It was quite by chance I’d turned in the direction of the farm and the caravan field. But the idea of using Griff’s own place as a refuge struck me as brilliant revenge. He’d spend the night worrying about me – even in my blind anger I knew that – and all the time he’d be providing the shelter that meant I didn’t need to go back home. Next morning I’d trash it, just to let him know.
I couldn’t go back home. Ever. Not after all the things I’d said. Maybe things I’d done. Half of me wanted to remember; the other half made damned sure I couldn’t. My memory for detail simply shut down. It hadn’t for months, not with all those little exercises Griff used so patiently to set.
What if I’d hurt him? Dear God, what if I’d hit him the way I hit myself? I could have injured him. I was strong for my size, just as he was frail for his. I might even have killed him and not known. The things I’d said had been enough to give him a heart attack. One or two bubbled up in my memory: it was all I could do not to slap them down by punching my forehead.
I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t go back and find him lying dead because of what I’d done.
I couldn’t go back full stop.
Ever.
But I had to know he was all right. I stood in the rain trying to make my feet turn back to the village but they wouldn’t work. I didn’t realise what I was doing till the rain dripped off my nose.
I’d set out with nothing except my bag. No Tim, of course. I could have done with Tim.
No, I couldn’t. I might have put a knife through him and torn him apart.
What had I done to Griff?
My mobile. I had my mobile. Reception wasn’t good round here. But it was worth a try. The caravan itself was in a black spot. Out in the lane, in the rain again, I stared at the phone. Who was I going to contact? Griff’d never speak to me again, not after the things I’d said. He’d never speak to me again if he was dead, would he? If I’d killed him.
I closed the phone. There was no way I could phone Griff himself. No way. I couldn’t bear to hear his voice; I couldn’t bear not to hear his voice.
I scrolled through the numbers in the memory. Marcus? No, he’d started all this, him and his enthusiasm and incompetence. Mrs Hatch? No, she disapproved of me far too much, though she never let on. Dave? Tony? Tony. He was the one. Him and his skimpy towelling robe.
‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ he asked.
‘None at all. But you’ve got to go and see that Griff’s all right.’ I cut the call.
Back to the caravan. I had enough sense to peel off my soaking clothes before huddling under the duvet. There were the towels we’d used in Harrogate: I’d not got round to washing them, of course. Nor to emptying the fridge. There was even a little water left. And there was the first aid kit for my poor burnt hand.
My phone rang. Tony. Stark naked I had to go out into the field to hear what he said.
‘He says to come home.’
‘He’s all right?’
‘OK,’ he said in the sort of voice you use when you’re not sure. ‘But he says –’
I cut the call. No. I couldn’t. Switching off the phone, I dived under the duvet again.
Thank goodness for the emergency dressing gowns we kept in the ’van. In my panic the previous night, I’d forgotten that our pitch was nearest the farmhouse, which overlooked it. Griff had chosen it for security. Now I had the insecurity of seeing all my clothes scattered about, and the knowledge that as he cleaned their teeth the farmer and his sons would be able to peer down at me.
The clothes were still sodden, of course. Horrible. But I put them on anyway. Very quickly. Now I could check my resources. The rations we always topped up at the end of each journey were very low. But there was enough milk for a splash in my coffee and enough to dampen some breakfast cereal. There was only a tenner in my own purse, but in the one I use for business over a hundred quid in cash, most of it profit from the Harrogate sale I’d not got round to sorting into our accounts. Then there was the credit card Griff made me carry just in case there was a real emergency. Somehow I didn’t think running away from him was the right reason to use it. I could get some clean, dry clothes from a charity shop, but the shoes’d be a problem. I hated other people’s trainers with a vengeance. And then what? I’d made myself voluntarily homeless and unemployed. Nothing from the DSS for six weeks, then. Seasonal work? There were enough asylum seekers, poor sods, working for virtually nothing, to pick every vegetable in Kent, not to mention doing equally illegal hotel and café work. Begging or selling the Big Issue? Didn’t fancy either. Couldn’t busk to save my life. Belt-tightening was in order.
At this point the caffeine might have kicked in. I could get Marcus to let me know the best postcodes for my hunt. Who knows, by the end of the week I might be living in luxury?
If you live in a decent-sized city you take certain things for granted. Cheap and regular public transport is one of them. Living in the country, you have to plan all the time if you want to get from an A that isn’t on a railway line to a B that isn’t on a regular bus route. Journeys that would take less than half an hour by car become epic voyages. Especially when you don’t have timetables to hand, and you’ve no idea where to start from in the first place.
At least I had a rough idea about buses to Ashford, so it was there I headed first, making sure I sat hunched, hood up and staring out of the window at the familiar countryside. It was a waste of time, I dare say – in a village like ours someone would probably have recognised me if I’d dressed in a complete gorilla outfit. At least there were plenty of charity and ordinary cheap shops in Ashford. I’d have loved to get undies from the specialist lingerie shop in what used to be the market place, or even, more realistically, from M and S. But it’d be bottom of the market stuff for me. I could just afford a new waterproof top and new, if cheap, trainers: I knew from experience that folk only gave away anoraks and raincoats when they’d lost their weatherproofing. And I simply couldn’t bear the smell of other feet. Really, truly couldn’t. Then I did a circuit of the charity shops, picking a T-shirt here, jumper there. And a couple of bits of jewellery I could sell on for four times what I paid. I’d pop the profit in one of their boxes when I had enough to survive on. I kept the receipts to remind me and also to prove to a potential buyer I hadn’t knocked them off somewhere. Local maps from W H Smith, nothing like as good as the old ones back home at Griff’s.
I mustn’t think of it as home any more.
Bus station and railway station got me travel info. And I put a call through to Marcus.
‘You’re joking!’ he gasped. ‘But you’re like father and daughter. Well, a lot better than most girls and their dads: they have rows.’
‘Griff and I had a row. Actually it was over the fax you sent. He thought I was being unethical, doing industrial espionage, blah, blah, blah.’
There was a long pause, so long I was glad I’d asked him to call me back. ‘I suppose in the wrong hands… Shit! I never thought. Sorry.’
‘So will you find me just the ones very close to Ashford or Bredeham? And Marcus – hang on – I want you to do something else, too, before you call back.’
I think it was because he was feeling guilty that Marcus did exactly what he was told fairly quickly, calling me back while I was in a loo changing. I stowed the still damp stuff into one of the now empty carriers – it’d be a pain to ferry it everywhere, but that was life. I couldn’t afford to ditch it. I’d go and have a coffee while I mulled everything over. There was a coffee shop in the market place, with a few tables in what might at any moment be feeble sunshine. There. Now I could scan Marcus’s summary of very local posh piles and their opening times this month. He’d bring a list of those further away or with irregular opening times to the next fair. How I was to be there, I’d no idea, but it was the only safe way I knew of making a living. Unless I went to college and got a qualification for my restoration work – and God knew how’d afford that – I could only get work for friends or b
y word of mouth. In a world without Griff’s protection you needed more than that.
The coffee I was drinking nearly came back at the thought of him. Why hadn’t he been in touch? He knew my number. I’d have expected some message – after all, I’d checked he was all right last night.
If I thought about him, I’d cry. And Lina didn’t cry. Well, not very often. I wouldn’t hit myself, either. Calmly as I could, I looked at the information I’d written down in a notebook that wasn’t quite bottom of the range, because I didn’t want any tacky, girly designs on the cover. Griff had always told me to behave professionally, and fishing out my Little Pony to record a price or whatever was going to impress no one. Plus I didn’t like any of the girly designs.
Yes! There were two places open this very afternoon. Two! One was near Tonbridge; the other was near Canterbury, not all that far from Iffin Court. I knew it was easy enough to get from Ashford to Canterbury by train. There must be a bus from Canterbury to Hythe, which was, like Bossingham Hall, due south of Canterbury. I checked. If I legged it, I might just get the Canterbury train now. Sorry – no tip. The waiter had a regular wage. I no longer did.
Legs were going to become my most valued form of transport. It was quite a step from the railway station, Canterbury West, to the bus station, but nothing motivates you more than the knowledge you’ll have to wait another two hours if you miss the next bus. But I was in luck. The bus in question actually left Stone Street, the main road south I thought it would follow, and took to the village roads to the east, yes, actually to my goal, a hamlet called Bossingham. Yes! But it was clear that Lord Elham’s pad lay a good long way from any nasty vulgar thing like a public highway. The driver seemed to stop anywhere passengers asked, and happily pulled up in the lay-by by impressive wrought iron gates.
‘Mind you, it don’t open for another hour,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go on as far as the village? There’s a nice little pub called the Hop Pocket – you could get some lunch there.’
Largely because he closed the doors before I could get out and pulled away, I agreed. But I didn’t want a sandwich or drink. I was sure I’d seen those gates before. Sure.
I’d seen thousands of gates before. Well, hundreds. In those books Griff liked me to study. One pair must look very like another.
OK, then. Bossingham itself and the Hop Pocket. The village was dead ordinary, or at least this part – mostly bungalows, though with a cluster of older houses where the road took a sharp bend. A sign said there was a twelfth-century church a mile away. I needed food more than exercise. The Hop Pocket was little more than a double-fronted cottage, with a porch tacked on in front. Inside it was the sort of pub you dream about, not smart at all, wooden floors there because they’ve been there for ages, not self-consciously twee because they make a cool ambience. OK, there were a few hops scattered about, and a hop shovel, but no one had run riot with a mishmash of old artefacts simply because a designer who wouldn’t know his arse from an ear of corn had told him to. I found a corner table and a local newspaper and checked the blackboard menu. I read, you might say, from right to left, going for price, not what Griff would call gastronomic appeal. All the same, the sandwich I bought was full to overflowing, and after buying my first drink I took courage and asked for a glass of tap water. The lad behind the bar was only my age, and, finger to lips, handed one over.
‘D’you know anything about Bossingham Hall?’ I asked, toasting him silently.
He pulled a face. ‘His Lordship – that’s Lord Elham, though of course Elham village is a few miles away – he doesn’t come in here. Everyone else in the village does; not him.’
I gestured: was he snooty?
The barman shook his head. ‘By all accounts he’s just weird. Even the people working at the Hall say that. You know, the volunteer guides and so on.’
‘Weird in what way?’
But at this point a party of walkers stomped in, reorganising tables and shouting contradictory orders. Weird? Well, I’d have to find out for myself.
Chapter Sixteen
Through those gates, then. Into an avenue of chestnut trees and oaks, on to a road rough with potholes. Where the trees might have met, on the horizon, was Bossingham Hall. Imagine making the journey in a luxurious coach, to be greeted by a candlelit house. You’d already be planning which clothes your servant would lay out, which jewels she’d clasp round your neck and wrists.
No upholstered chaise for me. No, nor posh car. In fact motorists were sent on a diversion, so at least as a pedestrian I had a journey more in keeping with history. The house dominated the long walk. And it was long – a mile or more, I’d say. If this were the house, if my mother had brought me here, had she made me walk? Had she had the luxury of a buggy? Or had the poor woman been forced to carry me? A toddler can weigh heavy. Had I been quiet, or struggled, like Victoria, the child in the shop? Had I had a terrible tantrum, the sort to make her curl with embarrassment or simply bend and slap me, as I’d come to slap myself?
As I got closer I could see that the hall was a typical Palladian mansion, on a fairly large scale. It might even have had a facelift to transform it from an ordinary old house into something the neighbours would talk about. And they would have talked about it. It had a lovely symmetrical frontage, with a central portico like a Greek temple, four columns topped by a pediment. They might have said that the new wings were a bit on the large side. Should I have thought so? If only Griff had been with me to guide my eye.
He’d have been incensed that present-day visitors weren’t admitted via the great front door, reached by a wide and impressive flight of steps. We were sent to the side, where a couple of blue-rinsed ladies intercepted us. I paid my money and took up what felt more like an order than a kind invitation to leave my heavy bags with them. Flexing numbed fingers, I cast financial sense to the winds and bought the glossy guidebook too. I could call it research. Then I followed the signs, which took me via a corridor full of Lely look-alike ladies, all long noses and pursed mouths a-simper, to the entrance hall, which didn’t look at all impressive. Why not? I walked to the front doors and turned back to face it, as if I’d been a visitor arriving properly, not just a customer. It was only then that I got the full impact of the symmetrical stairs, starting either side of the hall and meeting in the middle as they rose. If only I’d known all the proper terms. But I didn’t, and I had to be content with a long and uneducated gawp. Mustn’t it have been wonderful to live in a place like this in its heyday? Probably, though, I’d have been no more than a tweeny, and would have spent more time dusting the statues and banister rails than admiring them. The son of the house would probably have got me pregnant, and I’d have been turned off without a shilling or a reference.
Was that what had happened to my mother? Had she been a servant here?
I bit my lip, and took a deep breath. I was moving too fast. Sure this place felt familiar, but I might simply have seen others like it in Griff’s books – no architect worth his salt wouldn’t have wanted to put similar staircases in similar halls, once he’d got all the head-scratching out of the way and knew how to make cantilevers work. There! A word had come back. Was that an omen?
I worked my way though the house, loving the proportions of each room, even if I felt some of the later Victorian colour schemes really vulgar, not to mention the fact that they clashed with the fireplaces. No, not a greyish white one in sight. Their marble was more yellowish than the one in my memory. One in the morning room was rust-coloured, and whoever had chosen crimson wallpaper should have been ashamed, especially when it was supposed to be an informal room. The library was my favourite room, not just full of books, as you’d expect, but with two very nice cabinets full of china to die for – Meissen, Sevres, Derby. The dining room was a bit of a let-down. The furniture wasn’t much better than Ralph Harper’s stuff, out of proportion and full of mismatched veneers. There was part of a Worcester dinner service on the table, and what looked like Stourbridge glass, but I would
n’t have thought any of it top of the range. The drawing room must have been very pretty in its heyday, with a yellow satin wall-covering and chairs with toning upholstery. It was a pity someone hadn’t taken a needle to it years ago: now it would need a full restoration. Visitors were allowed to see only two bedrooms. They both had hidden doors: I’d have given my teeth to nip over the elegant cord keeping us at bay and sneak a look at what lay behind. Ever since Griff showed me my first stately house, that’s what I’d wanted to do. Forget the public rooms – up to a point at least – and show me where real life was lived, the servants’ rooms and their bedrooms. We were allowed a peep into a bathroom, presumably once a dressing room, with a two-seater loo and more mirrors than I’d have thought Victorian ladies would have considered decent. Perhaps they still had hipbaths in their rooms, and left this sort of thing to peacocking gentlemen. And that was it. I’d seen no more than about a tenth of the house, but my tour was over and I was being courteously directed to the gift shop and tearoom, which was situated in the original kitchen.
Forget the gifts. But a Coke wouldn’t come amiss, and I had a plan. I could read the guidebook while I drank it and maybe talk my way in for another poke round.
For maybe read definitely. The guidebook was a mine of information about the owners, the Duke of Elham, which they kindly told us was pronounced Ealham, even giving a family tree on the back cover. They traced their ancestry back to the Conquest, would you believe? Yes, the original castle was built with the hush money William the Bastard doled out to his cronies, even if the book didn’t put it quite that way. Anyway, once the family had got a toehold in the country, they’d spread all over it, like a patchy rash. They had estates here, there and everywhere at one point, though some had been sacrificed to pay debts – they must have been a spendthrift lot. Then they came into money in the eighteenth century, though trade, the book said, and decided to go to town on Bossingham Hall, which was nice and convenient for London, where they spent most of their time. There were some lovely portraits from this period, including a spectacular Reynolds of the then Lady Elham, and a Gainsborough of her sister-in-law. Clearly whatever the trade had been it was what Griff called lucrative: I realised with a shudder that at that period it might well have involved human cargo. Yes, I’d been at one school long enough to go on a trip to the maritime museum in Liverpool, with its slavery exhibition. There were even worse things to be than skivvies at a great house, or homeless antique dealers.
Drawing the Line Page 15