Ravenscliffe by Jane Sanderson Page B

see,’ Seth said, with the gloomy fatalism of the seasoned gardener. He loved these exchanges; loved to feel on a par with Percy Medlicott; loved to sound like a man who understood the seasons and the soil.
    ‘What about that compost then?’
    This was Amos, still stabbing at the earth with a spade. Seth, pushing his luck, said: ‘If I talk to Uncle Silas, will you talk to Mr MacLeod?’
    Amos looked up.
    ‘I’ll fetch that compost,’ said Seth.

    Tobias Hoyland was playing croquet, not – as one might reasonably expect on a summer afternoon – on the designated lawn outside, but up in the Long Gallery of Netherwood Hall, where the heavy-handed or the uninitiated could too easily send theballs skidding wildly across the floor to rebound from the skirting boards with a crack of wood upon wood. Indoor croquet: a game requiring great skill and finesse and invented by Tobias ten years ago using strategically positioned furniture for hoops, since even he could see that to ram metal spikes between the polished floorboards would be going too far in the pursuit of fun. The centre peg was always a Wedgwood vase, one of several dotted about the Long Gallery: not priceless, but valuable enough. It added a certain frisson to the contest that the vase – ideally – should remain intact, but at the same time must be struck by a ball in order to win the game.
    The hoops – three occasional tables, two elegant chairs with slender, bowed legs and a Chinese rosewood plant stand – were already in position when Henrietta found her brother. His various haunts were familiar to her and the Long Gallery was a particular favourite, as its dimensions gave it great scope for entertainment. Why design a room like a gigantic skittle alley then expect people to behave in it with decorum? This was Tobias’s view at any rate.
    ‘Just in time,’ he said, when he saw Henrietta. He smiled and held out a mallet. ‘Dickie said he’d play but he jibbed. Any idea what he’s up to?’
    Henrietta took the proffered mallet. ‘Indoor croquet is a strictly wet-weather activity,’ she said reprovingly, in the instantly recognisable, slightly joyless tones of Mrs Powell-Hughes. The housekeeper’s length of service had given her occasional scolding rights over the Hoyland offspring; they were young adults now – apart from Isabella, of course – but still they were not always beyond reproof.
    Tobias placed his ball and sized up the distance to the first target. ‘Time was when you could read him like a book,’ he said. ‘But these days I just can’t say what he’s thinking. Have you stepped outside, Henry? Mad hot. Even Mrs P-H couldn’t tell me we’re not better off indoors.’
    ‘I think he might be in love,’ said Henrietta.
    She spoke just as Tobias took his first shot, and she timed it to perfection, causing him to look up in astonishment at the critical moment. The ball veered off ineffectually to the right and Henrietta laughed.
    ‘Mimi Adamson. She’s staying with her uncle, a short canter away,’ she said. ‘Bodged it. Bad luck. My shot.’
    ‘Mimi Adamson? What would that gorgeous creature see in our Dickie? And that was sabotage, by the way. Your triumph – if triumph you do – will be hollow.’
    The game petered out in the end, the contestants defeated by the heat which, indoors, had a different quality from outside – less intense, more cloying, but equally debilitating. They sat down and Henrietta rang for lemonade. She blew a jet of air from the corner of her mouth up into her face, and a tendril of hair lifted briefly from her damp forehead then settled again.
    ‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘Literally.’
    ‘Don’t do that,’ said Tobias. ‘Who would I mock with you gone?’
    ‘We could swim,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Down at the ponds.’
    ‘Two days, then Thea will be here,’ said Tobias. He sat forwards, all animation. Behind him, on the wall, an oil painting of their father as a young man showed the