Consider the Lily by Elizabeth Buchan

Author:Elizabeth Buchan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
Published: 2012-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Her garden apart, Matty had set herself the task of sorting out the contents of the attics, which had been left during the renovations. The rooms had originally been used as servants’ sleeping quarters, but after the war and Hesther’s death the number of servants had dropped and they were turned over to attics.

The rooms ran east—west along the top floor, each one stuffed with boxes and trunks, furniture and paintings. The sight set Matty’s organizational antennae quivering.

Mrs Dawes had other ideas. ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said gloomily. Not only was the task formidable, but Matty had declared she was going to work alongside her. She surveyed hat boxes, garden chairs, shooting sticks, boot scrapers, trunks bulging with linen and cupboards piled with God knew what, and mentally girded her loins. Matty held out her hand for an apron and with the air of a condemned felon Mrs Dawes gave it to her. But once set to, they enjoyed themselves as women often do in such situations.

‘What are these?’ Matty held up a couple of poles encased in leather at one end.

‘Crutches, I think,’ said Mrs Dawes.

‘And these?’

‘More crutches. From the time when the house was a hospital. I thought all that stuff went back long ago.’

Matty cradled them in her arms. Someone had used these to shuffle his way painfully down the corridors and out into the rest of his life. ‘I see,’ she said and laid them down.

The piles grew and so did the list in Matty’s notebook. Progress was not as fast as it could have been, for every so often Matty pounced on an object and went into lengthy discussion with Mrs Dawes as to its history and use. Both women were feeling more positive about each other, and Matty enjoyed the sensation of bringing order into chaos.

The best of her haul was discovered behind a scrap screen which partially obscured a stack of paintings. Matty pulled out one, looked at it, said, ‘Oh,’ and then went quite pale. It was of a little girl sitting on a woman’s knee having her feet washed, ordinary people painted with an insight that made them extraordinary. She stared at it, both fascinated and pained by it, and loved it. After investigation among the family papers in the Exchequer, it was pinpointed as a Mary Cassett.

‘How could you let it sit up there?’ she tackled Kit over after-dinner coffee. They were in the drawing room where the Cassett had been hung between the windows. ‘It’s a wonderful thing. Look at the way the foot is so real in the mother’s hand and how she cradles its weight.’

Matty drank her coffee and scrutinized her find for the hundredth time. Kit got up and came and stood behind her. Matty had her head on one side and her coffee cup at a precarious angle. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and Matty felt his touch like a burn through her dinner gown. ‘I think it came from Boston. Mary Cassett was an American,’ she said without turning round.

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