The Ullswater Undertaking Read online

  The Ullswater Undertaking

  REBECCA TOPE

  With thanks to Pat who almost single-handedly saw me through the horrors of 2020

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  By Rebecca Tope

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  The villages and towns in this story are real but the individual houses and the saleroom in Keswick are invented. I do not entirely vouch for the accuracy of the bus schedules.

  Chapter One

  Four in the morning in the middle of April was not at all a bad time to be awake, Simmy was discovering. At the age of eighteen days, little Robin was adamant that he had to be fed at this very hour and his mother had no wish to disappoint him. The hours when he was asleep felt like wasted time to her, in the first flush of euphoric disbelief at his very existence. The birth had been ridiculously quick and easy, reaching the hospital in Barrow with barely ten minutes to spare, before sliding him out with scarcely a yelp. ‘Classic second labour,’ said the midwife knowingly. Simmy had flinched at this reminder, sorry that these would be the first words the new baby was to hear.

  A boy! A living, breathing, flourishing boy, weighing nine pounds and apparently pleased to find himself in the world. Christopher, his father, had been almost as incapable as Simmy was of believing he was real. ‘Well, the Hendersons are good at boys,’ he said. Two more ghosts joined that of Simmy’s first baby – the new child would have no Henderson grandparents.

  It took them all day to select the baby’s name, and then it seemed destined and obvious and permanent. Not only a subtle homage to the Winnie-the-Pooh books, but other agreeable associations. ‘A robin’s a lovely little bird,’ said Simmy.

  ‘Not to mention Robin Goodfellow,’ said Simmy’s father, when the decision was conveyed to him. ‘That should ensure that he keeps you on your toes. I believe he was actually a hobgoblin.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ laughed Simmy.

  ‘Basically it’s just a really nice name,’ said the new father. ‘And we do owe my friend Robin several favours. He worked his socks off trying to find us somewhere to live. He’ll think we’ve named our son after him.’

  ‘“Our son”,’ Simmy repeated with a soppy smile, quashing the flicker of regret at having the man for ever connected to the baby. She’d forgotten all about Mr Robin Stirling, the estate agent.

  Now Christopher was asleep, Simmy was settled into the cosy nursing chair her father had bought her and Robin was placidly suckling. Saturday would be under way before long, and Chris would have to spend a long day auctioning off 750 lots at his workplace in Keswick. The auction house had survived its moment of notoriety the previous year when it sold a piece of Tudor embroidery for a headline-making sum, and was hurtling from one success to another, with income from commissions rocketing up. People from all over the world were spending incredible sums on quality antiques and random collections of memorabilia from house clearances – a situation, Christopher insisted, that would only get bigger and better in the coming years.

  Even if the Chinese economy floundered, there were Americans, Japanese, Indians and even newly affluent Africans eager to buy goods that had originated from their countries. They wanted them back and were willing to pay whatever it took.

  Outside it was windy. The building was not yet quite weatherproof in some parts, having been built as a large stone barn some two hundred years previously. There had been a very hasty conversion undergone over the winter months, creating an upper storey, staircase and fully fitted kitchen and bathroom. Other rooms were still a work in progress, with walls unplastered and floors uncovered.

  Robin the elder, friend of Christopher, had valiantly handled the sale of Simmy’s Troutbeck cottage, selling it for more than the original asking price, two weeks before Christmas. It had been on the market a mere ten days. ‘Of course, he’ll get a good share of the commission,’ Simmy reminded Christopher when he showed signs of going overboard with his gratitude. Try as she might, she wasn’t entirely able to like the man. Giving her baby his name had been an accident, on that first day. She’d been thinking almost entirely about cheerful little birds. And Robin Stirling had not after all found them a place to live. The barn had been – incredibly – just given to them by a woman in a rush to escape the area and all it meant to her. As a result they had more money than Simmy had ever thought possible, just sitting in a pathetically low interest bank account.

  Dawn was breaking, pink-tinged clouds racing across the fells, driven by the wind. Outside was the tiny settlement of Hartsop, a few miles south of Patterdale, itself another short distance from Ullswater and Glenridding. Simmy had never before seen it in spring, and the experience was intoxicating. She was working up a routine of bundling the baby into a sling and walking a mile or two along a rough track that ran alongside the beck to the southern tip of the lake. The first such walk had been on Robin’s eighth day, and Simmy had managed almost a mile, feeling light-headed with responsibility for the little life tied on her front, as well as exhilaration at this new phase of her life. She had repeated the walk three more times since then. Christopher worried that she would slip and fall, with Robin altering her centre of gravity. Before they’d moved here he had repeatedly insisted they get a dog. Now, with all this walking, it made even more sense. ‘A golden retriever,’ he begged. ‘Or an Irish setter.’

  ‘I can’t cope with a dog just yet,’ she always prevaricated. ‘Maybe in the summer.’

  The walking was growing more important to her with every passing week. Once she had got as far as the pub in Patterdale, taking almost an hour to gather her strength for the return walk and feeding the baby quietly in a corner. She could not see how a dog would enhance this experience. An Irish setter would run across the road and get killed. A retriever would want her to throw sticks for it. A terrier would chase sheep and a spaniel would get under her feet.

  It was a precious interlude, which she knew couldn’t last. Her flower shop down in Windermere was still functioning, with young Bonnie Lawson stepping up magnificently and a temporary woman brought in to help. That had been quite a moment, when Verity Chambers had come into their lives. In her fifties, with a broad Cumbrian accent, she was reassuringly compliant and co-operative. She let a girl less than half her age order her about with apparent contentment, never arguing or complaining. ‘It’s a miracle!’ Bonnie insisted. ‘I can’t get used to it at all. Ben says it’s all an act and she’s just biding her time before she takes over the whole business.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Simmy. ‘She’s just happy to let somebody else carry all the responsibility.’

  ‘But she does talk far too much, most of it total nonsense,’ Bonnie added.

  Verity knew more than enough about flowers to be an asset in the shop. But when it came to taking orders, with the timing often quite crucial, she was useless. Bonnie forbade her from answering the phone under any circumstances, or from going anywhere near the computer. But she could drive and knew her way around the region,
so she could be sent out with deliveries. Bonnie still showed no sign of learning to drive.

  Christopher woke shortly before seven to find Simmy and his son dozing together in the chair on the other side of the very large bedroom. Simmy had insisted on sitting by the big new window when she fed the baby because it looked out on a most spectacular view. ‘Hey, you two, come back to bed,’ he called.

  ‘Not worth it now,’ she said. ‘Young Sir is dead to the world. I’ll go and do us some eggs. My mother’s coming later on, when she’s finished the breakfasts.’

  ‘I remember.’ He got out of bed and joined them. ‘Looks like a nice day.’

  ‘I watched the sunrise. It was very pink. Shepherd’s warning.’

  ‘April showers, that’s all.’ He bent over them. ‘He’s going to look like my dad, isn’t he? Same neat little features.’

  ‘Too soon to say,’ said Simmy. ‘I can see my mother in him every now and then.’

  ‘She’ll be pleased about that.’

  ‘She’s just pleased, full stop.’ Angie Straw’s relief at the safe arrival of her only grandchild had been startling to them all. For a whole day, she simply wept, as if a tap had got stuck in the ‘on’ position. Her husband had walked her round the streets of Barrow in an effort to distract her, but in vain. She had rushed back to the maternity ward to check that she hadn’t dreamt the whole thing.

  Christopher left home at half past seven for the auction house in Keswick. The drive could take a full half hour if there was tourist traffic on the little road up to the A66. Already, since Easter, the volume of slow-moving cars was growing. The bidding didn’t start until nine-thirty, and Simmy never quite understood why he factored in so much time beforehand.

  But she was too busy to worry on this particular Saturday. ‘I’m going to paint some doors,’ she announced. ‘Humphrey’s going to be here just for a bit, getting everything ready for the dining-room wall. He says I’ve made a lot of extra work, insisting on it being double thickness. He’s calling it the Big Undertaking, which I think he thinks is funny.’

  ‘I don’t expect he really minds the extra work. He can see the logic.’

  ‘I can’t understand why he ever thought a flimsy partition would be good enough.’

  ‘He’s lucky we’re not making him build it of natural stone, like the outer ones.’

  Simmy grew thoughtful. ‘Did we even think of that?’ Despite her best efforts, the distractions of pregnancy, timings and inconvenient weather had forced them to take the quick and easy options in many instances. Christopher had shown little interest in the finer details. ‘I just want somewhere for us to live,’ he kept saying.

  Now he said, ‘Too slow and much too expensive. Personally, I think you can have too much natural stone. It’s not as if we live in the Cotswolds, where it’s so much nicer than what they dig out up here.’

  ‘Sacrilege!’ she scolded him. ‘Anyway, I thought I might do a bit of paintwork upstairs, while Robin has his morning nap.’

  ‘You should let them do it, you idiot. That’s what they’re for.’

  ‘Not at all. They’re builders, not painters. And I like doing it.’

  Christopher worried that paint fumes would be bad for his baby, or that somehow Simmy’s milk would be tainted. The entire Straw family mocked him for such needless worries. Once Robin had convinced them that he intended to live and thrive, they began to entertain very few anxieties. It was as if they’d used them all up before the birth, and now it was perfectly obvious that nothing could go wrong. Even Russell, who had slipped into a state of near paranoia in recent times, appeared to be cured of that condition now. He blithely approved of Simmy taking the child out in all weathers, of putting him near open windows or leaving him for ten minutes in the car. ‘That’s the way to do it,’ he yodelled. ‘Bring him up tough.’

  Simmy spent forty minutes painting a door frame before Robin stirred. Angie arrived at eleven, to find her daughter and grandson nestled in the new kitchen. The room had been planned to resemble that of an old farmhouse. It lacked an Aga or Rayburn but had an area at one end with easy chairs and a carpet close to a radiator that was not yet functional. Christopher frequently made the point that it was a perfect spot for a dog bed.

  ‘Guess what,’ Angie crowed. ‘I’ve just broken a taboo. It was intensely satisfying.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Facial hair on women, to be exact. Have you any idea how embarrassing people find that? It’s hilarious, especially in these days of so-called gender fluidity. I noticed this morning that I was getting a bit stubbly, and I said to one of the guests, as she was going out, “Wouldn’t it be great if society would allow women to grow beards?” Honestly – she didn’t know where to look.’ She laughed gleefully. ‘And your father was fantastic. He came up to me and stroked my chin, and said, “I think I might quite fancy that.” Made it all worse for the wretched woman, of course. She’s the type to spend half her money at a beauty clinic.’

  ‘She won’t be coming back to Beck View in a hurry, then,’ said Simmy.

  ‘I don’t care. It was worth it to see her face. I’m going to make a habit of it from now on.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Simmy.

  An hour passed in baby-worship, coffee, idle chat. ‘Are you staying for lunch?’ Simmy asked, at midday.

  ‘I am – didn’t I say? Or we could go to the pub. Your father says he’ll come up on the bus this afternoon. We can go and meet him. He was thinking we’d have to fetch him from Pooley Bridge, because that’s been the end of the line for the bus since they started those diversions, but it’s running normally again now. I left him compiling a long list of stuff to get from the cash and carry. We’ll go together on the way home.’

  ‘He won’t be staying long, then. Why didn’t he come with you this morning?’

  ‘He wasn’t ready. He’d spent ages going over maps with one of the guests and was all behind. And there were beds to change for this evening.’

  ‘Poor Dad,’ said Simmy regretfully. The demands of the popular bed and breakfast establishment were more and more burdensome, getting in the way of family matters now that Simmy lived so much further away. ‘The bus takes ages.’

  ‘He likes it. There’s always somebody to chat to. If he really minded, he’d get another car. We don’t have to manage with just one if we don’t want to.’

  ‘Except you haven’t got space for two. One of them would have to live out in the road.’

  ‘So what?’

  Simmy shrugged. ‘So nothing, I suppose. But I don’t think Dad would like it.’

  ‘Lucky he likes the bus, then.’

  They were going round in circles, but Simmy was made aware of a shift in the triangular dynamic of her family. She had always favoured her father, joking with him, reading his thoughts, sharing his preoccupations. But since the baby, her mother had grown much closer, with a new softness that surprised them all, including Angie herself. It was, of course, a cliché that the arrival of a baby brought the generations together. The surprise was that the maverick Angie Straw should conform to anything so objectionable as a cliché.

  They did not go to the pub but had a simple lunch, while Humphrey and his young assistant measured and marked, and started placing battens for the new wall. ‘I love all these smells,’ said Angie. ‘Paint and new wood. It takes me back to when your father and I had to have the floors replaced in our first flat.’

  ‘It’s nice having the builders here, now Christopher’s back at work. I might get a bit panicky all day on my own, otherwise.’

  ‘You’ll have to get over that,’ said Angie briskly. ‘The builders won’t be here for ever.’

  ‘I know they won’t. And they’re not here all day every day as it is. I just wish there were a few more neighbours, I suppose. Proper ones, not second-homers or holiday people.’

  ‘People are people,’ said Angie vaguely. ‘If you were in a pickle, you could just go to the door and shout, and a dozen hikers would
run to your rescue.’

  ‘True,’ said Simmy, wondering what that would actually be like.

  The phone rang shortly before two. ‘It’ll be your father with a change of plan,’ said Angie. ‘He always uses the landline.’ This was a slightly sore point between the two households. When the Hartsop house had requested the installation of Wi-Fi and Sky, an inevitable part of the package had been a fixed telephone line. Christopher had queried it, saying they could function quite well with mobiles, and there had ensued a lengthy harangue about signal reliability and system flexibility, which overrode any objections. ‘It can’t hurt, I suppose,’ said Simmy. Like her mother, she actually preferred using the time-honoured instrument, which was always sitting there on its stand, easy to find and easy to use.

  But it wasn’t Russell calling. It was a strange voice, asking for Christopher Henderson. ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid,’ said Simmy.

  ‘Ah. Well, tell him I called, will you? My name’s Fabian Crick – got that? He’ll remember me. Tell him I’ve come to remind him of his promise to me.’

  Simmy shivered slightly. ‘Promise?’ she echoed.

  ‘Right. It was a while ago now, but he won’t have forgotten. Your husband, or whatever he is, owes me big time. He made an undertaking, ten years ago now, and I’ve come to make good on it. You tell him that.’

  Simmy said nothing, but before she could end the call, there was a final remark. ‘Oh yes – and tell him I’m living in Ullswater now. Just up the road, in fact.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Angie.

  ‘Um … somebody who knew Christopher some time ago. He didn’t sound very friendly.’ She frowned worriedly. ‘And he says he lives just up the road.’

  ‘I dare say Christopher knows quite a few shady characters, one way or another,’ said Angie, as if that was perfectly fine with her. ‘I’m sure he can handle them. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Simmy, eyeing her baby son on his grandmother’s lap. ‘We need to go and meet Dad from the bus. It’s due in ten minutes, isn’t it? Then we can all go for a stroll through the village together.’