by P. D. James
Mrs Frensham’s questions were chiefly directed at Kim and were not difficult. What biscuits would she serve with coffee in the morning and how would she make them? Kim, immediately at ease, described her own recipe for thin spiced biscuits with currants. And how would she make profiteroles? Again Kim had no difficulty. Dean was asked which of three named wines he would serve with duck à l’orange, vichyssoise, and roast sirloin of beef, and what meals he would suggest serving for a very hot summer day or in the difficult days after Christmas. He gave replies which were obviously regarded as satisfactory. It had not been a difficult test and he could sense Kim relaxing.
It was Mrs Frensham who took them to the kitchen and afterwards turned to Kim and said, ‘Do you think you could be happy here, Mrs Bostock?’
Dean decided then that he liked Mrs Frensham.
And Kim was happy. For her, getting this job had been a miraculous deliverance. He remembered that mixture of awe and delight with which she had moved about the large gleaming kitchen, then, as if in a dream, through the rooms beyond it, the sitting room, the bedroom and the luxurious bathroom which would be theirs, touching the furniture in incredulous wonder, running to look out of every window. Finally, they had gone into the garden and she had flung out her arms to the sunlit view, then taken his hand like a child and gazed at him with shining eyes. ‘It’s wonderful. I can’t believe it. No rent to pay and we get our keep. We’ll be able to save both our wages.’
For her it had been a new beginning, filled with hope, bright with pictures of them working together, becoming indispensable, the pram on the lawn, their child running about the garden watched from the kitchen windows. For him, looking into her eyes, he knew that it had been the beginning of the death of a dream.
8
Rhoda woke, as always, not to a slow rise to full consciousness, but to an instant wakefulness, senses alert to the new day. She lay quietly for a few minutes, relishing the warmth and comfort of the bed. Before sleep she had partly drawn the curtains and now a narrow band of pale light showed that she had slept longer than expected, certainly longer than was usual, and that a wintry dawn was breaking. She had slept well, but now the need for hot tea was imperative. She rang the number listed on the bedside table and heard a male voice. ‘Good morning, Miss Gradwyn. Dean Bostock speaking from the kitchen. Is there anything we can bring you?’
‘Tea please. Indian. A large pot, milk but no sugar.’
‘Would you like to order breakfast now?’
‘Yes, but bring it, please, in half an hour. Fresh pressed orange juice, one poached egg on white toast, then wholemeal toast and marmalade. I’ll have it in my room.’
The poached egg was a test. If it came perfectly cooked, the toast lightly buttered and neither hard nor soggy, she could depend on good food when she returned for her operation and a longer stay. She would return – and to this room. Putting on her dressing gown, she went to the window and saw the landscape of wooded valleys and hills. A mist lay over the valley so that the rounded hilltops looked like islands in a pale silver sea. It had been a clear and cold night. The grass on the narrow stretch of lawn under her windows was pale and stiffened by frost, but already the misty sun was beginning to green and soften it. On the high twigs of a leaf-denuded oak three rooks were perched, unusually silent and motionless, like carefully placed black portents. Below stretched a lime avenue which led to a low stone wall and beyond it a small circle of stones. At first only the tops of the stones were visible, but as she watched, the mist rose and the circle became complete. At this distance and with the ring partly obscured by the wall, she could see only that the stones were of different sizes, crude misshapen lumps around a central taller stone. They must, she thought, be prehistoric. As she gazed, her ears caught the soft closing of the sitting-room door. Tea had arrived. Still gazing, she saw in the far distance a narrow strip of silver light and, with a lifting of the heart, realised that it must be the sea.
Reluctant to leave the view, she stood for a few seconds before turning and saw, with a small shock of surprise, that a young woman had entered noiselessly and was standing silently regarding her. She was a slight figure wearing a blue checked dress with a shapeless fawn cardigan over it, which proclaimed an ambiguous status. She was obviously not a nurse yet had none of the assurance of a servant, the confidence born of a recognised and familiar job. Rhoda thought she was probably older than she looked, but the uniform, particularly the ill-fitting cardigan, diminished her into childhood. She had a pale face and straight brown hair drawn to one side in a long patterned slide. Her mouth was small, the top lip a perfect bow so full that it looked swollen, but the bottom thinner. Her eyes were pale blue and a little protuberant under straight brows. They were watchful, almost wary, even a little judgemental in their unblinking scrutiny.
She said, in a voice which was more town than country, an ordinary voice with a hint of deference which Rhoda thought deceptive, ‘I’ve brought your morning tea, madam. I’m Sharon Bateman and I help in the kitchen. The tray’s outside. Do you want it in here?’
‘Yes, in a moment. Is the tea freshly made?’
‘Yes, madam. I brought it up immediately.’
Rhoda was tempted to say the word ‘madam’ was inappropriate but let it pass. She said, ‘Then leave it for a couple of minutes to brew. I’ve been looking at the stone circle. I’ve been told about it but didn’t realise that it was so close to the Manor. Presumably it’s prehistoric.’
‘Yes, madam. The Cheverell Stones. They’re quite famous. Miss Cressett says they’re over three thousand years old. She says stone circles are rare in Dorset.’
Rhoda said, ‘Last night when I was opening the curtain I saw a light flickering. It looked like a torch. It came from that direction. Perhaps someone was walking among the stones. Presumably the circle attracts a lot of visitors.’
‘Not that many, madam. I don’t think most people know they’re here. The villagers keep away. It was probably Mr Chandler-Powell. He’s fond of walking in the grounds at night. We didn’t expect him but he arrived last night. No one from the village goes to the stones after dark. They’re scared of seeing the ghost of Mary Keyte walking and watching.’
‘Who is Mary Keyte?’
‘The stones are haunted. She was tied to the middle stone and burnt there in 1654. It’s different from all the other stones, taller and darker. She was condemned as a witch. It’s usually old women who got burnt as witches but she was only twenty. You can still see the brown patch where the fire was. No grass ever grows in the middle of the stones.’
Rhoda said, ‘No doubt because people over the centuries have ensured that it doesn’t. Probably by pouring on something to kill the grass. Surely you don’t believe that nonsense?’
‘They say that her screams could be heard as far as the church. She cursed the village as she burnt, and afterwards nearly all the children died. You can see the remains of some of the gravestones in the churchyard, although the names are too faint now to be read. Mog says that on the date she was burnt you can still hear her screams.’
‘On a windy night, presumably.’
The conversation was becoming tiresome but Rhoda felt it difficult to put a stop to it. The child – she looked little more and was probably not much older than Mary Keyte had been – was obviously morbidly obsessed with the burning. She said, ‘The village children died of childhood infections, tuberculosis perhaps, or a fever. Before she was condemned they blamed Mary Keyte for the illnesses, and after she was burnt they blamed her for the deaths.’
‘So you don’t believe that the spirits of the dead can come back to visit us?’
‘The dead don’t return to visit us either as spirits – whatever that means – or in any other form.’
‘But the dead are here! Mary Keyte isn’t at rest. The portraits in this house. Those faces – they haven’t left the Manor. I know they don’t want me here.’
She didn’t sound hysterical or even particularly worried. It was
a statement of fact. Rhoda said, ‘That’s ridiculous. They’re dead. They’re beyond thought. I have an old portrait in the house where I live. A Tudor gentleman. Sometimes I try to imagine what he would be thinking if he could see me living and working there. But the emotion is mine, not his. Even if I persuaded myself that I could communicate with him, he wouldn’t speak to me. Mary Keyte is dead. She can’t come back.’ She paused and said authoritatively, ‘I’ll have my tea now.’
The tray was brought in, delicate china, a teapot of the same pattern, the matching milk jug. Sharon said, ‘I need to ask you, madam, about lunch, whether you want it served here or in the patients’ sitting room. That’s in the long gallery below. There’s a menu for you to choose.’
She took a paper from her cardigan pocket and handed it over. There were two choices. Rhoda said, ‘Tell the chef I’ll have the consommé, the scallops on creamed parsnips and spinach with duchesse potatoes, followed by the lemon sorbet. And I’d like a glass of chilled white wine. A Chablis would be fine. I’ll have it in my sitting room at one o’clock.’
Sharon left the room. Drinking her tea, Rhoda contemplated what she recognised as confused emotions. She had never seen the girl before nor heard of her, and hers was a face she would not easily have forgotten. And yet she was, if not familiar, at least an uneasy reminder of some past emotion, not keenly felt at the time but still lodged in some recess of memory. And the brief encounter had reinforced a feeling that the house held more than the secrets enshrined in paintings or elevated into folklore. It would be interesting to do a little exploring, to indulge once more that lifelong passion to discover the truth about people, people as individuals or in their working relationships, the things they revealed about themselves, the carefully constructed carapaces they presented to the world. It was a curiosity she had now determined to discipline, a mental energy she planned to harness to a different purpose. This might well be her last investigation, if one could call it that; it was unlikely to be her last curiosity. And she realised that it was already losing its power, that it was no longer a compulsion. Perhaps when she had rid herself of the scar it would have gone for good or remained as no more than a useful adjunct to research. But she would like to know more about the inhabitants of Cheverell Manor, and if indeed there were interesting truths to be discovered Sharon, with her obvious need to chat, might well be the one most likely to reveal them. She had booked in only until after lunch, but half a day would be inadequate even to explore the village and the Manor grounds, particularly as she had an appointment with Sister Holland to look at the operating theatre and recovery suite. The early mist presaged a fine day and it would be good to walk in the gardens and perhaps beyond. She liked the place, the house, this room. She would ask if she could stay until the following afternoon. And in two weeks’ time she would return for her operation and her new untried life would begin.
9
The chapel at the Manor stood some eighty yards from the east wing, half-obscured by a circle of speckled laurel bushes. Its early history and the date when it was built were unrecorded but it was certainly older than the Manor, a single plain rectangular cell with a stone altar under the eastern window. There was no means of lighting except by candles and a cardboard box of these was on a chair to the left of the door, together with an assortment of candlesticks, many wooden, which looked like discards from ancient kitchens and the bedrooms of Victorian servants. Since no matches were provided, the casual improvident visitor had to make his devotions, if any, without benefit of their light. The cross on the stone altar was crudely carved, perhaps by some estate carpenter either in obedience to orders or under some private compulsion of piety or religious affirmation. It could hardly have been on the order of some long-dead Cressett, who would surely have chosen silver or a more important carving. Except for the cross the altar was bare. No doubt its earlier furnishings had changed with the great upheavals of the Reformation, once elaborately festooned, later completely unadorned.
The cross was directly in Marcus Westhall’s sightline and sometimes for long periods of silence he would fix his gaze on it as if expecting from it some mysterious power, an aid to resolution, a grace which he realised would always be withheld. Under this symbol battles had been fought, the great seismic upheavals of State and Church had changed the face of Europe, men and women had been tortured, burnt and murdered. It had been carried with its message of love and forgiveness into the darkest hells of human imagining. For him it served as an aid to concentration, the focus of the thoughts which crept and rose and whirled in his mind like brown brittle leaves in a gusting wind.
He had entered quietly and, seating himself as usual on the back wooden bench, gazed fixedly at the cross, but not in prayer since he had no idea how to begin praying or with whom precisely he would be attempting to communicate. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to find that secret door said to be open to the lightest touch, and to feel this burden of guilt and indecision fall from his shoulders. But he knew that one dimension of human experience was as closed to him as was music to the tone deaf. Lettie Frensham could have found it. Early on Sunday mornings he would see her cycling past Stone Cottage, woollen capped, her angular figure pushing against the slight incline to the road, summoned by unheard church bells to some distant village church unnamed by her and never spoken of. He had never seen her in the chapel. If she came it must be at times when he was with George in theatre. He thought that he wouldn’t have minded if they had shared this sanctuary, if she had sometimes quietly entered to sit in companionable silence beside him. He knew nothing about her except that she had once been Helena Cressett’s governess, and he had no idea why she should have returned to the Manor after all these years. But in her quietness and calm good sense she seemed to him like a still pool in a house where he sensed that turbulent undercurrents ran deep, not least in his own troubled mind.
Of the rest of the Manor, only Mog attended the village church and was indeed a stalwart of the choir. Marcus suspected that Mog’s still powerful baritone at Evensong was his way of voicing an allegiance, at least partial, to the village against the Manor and to the old dispensation against the new. He would serve the interloper while Miss Cressett was in charge and the money was good, but Mr Chandler-Powell could buy only a carefully rationed part of his loyalty.
Apart from the altar cross, the only sign that this cell was in some sense set apart was a bronze commemorative tablet set in the wall beside the door:
TO THE MEMORY OF CONSTANCE URSULA 1896–1928,
WIFE OF SIR CHARLES CRESSETT BT, WHO FOUND PEACE IN
THIS PLAC.
BUT STRONGER STILL, IN EARTH AND AIR,
AND IN THE SEA, THE MAN OF PRAYER,
AND FAR BENEATH THE TIDE;
AND IN THE SEAT TO FAITH ASSIGNED,
WHERE ASK IS HAVE, WHERE SEEK IS FIND,
WHERE KNOCK IS OPEN WIDE.
Commemorated as wife, but not a beloved wife, and dead at thirty-two. A brief marriage, then. He had traced the verse, so different from the usual pieties, to a poem by the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, but made no enquiries about Constance Ursula. Like the rest of the household, he was inhibited from speaking to Helena about her family. But he found the bronze a discordant intrusion. The chapel should be simply stone and wood.
No other place at the Manor held such peace, not even the library where sometimes he sat alone. Always there was the fear that solitude would be interrupted, that the door would be opened to the dreaded words so familiar from his childhood, ‘Oh here you are, Marcus, we’ve been looking for you.’ But no one had ever looked for him in the chapel. It was strange that this stone cell should be so peaceful. Even the altar was a reminder of conflict. In the uncertain days of the Reformation there had been theological disputes between the local priest, who adhered to the old religion, and the then Sir Francis Cressett, who was inclined to the new ways of thought and worship. Needing an altar for his chapel, he had sent the male members of the ho
usehold at night to steal the one from the Lady Chapel, a sacrilege which had caused the rift between church and Manor for generations. Then, during the Civil War, the Manor had been briefly occupied by Parliamentary troops after a successful local skirmish and the Royalist dead had been laid out on this stone floor.
Marcus put thoughts and memories from him and concentrated on his own dilemma. He had to make a decision – and make it now – whether to remain at the Manor or to go with a surgical team to Africa. He knew what his sister wanted, what he had come to see as a solution for all his problems, but was this desertion a running away from more than his job? He had heard the mixture of anger and entreaty in his lover’s voice. Eric, who worked as a theatre nurse at St Angela’s, had wanted him to join a gay march. The quarrel was not unexpected. It wasn’t the first time that conflict had arisen. He remembered his words.
‘I don’t see the point of it. If I were heterosexual you wouldn’t expect me to go marching down the high street to proclaim that I was straight. Why do we need to do it? Isn’t the whole point that we have a perfect right to be what we are? We don’t need to justify it, or advertise it, or proclaim it to the world. I don’t see why my sexuality should be of interest to anyone except you.’
He tried to forget the bitterness of the quarrel that followed, Eric’s broken voice at the end, his face smeared with tears, the face of a child.
‘It’s nothing to do with being private; you’re running away. You’re ashamed of what you are, of what I am. And it’s the same with the job. You stay with Chandler-Powell, wasting your skill on a bunch of vain extravagant rich women obsessed with their looks when you could be working full time up here in London. You’d find a job – of course you’d find a job.’