One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [9]
Through a heavy panelled door we encountered a cool, high-ceiling room smelling slightly of ancient stone and polish. A giant baroque chimneypiece rose up before us from the old black range, and a vast oak dresser thick with copper pans flanked one entire wall. An old refectory table stretched centrally, a bench either side, and a white butler’s sink sat on a cupboard under the tall window. Original grey slate tiles spread at our feet. The room hadn’t been touched for fifty years, and although the peeling cream walls badly needed a lick of paint, other than that, it was perfect. Maggie stood still in the doorway, awestruck.
‘Oh, but this is terrific. It’s like a museum piece!’
‘It is a bit of a relic,’ Laura agreed, chewing her thumbnail and looking round.
‘Yes, but that’s the point. Apart from the walls – and I love that floor, by the way – I wouldn’t touch it. I certainly wouldn’t dress those windows, and that cracked old paint on the shutters is fab. Lucky you!’
‘This is the room Laura would like us to do,’ I explained helpfully.
‘Oh.’ Maggie’s eyes widened. ‘Right.’
‘You see, the walls are such a state,’ Laura rushed on, ‘and in here too, the pantry.’ She led us into another totally perfect room, albeit with peeling walls, but lovely slate shelving all the way round, more tiles on the floor. ‘Needs totally revamping.’
‘Yes,’ said Maggie, faintly.
Hugh stuck his head around the door. ‘Just come for the ice.’ He smiled and reached into the freezer for the bucket. ‘Don’t forget to show them the breakfast room.’
‘They’re not doing the breakfast room, Hughie,’ said Laura. ‘Ralph is doing that, remember?’
‘We’ll go,’ I said quietly to Maggie later, as we climbed the stairs to get changed for supper. ‘If they haven’t agreed this beforehand between themselves, I can’t get involved. This has all the makings of a family feud and I won’t be caught in the crossfire. I’m annoyed with Hugh, actually, for putting me in this position.’
‘Nonsense, it won’t turn into a feud. It’s only decorating, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Remember Lambrook Gardens?’ I intoned darkly.
Maggie paused on the stairs, shaken. Forty-one Lambrook Gardens had housed a recently married, loving young couple, with diametrically different tastes. Things had finally come to a head when he slashed her suede headboard and punctured the water bed with a knitting needle, but not before she’d tap-danced in studded rugby boots all over his highly glossed and varnished floorboards, which ran throughout the entire house. The decree absolute was through in six months.
‘But he’s adamant, Hattie,’ Maggie insisted in a low whisper as we went on upstairs to the gallery. ‘He’s got it all planned out. He told me when he showed me round. He wants all this horrible oak painted in the hall to lighten it—’
‘And she wants it all French-polished,’ I hissed. ‘She told me!’
‘And he wants to get rid of all the chintz and heraldic stuff—’
‘And she wants more chintz and more heralds. Wants to recreate a Victorian country house, as far as I can tell. Doesn’t want to modernize at all.’
She frowned. ‘I thought Laura had style?’
‘She does,’ I said loyally, ‘but it’s a conventional sort of style. She certainly doesn’t do minimalist.’
‘Maybe there’s a compromise?’
‘No, there isn’t. This is a disaster, Maggie. I’m so sorry to have dragged you in and it’s all my fault for not sorting it out properly, but we’ll leave in the morning.’
‘Don’t be silly. We’re here now; we can at least stay the weekend. It would be rude not to. Ooh, is this me? I can’t remember.’ Maggie pushed a door into what was palpably not the spare room she’d been allocated. We stood surveying Hugh and Laura’s master bedroom, complete with four-poster bed, hideous parrot wallpaper, and matching curtains and bedcover. Parrots do require the lightest of touches and there were more here than one would care to see in a rainforest.
‘God.’ Maggie boggled. ‘How do they stand it?’
I shrugged. ‘Well, it was Hugh’s parents’ room up until recently. That’s the point: they want a revamp.’
‘Whoever does it, it