by S. T. Joshi
The table was set for ten people. Dusty plates and silver utensils stained with age lay on the extravagantly lacy yellowed tablecloth. Like the upholstery of all the chairs, every plate was marked with C . Doilies to which spiders had lent extra patterns were spread on a sideboard, opposite which a painting took most of the place of a tapestry that had left its outline on the stone wall. Although the painting might have depicted a typical dinner at Lorn Hall, Randolph thought it portrayed something else. Of the figures seated at the table, only the one at the head of the table possessed much substance. The familiar face was turned away from his sketchy fellow diners to watch whoever was in the actual room, while a servant with a salver waited on either side of him. “Subsequently the situation was reversed,” Crowcross said, “and I made the place my own.”
Was the painting meant to remind him of the family he’d lost—to provide companionship in his old age? Randolph was trying to see it in those terms when the pinched voice said “By all means make your way onwards.” He could do without a repetition, and he made for the hall. As the chandelier went dark he glimpsed somebody turning the bend of the staircase.
“Excuse me,” Randolph called, moving the earpiece away from his right ear, but the other didn’t respond. If they were wearing headphones too they might not have heard him. He’d only wanted to ask whether they knew what time the house closed to the public. At least he wasn’t alone in it, and he picked his way along the hall to the kitchen, where part of the darkness seemed to remain solid as the weary light woke up.
It was a massive black iron range that dominated the grey room. A dormant fragment of the blackness came to life, waving its feelers as it darted into one of the round holes in the top of the range. How long had the kitchen been out of use? Surely nobody would put up with such conditions now. Chipped blotchy marble surfaces and a pair of freezers—one a head taller than Randolph, its twin lying horizontal—might be responsible for some of the chill that met him. A solitary cleaver lay on a ponderous table, which looked not just scored by centuries of knife strokes but in places hacked to splinters.
Randolph looked around for a portrait, but perhaps Crowcross felt the kitchen was undeserving of his presence. “My father enjoyed watching the maids at their work,” he said. “Red-handed skivvies, he called them. I did myself. Since then the world has changed so radically that their like have been among the visitors. Perhaps you are of their kind.”
“Not at all,” Randolph objected and felt absurd, not least because he suspected that Crowcross might have disagreed with him. He was searching for some trace of the people who’d worked here—initials carved on the table, for instance—when Crowcross said “There is no more to see here. Let us move on.”
He sounded like a parody of a policeman—an officious one used to being obeyed. Randolph couldn’t resist lingering to force him to say it again, and might easily have thought a hint of petulance had crept into the repetition. The light failed before Randolph was entirely out of the kitchen, but he glimpsed a door he’d overlooked in the underside of the staircase. As he reached for the heavy doorknob Crowcross said “Nothing of interest is kept down there. I never understood its appeal for my father.”
Perhaps Randolph did, assuming the servants’ quarters were below. He wondered how his guide’s mother had felt about the arrangement. The scalloped doorknob wouldn’t turn even when he applied both hands to it. As he looked for a key in the thick dust along the lintel Crowcross spoke. “I have told you nothing has remained. Let us see where I was a child.”
His petulance was unmistakable. No doubt the basement rooms would be unlit in any case. Randolph was making his way past the stairs when he heard whoever else was in the house shuffling along an upper corridor. He wondered if there was more light up there, since the footfalls were surer than his own. They receded out of earshot as he pushed open the door of the turret room.
The room was lit, though nothing like immediately, by a single bare bulb on a cobwebbed flex. The round aloof ceiling caught much of the light, and Randolph suspected that even with the curtains open the room might have seemed like a cell to a child. It was furnished with a desk and a table in proportion, each attended by a starkly straight chair. While the table was set for a solitary meal, it had space for a pile of books: an infant’s primer on top, a children’s encyclopaedia many decades old at the bottom. Even when Randolph made the children read instead of playing, Harriet rarely agreed with his choice of books. The stone floor was scattered with building blocks, a large wooden jigsaw depicting a pastoral scene, an abacus, a picture book with pages thick as rashers, open to show a string like a scrawny umbilical cord dangling from the belly of a pig spotted with mould. The desk was strewn with exercise books that displayed the evolution of the omnipresent handwriting; one double page swarmed with a C well on its way to resembling the letter that seemed almost to infest the mansion. “This is where I spent the years in growing worthy of my name,” said Crowcross. “In our day parents hired their delegates and kept them on the premises. Now the care of children is another industry, one more product of the revolution that has overtaken the country by stealth.”
Above the desk a painting showed the room much as it was now, if somewhat brighter and more insubstantial. Crowcross stood between rudimentary impressions of the table and the desk. His arms were folded, and he might have been playing a teacher, except that nobody else was in the room—at least, not in the picture of it. “If you have learned everything you feel entitled to know,” he said, “let us go up.”
Did Randolph want to bother going on, given the condition of the house? Harriet certainly wouldn’t have, even if the children weren’t with them. He’d had nothing like his money’s worth yet, unless he retrieved the payment on his way out. Perhaps the person upstairs might know more about the history of Lorn Hall, and Randolph didn’t mind admitting to a guilty fascination, not least with the companion at his ear. “If you have learned everything you feel,” Crowcross said and fell silent as Randolph left the room.
He was on the lowest stair when he noticed that the cherub on the banister had no wings. Somebody had chopped them off, leaving unequal stumps, and he couldn’t help suspecting that the vandal had been Crowcross, perhaps since he’d found himself alone in Lorn Hall, the last of his line. He had the uneasy notion that Crowcross was about to refer to if not justify the damage. “If you have learned,” the voice said before he could let go of the shaky banister.
From the bend in the stairs he saw the upper corridor, just about illuminated by the dimness beyond several doorways. Whoever he’d glimpsed on the stairs wasn’t to be seen, and no light suggested they were in a room. Presumably they were at the top of the house by now. Barely glancing at a second mutilated cherub, Randolph made for the nearest room along the corridor.
Its principal item was an enormous four-poster bed. Burdened by plaster sloughed by the ceiling, the canopy sagged like an ancient cobweb. More plaster glistened on an immense dressing-table and an upholstered chair that must once have looked muscular. Most of the light from the few live bulbs in the chandelier fell short of a side room, where Randolph was just able to distinguish a marble bath with blackened taps and a pallid hand gripping the side to haul its owner into view, but that was a crumpled cloth. “You are in the master bedroom,” Crowcross said tonelessly enough to be addressing an intruder. “Would you expect the master to have left more of a mark?”
His portrait showed him gripping the left-hand bedpost. As well as declaring ownership he gave the impression of awaiting a companion—watching with feigned patience for someone to appear in the doorway at Randolph’s back. His imperiousness was somewhat undermined by crumbs of plaster adorning the top of the picture frame. “Will you know what robs a man of mastery?” he said. “Pray accompany me along the corridor.”
Randolph couldn’t help feeling relieved not to be given the tour by his host in the flesh. He suspected the commentary had been recorded late in
the man’s life—when he was turning senile, perhaps. The chandelier in the next room contained even fewer bulbs, which faltered alight to outline another bed. Its posts were slimmer than its neighbour’s, and the canopy was more delicate, which meant it looked close to collapsing under the weight of debris. Had a fall of plaster smashed the dressing-table mirror? Randolph could see only shards of glass among the dusty cosmetic items. “Here you see the private suite of the last Lady Crowcross,” the voice said. “I fear that the ways of our family were not to her taste.”
He held a bedpost in his left fist, but it was unclear which bedroom he was in. His depiction of himself was virtually identical with the one next door. A figure identifiable as a woman by the long hair draped over the pillow lay in the sketch of a bed. Randolph couldn’t judge if Crowcross had given her a face, because where one should be was a dark stain, possibly the result of the age and state of the painting. “Please don’t exert yourself to look for any signs of children,” Crowcross said. “They were taken long ago. My lady disagreed with the Crowcross methods and found another of our fairer counterparts to plead her case.”
“I know the feeling,” Randolph said, immediately regretting the response. There was no point in being bitter; he told himself so every time he had the children and whenever he had to give them up. As he caught sight of the bathroom shower, which was so antiquated that the iron cage put him in mind of some medieval punishment, Crowcross said “You’ll have none of the little dears about you, I suppose. They must conduct themselves appropriately in this house.”
While Randolph thought his and Harriet’s children might have passed the test, at least if they’d been with him, he was glad not to have to offer proof. As he made for the corridor he glimpsed a trickle of moisture or some livelier object running down a bar of the shower cage. “That’s the style,” said Crowcross. “There’s nothing worthy of attention here if you’ve taken in my work.”
It almost sounded as though the guide was aware of Randolph’s movements. To an extent this was how the commentary operated, but could it really be so specific? He was tempted to learn how it would react if he stayed in the room, but when the lit bulbs flickered in unison as though to urge him onwards he retreated into the corridor.
The adjacent room was the last on this side. Shadows swarmed and fluttered among the dead bulbs as the chandelier struggled to find life. All the furniture was stout and dark, the bedposts included. One corner of the laden canopy had almost torn loose. The room smelled dank, so that Randolph wouldn’t have been surprised to see moisture on the stone walls. “This was the sanctum of the eldest Crowcross,” the voice said. “His wife’s quarters were across the corridor.”
Presumably the portrait was meant to demonstrate how the room had become his. He was at the window, holding back the curtain to exhibit or lay claim to a version of the landscape in summer. His eyes were still on his audience; Randolph was beginning to feel as if the gaze never left him. He was meeting it and waiting for the next words when he heard a vehicle start up outside the house.
The bedposts shook like dislocated bones as he dashed across the room, and debris shifted with a stony whisper. The gap between the curtains was scarcely a finger’s width. They felt capable of leaving handfuls of sodden heavy fabric in his grasp, and he knew where at least some of the smell came from. As he dragged them apart the rings twitched rustily along the metal rail. He craned forward, keeping well clear of the windowsill, which was scattered with dead flies like seeds of some unwelcome growth. The grid of cramped panes was coated with grime and crawling with raindrops, so that he was only just able to make out the grounds. Then, beyond the misshapen bloated topiary, he saw movement—the van near which he’d parked. Its outline wavered as it sped along the drive and picked up speed on the road.
Was Randolph alone in the house now? In that case, how had the driver sneaked past him? As the van disappeared into the rainswept gloom Crowcross said “Will you see the woman’s quarters now? Everything is open to you, no matter what your pedigree.”
How distasteful was this meant to sound? Randolph might have had enough by now except for the weather. He felt as if he was ensuring he outran the voice by hurrying across the corridor. A few bulbs sputtered alight in their cobwebbed crystal nest to show him yet another dilapidated bed. A hole had rotted in the canopy, dumping plaster on the stained bedclothes. Crowcross was holding a bedpost again, and a careless scribble behind him suggested that someone had just left the sketched bed. “Any little treasures would be barred from all these rooms,” he said. “Have any found their way in now? Do keep an eye on their behaviour. We don’t want any damage.”
“I think you’re having a bit of a joke,” Randolph said. How senile had the speaker been by the time he’d recorded the commentary? Had he been seeing his home as it used to be? The light stuttered, rousing shadows in the bathroom and enlivening a muddy trickle on the initialled tiles above the marble trough. “If you have had your pleasure,” Crowcross said, “the eldest breathed their last next door.”
“My pleasure,” Randolph retorted, and it was a question too.
The chandelier in the adjacent room lacked several bulbs. In the pensioned light a pair of four-posters occupied much of the cheerless space. Although the canopies were intact, the supports showed their age, some of the thinner ones bowing inwards. “They came here to grow as old as they could,” Crowcross said. “Tell any little cherubs that, and how they had to stay together while they did.”
Randolph thought the commentary had turned childish in the wrong way, if indeed there was a right one. He’d begun to feel it was no longer addressed to him or any listener, especially once Crowcross muttered “And then older.”
The beds were flanked by massive wardrobes almost as dark outside as in. Both were open just enough to let Randolph distinguish shapes within. The figure with a dwarfish puffy head and dangling arms that were longer than its legs was a suit on a padded hanger. Its opposite number resembled a life-size cut-out of a woman drained of colour— just a long white dress, not a shroud. Nobody was about to poke a face around either of the doors, however much Randolph was reminded of a game of hide and seek. He’d never prevented the children from playing that, even if he might have in Lorn Hall. As he did his best to finish peering at the wardrobes Crowcross said “Are you still hoping for diversions? They await your judgement.”
Randolph was starting to feel like the butt of a joke he wasn’t expected to appreciate, since Crowcross didn’t seem to think much of his visitors, let alone their views. When a pair of the lamps in the next room jittered alight, a ball on the billiard table shot into the nearest pocket. Of course only its legs had made it look as large as a billiard ball. Packs of battered cards were strewn across a table patched with baize, and cobwebs had overtaken a game of chess, where chipped marble chessmen lay in the dust beside the board. “This is where games were played,” Crowcross said, “by those who had the privilege. Mine was waiting, and in the end I won.”
He might have been talking to himself again, and resentfully at that. “We haven’t seen your room yet,” Randolph said and wondered if all of them had been. “You aren’t ashamed of it, are you? It’s a bit late to be ashamed.”
He was heading for the turret room when Crowcross said “Eager to see where I was visited by dreams? Since then they have had the run of the house.”
After a pause the room was illuminated by a stark grubby bulb. A bed with no posts and less than half the size of any of the others stood in the middle of the stone floor. The only other furniture was a wardrobe and a comparably somber dressing-table with a mirror so low it cut Randolph off above the waist. Perhaps the soft toys huddled on the pillow had at some stage been intended to make the room more welcoming, but that wasn’t their effect now. The pair of teddy bears and the lamb with boneless legs had all acquired red clownish mouths that contradicted their expressions. So much paint had been applied that it still resembled fresh blood
.
They were in the portrait, where their sketched faces looked disconcertingly human. Perhaps the alterations to the actual toys had been a kind of preliminary study. Crowcross stood at the sunlit window, beyond which a distant figure stooped, hands outstretched. “I used to love watching the keepers trap their prey,” Crowcross said. “They are put here for our pleasure and our use.”
As Randolph turned away he saw what the painting didn’t show. The toys on the pillow almost hid the clasped pair of hands protruding from beneath the quilt, which was blotched with mould. No, they were wings, none too expertly severed from the body—a pair of wooden wings. “This could have been a child’s room,” Crowcross mused. “We always raised our children to be men.”
“Don’t we talk about girls? I thought I was supposed to be unreasonable but my dear lord, my wife ought to listen to you,” Randolph said and seemed to hear a confused violent noise in response. The window was shuddering under an onslaught of rain. He turned his back to all the eyes watching him—the portrait’s and those of the disfigured toys, which were exactly as blank—and heard soft rapid footfalls on the stairs above him.
They were shuffling along the top corridor by the time he reached the staircase. “Excuse me, could you wait?” he shouted, raising the other headphone from his ear as he dashed upstairs so fast that he couldn’t have said whether one cherub’s face was splintered beyond recognition. Whenever he grabbed the banister, it wobbled with a bony clatter of its uprights. In a few seconds he saw that the top corridor was deserted.
None of the rooms showed a light. Perhaps whoever was about was trying to fix one, since otherwise their presence would have triggered it. Perhaps they were too busy to answer Randolph. Had the driver of the van been in the house at all? Presumably the person Randolph had glimpsed earlier was up here now. They couldn’t have gone far, and he made for the turret room in the hope of finding them.