‘Actually, I’d love a cup of tea.’ She was aware her mother wouldn’t approve of this choice. For her, in polite society, tea was only drunk at breakfast or in the afternoon, even though she quite often had a cup of tea after supper.
‘Hugo?’ Harold looked at him. ‘Would you care to make us some tea? And the biscuits in the tin?’
‘The visitor-only biscuits?’ said Hugo.
‘Of course! We have a visitor; we have an excuse. Come, Lizzie, let me show you what we’ve been doing.’
The barn was quite full. There was a large table shaped like a leaf, inlaid with something – Lizzie couldn’t tell what – that could have been gold or could have been a pale yellow wood.
‘This is waiting to be collected. The owner – we only work to commission – lives abroad and will take it when his house in the South of France is ready for it. This piece’ – he took Lizzie to a desk with an open lid and when she looked inside she saw layers of opening boxes within it – ‘is what Hugo and I have been working on.’
Lizzie moved across to a table. ‘I like this.’
‘That’s Arts and Crafts in its influence.’
‘It’s simple, yet beautiful.’
She walked round the workshop which was also a showroom of sorts, looking at each piece with concentration. Harold followed her, supplying bits of information from time to time.
‘So, my dear, tell me why you want to marry Hugo? Apart from the fact that you are expecting his child.’
Normally, Lizzie would have been hugely embarrassed to talk about such things with a virtualstranger – a male one at that – but there was something about this kind older man which made embarrassment unnecessary.
‘It’s quite simple, really. I love him.’ She smiled. ‘That sounds rather sentimental, I suppose. But it’s the truth.’
‘And you don’t mind him being in a profession – if one can call it, it’s more of an art really – that is unlikely to ever make him a rich man?’
‘I really don’t care about that,’ said Lizzie. ‘Obviously, I’d prefer it if there was food on the table, but the house we’re going to live in has a garden – we can grow vegetables. And I’m good at sewing. People always want sewing done. We’ll manage. And I’d rather he was happy than earning a fortune.’
‘My dear, do you have any idea of the sort of income you could have expected had Hugo stayed with the law?’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘No and I don’t need to know. It’s not relevant really, is it?’
Harold laughed. ‘Well, I’m very pleased he’s marrying you. I would never say this in front of him, but he really is very skilled as a cabinet maker and he’s only just begun learning. A few more years and he’ll know everything I know.’
‘Thank you so much for telling me. It makes me feel proud, although his skill is nothing to do with me. But I know it will bring him lots of satisfaction. Ah – here’s the tea.’
They drank the tea sitting on stools round an upturned tea chest. ‘I’m afraid everything here is for someone else,’ said Harold. ‘So we have to manage without a proper table.’
‘But it does the job,’ said Lizzie, putting down her mug and helping herself to a visitor-only biscuit.
When the tea had been drunk, Hugo got up. ‘Would you mind very much if I used the telephone, Harold?’
‘No, not at all. But come into the house to do it. There’s something I want to show Lizzie.’
The house was lovely and was filled with antique furniture. Lizzie would have expected it to have pieces created by its owner. Harold seemed to read her mind. ‘Everything I make is for sale. The furniture I inherited does me perfectly well. Now, come and see what’s in my linen press.’
Lizzie wasn’t expecting to be taken to a cupboard, but Harold opened the doors on one that sat on a chest of drawers. ‘Oh. So this is a linen press?’
‘It is,’ said Harold. ‘Now look.’
The deep shelves were filled with bolts of fabric. Cotton, satin, silk, brocade and lawn. ‘Oh my goodness!’ said Lizzie. ‘Where did all this come from?’
‘My mother was a dressmaker and after she died we didn’t know what to do with the fabric she left. You would be the perfect person to give it to. Hugo? Come and help me find something suitable to put it all in. Lizzie, you have a look and see if there’sanything you don’t like. I’ll give that to someone whose having a sale of work or some such.’
Lizzie looked through the bolts of silk, satin, fine lawn, poplin. It was all wonderful although there was only a small quantity of many of the fabrics. She was enraptured. Alexandra had given her a bundle of bits and pieces and she had been thrilled with that. This was on another level of loveliness.
Hugo and Harold were gone for a little while but at last reappeared with a large trunk.
