‘Ne’mind,’ says Roly, ‘don’t suppose anyone’ll notice.’
‘Oh good God,’ says Rufus, ‘she could have told us. How many people has she asked, do you know?’
‘Not that many, I don’t suppose. Not a lot of notice, after all. Hunt. Locals. You know.’
‘Oh, well, it could be worse, I suppose,’ he says.
‘No it couldn’t! I haven’t washed my hair in three days! All my slap’s at the bottom of my rucksack and there’s a hole the size of Tasmania in my pants.’
‘Don’t bend over, then.’
‘That’s some help. Thanks. Can we stop so I can brush my hair, at least?’
Roly sucks air through his teeth. ‘Think things kicked off an hour ago. Can’t really be much later than we already are.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Not much further,’ says Rufus. ‘See? We’re on the Stow road already. We’ll get signs in another couple of minutes.’
I glance back out of the window and see that our surroundings have changed dramatically. We’re driving fast along an undulating main road lined with majestic deciduous trees and a dry-stone wall that is so well-covered with lichen that it looks as though it’s been standing there since neolithic times. A wide green verge is broken at regular intervals by neat ditches a foot wide and six inches deep. Side-roads are announced by tidy black-and-white-painted Dick Whittington signposts that break the mileages down to quarter-mile distances. And suddenly, the place names are really, really foreign: The Slaughters; Lower Swell; Guiting Power; Shipton-under-Wychwood; Stow-on-the-Wold. I catch glimpses of thatch, of smokestacks and tiles made from a peculiar golden stone I’ve never seen before: not the strong gold of Gozo, but a gentle, silvery gold: palomino gold. And, despite the fact that we’re driving through a landscape I know to be early winter, it’s so – green. It’s like a kid’s been let loose with a paintbox and tried to come up with as many versions of the same colour as he can in half an hour. There’s lime green and lemon green, rusty green and green so dark it’s almost black. There’s eight shades of khaki and a good dozen of emerald. There’s pea and olive and grass (at least a score of grass), and gold and leaf, malachite and verdigris, bottle and sea, there’s green that flashes bright yellow when the sun breaks through the clouds and green that’s almost oily in the shadows.
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘What?’ says Rufus.
‘This.’
They both look a bit puzzled. ‘What?’
‘This! This view!’
‘View?’
I jerk my head at the scene out of the window.
‘Oh, that,’ says Rufus. ‘That’s not a view.’
‘Looks like one to me,’ I say.
‘No, no,’ says Rufus, as we swing off the main road on to a road signed Bourton Allhallows. ‘This is a view.’
As he speaks, the woodland comes to an abrupt end and I see that we are driving along the high back of a rolling hill some hundred and fifty metres high. And on either side, two river valleys meander broad and mellow under a sky so huge it feels as though you must be seeing beyond the horizon.
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘Sheep country,’ says Rufus.
‘Heythrop country,’ says Roly. ‘Best hunting in the world.’
The man’s obsessed. He’s like a surfing bore. Less decorative, though.
‘Wow,’ I say, again. I’m really lost for words. ‘So this is where you grew up?’
Rufus nods. ‘Learned to fish down there,’ he says, ‘and had my first sexual experience over in that field.’
‘Who was that, then?’ asks Roly.
‘Miranda Vaughan.’
‘Ah, Miranda,’ says Roly. ‘She was everyone’s first sexual experience, wasn’t she?’
‘You too?’
‘Pony Club camp, 1988. Asked me if I wanted to help her stuff her haynet. ’f’ya know what I mean.’
‘We hit a patch of stinging nettles,’ says Rufus. ‘Knees like blackberries for a week.’
‘Worth it, though.’
‘Oh, yes. Well worth it. I thought I was King Kong.’
‘Whatever happened to Miranda?’
‘London. Minor modelling career. Lucky escape from drugs hell. Welsh landowner. Tow-headed children. Ponies. Roofing problems.’
‘The usual, then.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Guys,’ I say, ‘I’m delighted to hear these details, but I need some advice here. What should I know before I walk into this party? Who are these people? What do I talk to them about?’
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ says Rufus unhelpfully. ‘I love you, so they’ll love you.’
‘Steady on,’ says Roly. ‘PDA, old chap.’
‘You are odd, Roly,’ says Rufus affectionately. He reaches over from the back of the seat and takes my hand. Instantly, I begin to feel better. Not that I’m some sort of little girl who needs Daddy to hold her hand or anything, but the solidarity’s good. ‘No-one’s going to expect you to sparkle, darl. Just be yourself.’
‘If I wanted advice from Cosmopolitan I’d have bought a copy. Be myself? Which self is that, then? Bookish self? Dancing on the tables self? Kitten-cuddling self? Trust-me-I’m-a-professional self? Weeping-over-tax-forms self? Which one would you like?’
‘Look: they’ll be curious. And they’ll probably suck up to you, at least for the time being.’
‘Which means?’
‘Uh?’
‘That they’ll stop, yes?’
‘Can’t expect people to suck up to you for ever,’ he says cheerfully.
‘Your mother’s managed it,’ Roly points out.
‘My mother is a very special person,’ says Rufus, and, thank God, I spot a note of irony in his voice.
‘That she is, old boy,’ says Roly. ‘That she is. Front or back, Roof?’
‘Back. Front’ll be crammed.’
Roly, who’s changed down to second, changes back up again and accelerates past a pair of monumental stone gateposts and another road sign that reads ‘Bourton Allhallows: House Only’. The verge has turned into a miracle of mown sward, the sort of grass that looks like it’s been woven rather than cultivated. It runs beneath a six-foot wall, which is, itself, topped by a magnificent topiary hedge in the shape of crenellated battlements, fortified, every fifty feet or so, by a circular turret. Oh my God. If this is what the hedge looks like, what the hell is behind it?
Actually, the hedge is, now I look more closely at it, a bit raggedy: the trees that constitute the topiary have got thinner with age and show skeletal branches through gaping holes. The wall, product of thousands of hours of high-level craftsmanship, bulges in places, and has even, at a couple of spots, fallen down altogether and been filled in with half-hearted concoctions of wooden stakes, chicken-wire and strands of barbed wire. Fair enough, I think, it’s a good few miles long, and keeping it up must be a similar task to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The wall curves off to the right and Roly changes down to take the corner. Another road sign flashes past: ‘Bourton Allhallows’, it says, ‘Please Drive Carefully’. And then, we’re in the village.
I get a shock. I am slap in the centre of a picture postcard again. The road we’re on cuts through the centre of a perfect triangular green, crosses a narrow little hump-backed bridge over one of those little duck-filled creeks you always fantasise you’re going to see your perfect children playing in one day. And surrounding the perfect green is a perfect village: all thatch and eaves and mullioned windows, tiny little front yards filled with cottage flowers. A fantasy pub, wooden benches and stone millwheels against the walls, to the right. The sort of village shop with the thirty-pane display window that Franklin Mint sell in miniature by the thousand every year, to the left. A squat, comely church, complete with bell tower, straight ahead. Clumps of bulrushes grow out of the stream, a majestic naked oak spreads anciently, a tumble of late roses spilling over a wall.
And then I get another shock. Because, att
ractive though the initial impact is, it is quickly discernible that, like the boundary wall to the estate, the entire village of Bourton Allhallows is falling down. The thatch on most of the cottages is so bare that you can see the wire that holds it in place. The lich gate of the church lurches at an impossible angle. There are no cars in the pub car park or on the track leading to it, and, on closer inspection, it is pretty obvious that not only is the shop not open today – it never is. In a less peaceable part of the world, those windows would be covered in weatherboard. Paint peels on front doors and window frames. It’s as though the people have simply upped and left. I shiver, but stay silent. I’ll find out later. No doubt.
Past the green, the estate wall swings back up to meet the road: rougher here, the hedging barely trimmed at all, woodland behind. Roly turns the Land Rover up the drive, through slumped white gates that I would guess haven’t been closed in fifty years, and we drive through the woods in silence. Rufus puts a friendly hand on my shoulder and I lean my cheek on it. I’m so nervous now my stomach is turning over and I can feel a twitch in my legs where all the muscles are telling me to turn tail and run. He kisses the top of my head.
‘Stay cool, darling,’ he whispers.
‘I am cool,’ I lie.
‘I know you are,’ he lies back. ‘Don’t worry. It’s going to be great.’
I turn and kiss him, give him a smile. Which plummets from my face as we emerge from the woods and I see my new home.
Chapter Thirteen
Simply Heaven
The ravens are the first thing I notice. Well, ravens, rooks, crows – they could be some kind of funereal local galah for all I know. Black birds, anyway, and scores of them, flying in and out of a hole in the roof the size of a Daimler. But I’ll call them ravens, because I feel a bit like Duncan approaching my doom, and for sure I have my very own Lady Macbeth waiting for me under those battlements.
Although the battlements are only metaphorical. My fantasies of drawbridges and fluttering pennants are dashed on the reality of a hotchpotch of roofs and windows spread out over a few acres of flat ground enclosed on three sides by the weedy arms of an oxbow lake. The fourth side is wall: four metres of flinted grey stone with a huge hole in the middle where the main drive sweeps into a gravelled courtyard. The wall, naturally enough, is on the south side of the house, and produces a deep patch of dank shade where a lawn ought to be. Several dozen cars have been crammed into the yard, and a couple of dozen more are strung out, tyres carving deep ruts in the damp grass, along the edges of the main drive.
‘Hell,’ says Rufus. ‘How many people did you say she’d invited, again?’
‘Looks like one or two,’ says Roly. ‘Glad to see you’ve got the moat filled up again, anyway.’
‘Yes. It did get a bit stinky. Dead fish and stuff.’
‘Did they ever work out what it was?’
‘Bizarre,’ he says. ‘They found a couple of cracks at the bottom, but nothing much else. He said they were probably quite deep and the whole lot had drained into them. Sealed them up with a couple of tons of concrete and it seemed to do the trick. Probably just one of those freak occurrences. It’s not like we’re in the earthquake zone or anything. Just have to keep our fingers crossed.’
‘Well, it’s just good to see the old place back on form,’ says Roly. ‘Always been a tad envious of you, old boy. Not many people have got to grow up in heaven.’
Rufus sighs. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ he says complacently. ‘Simply heaven.’
And I’m looking at it, and thinking: please don’t let them ask me to join in right now, because I’m not sure I have the self-control. Because if Bourton Allhallows is heaven, then God’s got some sense of humour. Bourton Allhallows isn’t heaven: it’s Gormenghast. It’s post-Danvers period Manderley.
Oh God. We’re closer now, close enough for me to see the forests of broken drainpipes, the great green slashes where years of rainwater have worked themselves into the walls. And – my blood runs cold – as I watch, a raven flies over the moat, and lands on what I’ve been trying to deny my eyes were seeing: the branches of a small tree that’s growing out of the hole in the roof. The branch bends beneath its weight, and the bird flaps its wings for balance, disturbing a handful of its roommates, which set off on a pivot of irritable flight.
A tree. There’s a tree growing through the roof of my new home.
Roly shifts down a gear as the road gets steeper towards the bottom of the valley, and says: ‘Seriously, Melody. You’re a lucky girl. Used to come and stay here in the hols. Happiest days of m’life. You can’t help but be happy in a place like this.’
I glimpse the stable block as we go past, behind another collapsed wooden gate. Unpainted doors hang off hinges, bits of dilapidated farm machinery lurking in the darkness beyond. Here’s what I see as we get closer. Window lintels leaning at drunken angles over split and peeling sills. Buddleia sprouting from cracks in masonry, and straggly lavatera bushes, six feet high, sprouting unchecked from the drains at the bottoms of rusting downpipes.
I crane upwards. There are boards across some of the upper-floor windows, close to the hole in the roof. And of the whole, I can make no sense at all. It’s as though every generation that’s passed through this building has felt it necessary to add a bit. A grim jumble of architectural styles tacked one on to the other with the carelessness that only bonded labour can achieve. And hanging over it all, yew trees; the sort of trees you see in boneyards: black, dense and dripping.
‘There we go,’ says Roly, cranking on the handbrake. ‘Roof, grab a couple of brace of those birds, will you? Seriously. You can hand them out to the poor or something if you can’t eat them.’
I don’t suppose the poor would be all that grateful for four rotting game birds with their feathers still on. I’d’ve thought they’d probably prefer a six-pack and some vouchers for Mickey D’s. But maybe the English poor are different from our lot.
I unlatch my door, step down on to slippery flagstones. Perkins, tail going like the clappers, stands up to exit with us. Roly shouts at him to stay.
‘God, let the poor chap have a pee, at least,’ says Rufus. ‘How long’s he been locked up in there?’
‘Suppose you’ve got a point,’ says Roly. ‘And he’s not touched any of the pheasants. Good chap. You’re a good old boy.’
The dog leaps down, trots off, tail pluming, in doggy fashion, to relieve himself against a yew tree.
Somewhere high above us, an overflow pipe trickles, the water arching out to splatter the widest possible area of the yard. Rufus looks up at it, sighs. ‘Damn. No-one’s sorted that out yet.’
‘Where’s it coming from?’
‘One of the lavatory overflows, I think. Just never been able to work out which one.’
‘How many are there?’
He shrugs. ‘Thirty-six that I can think of. Could be a couple more people have forgotten about. Bit of a habit of changing interior walls. We lost the chapel for a hundred and fifty years.’
‘Stop it. You’re just showing off, now.’
‘And there are at least three secret corridors.’
‘Can it, Wattestone.’
‘And a dungeon, though there’s not much left of it, given that it’s below the water table.’
I give him a look. He grins. ‘Welcome home, Mrs W. Bourton Allhallows salutes you.’
Roly pulls the handle off the back door. ‘Shit, sorry,’ he says.
‘N’e’mind,’ says Rufus. Takes the handle from him, lays it down on a moss-covered stone toadstool and opens the door with a hefty kick. ‘It’s not like it’s the first time.’
‘Jeez,’ I say.
‘It’s a family house,’ says Rufus. ‘They all have quirks.’
‘Got any ghosts?’ I ask.
‘Only eight or nine,’ he says dismissively. ‘You hardly ever see them.’
‘Well, which are the main ones?’
‘Um … there’s a nasty old bloke who wanders abou
t in the main courtyard at night with a knife. He tends to give people a bit of a shock if they don’t know about him. Otherwise it’s just the usual run of nuns and monks and fever victims.’
‘And Eloise,’ says Roly.
‘Oh, yes. Yes, you need to watch out for her. She can be a bit of a frightener.’
‘Who’s Eloise?’
‘Well, we’re not entirely sure. We call her Eloise after Heloise and Abelard, you know?’
All Greek to me so far. I nod, understandingly.
‘You’ll recognise her,’ says Roly, ‘from the long white nightdress and the fingernails.’
‘Fingernails?’
‘Sort of bloody stumps. The usual, in a walling-up.’
‘Huh?’
‘Nasty thing.’ Rufus pauses in the doorway. ‘Bit of a habit back there for a while. Probably four or five of them about the place: it’s one of the reasons you keep coming up against dead ends.’
‘What’s walling-up?’
‘Nasty sort of medieval murder. Punishment for recalcitrant brides, slutty daughters, that sort of thing. Family went in for it in a big way, apparently, though of course it was always a secret. Murder not being any more legal back then than it is now. They used to knock ’em out and stick ’em in a bit of corner, or cellar, whatever, and build a wall across them so they’d come to in the dark and starve to death.’
‘Scratching feebly at the bricks,’ says Roly, with more relish than I would say was strictly necessary.
‘God, that’s terrible.’
‘I know,’ says Rufus. ‘Well, people were pretty horrid back then. Constantly impaling each other and so forth.’
‘And your family made a habit of this?’
‘So the story goes.’
Roly’s big hand clamps heavily down on my shoulder. ‘So you’d better watch yourself, young lady,’ he leers into my face, and bellows with laughter as he sees me react.
We go inside. A long whitewashed corridor, patched with more damp. Off to our right, a huge furnace roars and burps, metal walls thundering as though there’s someone inside hammering to get out.
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