by James Wilson
It suddenly occurred to me that, without even thinking about it, I had been visualizing my visit to Hallaton Hall as a kind of repeat of my expedition to Miss Shaw’s house, but with a different book. That, I could see now, as I ventured on to the drive, had been a mistake. Miss Shaw’s house, for all its seclusion, had looked out upon the world, and admitted the possibility you might have some business with it. This place, by contrast, seemed to repel you by the monumental mass of its indifference – which increased, like a sort of inverse gravity, the nearer you got to it, making each step harder than the last. The door would be opened, in all probability, not by a friendly housekeeper or maid, who might be appealed to as a fellow human being, but by an inscrutable footman trained to keep undesirables at bay. I could sense his withering stare already, and see the twitch in the corner of his mouth, as my carefully rehearsed phrases bounced off him like arrows loosed against a dreadnought …
It was no good: I needed to think of another strategy. I turned, and started back towards the gate. At any moment, I thought, there might be a bellowed Hey, you! behind me, followed by the sound of pursuing footsteps; but all I could hear, beyond the scrunch of my own feet on the gravel, was a leisurely tattoo of hoofbeats from the road outside, and two men calling to each other in the stable-yard. I had just reached the entrance, and was on the point of making good my escape, when a horse suddenly appeared in front of me, blocking my path into the street. I tried to dodge round it; but the rider, a girl of no more than eighteen or nineteen, stopped the beast abruptly, and sat staring curiously down at me.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
She nodded. She didn’t speak, but her insolent blue eyes demanded to know who I was, and what I was doing there.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. I made another attempt to get past. She responded by urging the horse a couple of paces forward to stop me.
I started to blush. There was nothing for it: I was going to have to account for myself. And reluctant though I was to tell her the truth, I knew that if I tried to make up a more convincing story on the spot I should almost certainly end by being caught out.
‘I was looking for Mr. Studd,’ I said.
‘Studd?’
I nodded.
‘There hasn’t been a Studd here since before I was born. Longer ago than that.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but this is the only address I have.’ I took the prayer-book from my pocket, and opened it to show the inscription, pointing to where Hallaton Hall had been written and then rubbed out. She frowned at it, with the sulky look of a stupid child who suspects you’re playing a trick on her, but can’t quite understand how it’s being done.
I remembered that the surest way to disarm suspicion is to ask for help.
‘Do you know where I might find him?’ I said. ‘Or, at least, where I might find someone who could tell me what happened to him?’
She continued gazing at the book for a second or two, then glanced over her shoulder and called:
‘Carter!’
I looked back along the road. Fifty yards or so behind her sat a groom on a bay gelding. As I watched, he nudged the horse into motion and began trotting towards us.
He was a burly, bull-necked fellow who looked like a prizefighter, and there was only one reason I could think of why she should have summoned him. I instinctively rose on the balls of my feet, preparing to run. Then I realized that it would not simply make me look ridiculous, but would also be entirely pointless, since the only way open to me was back into the grounds, where I should be trapped.
‘Yes, miss?’ he said as he came up to us – all the while studying me with a sardonic grin, as if he were measuring me up as a potential opponent and finding me less than impressive. His forearms, I noticed, were so thick that they threatened to split the sleeves of his jacket.
‘Pick,’ said the girl.
‘Beg pardon, miss?’
‘Old Pick – what’s his name –?’
‘John, would that be?’
She nodded impatiently. ‘John, John, yes. Where does he live?’
‘Pudding Lane, miss.’
‘There,’ she said, looking down at me. ‘If you want to talk about Studds, go to Pudding Lane and ask for John Pick.’ And without waiting for a reply, she tapped the horse into life with her crop and rode on.
The groom smiled as he passed me – and then, looking back, called:
‘Pudding Lane’s off the high street, sir. You can’t miss it. And Pick’s is three down on the right.’
I raised my cap in thanks, but he had already turned away, and didn’t see it. I watched them both into the stable-yard, before setting off for the high street.
*
My first idea was that I should simply establish where Pudding Lane was, and then return to the pub to gather my thoughts before going in search of John Pick. But when I got there, and found a grassy track, bordered on one side by neat gardens and on the other by an orchard teeming with squawking hens, it looked so enticing that I couldn’t resist seeing where it led. And as I reached the third gate, I saw – not more than six feet away, stooped behind a low hedge – a stocky man of sixty or so tending a line of bean-poles in front of his cottage. I tried to edge past without his noticing me, but he sensed my presence, and looked up smiling.
‘Lovely evening.’
Impossible, now, to extricate myself. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is. Are you Mr. Pick, by any chance?’
He grabbed the handle of his fork and pulled himself up, then stood squinting into the setting sun behind me, trying to see if he recognized me. He was broadly built, with close-cropped silver hair that ran seamlessly into a well-trimmed beard, giving the queer impression that his whole head was covered with a continuous grey pelt. The effect was to make him look startlingly like a badger.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said, after a couple of seconds.
‘My name’s Corley Roper.’ I held out my hand. He glanced down at it in surprise, then – after brushing the earth from his palm – reached out and took it. He said nothing, but from his perplexed expression I think he must have thought I had come to try to sell him something.
‘A young lady at the Hall said you might be able to help me,’ I said.
‘What, Miss Bankhart, you mean?’
I smiled. ‘I don’t know. I only met her by chance. But when I mentioned that I was trying to find out something about Mr. Studd, she suggested I should come and see you.’
He did not reply at once, but leaned heavily on his fork, his jaw working as if he were chewing a plug of tobacco.
‘Which Mr. Studd?’ he said at last.
‘Henry Malden.’
He sucked his cheeks in surprise. ‘Ah, poor Master Henry. What’s happened to him, then?’
I shook my head. ‘I know nothing about him at all, I’m afraid. All I have is this.’
I opened the prayer-book and held it out to him. He took it and scanned the inscription, moving his lips as he read.
‘And how come you do have it, if you don’t mind my asking?’ he said, as he handed it back again.
‘Well, that’s something of a story.’ I glanced past him. ‘Perhaps …?’
He turned to see what I was looking at, then got my meaning, and nodded.
‘Very well, sir,’ he said, opening the gate. ‘Please come in.’
‘Thank you.’
He led me up an uneven path towards his plain little red-brick cottage. Under the window, wedged against the wall, was a weather-stained wooden bench.
‘We’ll do well enough here, don’t you think, sir?’ he said, prodding it with his foot.
‘Yes, of course.’
We sat side by side, looking out at the hills rising above the orchard. I could hear children playing in the neighbouring garden, and see a woman taking down laundry from a line.
‘Don’t trouble yourself about them, sir,’ he said. ‘They won’t pay us any heed.’
I tapped the prayer-book on my knee. ‘Thirty years ago,’
I said, as softly as I could, ‘someone gave this to a little girl living in France. She was far too young to remember who it was. But there must have been a reason for it.’
He nodded. ‘Well, her parents would know, wouldn’t they?’
I looked across at the woman. He was right: she was showing no interest in us at all. Dropping my voice to a whisper, I said:
‘She doesn’t know who her parents were. But …’
‘Oh, I see!’ He was stage-whispering himself now. ‘And you imagined Master Henry might have been the –?’
‘Yes. Is that possible, do you think?’
‘No, sir. Well, I shouldn’t say no, because you never really know another human creature, do you, and what you might find in him, if you looked deep enough? But if you was to ask me, which member of that family was least likeliest to go and make a child he didn’t want the world to know about, I’d say Master Henry.’
‘And which would be the most likely, do you think?’
He started, as if he had only realized too late that I was almost certain to ask him that question, and regretted laying himself open to it.
‘I was only a stable-boy, sir,’ he mumbled, his cheeks reddening beneath the grey furze of his beard. ‘And then a groom. It was just Good morning, sir; good morning, miss; good morning, Pick. They were pleasant enough to me, most of the time. And Mr. Studd, that’s the father, he was a fine gentleman, who knew a good horse when he saw it. But that’s about as much as I can tell you about them. And it wouldn’t really be my place to say more in any case, would it, even if I could?’
That didn’t stop you offering an opinion on Henry, I thought. But to say so would only make him retreat further; so instead I simply asked:
‘Why did you call him poor Master Henry?’
He grinned with relief. ‘I’d say they was both of them poor, truth be told. Him and Master Edward, I mean. But Master Henry was the worser.’ He spread his fingers on his knee and looked down at them, shaking his head. ‘Not poor the way we were, of course. Poor like a couple of young saplings that find the other trees have growed up around them, so they can’t get enough light.’
‘Master Edward …?’
He scowled at me, wrestling with the impossible challenge of imagining what the world must look like to someone who had never even heard of the Studds.
‘Master Edward was Master Henry’s elder brother,’ he said finally. ‘Mr. Studd, see, had four children by his first wife: Master Edward and Master Henry, and then the … the two young ladies. But –’
‘Listen,’ I said, drawing out my pen and notebook. ‘Do you mind if I write this down?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not a secret. Leastways, not so far as I know.’
I started sketching a rough family tree. ‘So: the brothers are Edward and Henry. What about the sisters?’
He hesitated a second, before clearing his throat and saying gruffly:
‘Miss Henrietta and Miss Emily, sir. But their mother died, that’s the tragedy of it, when they was all just mites. And Mr. Studd re-married. And he and the second Mrs. Studd, they come back to England, and had five bpoor the way weoys of their own. And –’
‘Wait, wait – came back from where?’
He raised his eyebrows, as if he were surprised that I needed to ask. ‘Why, from India, sir. They went first to Wiltshire, I think it was. And then, after a few year, they come here, and took the Hall.’
‘And when was that, do you remember?’
‘Oh, that would have been …’ He screwed up his eyes and stared into the distance, whistling silently. ‘About 1862, I reckon. Or sixty-three. I was just a lad at the time. But when my dad – he was groom to Lady Hinrich, who had the house before them – when he saw how many hunters Mr. Studd meant to keep, and how many staff he was going to need to mind them, he suggested me for a stable-boy. And that’s how I got my start.’ He shook his head again. ‘Crazy for the horses he was, Mr. Studd.’
‘And Henry and Edward were what, overshadowed by their half-brothers, were they?’
He nodded. ‘Well, not to begin with, maybe, on account Master Kynaston and Master George and Master Charles weren’t much more’n babes when they come here. But by the time they was old enough to run around, it was soon pretty clear who ruled the roost. You’d have thought Master Kynaston was the Prince of Wales, the way he’d stride about, ordering everything to his liking, and Mrs. Studd looking on like this.’ He pressed his hands together, and somehow managed to pull his bearded face into a grotesque parody of a doting madonna’s smile. ‘Always got his way, did Master Kynaston. And’d make sure Master George and Master Charles got theirs, too, when it didn’t interfere with his.’ He shook his head, and laughed almost noiselessly. ‘Funny, when you think what become of them. Just goes to show, you never can tell with folks, can you?’
‘Why, what did become of them?’
He lifted his arms, and wielded an imaginary cricket bat.
‘Oh, what, the Studd brothers?’ I said. ‘Who played for England?’
He nodded, pleased to discover that – alien though I undoubtedly was – even the universe I came from was not entirely Studdless. ‘And then went on to be missionaries, so I heard.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that.’
He nodded again. ‘Leastways, Master Charles did. Went off to China or some such, I believe. Hard to imagine, that, when you think of how he used to torment poor Master Henry.’
I shifted position on the bench – taking the opportunity, as I did so, to turn my head for a moment and glance in at the window. The sunlight was too bright for me to be able to make out much; but through a ghostly image of the garden I glimpsed a cluttered table with an open beer-bottle on it, and – hanging at a skewed angle on the wall beyond, where in a religious household you would expect to see The Light of the World – a dull print of a rural scene.
‘Perhaps’, I said, ‘the habit of supposing you are always right and the other poor chap is always wrong is exactly what you need to be a missionary.’
I had not misjudged him. He chuckled and said:
‘I never thought of that, sir. But maybe you’re right. Master Henry might just as well have been a savage, the way they treated him sometimes – and that’s the truth.’ He paused for a moment, startled by his own frankness; then – fearing I might think him disloyal – turned towards me and said: ‘Not that I’m saying they were wrong, mind. They were only favouring their own, after all, and that’s natural enough, isn’t it? It was just hard to watch sometimes. Put me in mind of a lot of healthy young piglets jostling a couple of runts to keep them from the teat.’
‘And what about the girls? Did they get jostled too?’
He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Not so much, sir, no.’
‘What, they were stronger-willed, were they?’
He let out a soft phew. ‘That’s a tidy way of putting it. I can think of another word. Any road, they were Mr. Studd’s darlings – and if the mistress or one of the boys crossed them, they’d have him to answer to for it.’
‘And what became of them? Do you know?’
The skin tightened around his eyes, and for a moment he seemed at a loss what to say. Then he mumbled:
‘Miss Henrietta married the doctor. Dr. Crane.’
‘And do they still live here?’
‘No, sir,’ he muttered, barely moving his lips. ‘They moved away a good while ago now.’
‘That’s a shame. Do you know where they went?’
He shook his head.
‘How about Miss Emily? Did she marry?’
He breathed in sharply, then tried to cover it by coughing.
‘I couldn’t say, sir. All I do know is, she hadn’t by the time she left here.’
‘And when was that?’
He squirmed, almost imperceptibly. ‘You’ll have to give me a minute, sir. I’ll need to work it out.’ He leaned forward, dropping his hands between his knees, and stared out at the horizon again. His eyes, I n
oticed, had gone suddenly dull and milky, as if a cloud were passing across the sun, and they had picked up its reflection.
‘Seventy-one, sir,’ he said finally, levering himself up.
‘That’s when she went?’
‘When they all went. Save Miss Henrietta, of course. She stayed, on account she was Mrs. Crane by then.’
1871. A good nine or ten years before Mary Wilson was born. Whatever her connection was to Henry Malden Studd, it looked as if I wasn’t going to find it in Hallaton.
‘And what about Master Henry?’ I said. ‘Do you know what happened to him after they left?’
‘Him and Master Edward was sent off to India again, to run the plantation. That’s what I understood, any rate.’ He saw the question in my eyes and added quietly, as if he were committing an indiscretion: ‘Indigo. That’s what all the horses and the houses and the money is, if you come down to it. Indigo. Made by a lot of poor barefoot heathens.’
‘And you don’t know if they ever came back?’
‘No, sir. That were pretty well the last I heard of them.’
I nodded. ‘And the rest of the family –?’
‘They went back to Wiltshire. A big place, seemingly, bigger’n the Hall, they say. I might have gone with them, only I was courting by then, and my girl was in service at the Manor, and didn’t want to leave.’
‘Do you remember what it was called? The house in Wiltshire?’
He chewed his lip for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Tell you what I do have, though, sir,’ he said, getting up. ‘And that’s the letter Mr. Studd were good enough to send, when Amy and me was married. It weren’t from Wiltshire, it were from their London house. And of course, it’s a good few years ago now. But there’ll be someone living there, won’t there – and if it isn’t Master Kynaston, then whoever it is might still be able to tell you where you can find him.’
He went inside, and reappeared a moment later carrying a black-bound scrap-book, which he had wedged open with one finger.
‘Here you are, sir,’ he began. ‘Number two –’ And then, losing confidence in his ability to read it, he bent down and showed me the page:
Gummed to the middle was a letter written on expensive blue paper. The ink had already started to yellow, but the engraved address at the top was as clear as ever: