead.’
Annie turned, and her breath caught in her through. ‘Oh … my.’
‘She’s still got the looks, even at her age, hasn’t she?’
Annie’s knees felt weak, and she reached out for something to support her, finding, in a sudden moment of shock, only the antler of another inquisitive reindeer. As she jumped away, the magical spell cast by seeing the house for the first time was broken. In doing so, however, she was able to appreciate a little better the full extent of what apparently now belonged to her.
Set among trees and overgrown gardens Les was perhaps struggling to manage, Stone Spire Hall was part manor house, part castle. Whoever had built it had struggled to decide on any particular style, with one wing all Elizabethan black and white with overhanging wooden eaves above cast iron window frames, while another was granite stone and raincloud grey, rising four storeys, with even a tower room protruding from one corner, and what looked like a balcony surrounding it, topped with battlements.
‘Used to take me own breath away too, Miss, back when I was a lad and coming back from school. Every single time. And if you think this is nice, wait until you see it at Christmas time.’
‘It’s … magnificent. I can’t believe it’s mine. This is like a fairytale come true.’
Mr. Fairbrother chuckled. ‘Plumbing’s a bit shoddy and there’s damp in some of the bathrooms.’
‘Bathrooms … as in, more than one?’
‘There’s a fair few kicking about, I suppose. But only three we really use. Others are a bit dusty. Most are in the guest quarters, but old Lord Wilf never had no guests. Bit of a recluse, he was.’
‘A bit of a….’ Annie could only shake her head. ‘I’m still struggling with this. I mean, I’m a bank clerk. I took a week off to come up here, and now I find out my grandfather was a reclusive landowner who owned a mansion and a patch of land—’
‘A few hundred acres, more or less, although I don’t remember exactly off the top of me old head.’
‘—in the Lake District, and I didn’t even know?’ She flapped her hands. ‘This is insane.’
Mr. Fairbrother chuckled. ‘Quite, quite.’
‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Well, she’ll sort you out.’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs. Growell. The housekeeper.’
‘Mrs. Growl?’
‘That’s right. Fearsome as they come, is Mrs. Growell. I mean, it was your grandfather who owned the place, but it was her who ran it. With an iron fist and all.’ Les turned and pointed across the open gardens at a small cottage nestled among the trees on the far side. ‘That be my humble abode over there. Safest place on the property.’ Les chuckled again. ‘There was many a winter night when I’d open the door to find your grandfather outside, wanting a place to hide.’