The Dance of Love by Angela Young

Author:Angela Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2014-08-04T11:06:59+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Ansdrie allowed Sir Thomas to persuade him against the bicycle franchise. It had become clear there were no customers in rural Fife for machines that cost twenty pounds when a miner’s wage was one pound a week and the paper-mill workers half that. Even a schoolteacher’s wage would not allow the luxury of a bicycle, and anyone who was rich enough would travel to Edinburgh to buy one. When iron ore was not found, many hundreds of acres of Ansdrie land were sold to Crichton, and what was left had been let to a tenant sheep farmer. Eaton Terrace and Sir Thomas’s villa in France had been sold, but still Ansdrie and his father-in-law had not come up with an idea that would secure the future of Ansdrie House.

On a cold spring day in the year after Edward VII died and Duncan celebrated his ninth birthday, Ansdrie, Sir Thomas and Lady Bridewell sat in the drawing room. The fire had been lit and, as Lady Bridewell worked a tapestry for a fire screen, she said she could not understand Natalie’s obsession with her orangeries. ‘She has a perfectly good morning room for reading, and it would be warmer.’

‘She used to sit in the orangery at Hey Tor House with her mother,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘Orangeries have a particular meaning for her. Besides, oranges need protection from the cold just as much as we do. She will not suffer.’

And Ansdrie noticed, not for the first time, the difference between his father-in-law’s treatment of his wife, and his mother’s. Even Gussie no longer thought Natalie beneath them, but his mother had a way of reminding them all that Natalie’s behaviour was different, if not exactly inferior.

‘Well, I find it peculiar,’ she said, ‘when this house has more than enough rooms.’

‘As it happens,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘it was Natalie’s orangeries that gave me the idea I have been pursuing. An idea that just might secure Ansdrie House for Duncan.’

Ansdrie stood up. ‘We must discuss it,’ he said. ‘In the office.’

When his mother stood to accompany them Ansdrie said, for the first time in their business discussions, ‘I think it better that Sir Thomas and I discuss his idea alone.’

If she would not alter her attitude to his wife, the woman without whom Ansdrie House would have been lost altogether, he would no longer allow her to influence its future.

‘Am I to be excluded from discussions about my . . . this house?’

‘It is not your house, Mama,’ said Ansdrie. ‘And I shall inform you of any decision we might take.’

Ansdrie was glad of his father-in-law’s reassuring hand on his shoulder as his mother sat down and pulled tightly on a thread, and he turned his back. As they walked towards the office across the courtyard, blowing out their cheeks against the chill wind, Sir Thomas said, ‘I thought we had exhausted the possibilities for saving Ansdrie. I had, more or less, resigned myself to funding it, alone.’

‘You have been the most generous of fathers-in-law.

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