By ‘but’ she meant that Uncle George lived in the bleakest and coldest part of England and was a thoroughly grumpy old man.
‘We’ll see what Madlyn thinks,’ said her father.
Madlyn, when they put it to her, knew exactly what she thought. She thought, no. She had four parties to go to, the school was planning a visit to the ballet and she had been chosen to play Alice in the end-of-term production of Alice in Wonderland. What’s more, from what she had overheard, she was sure that Uncle George’s castle was not the kind that appeared in cartoon films, with gleaming towers and princes, but the other kind — the kind one learned about in History lessons, with things like mottes and baileys and probably rats.
‘It would mean wearing wellington boots all day,’ she said, ‘and I haven’t got any.’
Rollo was lying on the floor, drawing a picture of a Malayan tapir which lived near his skink in the zoo. Now he looked up and said, ‘I have. I’ve got welling-ton boots.’
Mr and Mrs Hamilton said nothing. The Americans were offering enough money to enable them to fix the car and pay every single bill in the house when they got back. All the same, they stayed silent.
The silence was a long one.
But Madlyn was a good person, the kind that wanted other people to be happy. Being good like that is bad luck, but there is nothing to be done.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Madlyn at last. ‘But I want proper boots, green ones, and a real oilskin and sou’wester, and an Aran knit sweater, and an electric torch with three different colours…’
She was a person who could always be cheered up by a serious bout of shopping.
CHAPTER TWO
Sir George always woke early on Saturday morning because that was when the castle was open to the public and there was a lot to do.
He lifted his creaking legs out of the four-poster bed, which was propped up at one end with a wooden fish crate to stop it falling down, and padded off to the bathroom. There was no hot water but he was used to that; the boiler was almost as old as Sir George himself and Clawstone was not a place for people who wanted to be comfortable.
It did not take him long to get ready. His hair was so sparse that brushing it was dangerous, so he only passed a comb lightly through what was left of it and put on his long woollen underpants and the mustard-coloured tweed suit he wore summer and winter. But today, because it was Open Day, he also put on a tie. It was a regimental tie because he had served all through the war in the army and got a leg wound which still made him limp.
‘Right! Time to get going,’ he said to himself — and went over to the mantelpiece to fetch the bunch of keys which lived in a box underneath a painting of a large white bull. Once Sir George’s bedroom walls had been covered in valuable paintings, but they had all been sold and only the bull was left. Then he went downstairs to unlock the door of the museum and the dungeon and the armoury, so that the visitors tramping through the castle got their money’s worth.
Sir George’s sister, Miss Emily, also woke early on Open Day, and wound her thin grey plait of hair more carefully round her head than usual. Then she put on the long brown woollen skirt which she had knitted herself. During the many years she had worn it, it had taken on the outlines of her behind, but not at all unpleasantly because she was a thin lady and her behind was small. Today, though, because it was Open Day, she also knotted a scarf round her throat. It was one of those weak-looking chiffon scarves which look as though they need feeding up, but Emily was fond of it. She had found it under a sofa cushion when she went to move a nest of field mice who had decided to breed there, and the slightly mousy smell which clung to it did not trouble her in the least.
Then she fetched her keys, which also lived on the mantelpiece, but not under a painting of a bull — under a painting of a cow. Like her brother George, Emily had once slept in a room full of costly paintings, but now only the cow was left.
The third member of the family never came out of his room on Open Day. This was Howard Percival, a cousin of Sir George’s and Miss Emily’s. He was a middle-aged man with a grey moustache and so shy that if he saw a human being he had not known for at least twenty years he hurried away down the corridors and shut himself up in his room.
Emily always hoped that Howard would decide to help; there were so many things he could have done to interest the visitors, but she knew it was no good asking him. When shyness gets really bad it is like an illness, so she just knocked on his door to tell him that the day had begun and went downstairs to the kitchen where she found Mrs Grove, who came in from the village to help, preparing breakfast.
‘Nothing doing with Mr Howard, then?’ she asked, and Emily sighed and shook her head.
‘His door’s bolted.’
A frown spread over Mrs Grove’s kind, round face. It was her opinion that Sir George and Miss Emily should have been stricter with their cousin. With everyone working so hard for Open Day he could have pulled his weight. But all she said was, ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’
Emily nodded and went through to the storeroom to look at the treasures she had made for the gift shop.
People who pay to look round castles and stately homes usually like to have something to buy, and Emily had done her best. She had made three lavender bags, which she had sewn out of muslin — the kind that is used for bandages — and filled with flower heads from the bushes in the garden. One of them leaked a little but the other two were intact, and since so far no one had actually bought any bags there would probably be enough for today. She had prepared two bowls of dried rose petals, which were meant to scent people’s rooms: pot-pourri, it was called. The trouble was that it was difficult to dry anything properly in the castle, which was always damp, both inside and out, so the petals had gone mouldy underneath. Now she packed the scones she had baked into plastic bags and stuck little labels on them saying ‘Baked in the Clawstone Bakery’, which was perfectly true. She had baked them herself the day before on the ancient stove in the kitchen and they were not really burnt. A little dark round the edges perhaps but not actually burnt.
It was important not to lose heart; Emily knew that, but just for a moment she felt very sad and discouraged. She worked so hard, but she knew that never in a hundred years would her gift shop catch up with the gift shop at Trembellow Towers. The gift shop at Trembellow was larger. It had table mats stamped with the Trembellow coat of arms. It had furry animals bought in from Harrods and books of poems about Nature and embroidered tea towels. And leading out of the gift shop at Trembellow was a tea room with proper waitresses and soft music playing.
No wonder people turned left at the Brampeth Crossroads and made their way to Trembellow instead of Clawstone. And it seemed so unfair, because the people who owned Trembellow did not need money; they only wanted it, which is not the same at all.
But she would catch up, Emily told herself; she would not give in to despair. She was always having good ideas. Only yesterday she had found some old balls of wool left in a disused linen bag which would knit up into mittens and gloves. The moths had been at some of them but there were plenty left.
Sir George, meanwhile, was opening up the rooms he had prepared to make things interesting for the visitors. He was a private sort of person and found it difficult to have people tramping through his house and making loud remarks, which were often rather rude, but once he had decided it had to be done, he worked hard to see that the people who came got value for their money.