by Peter James
‘Once the home town of Gideon Mantèll, who discovered the dinosaur,’ she added. ‘Originally a Saxon stronghold then a Cluniac priory.’
‘Smart alec!’
She grinned.
They drove through a deep cut in the Downs and along a wide, flat valley for a couple of miles, then slowed and turned into a lane that wound up a steady gradient, bounded on both sides by overgrown verges. As they drove down a dip, she saw a tarpaulin of mist suspended over a boggy field. They passed a 30mph speed-limit sign, then another sign that was partly obscured by a cluster of tall nettles: MESTON. PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY.
The lane levelled out. There was an elegant Sussex flint farmhouse ahead on the left, and she wondered if he was going to turn in there, but he drove on, without glancing at it, into a small, unspoilt-looking village of flint houses. They passed an old-fashioned village store, a pub called the Sherfield Arms and a Norman church that Frannie thought looked interesting.
The lane climbed steeply out of the village, bounded on the right by a continuous brick wall, beyond which she could see thick, mature trees in a rather grand, sweeping park, and on the left by a railed field. Oliver changed down a gear, and as they rounded a bend, Frannie noticed something odd rising above the brow of the hill ahead. It looked like a giant bird suspended in mid flight. As they got closer she could see that it was one of a pair of massive carved stone wyverns on top of brick gate pillars.
Oliver slowed and indicated. A white sign with black lettering, on a weighted pedestal, said: MESTON HALL. OPEN TODAY. 10a.m. – 5p.m.
Frannie looked at Oliver but his expression told her nothing. The wyverns towered above them, menacing creatures with snarling faces and scaly tails. He turned in through the gates and drove down a formal drive, walled on either side by tall yew hedges, towards a handsome flint stable-block. There was an archway through the centre of it, above which a gold clock face was housed in a domed Venetian cupola. The hands said 11.40.
They drove through the arch, and came out into a junction flanked by more yew hedges and with signs pointing in various directions: CHAPEL. TEA ROOM. CAR PARK. HOUSE. GARDENS. FARM. Another, on a freestanding plinth, said: THE MARQUESS OF SHERFIELD REGRETS ANY INCONVENIENCE TO VISITORS DURING NECESSARY BUILDING REPAIRS.
Uncertainty welled inside her; she wondered if Oliver was playing a game on her. He followed the drive in the direction labelled HOUSE and CAR PARK, and as they rounded the end of a hedge, the house suddenly appeared in front of them.
It was a red brick Elizabethan stately home, as large as many of the great houses she had visited with her parents when she was a child, built in a fold on the hilltop and dominating the entire valley.
The architecture was romantic and imperious: brick chimneys that rose majestically into the sky, banks of tall, mullioned windows with Gothic dripstones, the baronial front door in its own crenellated tower. A gravel drive ran in front of the façade, separating it from a formal, stone-balustraded lawn below which the park swept away down into the valley.
‘Is that it?’
He nodded with a guilty schoolboy smile.
The road ahead was marked NO VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT. To the right was a ticket hut, with a wooden bridge beyond that spanned a ditch into a sloping field containing a massive gnarled oak and half a dozen cars parked haphazardly. In spite of its grandeur, the house had a forlorn air of neglect about it. The grounds also, as if it was a struggle to keep them up, and probably a losing battle.
Oliver braked to a halt as a solidly built woman in her sixties hurried towards them, her hand raised in a greeting. A springer spaniel raced past her and stood outside Oliver’s door, barking furiously. He opened the door and the dog scrambled in and on to his lap, licking his face.
‘Captain Kirk! Hello, chap! Hello! Hello! Say hello to Frannie!’
The dog jumped on to Frannie’s lap, its tail thumping as she stroked it, then scrambled frantically over Oliver’s lap, jumped back down and barked expectantly at them.
The woman reached the car and paused for breath, wheezing heavily, and gave Frannie a quick but absorbing glance. She had a kind, rather handsome face, and was wearing an ill-fitting cobalt-blue T-shirt printed with the words MESTON HALL, EAST SUSSEX in gold letters. Her voice was doughty, with a faint rural burr. ‘Good morning, Lord Sherfield.’
‘Morning, Mrs B. How are we doing?’
Frannie looked at him, her surprise increasing. She began to feel slightly out of her depth. The woman ran her eyes over her again, making Frannie feel like an object in a display case, and she felt a flash of irritation that Oliver made no immediate effort to introduce her.
‘Not a bad week,’ the woman said. ‘And a good start so far today. About a dozen already.’
Oliver nodded approvingly. The dog was still barking. ‘Quiet!’ he yelled.
The woman wheezed again, and dabbed her brow with the back of her hand by way of signalling her dislike of the heat. ‘Good day yesterday in the tearooms. Party of ramblers. Twenty-four of them. All had high teas.’
‘Excellent. Jolly good. Well done.’
The engine rumbled busily and Frannie sat with a polite smile on her face, aware of the woman’s scrutiny. There was obviously a lot that she had not been told and she hoped she could get through the next twenty-four hours without showing herself up in any way. She listened carefully as the woman addressed Oliver again. Despite a feeling of nervous excitement verging on panic, she was determined not to miss a trick.
‘We can do a lot more with that catering side. We ought to consider keeping it open during the winter. I think we could do a good trade with the ramblers.’
‘Yes – ah – yes, I’m sure you’re right – I’ll – er –’ he nodded thoughtfully, glancing at Frannie. ‘This is – ah – Miss Monsanto,’ Oliver said. ‘Mrs Beakbane.’
Mrs Beakbane arched her back and tilted her head sideways in order to present herself with a better view of Frannie. ‘How do you do?’ she said in a pleasant but rather servile tone that Frannie found slightly embarrassing.
‘Hello,’ she replied, feeling her way.
Oliver pushed the gear lever forwards. ‘Right, I’ll – ah – see you a bit later on.’
‘Oh, one more thing – young Cliff Webber in the village is anxious to have a word.’
He disengaged the gear. ‘Cliff Webber?’ He looked distant.
‘Charley Webber’s boy.’
‘Ah.’ Oliver still looked a little blank.
Mrs Beakbane glanced around as if to make sure no one was in earshot. ‘Getting married. Wants to talk to you about a house.’
‘I was planning to go down to the estate office this afternoon.’
‘I’ll let him know to pop in, shall I?’
‘Yes, right, about three o’clock.’
He drove on slowly, with Captain Kirk chasing along beside, down on to the gravel and along the front of the house. ‘Mrs B,’ he said, ‘can be a bit of a dragon but she runs the place with an iron rod.’ He stopped and waited patiently for a Japanese youth to take a photograph of his girl by the front door.
Frannie turned to Oliver with a quizzical air. ‘Lord Sherfield?’
He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. ‘I – I don’t use it very much. My wife used to –’ He fell silent.
‘So you’re a peer?’
‘Not a very active one, I’m afraid. When I’m not at the bank I spend most of my time trying to keep this place going.’
Frannie stared out of the window. Close up, the neglected condition of the house was much worse. The stone casements had been painted at some stage, and now the paint was flaking off. Chunks of the masonry had fallen away. The brickwork badly needed repointing, and the bricks themselves had been rubbed raw by centuries of wind and rain. Green slime coated the walls behind the downpipes of the guttering. Shrubbery climbed unchecked, blocking the light from some of the windows, and had even found a way inside some of them.
She focused on the coat of arm
s carved in a stone tablet above the front door, noticing a wyvern among the symbols, and a Latin inscription that was too worn to read. The Japanese smiled cheerily and Oliver drove on again. Frannie felt an air of unreality as she attempted to take it all in, trying to accept that this was not a dream, that this really was Oliver’s home and she was going to be staying here. She pictured her father’s approval.
The drive ended at a low wall, beyond which was an ornamental circular pond, with a stone fountain that was not working. A large sign said: PRIVATE. NO VISITORS BEYOND THIS POINT.
Oliver pulled on the brake and switched off the engine. Outside the car, Captain Kirk’s barking penetrated the silence. Frannie jumped down, and the dog suddenly went mad, chasing its tail around in several wide loops, skidding on the gravel, then it jumped the wall, skirted the pond and hurtled off towards some beech trees beyond. She shut her door; the clang hung in the air for a moment, then there was complete silence again. It was broken after a few seconds by the distant bleat of a sheep.
Oliver opened the tailgate and hauled their bags out. She walked across the lawn to the balustrading and surveyed the acres of parkland into the valley, savouring the smell of the grass. Rolling meadows, one of which contained a couple of horses, and another a large flock of sheep, dropped down towards the dense, mature woodland that covered the floor of the valley, and through which she could see pearly glimmers of a lake. The woods rose up the far side and gave way near the top to downland pasture sprinkled with sheep. The entire vista was peppered with stone obelisks, classical columns, statues and follies, adding further to the unreality for Frannie.
She turned to Oliver, who was standing quietly beside her, holding their bags. ‘It’s really stunning,’ she said, her excitement tempered by unease, then a sudden feeling of anger. ‘I could kill you,’ she added.
‘Why? What’s the matter?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about all this? Did you think it would frighten me off?’
‘How was I supposed to tell you?’
She walked on a few steps, pushing her feet through the swaying fronds of grass. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Why are you upset?’
‘You’ve made it embarrassing for me. I haven’t even brought a decent dress.’
‘God! We’re not formal – it’s only you and me.’
‘And all your staff?’
He put an arm around her and squeezed gently. ‘You look wonderful as you are, you don’t need a ball gown. We live in jeans down here.’ He gave her a light kiss on her cheek. ‘Come on, let’s go and dump our bags.’
She gave him a glare that was part anger, part smile. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Since 1580.’
‘I didn’t realize you were that old.’
The corners of his eyes creased in a smile and the breeze lifted his hair and rearranged it across his forehead. ‘Halkins have lived here ever since it was built. It hasn’t always passed from father to son – the lineage has become a bit diluted over the centuries.’ He turned and carried the bags through the gap in the walls, and as she followed she saw to her surprise that the house continued with another wing. It was in the same style as the façade, but set well back behind a group of rectangular parterres that badly needed tidying. Beyond it she could see a row of greenhouses and the wall of a kitchen garden. A plume of thick blue bonfire smoke reminded her that summer was nearly over.
‘This is the bit I – ah – we – inhabit,’ Oliver said.
She followed him along a narrow gravel path bounded by a rampant herbaceous border, down the side of the house, past a bumble bee clinging like a circus acrobat on to the swaying stem of a climbing rose, and a hydrangea that was out of control, then stopped at the front door. It was oak, in the same style as the main front door of the house, but not extended forwards. Above it, Frannie noticed there was again a carved heraldic crest with a wyvern on one of the lozenges.
As Oliver slid the key into the lock and turned it with a sharp clunk, her brain registered something familiar about the Latin motto that was written in the scroll beneath the crest. In the distance she heard the single, mournful toll of a bell, and glanced at her watch. It was 11.45.
She looked up at the crest and read the motto again. Non Omnis Moriar. Automatically, she translated it to herself. I shall not altogether die.
Oliver held the door for her and she frowned as she stepped into the large, dark hall. Although she had come across that motto in her Latin studies at school, she had come across it somewhere else, also, and the thought disturbed her. She was not sure why.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Oliver waited for Captain Kirk, then closed the front door. It was pleasantly cool inside and very dim. Frannie realized she still had her sunglasses on, and removed them, but even when her eyes had adjusted it was not much brighter. Sunlight shone through the narrow windows, creating a dramatic chiaroscuro effect and trapping motes of dust in its rays.
They were in a large panelled hall with a flagstone floor partially covered with fine rugs. In the centre was a round inlaid table with a vase of fresh flowers. A wide oak staircase rose up to a half-landing on which stood a suit of armour.
Frannie’s gaze fell on a squat bronze container in the shape of two back-to-back rams, standing on the floor. She went over to it, examining it more closely. It was cold and felt smooth in spite of the intricate carving representing the coat. She turned to Oliver, feelings of inadequacy forgotten, excitement brimming inside her. ‘How long have you had this?’
Oliver looked at it with a faintly bemused air. ‘Never quite worked out what it is,’ he said.
‘It’s Chinese,’ she said. ‘Called a zun.’
‘Zun?’ He mocked her with his eyes.
‘They would have put wine in it. Know how old it is?’
‘About two hundred years, I should think. It was brought back from the Orient by one of my ancestors – the family used to have business interests out there.’
Frannie studied the carving of the horns and squinted carefully at the pattern in the poor light. She raised one end up with some difficulty, and looked beneath one of the legs. ‘I think it’s Shang dynasty; somewhere between 1700–1050 BC.’
Oliver appeared startled. ‘My father used it as an umbrella stand,’ he said.
She wondered if he was joking, then realized from his expression that he wasn’t. ‘It’s priceless.’
‘We’ve got all sorts of bits and pieces here. Nothing’s ever been properly catalogued. Maybe I should hire you to do that.’
‘So long as everything’s Oriental or Roman I’ll be OK; I’m not much good on anything else.’
‘There was a Roman villa here originally, before the house.’
‘Has anyone ever done any excavations?’
‘In about 1820. They found a tessellated pavement and baths, then they filled it all in and planted beech trees on top.’
‘God, why?’
‘I think they got fed up with people coming and poking around.’ He picked the bags up. ‘Right – let’s dump these.’
They climbed the stairs, which were lined with painted panels of hunting scenes, went through a pedimented door, past a fire bucket and extinguisher which added a rather institutional feel, she thought, and down a wide, dark landing. Their shoes squeaked on the polished wooden floorboards.
Oliver stopped by a door and pointed to the end of the corridor. ‘That takes you through into the main part of the house – the section that’s open to the public – if you want to have a wander any time. You’d have to buy a ticket, of course.’
‘A ticket?’ Then she saw his expression and realized he was teasing.
He opened the door for her. Frannie went into a large, sparsely furnished bedroom that smelled of musty fabric. In spite of the sunlight streaming in, the room had a cold, damp feel, as if it were rarely used, and it had not been redecorated for decades.
Oliver pressed the light switch by the door and seemed surprised that
the bulb came on, regarding it for some moments with an expression of almost primitive wonder, then he switched it off and carried Frannie’s bag over to a chaise-longue at the end of a funereal-looking two-poster bed. ‘There’s a loo just down the corridor, second door on the left, and a bathroom next to it. I’m afraid the Elizabethans didn’t go in for en-suite bathrooms.’
Frannie gazed out of the window across the valley. ‘Incredible view. How much of it’s your land?’
‘To the north as far as the main road we turned off, and to the south down to the river, which you can’t see from here.’
‘Your land goes as far as the village we came through?’
‘I – um – own the village.’
‘Own it?’
‘Yes.’ He scratched the top of his nose, and had the grace to smile. ‘There are about seventy houses – all peppercorn rents. A lot of the farmland’s tenanted out, so most of the houses are let to the farmworkers.’
‘How feudal!’
‘Very. Look, you’ll want to freshen up or something. I’ll go and make some coffee and meet you downstairs.’
In the bathroom there was a chipped and stained cast-iron bathtub and wash-basin. When she turned the brass tap it rattled with a sharp knocking sound for some moments, then rust-coloured water hurtled out with the ferocity of a fire hose.
She checked her face in the large mirror and tidied her hair. An air of unreality surrounded her, almost as if she had entered a new dimension where she didn’t really know the rules.
A strong smell of coffee filled the hall as she went downstairs and along a short passageway into a large kitchen that had a homely, lived-in feel. Copper pots sat on a rack above the Aga oven; strings of onions and another of garlic cloves hung from hooks; toy cars were strewn across a Welsh dresser; a chewed plimsole lay on a decrepit sofa. An open door led through to a scullery.
Oliver was seated at an old pine table, phone to his ear, tilting back precariously in a chair and tapping his knee with a pencil. Behind him, a red light glowed on a gurgling percolator.
‘Yup, well, I’ll be in the estate office for an hour or so this afternoon but that’s all. I’m not going to have too much time free this weekend.’ He winked at Frannie as she came in.