I nodded. ‘By lunchtime, I hope. I haven’t got that much to do on it.’
Her smile was very bright. ‘That’s wonderful! Well—’ she pressed her hands together, ‘—we must certainly make sure that your car is ready for you when you need it. But as I say—don’t worry about it. Leave it with me.’
I would, I said. Soon afterwards I wished her goodnight and went upstairs.
In my room I read until almost eleven then changed into my dressing gown and turned on the television. Just a few moments later Carl knocked at the door and came in carrying a tray with a glass on it.
‘Mrs. Weldon sent me up with your drink, sir . . .’ He put the glass down and went away again.
I sat sipping the drink while I watched a film: Don’t Look Now. It had just reached the part where the young wife was running through the streets of Venice in search of her husband when the door opened again.
Catherine came into the room.
She spoke no word at all, just moved forward, turned off the set, took the empty glass from my hand and kissed me long and sweet on the mouth.
* * *
Once again I discovered with her that same miraculous liberty of feeling and expression. It was a sexual freedom I had never known before my arrival at Woolvercombe House, a feeling that once more amazed me with the power and the daring it gave; and tonight, because of the preceding night’s happening, it was even stronger.
When at last it was over and I lay on the bed recovering my breath I glanced across and saw through sweat-glazed eyes that Catherine had put on her nightdress and was preparing to leave. I gestured to her to wait, but she just shook her head and mouthed some words I couldn’t catch. The next moment she had gone from the room.
Chapter Twelve
I muttered an answer to Carl’s smiling ‘Good morning, sir,’ as he placed a cup of coffee on the bedside table. He moved then to the courtyard window and drew back the curtains. Sunlight sliced into the room. It was almost eight-thirty.
‘Is there any news of my car?’ I asked him. ‘I’m expecting to be leaving this afternoon.’
‘I’m so sorry, sir . . .’ He shook his head. ‘—I’ve been looking for the keys but I haven’t found them yet.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said irritably, ‘they’ve got to be somewhere. What happens if you can’t find them?—maybe he took them away with him . . .’
‘Oh, no, sir, I don’t think Sam would have done that. I’m sure we’ll find them, sir. I’m just about to start looking in his room. The trouble is, he left it in such a terrible mess. It’s not going to be easy to find anything in there.’
‘Well, if you can’t find them I’ll just have to get new ones cut,’ I said, ‘—which is a job I could do without.’
‘Oh, no, sir. Don’t worry, sir. I’m sure it will be all right.’
‘I hope so.’ My tone was grudging.
* * *
Anxious to get going on the portrait I was in the studio well before ten and getting my materials ready for work. Then, my preparations finished, I sat down in front of the easel and waited for Catherine to appear.
Half an hour went by before I eventually heard approaching footsteps and the sound of the door opening. When I looked round, though, it was Mrs. Weldon who came into the room.
‘Oh, Mr. Rigby—’ she shook her head as she walked towards me, ‘—just about nothing seems to be going right!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Poor Catherine—I’m afraid she’s just had a rather nasty fall.’
‘Oh, no! What—what happened? Is she hurt?’
‘Fortunately, no. It doesn’t appear so, anyway. Dr. McIntosh is with her now. She tripped, it seems—whilst going down the stairs. I’m surprised she wasn’t badly hurt—it must have been quite a tumble. As you can imagine, she’s very shaken.’ She sighed. ‘So that, I’m afraid, has put paid to her sitting for the portrait today. Oh, dear, Mr. Rigby—you’re having all these holdups . . .’
‘That can’t be helped, can it. The important thing is that Catherine’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course. She’s in her room now. Dr. McIntosh insists that she remains there for the rest of the day—and just takes things easy. She’ll be all right by tomorrow, I should think.’ She smiled. ‘So you’ll be able to get the picture finished then.’ As she spoke she edged forward and took a little covert sideways glance at the canvas. ‘D’you think I could have a tiny peep at it?’
‘By all means.’
I watched as she stood before the easel and gazed up at the canvas. She nodded appreciatively. ‘It’s so good,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait till it’s finished.’ She turned and smiled at me. ‘You are a clever man.’
When she’d gone I took a brush to the canvas and added a little to the background. I was tempted also to add a few touches to the figure itself. But I managed to hold off. I’d learned from past experience that such a course was fraught with dangers. Be patient, I urged myself, till Catherine’s able to pose again.
I was passing through the hall a little later when Carl came to me from the direction of Mrs. Weldon’s study.
‘Oh, Mr. Rigby, sir . . .’
I stopped. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m afraid I still haven’t found the keys to your car—but I’m still looking.’
‘Thank you.’ I waited a moment longer but he didn’t seem to have anything to add so I gave him a brief nod and went out into the courtyard.
Moving towards the grounds at the rear, sketchbook in my hand, I ignored the route I had previously taken and instead took the path to the right that ran alongside the kitchen gardens. At the end of the gardens I carried on, moving in a south-westerly direction. A few minutes later I was in the thick of the grounds’ wilderness. The path here, though, unlike the one I had taken before, had been maintained.
The day was so warm. All around me was that quiet so typical of English summers in the country. Birds called and bees hovered, buzzing; the air was full of the scent of ripeness. The day was like a heavy, full-blown rose. Ambling slowly along the path I came upon an arbour; there must be several of them about the place, I thought. This, like the one I had seen before, had probably once been a neat, well-tended little spot; now like the other it had been allowed to go to ruin. Neglect and the wild-growing plants had long ago taken over.
Just a few yards further along I came to the banks of the stream. The bridge across it here, however, was no makeshift job like the one further over to the east. This one was wider, solid-looking and had a wooden rail. After a moment’s hesitation I stepped onto the bridge and walked over to the other side. There the path forked, one branch going off to the left, and the other to the right. I stood there for a few moments looking around me, then, turning, I started off back the way I had come.
When I reached the rose arbour once more I stepped down from the path and crossed the uneven white flags towards a stone bench that stood in the shelter of a crumbling wall. I sat down, stretching out my legs before me. The house was somewhere over to my right. Turning, I craned my neck to catch some glimpse of it. It was quite hidden, though.
A few yards in front of me in the centre of a circular shallow well was a statue of a small naked boy. He stood, arms outstretched, on the back of a turtle. Moss and lichens obliterated the details of the stone carving, and the top of the boy’s head was marked white with bird-droppings. At one time, clearly, the shallow well had held water, the boy riding in the centre of it. Now he and his turtle were land-bound.
I found the statue enormously appealing and opening up my sketchbook I began to make a drawing of it. I worked carefully, totally absorbed.
Forty minutes later it was almost done. A few more touches, a final glance at it—to check, and I closed the book and got up from my seat.
It was just as I reached the steps leading up to the path that I heard
the sound of women’s voices.
I stayed where I was, listening. For a while there was nothing more and then there came a little burst of laughter followed by a murmur of conversation. The voices came from the right, on the path leading from the house.
Moving up the steps I looked through a screen of privet and dog roses and saw figures approaching. At once I stepped back into the shelter of the arbour. There, peering out, I watched as they drew near.
There were the five of them, walking in single file. I stood very still, watching and listening while the three in front drew level, passed within a couple of feet of me and disappeared from view. Not far behind them came the remaining two. As they drew abreast of the arbour’s entrance one of them stopped, her companion coming to a halt a few feet further on, waiting. Against the lush green of the tangled thicket their black habits had an almost surrealistic appearance. Their faces were hidden from me but I could see quite clearly that the nearest woman was fumbling in the folds of her habit. I watched as she bent down her head. There came the sharp hiss of a match being struck and then the woman who waited said in a heavy cockney accent:
‘For Christ’s sake don’t let them catch you. You know what they said about smoking . . .’
The one nearest to me straightened and as she did so I saw a little wisp of smoke float up into the air above her head and drift away.
‘Aw, fuck ’em,’ she said. ‘Who gives a shit anyway. I’ll be glad when this caper’s finished with.’
Chapter Thirteen
I went to see Catherine in her room that afternoon. I’d asked Mrs. Weldon whether I might and she’d at once replied, smiling warmly, that she was sure Catherine would greatly welcome such a visit.
It was close on four o’clock when I tapped on Catherine’s door, and at the sound of her voice I went in to find her sitting in a high-backed armchair, reading a book. She was wearing a long, loose-fitting deep-blue robe that buttoned high at her neck. Her dark hair fell flowing past her shoulders. Her feet, clad in slippers, were raised on a footstool before her. She put her book down as I approached, and smiled up at me. I leaned down, kissed her softly on the cheek and then sat in the chair facing her.
‘So how are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Oh, okay . . . A bit of a fraud actually—just sitting around and loafing all day. I mean, I didn’t break any bones or even bruise myself—’ here she put up a hand and gingerly touched her crown, ‘—apart from a bump on the head.’
‘You were lucky,’ I said. ‘Thank God it was no worse. How did you come to fall?’
‘I don’t know really. I just—missed my footing, I suppose. It was awful. I just seemed to—plunge down. And I must have been knocked out because I can’t remember anything else until I woke up in here, lying on my bed.’ She gave a rueful little smile. ‘I do feel all right now, though—but the doctor insists that I rest. He’s such an old fusser.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.’
‘I suppose so. But I hate the thought of stopping you getting on with the painting. I know how eager you are to get it finished and get on your way again.’ She eyed me keenly as she said this last.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, shrugging, ‘—I’m not going anywhere until my car’s mobile again.’
We exchanged a few words on the unresolved matter of my car keys and following that I managed to bring the subject around to the nuns. They’d been on my mind ever since that morning when they’d passed me by as I’d stood in the rose arbour. I wanted to say to Catherine now that their behaviour had struck me as being very un-nun-like—but instead I limited my comments to their reclusiveness, and asked whether she knew anything at all about them.
‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘I told you—I haven’t even spoken to them.’
‘So you’ve no idea where they’re from—or where they’ll be going when they leave here . . .’
‘No. Why should I? The whole thing’s nothing to do with me.’ She looked at me with puzzlement in her face. ‘Why are you so curious about them?’
I debated for a moment whether or not to tell her what I’d heard whilst standing in the rose arbour. But I decided not to. What business, I asked myself, was it of mine . . . ?
‘It’s just—idle curiosity, that’s all,’ I said. ‘There’s something about nuns that I find intriguing. Perhaps it’s something to do with that cool, unemotional facade they present to the world. One never knows what’s going on behind it.’ I paused then added: ‘I think there’s something really rather—sinister about them . . .’
‘Sinister!’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Ah, that’s a shame you say that—when they’re obviously harmless, devout—and rather pathetic creatures.’
It was quite clear to me, looking into Catherine’s open, honest face, that she didn’t know anything more about the nuns than she’d claimed to. Here she was describing them as devout and pathetic . . . Well, whatever they might be, I thought, I somehow doubted that those particular adjectives applied . . .
I thought more about the nuns when I lay in bed that night. I’d drunk the nightcap that Carl had brought and already the haziness of sleep was stealing over me; it was working much better tonight. In spite of the drink, though, it seemed for a while that my memory of the nuns might get the upper hand and keep me awake. It didn’t. Soon I slept.
* * *
‘You look as though you’ve had a really good night’s sleep, sir,’ Carl said.
He had just awakened me with my morning coffee and now stood facing me at the foot of the bed.
‘I did,’ I said shortly. I couldn’t return his smile. After a moment he added, still smiling slightly:
‘We couldn’t find your keys, sir. I’m so sorry . . .’
I fought down my rising irritation. ‘Oh, I see. Oh, well, then—there’s nothing for it but to get new ones cut tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘—And by the time that’s been done and then my car’s been fixed it could take up the whole day!’ I shook my head in exasperation. ‘Have you really looked for them?’
‘Oh, yes, sir . . . I think perhaps Sam must have taken them after all.’
‘Well, why would he do a thing like that? Have you tried to get in touch with him?’
He shrugged. ‘We can’t. We don’t know where he went.’
‘You don’t know where he went?’
‘No, sir.’
He looked at me for a moment longer then turned and went from the room.
How odd it was, I thought—that whole business with Sam. Not for a moment could I condone his behaviour with Catherine, but it still struck me as rather strange that after all his many years of service he should so be dismissed—at a moment’s notice. Strange, too, that apparently no one knew where he now was. Yes, very odd. But there, I reflected, it wasn’t the only odd thing about this house and its inhabitants.
* * *
Catherine arrived in the studio just after ten. She stood with her back to the closed door for a second then came over to me. I put my arms around her and lightly kissed her. Holding her then at arms’ length I looked at her as she smiled up at me. ‘You don’t look any the worse for your fall,’ I said, and she agreed: ‘No, I don’t. And I feel really good.’
She took her pose then and I wasted no time in getting to work. Three hours later I put down my brush with a gesture of finality and grinned at her triumphantly.
‘It’s finished.’
She got down from the dais and gazed up at the painting. This was her first view of it and I watched her face, studying her reaction. She stood silent and unmoving for some time, then she said simply:
‘. . . Beautiful . . . It’s just beautiful.’
The pleasure I took in her reaction added to that pleasure that already came from my sense of achievement. The portrait, I k
new, was about the best I had ever done. After a while she said, still looking at the canvas, ‘So now it’s done—and soon you’ll be leaving us.’
‘Yes.’
‘I shall be sorry to see you go . . .’ She still didn’t face me. ‘But you’ve got your real life to get on with, haven’t you? We’re just two people who—who’ve been thrown together for a few days and now, as people do, we have to go our own ways . . .’
‘Yes . . . I suppose that’s about it . . .’
She turned then, her mouth touched by a sad little smile. ‘Shame . . .’ she said. Then she added, softly:
‘But there’s still tonight.’
‘Yes . . . there’s still tonight.’
* * *
Armed with pencils and sketchbook I left my room again that afternoon and, notwithstanding all the unexplored space available to me at the front of the house, chose once more to cross the courtyard towards the grounds at the rear. I followed the path to the left, the one I had first taken, passing between the lawns and the yew shrubbery and moving in the direction of the birches. Beyond them I pressed on along the narrow choked way until I came to the stream with the old makeshift bridge. Standing looking across to the other side I realized that Mrs. Weldon’s request to me to give the nuns their privacy now only made me more curious . . .
I stood there in the stillness of the afternoon’s heat. The only sounds were the humming of insects, the calls of birds, and the ripple of the water below the bridge. After a while I put out my foot and tested the planks—and decided they would bear my weight. A few more moments of hesitation and I hurried over to the other side.
Here I found that the formal path ended, the way continuing only as a little-worn track, hardly discernible in the undergrowth. Then after a short distance where the trees grew taller and thicker I came suddenly into a wide grassy space. There I saw, rising up from a nest of brambles in its centre, a tall edifice of grey stone. It was a tower—some kind of folly, I thought. As I stood and gazed at the great phallic shape I wondered briefly why I hadn’t seen any sign of it before, but then I saw that its base stood low in a hollow in the ground so that its top was hidden by the surrounding trees.
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