To the Manor Drawn Read online

  Published in 2007 by Pier 9, an imprint of Murdoch Books Pty Limited

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  Text copyright © Leslie Ann Bosher 2007

  Design copyright © Murdoch Books 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Chief Executive: Juliet Rogers

  Publishing Director: Kay Scarlett

  Project manager: Colette Vella

  Editors: Karen Ward and Karen Gee

  Design: Sarah Odgers

  Cover illustration: Antonia Pesenti

  Internal illustrations: Antonia Pesenti and Tim Seal

  Production: Monique Layt

  Author photograph: Don Lambert

  Lyrics on page 89 are from ‘Weather Song’, words by Michael Flanders and music by Donald Swann © Chappell Music Ltd. All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia, Canberra

  ISBN 9781742660677 (eBook)

  To the

  MANOR

  drawn

  LESLIE ANN BOSHER

  ‘Home is where the heart is,

  hence a movable feast.’

  —Angela Carter

  To my Bill,

  Whose name should appear on the cover of this book

  for his enthusiastic and unrelenting support.

  As women know, it is not always an equal world.

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part 1: IT’S ONLY SCARY IF YOU LOOK BACK

  Chapter 1 - Collateral Damage

  Chapter 2 - To the Manor Drawn

  Chapter 3 - The Ties that Bind

  Chapter 4 - Chocks Away

  Chapter 5 - Holiday Hell

  Part 2: LIVING LIKE NATIVES

  Chapter 6 - Nature Reigns

  Chapter 7 - First Impressions

  Chapter 8 - Sleuthing the Source

  Chapter 9 - Ghosts are Where They Find You

  Part 3: ‘MULTUM IN PARVO’

  Chapter 10 - So much in So little

  Chapter 11 - Like a Good Chardonnay

  Chapter 12 - Pleasurable Pursuits

  Part 4: CALL OF THE WILD

  Chapter 13 - Weather or Not

  Chapter 14 - A Well-Kept Secret

  Chapter 15 - A Siren Call

  Part 5: THE SPORTING LIFE

  Chapter 16 - Pitching Pennies

  Chapter 17 - Football, Fun Fairs and Hares

  Chapter 18 - A Girlie Fix

  Chapter 19 - Charity Begins at Home

  Part 6: HUNTER–GATHERER

  Chapter 20 - Home Truths

  Chapter 21 - The Necessities of Life

  Chapter 22 - Food for Thought

  Chapter 23 - Rural ‘Honeypots’

  Part 7: FOOT ’N’ MOUTH

  Chapter 24 - Politically Incorrect

  Chapter 25 - Greet and Meat

  Chapter 26 - A sanity Check-up

  Part 8: OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

  Chapter 27 - Two Thousand Years of Blood and Guts

  Chapter 28 - On the Hoof

  Chapter 29 - The End of the Season

  Chapter 30 - Rules Of The Road

  Part 9: RUNNING FOR COVER

  Chapter 31 - A Question of Loyalty

  Chapter 32 - Ladies Who Lunch

  Part 10: GETTING IN THE SPIRIT

  Chapter 33 - Cooking your Goose

  Chapter 34 - Calling all Neighbours

  Chapter 35 - Freezing for the Lord

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgments

  Part 1

  IT’S ONLY SCARY IF YOU LOOK BACK

  Chapter 1

  Collateral damage

  Email To: Kathleen

  From: Leslie Ann

  Date: 3 February

  Subject: Itchy feet

  Dear Kathleen,

  I’m convinced life is too short for collecting store loyalty card points, so I’m off to Paris for a little R&R (real estate and retail therapy). I hope to find a cosy pied-à-terre Bill and I can enjoy over long weekends. Right now the world just seems too small to stay in one place all the time.

  Besides, it’s been raining here for days. The Brits say it is good for their grass and my complexion. I say any nation that can watch cricket on the telly for five straight days doesn’t deserve to have an opinion.

  I’m out of here. Wish me luck.

  Leslie Ann

  Have you ever thought what would happen if your ship finally sailed into port and the only cargo on board was containers of birthday candles; decades of little wax statues, with your name on them? No lottery windfall, no castle in Spain, just a reminder that time marches on. This prospect occurred to Bill and me as we faced yet another grey, brittle February in London. To our way of thinking, it was a non-month. Sandwiched between Harrods’ January sale and March, February was noted only for a profusion of butter-yellow daffodils in the Royal Parks surrounding Buckingham Palace. With the Christmas holidays behind us for another year, a feeling of unrest began to set in. We weren’t the only ones feeling twitchy as evidenced by the sour expressions on the faces of men and women making their way to work. Slow moving crowds, swathed in black, were our daily companions as seasonal affective disorder began its relentless attack on London’s residents.

  Bill and I were all too familiar with the routine but we convinced ourselves that the benefits of living in London outweighed the down side. Every weekday Bill made the pilgrimage from our home in Chelsea to his office in the financial district, threading his way through the streets to the Sloane Square Underground station. En route he passed the usual collection of realtors, cleaners, banks and Indian-owned convenience shops. Partridges, a speciality food store, was the exception in an otherwise bland row of shopfronts. This bitesized emporium was a godsend to those who had not planned ahead for dinner and were willing to pay top price for the privilege of shopping in an establishment displaying a Royal Warrant over the entrance.

  Running late one morning Bill failed to collect his daily paper as he dashed past his usual newsagent. While sneaking glances at the headlines over the shoulders of his fellow Tube passengers, he eyed a discarded copy of a property supplement on a threadbare train seat. Thumbing through the pages of flats, detached houses and bungalows, a familiar name caught his eye—Rutland. Remembering a rather sexy birthday weekend spent at Hambleton Hall, a gem of a hotel located in the heart of Rutland, he became intrigued at the prospect of a return visit. Even more intriguing was a stunning new property coming onto the market; a stately manor house that had been converted into private apartments, one just perfect for our rendezvous weekends.

  I, on the other hand, was pampering myself in Paris. Using the excuse that I needed to freshen up my French, permanently tainted by my lingering North Carolina Southern drawl, I booked a two-week working holiday. Apparently, over time, I had cultivated a nasty habit of composing sentences in French using only the present tense, which sidestepped the necessity of conjugating irregular verbs. After years of putting up with flawe
d speech, I decided to investigate the future perfect in a proper setting, so I enrolled in an immersion course which included the chance to stay with a local family in the leafy suburb of Neuilly. Having already surrendered my French Francs in favour of the Euro, and abandoned my trusted Michelin Travel Maps for a new satellite navigation system, I was determined to speak the language before it too became relegated to Europe’s dustbin.

  I was neither a day-tripper—one afternoon in Paris would only frustrate me—nor a leaseholder of a small pied-à-terre where time was no object. I had given myself the opportunity to brush up on the language, explore distant neighbourhoods take in the Louvre during evening hours when crowds were too worn out to linger and to enjoy local wine in any café that took my fancy. With Bill back in London, the focus of my attention was entirely on Paris. Substituting my missing husband for the love of a city more beautiful than any has the right to be was nothing but pure pleasure.

  My days always began with first dodging the infamous minefields of dog droppings on the footpaths as I made my way to the Neuilly Metro en route to school. I became somewhat of an authority at recognizing the ingredients of an à la carte meal enjoyed by a Parisian chien. Unfortunately, in the two weeks I spent in Paris my working knowledge of canine dietary habits far exceeded my knowledge of the French language. I quickly learned that stepping in a hound’s biggie was less dangerous than stepping in that of a petulant poodle reared on a diet of pâté. The latter, slippery and deadly, was catastrophic to the body and could send me flying onto the pavement like an inebriated ice skater.

  As luck would have it I was the only American student in the school. My classmates were all Japanese English teachers a dozen years my junior. These women had an innate ability for foreign languages that I would never master, no matter how many times I stood in front of the class to read aloud from the elementary tutorial Jean et Jeannette, the French equivalent of the popular American book series Dick and Jane.

  Once my six-hour lesson was over for the day I headed for the streets of Paris to unload my weighty wallet in shopping nirvana. The French approach to merchandizing was a welcome relief from London’s homogeneous style where chain stores simply leapfrog each other down Oxford Street, offering no more variety than the choice of location in which to browse. Even the most intrepid British shoppers eventually succumb to the boredom of cloned storefronts and mass-produced merchandise.

  One day after returning early to my accommodation for a much-needed nap, I found a manila envelope placed on my pillow by my hostess, Madame Kilfiger. It was from Bill. Inside was a fact sheet on a newly renovated property called Stocken Hall. Written boldly across it in red ink were the words, ‘this could be the one!’ As I had only the day before contacted an agence immobiliere to view properties within Neuilly’s genteel perimeter, a suburb of Paris I had come to enjoy, I found it surprising to say the least that Bill could contemplate a move to the countryside without first consulting me. Of course, I had neglected to mention to him that I was secretly plotting to purchase a little weekend hideaway myself. Obviously, we were two free spirits set on a collision course.

  Later that evening, Madame beckoned to me to take a phone call from Bill. Sitting on a rickety chair in the corner of the hallway, I excitedly picked up the receiver with one hand while gently cupping the other hand around my mouth to ensure a bit of privacy. Although I had only been away a week, I was thrilled

  to hear his voice. Cooing to each other about lonely beds, long nights and cold feet, we played a cat and mouse game of courtship.

  ‘I can’t wait for you to come home. I have a surprise to show you. Did you receive the package I mailed on Tuesday?’ Bill’s tone was breathless, searching and hopeful.

  ‘I sure did, the one that contained a brochure about a place called Stocken Hall?’ I replied. ‘I have it here in front of me now.’

  ‘Well then, what do you think?’ Bill’s question drifted into a noticeable pregnant pause.

  Letting the silence settle, I wondered whether it was possible that my levelheaded husband had finally bought into the rose-covered cottage myth of cosy nights by the fireplace, too many gin and tonics and country walks long enough to lull us into old age.

  ‘Honey, it looks lovely, but did you happen to notice where it is located? It’s in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!’

  I was too late. Bill had not only seen the Hall; he had fallen in love with an apartment within it, investigated mortgages and in his mind arranged all of our furniture and paintings room by room. There was no reason for me to lovingly interject ‘are you crazy? What can you possibly be thinking of? Me, living in the countryside? I don’t even ride!’

  All I could do was counter with a demure, ‘Wait till you see the maisonette I found for us today. It’s perfect for the two of us, with a kitchen just large enough to prepare café au lait and croissants. I know you’ll love it. The building is located in the most charming suburb and within walking distance of absolutely everything.’

  We ended our phone conversation with both of us feeling like winners. It was agreed we would visit ‘his’ property on my first weekend back in England, after which we would return to Paris to view ‘my’ property. The one Monsieur Le Beau, my agent and new best friend, was holding on reserve for us. Surely, the horse and hound set of the English countryside was no match for the sophistication of Paris?

  Chapter 2

  To the manor drawn

  Email To: Ruthie and Frank

  From: Leslie Ann

  Date: 10 March

  Subject: Crystal ball gazing

  Dear Ruthie and Frank,

  This will come as a shock, but over the weekend Bill and I went to see a property in the countryside. It is possible that you were right all along when you predicted we would permanently settle in England when the time was right, but could there really be a life for us outside the Big Smoke? Please tell us you don’t see the word ‘rural’ in your crystal ball.

  Love,

  Leslie Ann

  The glossy sales brochure for Stocken Hall, no doubt a product of one of the year’s most promising marketing graduates, was expressly designed to make the reader salivate. The lexicon of realtor terms flowed like warm oil over the pages. Two verbal bookends, ‘prestigious and impressive’, helped to focus the mind, although we weren’t entirely naïve about the adjective-laden sales jargon employed to butter up prospective clients. Nevertheless, the hook stating that the house was only for the ‘privileged few’ penetrated at least one male customer’s psyche.

  In truth, it is hard to resist glancing at photographs of Georgian properties listed in Country Life magazine or the real estate section of London newspapers. The proportions are so eye-catching. Romance seeps from their aristocratic façades. Possibly it is the sense of balance and symmetry or the dimensions of the rooms that make people consider this period to be the pinnacle of housing design in Britain. Although there is no homogenous style to cover the reigns of the four King Georges from 1714 to 1830, certain classical features do predominate: wooden panelling, multi-pane sash windows, fine staircases, carved timber or cast-iron balustrades, delicate mouldings and high ceilings. The availability of natural light and a sense of space add to the myth that somehow this style is superior and worth paying over the top for original features.

  The property description began with a real attention grabber:

  Stocken Hall is an historic stone mansion house, parts of which date back to the reign of Charles I, 1625–1649, when it was originally built and later became the home of the Sheriff of Rutland.

  ‘The estate consists of six large reception rooms, one billiard room, fourteen bedrooms, three bathrooms, a range of attics, an ample kitchen, larder, pantry, store room and cellar. At the rear of the house is located the old stable block with a working striking clock. It contains a garage for six cars, a harness room, saddle room and offices. On the grounds are farm buildings, several cottages, a large kitchen garden and a two-acre orchard with assorted pear, ap
ple, plum and cherry trees, all nestling on 529 acres of woodland.’ At least that was the property description produced for a public auction held in July 1948. Difficult times followed the Second World War placing a final nail in the Hall’s coffin, as was the case with so many stately homes too large to be maintained by a nation ravaged by war and depleted of manpower and resources. Now, the carcass was to be hacked up into eleven apartments.

  In reality, Stocken Hall had been dismantled and reassembled many times before. The Royal Air Force was the first to bring it into the public domain by requisitioning it for officer’s quarters in 1938. Refitting the Hall with fire escapes and urinals, the RAF turned it into a dormitory for officers before abandoning the property in 1948. Left for scavengers to pillage, the original staircase and fireplaces were removed before the property was rescued by a developer in 1990 with plans to convert it into offices. Unfortunately he went belly-up before the project was completed. It wasn’t until 1999 that the fortunes of the Hall began to turn, when a team of architects decided to reconfigure the building into private apartments under the watchful eye of the nation’s caretakers, English Heritage. This organization is responsible for protecting historic properties designated to be of ‘national, social or architectural importance’. Of the over 500,000 buildings on their books today only a tiny 3 per cent fall into the ‘special interest’ category of Grade I and Grade II Star, which mandates that every effort must be made to preserve them for future generations. Stocken Hall is in the latter group.