Last Act of All by Aline Templeton Read Free Book Online

the Red House in the village, with enough money left after paying off the mortgages to mend the roof and fix the dry rot. It was my grandmother’s house. She quarrelled with my grandfather — I suspect she was a woman of taste and discrimination — and moved out. It’s perfect Queen Anne, and the relief to my aesthetic sense would be enormous.’
    ‘ It can’t be as easy as that.’
    He shot Helena a startled glance, like a horse shying, as if afraid of this approach to mental intimacy. His reply seemed at first inconsequential.
    ‘ My brother had thought about selling off land for building. Well, I suppose I could do that, and be financially a lot more comfortable. But I don’t need that much money — there’s no one to come after me. If I were to sell to a developer, the village would be swamped by strangers, when it’s hardly changed since I was a child. By some sort of fluke, perhaps precisely because it’s not remotely picturesque, it’s escaped the influx of commuters bed-and-breakfasting during the week and getting up morris-dancing societies at the weekend. Your husband — forgive me — would be wealthy enough to pay for his privacy and satisfy my purist notions that it should stay as it is, unchanged.’
    ‘ You like the village as it is?’ Her response held a note of impolite incredulity, and she coloured. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound rude. I’m sure it has charms which are hidden from me. But it did strike me as being a rather unappealing place, as we drove through it.’
    ‘I suppose that’s our fault. Grandfather let a nice little row of Georgian almshouses collapse, and then the council built that very unpleasing housing scheme. The village properties never had a controlling landlord, so they all did their own ghastly thing.
    ‘ And of course they were quite delighted when the brewery pulled down the old inn and built a nice new one in the Fifties, with aluminium windows and a sign saying “Gents’ Toilet”. We are not burdened with a middle-class interest in conservation around here.’
    ‘ I had noticed. It’s what Neville loves about it, or at least, says he does. But you — you’ve been away from here, surely? Didn’t you find it jarred when you came back?’
    It seemed to be a question he had never asked himself. ‘Well, I was away at school, and then the army, of course, until I — I had to come back. But Radnesfield’s where I belong, they know me, I know them. Our families have lived together for a very long time, and we’ve always adapted to one another’s foibles.’
    ‘ Like an old married couple.’
    ‘ Perhaps.’ His glance lingered on her for a moment. ‘Though of course, as a bachelor, I couldn’t comment, could I?
    ‘ So you really like it?’ She was interested in his response; he was a thoughtful and civilized man, and if he could feel at home here, perhaps she too might find in village life the hidden charms she had flippantly mentioned.
    For the first time, she sensed withdrawal. ‘Like?’ he said vaguely. ‘Oh, I don’t know about like. It’s a funny old place. Seems a pity to mess it about. But I’m keeping you talking far too long. Let’s go and see where your husband has got to.’
    Neville, in the library which boasted French windows inlaid with stained glass, in trying hues of blue and orange, was talking about where his desk would go. Helena left them, and wandered drearily back to the big, old-fashioned kitchen.
    It was at the moment a nightmare, with a floor of cracked flagstones and a stone sink with a rotting wooden draining-board. But here, at least, the deadly hand of the architect had fallen lightly; it was simply a square, undecorated room, surprisingly light thanks to the great window at one end overlooking the big pond at the foot of the shallow rise on which the house was built.
    It was the first pretty view she had seen. The trees, the water — it reminded her of something. Willows, reeds, and ducklings, yes,