‘… younger sons …’
‘So tell me, Melody,’ says Edmund, ‘Mary says you’re something medical.’
‘Not really. Strictly alternative.’
‘Ah. You’ll not find a lot of call for that sort of thing around here, I’m afraid. It’s mostly shotgun wounds and broken limbs in Heythrop country.’
‘Dog bites,’ Roly interjects.
‘The odd bull-goring.’
‘Not a lot of use for the laying-on of hands. Mostly stitches and tetanus boosters.’
‘Well, I can speed up the healing process, at least.’
A familiar voice speaks up at my elbow. ‘Healing process? Melody, I hadn’t taken you for a psychobabbler.’
Oh hell. Mother-in-law alert. I slap a smile on, turn to face her. ‘Mary. Not psychobabble. Physical healing.’
She’s wreathed in smiles herself. Gives me a perfumy, powdery kiss on the cheek and a squeeze on the upper arm. ‘Well, thank heaven for that! I had visions of myself stumbling over pro-lesbian meditation encounters every time I went into the drawing room.’
Rufus seems to be having a boxing match with a couple of blokes who look like they might originally have been constructed out of modelling putty for a kiddies’ show on TV. They are being cheered on by a young woman with front teeth you could cut logs with.
‘Don’t worry, Mary,’ I attempt a joke, ‘I’ll just start things off slowly with the Wednesday-night know-your-vagina group.’
I really don’t know my own mouth, sometimes. The smile congeals on Mary’s face, and Edmund titters.
‘Oops,’ I say. ‘Maybe I should have kept quiet about that until you’d got used to the naturism.’
Mary recovers, and gestures to the thin man, who’s accompanied her over from the steps. ‘Hilary Crawshaw,’ she says. ‘Melody Wattestone.’
‘Katsouris,’ I correct her. There’s a visible gulp. Hilary, who wears an elegant grey suit with a tiny peak of spotted handkerchief sticking out of the top pocket, brushes my fingers with his. ‘How do you do?’ he says. ‘And congratulations.’
This one’s going to have to go straight on to my avoid list.
‘I say,’ says Roly, ‘aren’t you supposed to wish the bride good luck? I thought it was the chap who got congratulated.’
Hilary ignores him. ‘Many, many congratulations,’ he repeats. I’ve heard about the bitchy queens that aristocratic ladies gather around them to take them to art galleries. I think I’ve just met my first one.
‘Hilary,’ I say. ‘Hey, isn’t that a sheila’s name?’
The fingers freeze against my palm. ‘In Awstralia, perhaps,’ he bats back.
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he says. ‘I always holiday in Florence, myself.’
‘Hilary is an authority on fine art, aren’t you, darling?’ says Mary. Like I wouldn’t have guessed. ‘He used to stay with Harold Acton all the time.’
Well, that went straight over my head.
‘Wonderful parties,’ says Hilary. ‘The thought of the Villa La Pietra overrun with American students …’
‘Never mind,’ says Mary.
‘Never mind,’ I say.
‘I heard he was a frightful old poof,’ says Edmund. ‘Always jumping on Wykehamists.’
‘Oh, but the collections,’ says Mary. Then: ‘How was your trip? I’m so sorry there was no-one there to meet you. If you’d rung, we’d have been queuing up to come and get you.’
‘That’s so sweet.’
‘Non-sense,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving family hanging about at airports. Isn’t that so, Edmund, darling?’
‘Well, no, darling,’ says the husband, ‘except that you were knee-deep in sausage rolls all morning.’
‘It was fine. We bumped into Roly on the train, so there wasn’t a problem getting here.’
She slips an arm through mine. Pats me on the forearm. It must look great from the outside: it’s only me that can feel the stiffness in the gesture, the way she holds herself so that as little of her body is touching me as possible. ‘Well, welcome, my dear. It’s so good to have my boy home at last. Have you met the rest of the family, yet? Have you met our neighbour, Cressy Lambton?’
I find myself facing a tall woman with a weatherbeaten face. She wears her hair short and shapeless, fringe hanging in her eyes like a Shetland pony’s, and not a scrap of makeup. Her party clothes consist of green slacks with a puffed-sleeved white shirt over which she sports a padded jerkin of the sort people usually wear to shoot things in. I don’t mind telling you, Cressy’s as ugly as a hatful of arseholes.
‘How do you do?’ she says, and wrings my hand like it’s the neck of a wounded rabbit.
‘How’s it going?’
She looks a bit nonplussed at this enquiry. ‘All right,’ she says, after considerable thought.
‘Good,’ I say.
We stand there awkwardly, both of us trying to think up a topic of conversation.
Eventually, Cressy begins: ‘So do you hunt?’
‘I – no. I’m afraid not. I’ve never had the opportunity.’
‘Oh,’ she says.
I’ve never seen anyone lose interest in anyone else so quickly. Her eyes, literally, glaze. She starts to goggle about the room. Looks at her watch.
‘Good God,’ she says, ‘is that the time? Dogs need feeding.’
‘OK,’ I say.
‘Sorry,’ says Edmund, looking at her retreating back, ‘Cressy’s rather limited on the conversation front, I’m afraid. Still. You must meet the rest of the family. Tilly and Beatrice are waiting with bated breath.’
I glance back over at the sofa. Tilly doesn’t look like she’s waiting for anything much except maybe another bowl of those twig things. I know she’s pregnant and all, but she does look alarmingly like a milch cow, unhurriedly chewing cud and gazing off into the middle distance. Of Granny Beatrice all I can see is a bobbling confection of pale blue netting and silk flowers. I look around for support, but Rufus is occupied, looking at the diary of a woman so blonde that I suspect that there might be a small collection of leather lampshades in her attic. There’s no way I’m going to go and meet a woman in a hat while I’m wearing cheesecloth.
‘I’d love to meet them,’ I say. ‘Would it be a lot of hassle if I just popped off and changed my clothes, first, though? I wasn’t expecting a party.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Mary, eyeing my unbrushed hair and the coffee stain on my jeans. ‘You look perfect.’
‘I’m sure,’ says Edmund, ‘they’d much rather meet you sooner than later. Come over.’
I realise that the only way I’m going to get out of this is by appealing directly to him. ‘Your mother,’ I say, and give it heaps with the old eyelashes, ‘looks so elegant. I can’t turn up to meet her like this. She’ll think Rufus has married a hoyden.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ says Edmund, ‘and I don’t suppose for a moment that mummy would, either, but if you really …’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Not in the least,’ says Edmund.
‘Darling,’ protests Mary, ‘we’re in the middle of a party …’
‘Well, it’s hardly going to break things up, darling,’ he says back, slightly sharply. ‘I don’t suppose the poor girl’s expecting anyone to come and watch her.’
‘I won’t be long,’ I say.
‘Rufus!’ shouts Edmund over the hubbub.
My husband looks up. ‘Daddy.’
‘Wife needs showing to your quarters.’
‘On my way.’
‘It’s OK,’ I protest. ‘I can have a wash and brush-up in the kitchen.’
‘Balderdash.’
‘Well, just tell me which way to go and I …’
Everyone standing within ten feet bursts out laughing.
Rufus comes over and takes me by the hand. ‘I think we’d like to see you again before Christmas. Come on.’
I follow him out of the room.
; Chapter Fifteen
The Maze
It can’t be more than a minute since we took the back route out of the kitchen, but I’m as disorientated as an evangelist in a barful of blondes. I don’t even know which direction we’re facing in. I’m sure we’ve turned enough corners that we should have passed through the Great Hall at least twice already. Black floor boards, worn Persian runners, and doors, doors, doors. I feel like I could go a week here and never see a window.
‘I’m totally lost,’ I tell Rufus.
‘That’s why I came with you. You’ll pick it up eventually.’
‘But I thought we were only popping up to the second floor.’
‘We are.’
‘Well, how come we’ve gone up two flights of stairs and down one?’
‘This is the shortcut.’
‘Err …’
‘Think of it like an Escher etching,’ he explains. ‘Just because it looks like a staircase is going down doesn’t actually mean it is.’
We push open a door at what seems like random, and enter my third lounge of the expedition. Like in the last two, most of the furniture is covered by dustsheets. Like in the last two, the drapes are drawn, and rugs are folded back from the windows to stop, Rufus tells me, any stray sunlight getting in and fading them. In the gloom, I make out pale grey wallpaper covered in bougainvillaea, flimsy scarlet belvederes and heavily stylised, smiling mandarins. Two huge, ceiling-height mirrors are fixed to the far wall, behind gilt tables scattered with junk and framed photos of dogs and horses.
‘Which room is this?’
‘Chinese music room.’
‘Period?’
‘Georgian. Pianos are newer, harpsichords are older.’
‘Anybody play?’ There must be sixty, seventy thousand pounds’ worth of musical instruments mouldering under those sheets.
‘Haven’t been tuned in years. Costs a bomb, with five of them. I think Tilly used to plunk out the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata from time to time with the loud pedal down, but that was on the upright in the schoolroom.’
‘Schoolroom?’
‘Third floor. Victorian wing. Proper space heater and a doll’s house.’
He’s crossing the room as he speaks, stops in front of the left-hand mirror. ‘Now pay attention,’ he says. ‘You’ll need to know this.’
The table is scattered with bric-a-brac. A lamp. A small cloisonné vase. A leather-bound Bible, an ivory-handled whip. Rufus lays a hand on a ceramic King Charles spaniel, which merely tips forward rather than lifting up. There’s a clunk somewhere in the wall.
‘Important thing to remember in the Wattestone household,’ says Rufus, ‘is that anything secret is probably disguised as a dog or a horse.’
The mirror, complete with the table, which I see now is attached to its frame, legs hanging a couple of centimetres above the floor, swings back.
‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ I tell him. And, apart from a few score other things I’ve seen that were cooler, I sort of mean it too.
‘It is pretty cool, isn’t it? They didn’t want to spoil the look of the room when they built the Victorian wing, so that was the solution.’
‘Brilliant. This must have been great when you were kids.’
‘Fabulous. There’s half a dozen more scattered about the place. Hidden panels and stuff. More, for all I know. Roly and I used to spend the holidays popping out of the priest-holes and scaring the tourists.’
‘What’s a priest-hole?’
‘Gosh, you are wet behind the ears.’
‘Don’t suppose you’d know what to do with a funnel web, sweetheart. Educate me.’
‘Hidden rooms. When the persecution of Catholics was going on.’
‘Which was when?’
‘On and off for the best part of a hundred years. People would build them into their houses and hide priests in them.’
‘Sort of like a panic room?’
‘Not dissimilar. Enormous derring-do involved, of course. Punishable by death.’
‘Religion has a lot to answer for.’
We step through. From this side, the door just looks like a door. He pulls it to behind us. I pluck at his sleeve.
‘How do you mean, for all you know?’
‘It’s a big house,’ Rufus tosses out nonchalantly, ‘and not all of it has ever been lived in at any one time. They’d just build new wings and move into them whenever they made a bit of money.’ He scratches the back of his neck. ‘For such an old family,’ he says, ‘they were very nouveau. Anyway, what it kind of meant was that they sort of lost track of what went where. They kept sticking stuff over things without keeping records. I’m pretty sure that there are rooms that no-one has been into for entire generations. Probably with all the furniture in situ.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Well, there was a terrible smell in the Tudor wing for about twenty years at one point – from before I was born right through to when I was a teenager – and no one could track down the source, so in the end they just moved out. We’ve never really moved back in. They were always doing stuff like that. And I remember spending an entire afternoon when I was seventeen counting the windows outside and trying to match them up to the rooms inside, and I could never manage it. It’s a bit like one of those rings of standing stones.’
‘It’s all a bit Bram Stoker, isn’t it?’
‘The gothic novels were based on families like mine.’ He leads me down the corridor as dead Wattestones glare at my jeans. ‘Rumour has it that The Mysteries of Udolpho was written after my great-great-great-grandfather forgot he had a house party and half of the guests were eaten by the servants.’
We reach another set of stairs. These are made of marble, with cast-iron railings, like in a museum. Rufus sets off up them.
‘Blimey,’ I say, ‘I should have brought my hiking boots.’
He laughs.
‘So, have you just stopped wanting to know about these missing rooms?’
‘Darl, we’ve got thirty-two already. And that’s not counting the attics or the basement. Or the cellars. Or the bathrooms and dressing rooms. Or the public rooms. And we’ve only got two cleaning ladies. I think we’re probably better off without them.’
‘I’m getting a bit of a sinking feeling here.’
‘Don’t worry. There’s been a bit of subsidence in the east wing, but you get that in old houses.’
‘Don’t tease me, Rufus. I didn’t envisage my life as being one long round and with the mop and bucket.’
‘Feather duster as well, sweetie. We’ve got several with twelve-foot handles because of the high ceilings.’
I stop dead in my tracks, remain silent.
He stops as well, two steps down, and looks up at me. ‘Mel, you’re going to have to be a bit of a chatelaine at some point, but it won’t go further than that. We do actually employ people, especially in the tourist season. And besides, Granny’s still alive, let alone Mummy. I should think you’ll have a good couple of decades to get used to the idea …’
‘I said don’t tease me.’
‘I’m not …’
‘I didn’t sign up for this …’
‘No life is all fairy dresses and cocktail parties. Even Saint Princess Diana had to occasionally cut her toenails.’
‘Never mind,’ I say. ‘Maybe we should do this one step at a time, eh?’
I don’t think he gets exactly what I mean. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he says, brightening up.
‘Where the hell is this room, anyway?’
‘Just round the corner.’
We reach the top of the stairs. It’s taken a full five minutes to get here. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘it’s just along here, now.’
‘Jesus. I don’t even know which way we’re facing.’
‘If you were standing on the front drive, facing the house, our window would be on the left, on the first floor, hanging out over the moat.’
‘I thought you said it was the second flo
or?’
‘The first floor in England, sweetie, is the second floor everywhere else in the world.’
‘I get it. Another trap for the unwary.’
‘We like it that way.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
Rufus turns a handle and presses a shoulder to a door. ‘Hinges are a bit wobbly,’ he explains. And leads me into our marital bedroom.
Chapter Sixteen
The Painted Hussy
‘You go ahead,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
He looks doubtful. ‘Are you sure …?’
‘How hard can it be?’
‘This is Bourton Allhallows,’ he says. ‘You’d be surprised.’
‘So just tell me, OK? If it’s that complicated you can write it down.’
‘It’s not that bad. You turn right out of this door.’
‘OK.’ I’m digging in my backpack, only half-attending.
‘Then – Mel, listen. It might save your life.’
‘Bit of an exaggeration.’
‘Not necessarily. OK. Right, right, then right again. Then second left, then two more rights.’
I stop rummaging and look at him. ‘So that’ll take me back to here, then?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘There are stairs. I was trying to keep it simple.’
‘Ah.’
‘Quite a few. Some you don’t want to take. You’ll have to take exactly the route I told you, or you’ll end up in the dungeons.’
I bellow with laughter.
‘Not a joke.’
‘OK. Sorry. Not laughing.’
‘Repeat.’
‘Right. Right, right, right, second left, right, right.’
‘No. Mel, I said listen. You’ve put one too many rights at the front.’
‘Doh, stupid, the first right was a “Right”, not a right.’
He folds his arms.
‘Right, as in OK? As in “I’m complying, oh lord and master”?’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘Stop it.’
‘They’ve got a one-way latch on the door. And a hidden spring. Once you’re in, you don’t get out until someone comes and finds you.’
‘Nice.’
‘It’s damp down there.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘With a slug population that’s been there so long they’ve turned albino. And rats the size of squirrels.’
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