Crossing the line - 30. Mother at Norton Priory

Mother was delighted with the idea of an expedition to Norton Priory. Somehow the trip expanded, and she booked us a hotel room with a late dinner (her treat, she insisted) on the Friday night. That way we would have time to go exploring on the Saturday, searching for places she remembered, such as her friend, Marjorie’s house.

Dan and I would drive up and collect her, then head across country. Mother’s choice of hotel was a pub that had been reincarnated as a restaurant with rooms. From the outside it looked very traditional but inside, style reigned. It was well done, in its way, with a lovely emphasis on local artists and craftsmen, though it was all a bit to artful for my taste. It all said decorator; there was nothing simple or haphazard, no wonky dressers, and all the colours and patterns toned nicely, a different scheme in each room.

The staff were all alarmingly young and made up in enthusiasm and friendliness what they might lack in finesse. Again, they were all matching and toning; men and women (though I wanted to refer to them as boys and girls) all wore similar waistcoats, colours chosen from a restricted, rather muted palate. And they certainly knew how to be nice to middle class ladies of a certain age, so Mother was in her element. She had been at pains to let me know that only twin rooms had been available, so Dan and I sleeping in separate beds was not her choice.

Fair enough.

It was still a novelty, going away with Mother and my boyfriend. Everything was a tad polite, brittle even. At first.

“How is your Grandmother, Dan?”

We were in time to have an aperitif, so we were sitting round an inglenook fire drinking extremely strong gins and tonic, menus on our laps. The place was busy, with a mainly middle-aged, middle-class clientele. I spotted one young couple sitting at the bar nursing menus, from their body language, age, and remarkably smart dress, I suspected that it was a special date or an anniversary. On the other edge of the scale was the glossy couple in late-middle age who gave off that self-satisfied air of being regulars, she with carefully curated voluptuousness and he with a very smug belly.

“She is well. Vaughan told you that we took her to lunch at Tonelli. She had a great time.”

“The food was good?”

“Excellent, even Gran said so and the waiters all made a fuss of her. So, things are well there, though she keeps hassling me about when Vaughan and I are going to get married and have children.”

Only years of training in polite society prevented a nasty accident; as it was, I suspect Mother came rather close to spluttering out her drink. She stared at me, very pointedly. “Are you thinking of doing so?”

Luckily Dan laughed, broadly, “Give us time. We’re not even living together yet.”

“As far as I can tell, Dan’s Gran has transferred her anxiety for him to marry a nice girl and have kids, quickly, onto us.”

“Gran’s desperate for gran-kids. I’m her only grandson and she doesn’t want to miss out. It doesn’t seem to matter that we are certainly not ready to settle down and have 2.1 children.”

“I sympathise with your grandmother, Dan, but I find it difficult to envision my son in the role of carer of an infant. He would get involved in his work, and the infant would no doubt be ignored, come to harm or some such thing”, she was smiling, but it was dead right.

Dan chose to be amused rather than annoyed, “I feel similar, and frankly at the moment I don’t think our lives have space for children.”

“Not just our lives, I can’t see Dan and I, plus child, fitting into my little house.”

Mother nodded, “So, give it time. And when do you plan to marry, sometime soon if your grandmother had her way, Dan?”

Dan shrugged, “We have vaguely talked about next year. Vaughan’s got so much on at the moment, what with the paintings for Mr H, and the exhibition, and I reckoned that by next year I should be firmly bedded in with Mr H.”

“But we’ve not made firm plans, and don’t worry Mother, you will be the first to know. Dan fancies a big party at The Manor, but frankly, I sometimes think just the four of us, Dan, me, you and his Gran, and have a nice meal afterwards.”

“At Tonelli!” She smiled.

The talk of possible wedding venues, large and small, seemed to take the conversation, thankfully, into less taxing realms. But the issue of children was clearly still in Mother’s mind as, at the end of the meal, when Dan popped to the loo, she assured me that unlike Gran, she was in no urgent need of grandchildren. If we were keen and felt we could bring up a child, then she would certainly be supportive and enjoy it.

--oOo—oOo—

“I don’t recognise anything. This was presumably the walled garden, and I seem to remember Marjorie saying that it was effectively derelict, but parts were used for staff allotments”, Mother looked round and shook her head, “It has certainly changed.”

We were sitting having coffee and cake outside the café at Norton Priory. The cake was lovely, the coffee good and the sun was shining. We had already explored the shop and the craft centre. The gallery was unfortunately closed as they were preparing a new exhibition. Mother was both impressed and bewildered, the Norton Priory of today being so different from the sleepy, rundown backwater she remembered.

We were just finishing coffee when Greg appeared. Mother looked at him with interest; she had been told some of the background, and I think inferred some of it. But Greg was affable and knowledgeable, able to point out pieces of the estate that she might remember. It was a side to Greg that we had only glimpsed before; not the rather monosyllabic, often surly creature that dealt badly with the fall-out from his encounters with Donald Mitchell, but the professional who was knowledgeable and engagingly enthusiastic about the Estate and its ethos.

He joined us in the car, and we went on a tour, only this time we had a dual narrative going on; Greg would talk about a building’s history and how it had been converted to modern use, whilst Mother would remember what she had seen 25 or so years ago. Utterly professional, Greg might not have the effortless charm of some, but his engagement with the subject clearly impressed Mother.

Marjorie and Norman’s house was still there, providing a similar function. It was the area round there that drew out the most reminiscences, though in truth it was quite an unprepossessing house and currently had a young family living in it, witness the lines of washing. As we walked around the green in front of the house, Mother smiled at me and said that that was something Dan and I would have to look forward too, if we had children, perhaps we should think about a live-in nanny. Give her time, and I am sure Mother would have us completely organised.

The family were away so we could drive up to the main house, via a very grand approach. The gardens were minimal, mainly lawns, trees, and shrubs, evidently the 18th century owners had stripped out all the fancy layout and replaced it with English landscape gardening, and the later owners had never had the money to do much more. The house itself was pleasantly old and not especially grand. Parts were, evidently, very historic with sections dating back to the Tudor conversion of the original buildings, but there had been a constant stream of changes, adjustments, and fires. What we saw, principally, was a late Victorian façade that wrapped around the older elements, creating harmony and uniformity where there had been none.

Greg made the visit most enjoyable, and, on the surface, it was a great success, but there was something else. At first, I could not put my finger on it, then it hit me. Of course, in the early days when we visited Marjorie and Norman, there would have been four of us. My hazy memories of Norton Priory were all from when I was older, but my brother Titus would have come here, played here. He’d been seven when he died, so Mother must have plenty of memories of him here.

As we drove away from the house, she asked Dan to stop at a bridge. It wasn’t anything special, probably a Victorian re-build of something older. Dan and Greg lurked by the car, but she led me to the bridge, and we leaned on the parapet, looking at the stream flowing below.

“He loved it here.”

“Titus?”

“Yes, he really enjoyed coming. You were always an indoor child, even if it wasn’t picture-books, it was something else inside. But Titus loved being outside and here, well, your Father and I felt it was safe and let him run”, she shrugged. “Wouldn’t happen, nowadays, too many things to go wrong, but then he was able to run a bit wild. I have a picture of you two, standing on this bridge. After the photograph, Titus ran off down the stream whilst you simply plonked yourself down and looked at whatever picture-book I had brought with me.” She shook her head. “I should probably have told you this years ago. And I’ve been thinking. There’s a box of things.”

“Titus’ things?”

“Not his things, per se. Mementoes really, and photographs. Next time you come, we will go through it, and I will reminisce. We can talk about him, the three of us.” She looked at me, “It’s overdue; time to share things. I’ll warn you; I don’t remember that much.”

“Memory blanks itself out?”

“Something like that. But looking at the pictures might bring things back. And whatever reminiscence there is, I think Dan would welcome being part of it?” I nodded, “So, we’ll look at the mementoes and perhaps you can have a few more pictures on the wall.”

“My own rogues gallery.”

Afterwards, we returned to Greg’s place of work where Len had assembled a delightful picnic on one of a set of picnic tables set up just for that purpose. The food was simple but good; Mother surprised everyone by having a glass of the local beer to go with local cheese, chutney, and bread, and of course there was cake. A feast indeed, and a convivial moment with no thought of paintings, exhibitions, naked bodies or Francis Heyward, and Titus’ ghost seemed to be far less of a threatening presence. But just like the feast, I thought perhaps that the two men’s harmonious welcoming façade was just that, and that there were still strong currents underneath. But it seemed hardly the time or the place to dig further, even were it my place to do so.