Henry appeared through the scullery door, carrying a Tupperware container behind his back and making a beeline for the fridge. “Hey, Richard,” he said indistinctly, one hand over his mouth. “Thee, I just need to . . .”
“What are you eating? Is that cake?”
Henry shook his head. “No, no, Thee. It’s just one of Mrs. Choudhury’s pakhoras. You know how she never lets me leave without food.”
“How many have you eaten?”
“Well, ah . . .”
“I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
“Oh, ah, just one while I was there, then one on the way back, and then, ah . . .”
“She thinks I never feed you.”
“Richard, would you like one? They’re delicious.”
“Very fattening,” said Thea. “You should see how much she feeds the children: no wonder they’re over there all the time.”
“Oh, I see you’re onto the hard stuff already.” Henry tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, as Thea pulled the Tupperware out of his hands. “It’s great to see you here at last, by the way.”
Richard sipped his drink cautiously: Thea’s martinis were pretty near to pure gin, with olive. “It was good timing as far as work went. And of course I had real reason to be concerned about my brother’s and sister-in-law’s mental health. Seeing ghosts. Researching ghosts. Help was clearly needed . . .”
“Rubbish!” Thea reached out to snatch his martini back, and he swiftly lifted it into the air. Even sitting down, this was well out of Thea’s reach, and Henry was happy just to laugh.
“Now, Thee, you must watch that excitable Greek temperament—superstitious too, by the looks of things. Oh, now, that was pure temper. Pass the tea towel, Henry. You two owe me another martini.”
—
THAT EVENING, AFTER dinner, Richard, feeling uncharacteristically flat, stretched his legs out on the sofa in the sitting room. Ready for bed, and it was only nine-thirty. Must be his London hours catching up with him. Or more likely Thea’s martinis. Henry, a sheaf of papers in his hand, was murmuring with Thea: something about the ghost, no doubt.
Backlit by a silk-shaded lamp, with Thea, immaculately groomed, sitting on the floor and leaning on Henry’s knee to emphasize a point, and the boys for once not squabbling over their card game, they looked like a movie-screen family, too good to be true. He rested his head back against the cushions and watched them through half-closed eyes.
The image needed a title. Country Life at Bourne Abbey Lodge. Or maybe, This Could Have Been You. Well, there’s a thought. The room felt too warm now, to the point of oppressiveness, and he had a sudden craving for the cool blue space of his Chambers. Or maybe he just needed a cigarette. He got to his feet, signalling a watchful Thea and an oblivious Henry with two fingers to his mouth, and found his way outside via the scullery door.
The grind and snap of his lighter in the quiet of the garden was obscurely comforting, although it was certainly no cooler out here. The lawn stretched before him. He breathed in slowly and deeply, savoring fresh air and acrid smoke in equal measure.
In the still, moonlit air, smoke from his neglected cigarette curled into a luminous, almost vertical, stranded spiral, a DNA helix. Inheritance. You could run, but never escape. Well, hadn’t he proved that wrong? Henry was inheriting, and he, Richard Bourne, eldest son, was free of it forever, free to live his own life in London and pursue his chosen career. No crumbling wreck of an Abbey to blight his existence and tie him to the regions, none of the county social round to put up with come hell or high water.
He flicked the cigarette’s long ash tail and frowned. But he was here, wasn’t he? Back in, not quite the Abbey, but its Lodge. And in a month or two, he would be invited, knowing Thea, to a grand unveiling of the fully restored Abbey, now on the National Trust A-list, no less. He’d needed a break, but why hadn’t he gone down to Cowes, or flown to Paris for the weekend? The paperwork for Bourne Abbey was not so pressing that he couldn’t have dealt with it the next time Thea came down to London. So, why was he here, back on the family land, sorting out family problems again?
His sense of oppression was lifting with a little fresh air, and the unease that remained was probably just work-related. Yet he could think of nothing outstanding, nothing out of control. He prided himself, always had, on knowing exactly where he stood on all his current matters: no sprinting down from Chambers, gown flapping, for unprepared applications, or scrambling to hide sloppy preparation from his instructing solicitor and the Bench. No, it wasn’t work. And it wasn’t Thea, startling though her transformation was.
So why this discomfiting sense of something missing, or impending, that had been growing on him for the last few months? Something that he would have to rise to meet, or understand, that was outside of his experience. He squared his shoulders and glanced further, beyond the Lodge garden, toward the Abbey itself, invisible in the dark. But there was nothing untoward there: Henry’s ridiculous money-making plans, his avoidance of paperwork, were an irritation, no more.
Perhaps his work was a problem in a different sense: was he entering into that no-man’s-land of restless anxiety that so many senior juniors, waiting for the magical appointment to Queen’s Counsel, were said to suffer? He blinked slowly, reluctant to close his eyes to the sting of the smoke. No, not yet anyway: two more years at the earliest at his own estimate, though Sternbridge, his Chambers’ senior bencher, had hinted that a few more high-profile briefs from Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue could accelerate things somewhat. And certainly, until recently, he’d been happy to do just that. The Reid brief, where he was instructed to preserve and protect a family Trust, make it work as it should, was not his usual style: he was more an anti-Trust man, as the Americans would say.
The scullery door creaked open, and Thea emerged, her pearls shining in the moonlight. She had discarded her tailored jacket and the shirt underneath was sleeveless.
“Company?”
“Always a pleasure, Thea. Light?”
“No, trying very hard to give it away. Just let me smell the air. Aren’t ex-smokers pathetic? Never thought I’d join their ranks till I caught Jonathon playing with my pack. No moral high ground to tell him off, you see. And he knew it.”
“You’ll have plenty of distraction soon enough.”
Thea swung her arms out, then spun lazily, her heels scraping on the flagstones.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with ourselves when we have all that space at the Abbey. It seems almost unbelievable that it’s only a few months away now after—what? Five years of renovation and restoration. And no small thanks to your legal nous.”
“Nothing could have replaced your hard work, Thea.” Not to mention her family’s money. He hesitated. “I’m just glad that Henry—both of you—were willing to take on what I was not.”
“I’ve always wondered about that eldest-son thing, you know. If Henry hadn’t been so passionate about the Abbey, or if you hadn’t been able to break the Trust, would it really have been so awful for you to take it on?” She paused and, in the face of his silence, gave a husky little laugh.
Giving up hadn’t changed that. How strange that now, after eleven years, or was it twelve, she was so direct on the subject. Or was this sudden need for forgiveness, or closure, some kind of recognition, actually very timely, with all the hard work done and all she had wanted for so long, now close enough to touch?
His coming down at this juncture had had repercussions, caused anxieties, that he hadn’t fully appreciated. He squinted at the glowing end of his cigarette, taking in Thea’s guarded gaze and stopped breath, and made a conscious effort to throw sufficient emphasis into his voice. “Not in a million years.”
She gave a little jump, whether of unrelieved tension, or joy, or something else, he could not tell. But then her feet resumed their dance, and her voice thrummed lower and softe
r than before. “I’m not so sure I believe you. Oh, give me just one puff.”
He smiled, shaking his head, and stepped out of her charmed circle to flick the remains of the cigarette into the garden before heading inside. “Absolutely not, Thea. Think of your moral ground.”
—
AFTER THEA MADE noises about turning in, Richard went upstairs with Henry to do a dutiful look-in on Andrew and Jonathon, to find them fast asleep on the bedroom carpet under a tangled mess of duvets, sheets, and Twix and Mars Bar wrappers. The boys’ arms and legs were sticking out at odd enough angles to suggest a massacre. The video they’d been watching was long finished, and the battle scene from a re-colored El Cid was playing on the television.
While Henry pulled on duvets and unwound sheets, Richard scooped up the nearest body and tipped it into the top bunk, then stopped to watch the confrontation between a red-faced, red-crossed knight and a glamorous, dastardly infidel, speechifying with swords drawn under the green flag of Islam and Saladin.
“Great words. Henry, wasn’t this one of your favorite movies?”
Henry straightened to look. “Oh yes, wonderful stuff.”
“Yonder lies the castle of my father. Remember that line? Brought the house down.”
Henry tugged on a sheet that seemed to have wrapped itself completely around both a boy leg and a bunk leg, and had formed a granny knot. “Tony Curtis. But that wasn’t El Cid. It was Son of Ali Baba . . .”
“Who could have cast that pretty-boy Tony Curtis as a serious hero? Should have been Gregory Peck or this fellow with the beard.”
“Charlton Heston. No one laughed at him,” said Henry, sounding almost bitter.
“Here, I’ll pick him up and see if you can slide his leg out of the sheet. Looks like his brother tied him to the furniture.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said Henry. “Big brothers for you.”
—
OUTSIDE, A FITFUL moonlight shone down on the Abbey and its great estate, in darkness no longer shrunk by death duties and new roads to merely Park and Lodge. Night restored the ancient boundaries, when the Abbey lands encompassed Windsor Cottage, Lydiard village, Tregoze Church and the farmlands beyond, stretching to the gleaming line of the Stowe River on three sides and the first gigantic upward sweep of the Wiltshire Downs on the fourth.
In the back garden of Windsor Cottage, hutched rabbits slept, and snake bean and okra leaves drooped from the long summer’s day. In the center sat the compost heap, its smooth, even darkness at odds with the soft-edged asymmetries of bush and plant. It had been steaming all afternoon and the nearby cucumber frames dripped with condensation.
Perhaps because of the long hot spell, or Mrs. Begum’s failure to fork the heap over, or even possibly some process connected with the ancient, dense substance hidden within it, the heat of the pyramidal pile had climbed and continued to climb. There was enough heat radiating from it now to cause small rippling distortions in the single shaft of moonlight that fell on its peak.
Then a tiny wisp of smoke appeared at the topmost part of the heap’s cone. It rose, hung in the humid air. Just as it seemed about to disperse, another, slightly more definite coil of white appeared, then several more. The rich rotting scent of the compost began to be superseded, then swamped, by another smell, a powerful sweet bitterness.
The wisps became larger, more frequent, and merged into a continuous flow of white that moved steadily from the peak and down the sides of the mound, spreading out over the grass and vegetable garden toward the patio doors and beyond.
Before an hour had passed, the smoke had formed a dense white duvet that covered the lawns and had begun to flow down the hill toward the river, and along the side lane toward the High Street. The sleeping village, the Lodge and the Abbey itself, all lay in its path. Inside the cottage, Dr. Choudhury was once again snoring in his study chair, legs apart and covered in swathes of a pink and gold sari, his right hand resting on its pallu. A bitter scent drifted through the open window. He dreamt of material beauty: silk georgettes softer than velvet, damasks revealing the subtlety of their designs in candlelight, wedding lehengas so thick with gold wire embroidery that they could stand up on their own.
And then there he was: standing at the lectern in the Sheldonian Theatre, giving the Chancellor’s opening speech to two thousand students and wearing, with his professor’s bonnet, a most outstanding silk chiffon sari, deepest pink over a matching blouse, both spangled with gold wire, iridescent sequins and glass beads. He could feel the swinging weight of the embroidery as it pulled on the chiffon. He gloried in how it must look under the lighting and knew that every videoing parent would preserve him for posterity.
His speech concluded, and the students stood and gave three cheers, throwing their mortarboards into the air. Bowing graciously, the cynosure of all eyes, he turned on his heels to sway gracefully offstage, anticipating the crowd’s reaction when they saw the sari’s magnificent pallu, encrusted with gold and precious stones, as it followed the sinuous curve of his back . . .
—
MRS. BEGUM, HEADACHEY even in her sleep and, despite the heat, cocooned in three-quarters of the marital duvet, also dreamt of beauty: the beauty of a perfect traditional wedding, with all the modern trimmings as well. At least twenty thousand pounds’ worth. And she was somehow the perfect bride (young, beautiful, virginal, arranged, with lustrous hair and eyes so long and dark they hardly needed kohl) as well as being the bride’s mother. She sailed triumphantly past envious aunties and neighbors in full knowledge of the perfection of the match, the super-abundance of the food, the enormousness of the dowry, the impressiveness of the in-laws, and the surpassing weight of the wedding gold (six kilos, nah) being heroically carried on head, neck, nose, ears, wrists and ankles by that perfect bride.
Mrs. Begum wriggled with pleasure at the sight, then moaned quietly as the white stretch limousine drew into view, to take away the bride and groom. Off to Mustique for their honeymoon, like Princess Margaret.
—
UP AT THE Lodge, Richard had delayed going to bed until Henry and Thea had settled in for the night, idling over the paper while goodnights were said and warnings were given, as always, about the dodgy downstairs loo. Then he went outside for one last cigarette in the certain, luxurious knowledge that he would not be interrupted. The usual evening breeze had failed to appear, leaving the garden still warm, although, strangely, he thought he could glimpse a bit of mist about. A hot day tomorrow then. He thought with resignation of the sofa bed and the single duvet, nylon-filled and covered by a pilling polyester Batman, that waited for him in the study. Christ knew how he was going to get to sleep at all.
But when he finally lay down in the Lodge’s study, the masked avenger sitting clammily across his chest, and his own feet hanging over the bed end, he fell into sleep as suddenly and heavily as falling off a cliff. He occasionally came to, disturbed by cravings for nicotine and his king-sized mattress in Knightsbridge, breathed in the sweet, smoky atmosphere, then dozed and woke and slept again, returning each time to confused dreams of omission and failure.
In the Abbey Rohimun woke from a nightmare of fire and destruction to a painfully full bladder. She eyed the Tupperware container Tariq had given her for emergencies. No way.
The green velvet hangings were silver-grey in the moonlight, and a night breeze bellied them out as if the old house was breathing. Hundreds of men and women must have wakened like her, in this room in the night. Had any of them been exiled, she wondered, out of favor on some royal whim or error of judgement. Perhaps they spent their time here waiting on a message, not knowing whether to expect pardon or condemnation. Perhaps they were relieved to be exiled, free from all the pressure of having to keep other people happy. At least they had chamber pots, not bloody Tupperware.
She wriggled out of sleeping bag and camp bed, stood, then stretched her arms over her head and arched
backward to get the kinks out. Oh, for a decent bed. She creaked open the door and trotted cautiously down the corridor to the bathroom.
But once she was back, she wasn’t sleepy. She moved to the window and looked out. Moonlight, titanium white, flickered between bands of scudding summer cirrus, strobing the garden’s topiary creatures into almost-life. The giant yew hedge, darker than the night, loomed like a wall between her and the rest of the world. A greyish-white mist had crept up from the river and over the lawn, spreading out as if to encircle the Abbey.
She needed some fresh air. Rohimun wiggled open the window and leaned out to take a deep breath. The air was smoky and bitter tonight, like wet leaves burning, and made her think of gardens, and gardeners. How satisfying to create a garden like that spread out below, to know that at least some of it would last for generations. How many paintings did that, out of all the dross that was produced. Nothing of hers, for sure. Not yet.
While she was still a student, and Dad had just started to get involved with Bourne Abbey, he had told her some of the stories of the Abbey and the people who had stayed in this room. The famous Victorian Islamic convert Lord Headley Al-Farooq. The colonial adventurer and translator Marmaduke Pickthall. Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who had been buried upright facing Mecca on her Scottish country estate. Poor artistic Edward Lear, so fat and lonely. And now her. Rohimun turned to look at the great bed. It was testered in a deep green velvet, which also covered the undulating down mattress, fifty years old at least. Her camp bed squatted next to it, runt-like, the repository of all the bad dreams that had followed her from London.
She shivered again and pulled her tracksuit top down over her tummy. It slid back up, exposing a roll of flesh to the cold. What was the difference between her and Lear anyway? She turned away from the window and aimed a vicious kick at the camp bed. Fucking hell that hurt. The camp bed took off like a rocket with the force of her kick, sliding over the floorboards until it had almost disappeared from view under the great bed’s green coverings.
A Matter of Marriage Page 18