The Room Beyond

by Stephanie Elmas

We left the motorway and drove for nearly an hour down country lanes until Edward suddenly swung off to the right through a pair of gates marked Druid Manor – PRIVATE. The single track went on for some minutes, rising up and up towards a dark mound in the distance and getting narrower all the time as if the fields on either side were encroaching in on us, threatening to swallow the car up whole.

  The mound in the distance began to take shape, sprouting chimneys and windows and pillars and yet more windows. It was colossal. And in its circular driveway there appeared to be a black spike, jutting out just in front of the long colonnade of pillars that made up the façade. We edged closer and finally the fields withdrew sulkily. The spike turned into Raphael.

  ‘Where’s Eva, Mum?’ he asked, pulling Arabella’s door open. He didn’t look at me and I felt an irritating knot of disappointment in my stomach.

  ‘Oh, she’s coming tonight, I think. Robert’s got some church thing this afternoon, so the two of them are coming down together after that.’

  ‘She’s dumped the oligarch.’

  ‘Yes, I read about it in The Times colour supplement. Have you lost weight dear?’

  ‘I don’t know, probably.’

  A pleasant looking middle-aged couple in wellies came out to greet us with at least five dogs of varying sizes at their heels.

  ‘Darling Fiona!’ squealed Arabella, pressing the fakest of fake looking kisses into each of the woman’s cheeks. ‘How lovely to see you!’

  Edward and the man patted each other’s shoulders in a fond and hearty sort of way. They were the same height and shared that tall, straight-backed physic; you could tell they were brothers.

  ‘So you are still with us then,’ said Raphael, suddenly standing quite close to me.

  ‘Of course, where else would you expect me to be?’

  He brushed his hand softly down my arm.

  ‘May I introduce Lord and Lady Hartreve to you, my aunt and uncle.’

  ‘Come now, none of these formalities!’ laughed the lady. ‘Rupert and Fiona please. And you’re Serena, aren’t you? It’s very nice to have you here and is this really Beth! Haven’t you grown young lady.’

  The grand hallway of Druid Manor was easily large enough to have contained my aunt’s house. It was lined with marble and had the sort of staircase that Cinderella might have escaped down when she lost that crucial glass slipper. The walls were adorned with grand portraits of bewigged nobles bearing remarkable resemblances to their dogs and an immense chandelier swooped down from the ceiling, crowning it all.

  But as my mouth gaped open in admiration, I also took in my first breath of the damp air circulating about the place. It tasted of mushrooms and I felt myself shiver despite the fact that I still had my thickest winter coat on. The place was freezing, colder than outdoors, and horribly damp. Beyond the twinkling bulbs of the chandelier, ribbons of plaster were curling away from the ceiling and an ominous brown stain loomed above the arched window over the stairs. Arabella’s comment in the car came back to me; the house really was in a sorry state.

  ‘Let’s take these bags up,’ said Fiona, coming up to me. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’

  The upstairs corridors smelt even damper than the hallway and glimpses into rooms showed a mismatched collection of old furniture.

  ‘Where’s Estella and Olly, Auntie Fi?’ asked Beth.

  ‘They’re just doing the rounds on the estate. They’ll be with us shortly.’

  ‘They’re our cousins,’ said Beth with big confiding eyes.

  ‘I know. You told me in the car. Twice.’

  ‘Now this is your room, Beth’s is next door. Do come in, I hope you’ll be comfortable here.’

  We were summoned to lunch soon after with the cousins. The dining room felt warmer than the rest of the house; it had a huge baronial fire full of crackling logs and as everyone milled about the room I inched towards it, tripping over several basking dogs on the way. The flames melted my fingers and the new warmth edged silkily up my arms towards the rest of my body. Seb would have loved this. I could picture him at the centre of it all, teasing Beth, hurling bread rolls across the table.

  ‘Lunch is served! Everyone find a pew!’ hollered Edward. He seemed more jovial and at ease than I’d ever seen him and he’d already changed from his city clothes into tweed trousers and a rough Pringle jumper, just like his brother. The look suited him; not quite a uniform but more like his natural state of being. He was at home.

  In contrast Arabella seemed to have done the opposite. She looked even floatier and more chiffony than ever and must have been freezing, although she didn’t show it.

  ‘You’ll find there’s an awful lot of dog hair on that chair. Try this one,’ she mouthed at me with exaggerated lips. ‘Now Olly, you sit next to me. I want you to tell me all about your fascinating line of work. What is it that you do again?’

  ‘I’m a qualified chartered surveyor now,’ said the ruddy-cheeked, rather shy cousin.

  ‘How interesting! And I’d always hoped you’d be the one going into the money-making side of things.’

  At the other end of the table Beth was giggling away with Estella, Olly’s sister, and all around the family began to eat and chat away together in high spirits. Only Arabella stood out, winding her fingers along the yellow silk scarf around her neck and looking at Olly as he spoke with a smile that seemed to threaten to rip his throat out in one fell swoop.

  Beth disappeared after lunch with Edward, Rupert and the cousins.

  ‘It’ll give you time to unpack dear, although come back to us soon!’ said Arabella.

  I wandered back to the grand hallway, feeling rather like a trespasser after visiting hours in a stately home. Seb must have been with his father by now. I tried to imagine the two of them together but got nothing, although with my eyes closed I could just about feel the touch of his mouth on my neck.

  ‘So what are your first impressions of the Manor?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see you!’ Raphael was leaning against the banisters, half in the shadows. ‘Um, it’s beautiful, very grand. A bit cold though.’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled, his eyebrows raised comically. ‘Things can get almost arctic here. You have to pile the jumpers on, although my mother never bothers and always catches cold. The secret is to acclimatize yourself to it slowly, one of the reasons I arrived a day early. If you have a moment I’d like to show you one of my favourite rooms here.’

  He lead me back past the now empty dining room and through some doors into a lengthy network of corridors, clearly not in use anymore. Again the damp smell was much worse here; there were no windows and all the doors along the way were firmly shut. It had seemed impossible to feel any colder than I’d been already been but my teeth were now chattering. It was also becoming increasingly dark: few of the existing light sockets had bulbs fixed into them and some were just wires sticking out of the ceiling.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked and my voice sounded surprisingly small. ‘It’s like a maze in here!’

  ‘Then you’ve sort of hit the nail on the head. Look,’ he opened a door to his right and nothing but a flaky brick wall sat behind it.

  ‘Are they all like that?’

  ‘No, some of them lead to rooms, some to other corridors. But many of them are fake like this one as well. Now hang on, I always get a bit lost here. Let me concentrate. Where’s good old Seb when we need him?’

  ‘Does Seb know it here?’

  ‘Better than anyone. He didn’t tell you about the library I suppose.’

  I felt a stab of annoyance, and disappointment. ‘No.’

  ‘OK, we need to turn right.’

  It got really dark now. Raphael took the lead, brushing his hand against the wall and testing the light switches when they came his way. I didn’t break the silence. His head was stooped as if he was thinking his way along, following some sort of instinct. In the dim light he seemed like a monk, padding along a cloister. I could just make out the curve of his should
er blades, and I thought about the way I’d pressed myself against them on the back of the bike. I’d followed him that time as well, blindly putting my life in his hands.

  ‘Found it!’ he gasped, suddenly halting by a large pair of doors.

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Sorry, I think I took a couple of wrong turnings. It’s been awhile. When I was a child, I knew it inside out. Here we go.’

  The doors groaned apart and the room lit up before me.

  ‘Wow!’

  The sight instantly sparked off a memory, something my mother had shown me long ago:

  ‘Look at this little flower. It’s called a hellebore.’

  ‘That’s nothing special,’ I’d replied to her. It was just a timid little bell of a thing, brown and innocuous, staring down at the ground.

  ‘Try turning it upwards darling. Look inside the flower.’

  And when I did I’d found myself gazing into one of the most elegant and perfect things I’d ever seen; a circular explosion of pink and purple.

  I turned to Raphael, my mouth gaping. ‘I... it’s unimaginable! How did we get here?’

  ‘This library stands at the centre of the house. It’s the heart of it, if you like,’ he answered, his voice echoing.

  The room was completely round, but so large that every shelf that lined its interior walls must have been crafted to the most subtle of curves in order to slot perfectly into place. And in every segment of shelving sat hundreds if not thousands of books.

  Instead of windows there was a spectacular glass domed ceiling which, even in the overcast winter gloom, lit the room up like a stage. Hardly any furniture occupied the central parts of the room; there were a couple of heavy wooden desks and a few easy chairs scattered about here and there, but little could have done justice to a space of such extreme proportions. And yet somehow it was able to exist quietly out of view, almost impossible to find.

  ‘I can’t get over it. No one would ever guess that it was here.’

  ‘That’s what’s so interesting, isn’t it? You see it was built entirely for that purpose.’

  ‘What do you mean?

  ‘Some things just don’t want to be seen by anyone who looks in their direction,’ I could hear the excitement in his voice. ‘They can be right in front of your face, you can walk past them, around them, within their very shadow, but unless they want you to see them, you just don’t notice.’

  ‘We walked miles to get here though.’

  ‘Not really. You might not have realized but most of the corridors we walked along just wind and turn in on themselves. In fact the glass roof of this library is only a few feet away from your bedroom window.’

  ‘It can’t be. I would have noticed it. My bedroom looks out onto nothing but sky and a brick wall.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, because the angles are all wrong. And none of the other inner-facing rooms look out onto it either. The library simply doesn’t want to be gaped at by any old person.’

  ‘You speak about it as if it were a living thing.’

  ‘And who says it isn’t?’ he asked. I could see the tension in his eyes again: the urgency, the tight string poised to snap. ‘Don’t you believe that buildings have a life of their own?’

  ‘Whoever built this place must have been a master craftsman of some kind. A famous architect.’

  ‘No he was nothing of the sort. He was a man called Walter Balanchine. I’ve spoken to you about him before I think, the first time we met.’

  Walter Balanchine. That name just kept cropping up again and again.

  ‘Sasha would be very interested in this place then,’ I said, treading carefully. ‘Isn’t he some sort of expert on the man?’

  ‘Sasha would cut his right hand off to come here,’ he answered in a voice so dry that it set my teeth on edge. And then he suddenly smiled up at me, as if shaking the subject of Sasha off. ‘We’re lucky we still have this place actually. A large part of the Manor, including the library, threatened to cave in on itself a few years ago. Subsidence.’

  ‘It must have cost a fortune to repair.’

  ‘Yes... luckily we were sort of, bailed out, at the last minute so to speak.’

  I gazed around the room; it would have taken weeks, months to do justice to the jungle of books and manuscripts and endless artefacts that had been crammed into the library walls. No part of its circumference had been left bare and where the shelving ended it was replaced by drawings and paintings and mounted shotguns and stuffed birds in cases and a thousand other things.

  ‘It’s like Marguerite Avenue, but on steroids.’

  ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right about that!’ he laughed.

  But one large oil painting did draw me closer; it seemed only natural at first as it was bigger and more imposing than anything else in the room. And yet there was something more to it than that, a funny sort of magnetism about it that made me breathe a little faster with every approaching step. The beautiful girl at the centre... I knew her, I’d seen her before. Somewhere. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? My favourite painting in the house,’ said Raphael. He’d followed me across the room and I could actually feel his presence on the back of my neck. ‘It was commissioned in the 1870s by an unknown artist.’

  There were two people in the painting: a middle-aged man and the young familiar woman sitting on a horse. The man, who was standing at the horse’s head with the bridle in his hands, was broad-chested and stocky and looked as if he would have been far more comfortable sitting on the horse himself. He had large grey whiskers and a rather arrogant, bulldoggish expression on his face.

  But the girl’s eyes shone out so piercingly from the painting that it seemed as if she was staring straight at me. She had tints of red in her hair that were set off by what must have been a very smart riding habit, and she sat mounted on the lovely chestnut horse as if she owned the world and despised everything about her at the same time.

  ‘The great Stephen Hartreve,’ said Raphael, breaking the silence. ‘The man in the painting. This was his room, it was built for him.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘His daughter, Lucinda.’

  ‘Lucinda Hartreve, the one who lived in Marguerite Avenue?’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘You never did tell me about her.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I feel as if she’s a person I was familiar with once but need reminding about. Don’t you think she’s laughing at us all in this painting, as if everything’s a big joke?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got a point. I suppose that nowadays we would label her as nothing more than a rebel, but she was called far worse in her time. Lucinda and her father parted on bad terms. She ran off with the wrong man when she was quite young and eventually had an illegitimate child with someone else. Lucinda was her father’s favourite, he had a son as well who went to Africa as a missionary and died there. That’s why the inheritance eventually came to our side of the family.

  Lucinda was the apple of her father’s eye: strong-willed, a good horsewoman and very much admired for her beauty. After she left, Stephen retreated into himself. His wife had died many years before and he started to go mad rattling around Druid Manor on his own. And so he got Walter to build this library for him. He wanted something large enough to contain everything he might ever need to keep him occupied and yet so private that he should never be bothered by anyone.

  As he got older he spent more and more time here. He was drawn to its discreet grandeur; he loved the novelty of being able to disappear into it as if by magic. In fact invisibility became quite an obsession for him; you’ll find a whole section on it in this library, along with books on ghosts, the occult and so on. One wouldn’t associate a man like that with such subjects, but his daughter and, her legacy, changed him I think. He started to look inside himself until it became an obsession.’

  ‘It’s so sad, a good story though. You seem
to know a lot about him.’

  ‘I have excellent sources.’

  ‘What happened to Lucinda?’

  ‘Ah, that’s not a good story. But we should go, I expect Beth will be back by now and I have a number of things to do. Do you remember the way back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well let’s hope I do then!’ he answered with a low laugh. He reached out, drawing me from the painting with his hand.

  Eva eventually arrived with Robert late into the evening. They pulled up the driveway in a glimmering Aston Martin and we all assembled outside to greet them.

  Olly stroked the bonnet of the car with an adoring hand. ‘Like the motor!’

  ‘A present from the oligarch, just before she jilted him,’ said Raphael.

  ‘Didn’t he want it back?’

  ‘No,’ replied Eva. ‘I think he’d already forgotten about it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have strung him on a bit longer then, got a few more pressies out of him?’

  ‘No.’

  I trailed behind as the cousins swept into the house chattering loudly, and when no one was looking I disappeared upstairs. In my bedroom I peered through the window into the black night air. Slowly the outline of the brick wall that shielded my view of the library roof began to take form. It seemed impossible that that gigantic glass dome was only a short distance away, when all I could see was a patch of jet black sky and the silhouette of a crooked mound of ugly bricks. A secret library, hidden so cleverly from the world’s eyes. My spine tingled. And poor old Stephen Hartreve, withering away in that vast place, alone and heirless. What did happen to Lucinda in the end?

  I woke up the next morning to the glare of bright sunshine and the clamber of animated footsteps running along corridors and up and down stairs.

  ‘Serena!’ my door burst open and Beth came flying onto my bed. ‘It’s the Christmas Eve treasure hunt, get up! Oh they’re always so brilliant, Grandpa and Uncle Rupert do it for us and you’ve got to come too. Oh please, please!’

  ‘Calm down!’

  ‘I’m trying to, I really am, but I can’t breathe. You will come won’t you?’’