by Guy Sheppard
‘It’s time, Colin. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask you to do such a godless thing. I’m sending you to hell, for sure, I know.’
‘We’ve talked about that already.’
This cancer of the ovaries is not about to let go.
33
I sat up in bed wheezing and choking. I fought to suck in sufficient oxygen to restart my lungs. Yet dying was I not and most definitely did I not delude myself. From outside my window came the sound of my name.
I had already made it my business to observe the garden in which I knew Lizzie had once walked and run. I did as any griever might do when a place survived but the person didn’t. Speculatively, I made a point of imagining her playing games of hide-and-seek or gave conjectural expression to her childhood thrills and spills.
It was not a hopeful scenario, particularly, yet I could not watch but a wave of hope swept over me.
This night, I pressed my face to the leaded glass as usual to see frost bedeck the paths below with silver crystals. Something was all glitter and glimmer. What began as a bright and fluid cascade of water soon assumed the solid shape of an actual person, next to the figure of Venus. Neither nostrils nor lips condensed steamy oxygen but somehow she breathed in the gaseous night. Someone so aeriform had to be too insubstantial to be alive. Still she was every bit the projection of my own longings and dreams, a figure that was both opaque and transparent, close and far. She had a mind to dance while the fountain flashed and flickered.
Without moving her lips, she projected her voice with a commanding cadence.
‘Col – in. Col – in.’
She wore the same drab gown in which she had last lain at my mercy on the police mortuary’s dissecting table in London.
But this was more than me restaging bad memories. I found the will to mouth words back.
‘Thank God,’ I said. ‘You’re real.’
She knit her brow in great determination.
‘I’m as real as you would have me…’
‘Lizzie. My love. My darling.’
But she shook her head very firmly.
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘I haven’t yet found the perfect place you’d have me put you.’
‘If you don’t do it now the countess will take me.’
‘But like me, is she not simply grieving?’
‘Have you never considered if the dead mourn, too? I’m to be her new lost daughter Elizabeth, for eternity.’
‘All she wants is her family back.’
‘Then you’ll have to be her dead dragoon.’
‘Wait, Lizzie, please. I can’t live without you.’
‘Don’t you see, Colin, that’s how she wants it.’
It was my turn to shake my head. If at last a man found the key to life and death, he was no longer his own gaoler. If he was no longer his own gaoler, he was free to cross from this world to the next. Pulling on shoes and coat, I ran at full pelt downstairs to the garden. There, the chilling air stung my face like needles.
With little moonlight there was no way to see far ahead. Since there was no way to see far ahead I could barely follow the path through the remains of the knot garden in the ‘hortus conclusus’. Such intricate lines of evergreen rosemary and hyssop suggested something unending and infinite. If the air was as cold as the grave, there was also ice on the ground and all over the fountain. What I had taken to be spouting water turned out to be solid crystals.
Closing my arms on my dearly departed I would press my mouth to her clay-cold lips, I fancied, would let her breathe my warm breath for my own salvation. But I was left with the stone statue of Venus.
‘Lizzie?’ I cried. ‘Where are you?’
Only the goddess raised her warning finger to win my scant attention.
Of my dead wife there was no other sign.
Yet Venus’s eyes were not simply blank but stared straight ahead with all the passionate gaze of an interested adjudicator. I followed it. Poised in the gap in the yew hedge was another figure, slowly passing. I hurried closer and looked through the entrance to the pure white lawn beyond. There, someone picked up Lord Hart’s mallet and mockingly began a game of croquet, whereupon the expression on her face came across as more immediate and tangible. The nearer I approached her the more defiant she appeared. When the dead played the living they needed little rehearsal.
Defiance like that came with a challenge. The first, hollow strike of the ball amounted to absolute disdain since she let my presence count for so little. That hit was also the last. The roving ball passed all hoops and pegged out at the final stroke of a game that finished itself.
Resplendent in her scarlet gown and pearls, she trailed brilliant snowflakes behind her in a long glacial train. The point of her richly embroidered stomacher reached down from her breast to overlap her skirt with more gems. She was dressed in another dress taken from the chest in the cellars. She rested the mallet in her crooked finger for moment.
In her blazing eyes cried the wild screams of men and horses and the roar of cannon. They reflected the terrors of a civil war whose hell would never be forgotten or forgiven. Immediately she curled her sharp fingernails my way and her voice boomed in my ears to bring me back from the brink of distraction.
This was her garden and any denials from me, no matter how passionate, would be found wanting.
‘Come sir, it is the very Divel’s Delusion, for they would starve me from my own house, take away my rents and burn my crops and then WE shall have nothing to live upon…’
‘Wait, Countess, tell me what you just did with Lizzie?’
‘Don’t be silly, Inspector. It’s me, Marigold.’
I wrenched the mallet from her hands.
‘If that’s true, let me see your fingers.’
34
For the next few days I greeted Lord Hart most effusively, whereas he turned his face to the wall or stared hard at the floor. Although I gave him no good cause to start or spring back, he appeared to shrink from me both physically and mentally. I definitely could not explain his abrupt change in attitude, unless he took exception to my newly trimmed bristles and moustaches. In actual fact, my pointed and waxed chin-tuft, like a goat’s beard, was as novel to me as it was to him.
Also, my skin had become a peculiar whitish or ashen colour, but not at all unsightly.
If I said that I thought him a little in awe of me I would not have been too far wrong.
As usual I dined by myself in the great hall where in fact I ate very little. It was as though suddenly George and I could only live in Coberley Hall at each other’s discretion, we had to be silent partners in the non-betrayal of its secret.
Pretty much.
Those few times when he did choose to interfere in the daily management of my estate I was deeply enraged and soon flew into a temper. Forced to conciliate, I did my best to defy his defiance, but noted in his eyes a flicker of anxiety at the forthrightness and urgency of my demands. In truth, I was not unaware of my own growing restlessness and unsociableness.
I decided to defuse the situation by shutting myself up with great bundles of estate documents in the disordered library. Perhaps its contents would make more sense than its owner.
*
At a twist in the steps of the great oak staircase I met James about to descend from the next landing. He was creeping about like a mouse to check doors which he did every morning and evening.
‘You still speaking to his lordship, at all?’ I asked.
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘Is he sulking about something? I must say that I find his sullen attitude towards me very disconcerting.’
He rattled his keys very loudly.
‘What attitude would that be, sir?’
‘H’m, well, yeah, George is quite unwilling to discuss my management of his affairs, but I literally do feel that certain things need to be settled in a hurry. For instance, I’ve almost completed my tour of the estate’s boundaries but need to settle any queries with the Land Registry now
that I’ve decided to earmark certain fields and property for sale. The thing is, I do not understand the maps in their entirety.’
‘What in particular is the problem, sir?’
‘Someone has drawn a thick red ring round an area called Hilcot Wood.’
James fixed his grey eyes on mine with great firmness.
‘Consider it a warning, sir. Hilcot Wood is a very old place full of little grassy glades that are really marshes. One wrong step and you can be in over your head in a bog in seconds.’
‘But Peter Slater must go there regularly to feed the pheasants?’
‘Naturally he knows its secret ways.’
‘Okay, of course, I should hope so. Has anyone seen Mr Slater, at all? He’s not at ‘The Firs’ or the Shooting School. And he won’t answer his phone.’
At which point James started downstairs past the nearest newel post’s grinning monkey.
‘Excuse me, sir, I think I hear his lordship calling.’
*
Everywhere I went I met fresh grounds of suspicion. This was not expressible in so many words, but that was the gist of it. I could not but help feel prone to the partial or unconfirmed belief that although naturally I regarded myself beyond reproach, other people suddenly held me in suspicion. They said very little to my face, but such hostility as they could muster in a glance or grimace I felt obliged to avoid by doing without them. With map in hand, I chose to walk round the estate in the manner of a soldier or sentry. Of my patrols I gave no advance notice.
One afternoon found me in the vicinity of Father O’Connell’s derelict bungalow. The white winter sun pierced the black thorny hedges along the lane, exposing old birds’ nests and discarded beer cans. Coming to what was in fact a muddy public footpath into a field, I saw hard at work the unmistakeable figure of Adrian. Now I was myself buoyed by my latest ambition, so I advanced with an emphatic wave in order to spur him on.
Ever since a thrilling new confidence stiffened my resolve, I felt driven to issue orders which in no way could be construed as impudent, only bold.
‘Do hurry up and get this field cleared.’
Adrian hitched his baggy jeans up his skinny buttocks and climbed in the driver’s cab of his tractor.
‘That’s all very well, Mr Walker, but you can’t simply spray couch grass with insecticide, it’s too resistant. Absolutely it is. The only way to kill it is to dig it up and then spray it. You’ll see, soon nothing will grow in this field until you want it to. That’s the wonder of weed killers these days, they’re the farming equivalent to mass murder.’
‘I simply meant to say that first you must finish fencing the new boundary. That way I’m not just selling an abandoned building but an attractive land package. The money I will use to restore Coberley Hall to its past glory.’
‘It’s about time someone took a proper interest,’ said Adrian, scratching his closely cropped grey hair.
‘You and I know how difficult it is to persuade George to do anything?’
‘All that will change now you’ve decided to stay on, your lordship. Coberley Hall needs a man with fresh blood. Absolutely it does.’
‘What did you just call me?’
But Adrian slammed shut his cab door. His deadpan voice faded with the first rev of the engine.
I tried shouting at him, to no avail. Deafened myself, there was no point trying to deafen. Instead I folded my shotgun over my arm and resumed my march up the lane, feeling proud.
*
Once a man decided to put down roots in a place he could feel bigger and better about himself, he could take considerable satisfaction from being king in his own little kingdom. I drew my map from my pocket and the lonely red ring that had been drawn around a square mile or so of woodland drew my attention. The disfiguring delineation was more smear than carefully penned line, more blood than ink.
A crimson thumb mark denoted Hilcot’s hidden entrance which, in reality, proved to be a mere gate like any other. An uninviting and much overgrown track led into a gloomy plantation of beech and red cedars past a sign which said PRIVATE.
I had taken but a few steps when a piercing cry filled my ears. So shrill was the sound that I looked up – a large, companionless silhouette circled the sky high over my head. I thrilled to the call of the wild, if not to the wilderness called. Only a bird of prey had a scream that ghoulish. Any man’s heart had to expand just to see it. Then it was gone with its ominous significance. It shot over the next horizon as fast as an arrow, took with it its promise of good or ill fortune. It was a red kite.
As it happened, I chose not to venture any further into a place so unfrequented until I found Peter.
*
Physical exercise did little to alleviate my feverish state, yet inwardly I was more serene. Fewer were the loud and irregular beats of my racing heart which had threatened to throw me so off balance. It occurred to me that my pulse tick-tacked now with the slow steady rhythm of some increasingly deadly purpose.
The growing awareness of a change in my mental character lessened the fright at the visible ravages to my body. I felt elated by my own emaciation. Ill was I not and quite obviously was I not dying.
*
My first action upon my return to Coberley Hall was to revisit the churchyard. Only someone who did not feel proud of the dead that he inherited could refuse to show some humanity towards the sadly departed. I glanced at all the pretty slabs and impressive inscriptions that marked each plot as I took time to imagine my own name chiselled here in large, elegant capitals.
Turning alongside the church’s weather-stained south chapel, I was dismayed to have a man’s voice spoil the dead’s solemn solitude.
‘Can love ever outlive the tomb? Or am I wrong as well as wronged?’
No sooner had he spoken than Rebecca parked his wheelchair at his side.
‘What’s going on?’ she snapped. ‘Who’s that with you?’
Lord Hart ran his overgrown fingernails through his long hair.
‘I was simply confiding in Philip, my dear.’
By now I was in deep shadow at the south side of the church tower where I halted, eager to overhear whatever new conspiracy the two of them were hatching against me.
‘So, please, tell me what is there, honestly, left to say to your brother?’ asked Rebecca, flicking her untidy fringe from her eyes.
‘I came to tell him that dies irae is here. Our day of Judgement. He never could stomach my use of Latin phrases, never could see how a dead language could be of any use to the living, but would he not agree when I say the Coberley Estate is damnosa hereditas – it’s an inheritance that brings more burden than profit?’
That I was furious could not be doubted. The key to my whole future happiness was my stake in Coberley Hall and its land, which I now regarded as part of my very being. How should I react? I could see nothing sane in his assessment.
‘Come away at once,’ said Rebecca sharply and led him to his wheelchair. ‘Didn’t we agree how much better you can cope by following a strict daily routine?’
In response, he tapped the metal ferrule of his dragon cane against the headstone and repeated aloud its inscription:
Let Fate Do Her Worst. There Are Moments Of Joy, Bright Dreams Of
The Past, Which SHE Cannot Destroy.
‘Really. You done?’ declared Rebecca and unscrewed a silver Thermos flask which she had in her pocket. ‘Please, no more ‘SHE’ today.’
Lord Hart’s eyes flashed blue. Then he nodded.
‘It seems that Marigold might have been playing with me all along.’
‘Does that make you more sanguine?’
‘Not sanguine, suspicious. It is all part of her plan.’
‘I wonder if you really are making as much progress as I thought.’
‘There’s no trusting her. But then to Marigold, the countess is the answer. Fraud or not, she believes in ghosts. She refuses to accept that some genetic link with the fatal disease that afflicted my brother might
explain things better. I think I agree with her.’
‘Just because Philip said he saw the countess, too, doesn’t mean you can’t move on.’
‘If I do, won’t I lose him forever?’
‘You don’t have him now, you only have a few grievous feelings.’
‘If Philip were here he’d know what to do.’
‘So, please, tell me. What would he do, in your estimation?’
From my hiding place I could not read the exact expression in Rebecca’s fractious face, but I could tell that she was fighting what she considered a cruel fantasy and product of his condition.
‘He’d say we have to kill the bogy man. He’d say we should settle the unfinished business that death leaves behind.’
‘Ah, yes, your childhood hero. You don’t still doubt Philip’s demise, do you, George? You have his death certificate in a drawer. It’s down in black and white. So why let him live on in your head?’
‘You can’t kill the dead with a piece of paper.’
When I sneaked another look I saw Rebecca take her patient’s Panama and set it straight on his head. She treated trifles as ridiculously important.
‘No one can bring your twin back to you, George, not even with Marigold as medium.’
‘You say that. You tell me to stop wishing for the impossible, but who are we without each other except ghosts anyway?’
‘None of us should assume that the dead speak our language.’
He let slip his stick.
‘Marigold thinks I’ll take her back if she gives me Philip.’
‘Yet so far she has brought you nothing but false hope. Does she even know what she can and can’t do?’
‘We say the heart is the seat of our emotions. We say a man has no heart or a heart of oak. We learn lines by heart or speak from our hearts, we try to win the heart of someone. A man in low spirits is out of heart and he who overwhelms him with sorrow breaks his heart. All this for a hollow organ of flesh and blood that circulates our blood simply by contracting and dilating. That is the riddle.’
Rebecca unscrewed the little cup from the end of the flask.