Lola
The skies were gray with a misty rain falling when the train from Paddington pulled into Oxford.
“Typical,” was Miss Nightingale’s sighing comment as we stepped out onto the platform, along with about a hundred other people, all obviously in a rush to get somewhere. I hauled out Miss Nightingale’s boxy brown suitcase that was almost an antique, and my own little Samsonite on wheels, then we walked along the windy platform and out into the street.
“There you are, Miss Nightingale,” somebody said, and we swung round to see a burly, bearded man in a blue anorak, wiping the rain off his glasses and smiling at us. “Good to see you back again, though I’m sorry about the weather,” he added.
“Par for the course, Fred,” Miss Nightingale said, shaking his hand. “It always rains when I return from holiday. This is Lola March Laforêt, my friend from France, via California. Lola, this is Fred Wormesly, keeper of my Little Nell and the Blakelys Arms, as well as many of the village secrets.”
Fred’s laughter boomed over us as he grabbed our suitcases and led the way to the dark blue Volvo wagon parked in the lot. “Not too many secrets in Blakelys anymore, Miss Nightingale,” he said. “All’s peace and quiet here lately.”
“Well, thank heavens for that,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Lola and I have had quite enough excitement to last us a while.”
Fred Wormesly drove us through Oxford, the city of “dreaming spires,” though it was hard to make out the lovely ancient stone colleges through what had now turned into a downpour. However, Miss N promised to bring me back and show me around “when the weather picks up,” she said, and Fred said the forecast wasn’t looking too good and maybe I’d have been better off staying in the south of France.
We circled a roundabout and suddenly we were out in the countryside, driving past thick hedgerows and fields filled with woolly black-faced sheep, past gas stations whose high prices startled me, with shops selling crisps and “cigs” and cold drinks. Little side roads led off to villages with names like Witney, Eynsham, and Widford.
We turned into the lovely village of Burford, bowling down the high street lined with quaint bow-windowed shops and tearooms and pubs, across a little stone bridge over the Windrush River, then we turned off once more and we were in Blakelys.
“Home at last,” Miss Nightingale murmured, as we curved along the village street, sheltered with big old plane trees, past a store that sold bread and eggs and milk and small everyday supplies. We drove through a little stream, fording it like the stagecoaches of old must have done, swung a right, and ended up in front of the Blakelys Arms, all honey-colored stone, low roofed, and with a jolly crested sign swinging in the wind. A blackboard outside said:
PUB FOOD—TODAY’S SPECIALS: MACARONI
AND CHEESE, PLOUGHMAN’S WITH STILTON
AND HOME-BAKED BREAD, AND THE BEST
STEAK AND KIDNEY PUD IN OXFORDSHIRE.
“We’ll have a bit of that for our supper,” Miss Nightingale said, climbing stiffly out of the car. “It’s good to be home.” She lifted her face happily to the soft, cold rain. “And my Little Nell will be waiting for me.”
“That she is, Miss Nightingale,” Fred said, holding open the car door for me. “And welcome to Blakelys, Ms. March.”
The “saloon” bar was low ceilinged with ancient black beams and lath-and-plaster walls, crisscrossed with more beams. A fire burned in the huge stone grate and a couple of old codgers in cords and tweed jackets and flat tweed caps sat in front of it, quaffing pint mugs of dark brown ale. They glanced our way, lifting their caps as they recognized Miss N, saying, good to see you home again, ma’am.
Little Nell, the Yorkie of the lusty yelps, had already bounced up into Miss N’s arms and was busy licking her face. A stately blond woman emerged from behind the bar, a smile of welcome on her face. “Well, there you are at last, Miss Nightingale,” she said. “It’s lovely to see you again.”
“And you too, Mary,” Miss N replied, returning Mrs. Wormesly’s embrace. “And thank you for taking such good care of my Little Nell. Though you’ve spoiled her rotten of course, as you always do. Just look at her, she’s quite the little porker.”
Mary Wormesly laughed and tickled Little Nell under the chin. “She’s a right one for the beer, Miss Nightingale, better get her home and sobered up. But how about something to eat first? You must be starving after that journey.”
Miss N introduced me and said we would love two steak-and-kidneys, please, and two lager and limes, nice and cold if she had it.
We made ourselves comfortable in a high-backed pine settle with red velvet cushions that looked as though it might once have been in a church. Little Nell was tucked between us. Miss N made the formal introductions and told the terrier she had better behave and make me welcome or she was for it. Little Nell gave my hand an exploratory sniff, then a lick, then sat back smiling at me. And yes, dogs do smile, you know that.
“This is so nice,” I said, sipping my cold lager and lime, relaxing as the logs crackled in the hearth and the old boys settled into a game of dominoes.
“It’s early yet though,” Miss N said. “It’ll fill up later, especially on a night like this.”
A night like this, I thought, with a little shiver of apprehension. A gray, cold, rainy night, so far away from “home” and from the sunshine. And from Patrick. But I pushed away those thoughts and tackled my steak-and-kidney pie, hot and aromatic with a thick gravy and a buttery crust. It was very good, even to my critical chef’s taste buds.
“Exactly what we needed,” Miss Nightingale said, feeding a bit of gravy-soaked crust to Little Nell, who for a miniature Yorkshire terrier was certainly looking a bit “porky.” “I know it’s wrong,” she admitted, “but Nell’s been ruined here, and I don’t want to look like the ogre all at once. I’ll have to wean her off all this and back onto dog food—and no beer. It all takes time, it does every year,” she added with a mischievous grin. “I believe Little Nell looks forward to her vacation at Blakelys Arms as much as I look forward to mine at the Hotel Riviera.”
Our stomachs full, warm and tired, it was time to go. Miss N collected Little Nell, we said our good-nights, then Fred drove us back through the village, to Miss N’s cottage. Across the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go, I thought, smiling.
Gardener’s Cottage was typically Cotswolds, built of the local golden stone with sloping roof lines, set in a riotous cottage garden surrounded by a low dry-stone wall. Dormer windows peeked from under the eaves, and on the ground floor were diamond-paned arched windows. The door was planked wood with massive iron hinges, and the last of the yellow roses draped the lean-to garage. With the sweep of treed hillside in back of it, and the little brook we had forded earlier bubbling in front of it, it was the perfect calendar cottage.
“It’s just a hodgepodge, really,” Miss Nightingale explained as she unlocked the front door and ushered me inside. “Part Elizabethan, part Gothic Victorian, and anything in between.”
I found myself in a small, beamed sitting room, crammed with tables of knickknacks: silver polo trophies and sepia photos of rather grand-looking people in tweeds holding shotguns, standing on the steps of the manor house, with an array of slaughtered pheasant displayed at their feet. Dozens more photos in lovely old silver frames; a Chinese tea service of exquisite design and fragility arranged in a beautiful antique glass-fronted cabinet; a square of scarlet silk embroidered with dragons framed in ebony, and oil paintings of horses and dogs on the walls. There were two deep sofas in rose-patterned chintz arranged in front of the stone fireplace. Some kind person, probably Mary Wormesly, had lit the kindling, so there was a bright fire crackling in the grate to greet us. An Oriental rug in reds and blues warmed the wide-planked dark wood floor, which Miss N told me was chestnut.
Books were everywhere, books, books, and more books, crammed into the built-in shelves, in piles on the floor, tumbling from chairs, propping up lamps.
“My little library,” Miss N said, taking modest credit for the accumulation of a lifetime of reading. “I do like a good book on a long winter’s night.”
There were baskets too, filled with bright wools and knitting needles, and doggie toys and chew bones scattered around. This was a true home, with all the love and chaos that went into creating it.
In the kitchen a bright-red Aga stove murmured softly, sending out wafts of heat, and next to it was Little Nell’s bed, a soft blue cushion that she instantly climbed on. She circled three times, then curled up in a tight little ball, head on her paws, watching us with bright dark eyes.
The kitchen was softly lit and cozy with a long pine table that could seat eight comfortably, a couple of old leather armchairs that Miss N said had come from the manor, and red and white checked curtains at the Gothic-arched windows.
A small hallway divided the living room from the kitchen and a central staircase, carpeted in red, obviously Miss N’s favorite color, ran up from it. The staircase walls were lined with school photos, and Miss Nightingale told me they were her Queen Wilhelmina’s girls, a photo for every year she had been headmistress.
Miss Nightingale’s room had a surprising red-lacquered Chinese marriage bed in an ornate cupboard, which was almost like a little room in itself, and Miss N told me she had slept in it as a child in Shanghai, where, she astonished me by saying, she had been born.
She lifted the lid of an old leather trunk and showed me silken cheongsams and old fans, and tiny little shoes worn by the bound-foot women, and which looked suitable only for dolls. There was a splendid Queen Anne chest with the luster of generations of careful polishing, soft Persian rugs, and heavy linen curtains patterned with more roses, which matched the sofa next to the Victorian iron fire grate. Leading off was a comfortable modern bathroom, and down the hall and up another couple of steps was my sweet little room, tucked under the eaves with a sloping ceiling and a pair of those dormer windows, diamond paned and looking like something from a fairy tale.
There was a regular bed, not a Chinese one, covered in a green and white patterned quilt and piled with pillows. A shaggy white rug on dark chestnut boards, a lovely old dresser in blond burled walnut with an oval mirror, a comfortable chair, a reading lamp, a small table by the bed, piled with books. I checked the titles: Lawrence Durrell’s Justine; the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay; Steps in Time, Fred Astaire’s 1960 biography, a first edition at that, signed by the man himself; a leather-bound memoir of the Blakely Nightingales; The Leopard Hat, the story of a daughter’s relationship with her mother and their Park Avenue life in the sixties, written by Valerie Steiker; and a couple of the latest novels by Anita Shreve and Nora Roberts.
“Plenty to choose from,” I said, smiling.
“Sometimes the nights can be very long, my dear,” Miss N said.
“And here’s your own little bathroom.” She showed me the tiny room where the ceiling sloped so steeply no man could have ever stood up in it without cracking his head on the massive oak beam that ran through it.
“Everything a girl could need,” I said, smiling at my friend. “It’s like a cottage in a fairy tale.”
And she laughed and said, well, maybe not quite, then she led me back downstairs where she made us both a cup of tea. The fire crackled and spit and flared up nicely, settling into a delightful orange-red glow that warmed our feet, while the tea warmed the rest of us. It was time to say good night. “How can I ever thank you?” I said, hugging Miss N. “This is so lovely, so different…”
“It’s always good to get away when things are a little difficult,” Miss N said, throwing another log on the fire. “A little distance between you and your problems can put a different perspective on things.”
Curled up in that comfortable bed, my head on the soft pillows covered in lavender-scented linen pillowcases so old and soft they felt like silk, I thought about my life and my worries, and about Patrick who was alive after all.
I wondered whether it was he who had set fire to the hotel. Did he have something to do with Scramble’s death? Was he still involved with Giselle, or with Evgenia Solis? I could think of no answers, only that now I was afraid of him. I did not know what he might do. But here, in my cozy room, curtains drawn, rain spattering on the windows, with the duvet pulled up to my chin, I felt safe.