Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  At least, I thought I did. I looked again, straining my eyes to penetrate the wood’s fathomless murk, but nothing was visible. I carried on walking, writing it off as a fox or deer or some such thing. It was easily possible. This country estate was so at peace with itself that I could imagine anything living here in complete seclusion and secrecy.

  3

  Century Film had put the cash up for a period blockbuster called I, Caesar . From what we’d heard, it was going to be a fictionalised biopic of the great general, taking in all his major battles and love affairs, and ending with his famous murder in the forum at Rome. A host of historical celebs were expected to make appearances: Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, Spartacus, Calpurnia, Brutus, Pompey and Augustus, to name but a few – offering juicy roles indeed for Hollywood’s great and good, who, by all accounts, were champing at the bit to get involved.

  That’s about as much as we really knew, along with the fact that the producers were seriously interested in utilising certain key themes that we’d written for our seminal album of 1975. Eagle Road had been something of an oddity even back then when ‘progressive’ and ‘concept’ were buzzwords in rock. It had charted the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, and, while track titles like Cross Of Blood , Roman Wolf and Attila’s Pride probably didn’t promise much to historical sophisticates, we’d really gone out (when I say ‘we’, I mean Rob mainly, one of whose greatest inspirations was always the composer Miklos Rozsa) to create the authentic sound of that lost age by using combinations of oriental, Greek and Jewish music. Of course, it would be untrue to say that there hadn’t been considerable head-banging material in there as well – I mean, that was our staple diet. But on the whole we’d created an ancient, arcane sound, which Century Film wanted to use at least part of for the background music on their new production.

  I suppose this made it all the more confusing that we were now in an English country house dating back to Charles II, in order to discuss it. I mean, don’t get me wrong – many rock bands, particularly from our era, were often pretentious enough to retreat to scenic and isolated abodes, where they could ‘take song-writing inspiration from their surroundings’ (and probably take a lot of drugs as well, only this time in complete privacy), but we weren’t even at the songwriting stage yet. This was nothing more than a get-together to discuss the potential of the project, and, if we were all in agreement, to perhaps lay down some ground rules as to what we could plunder from the original album and how we might update it. But it was hard to see why we had to do it here and not in some London hotel.

  Mind you, there was no denying that this was a very pleasant place to be. The interior of the Chase was as lovely as the exterior, the rooms all on a grand scale and filled with artworks and fine old furniture. At first we were assembled in ‘the parlour’, the high ceiling of which was covered with ornate plasterwork, the walls oak-panelled and hung with Cromwellian armour and weapons. A long banquet table ran down one side, and on this, the housekeeper – a Mrs. Hacket – had laid out brandy and champagne cocktails for us. Mrs. Hacket could have been made to match the environment, being trim, elegant, and looking very prim (and somewhat sexy) in her tight flower-print dress. She was in her mid-forties, and wore her ash-blonde hair cut severely short, but she was undeniably handsome and possessed of a delightful smile. A huge but youngish bloke, who I learned was her son, Lionel, was also on hand, hurrying to take away any trays of empties, and, if necessary, to bring in new bottles from the kitchen. By his dusty overalls, I judged him to be the caretaker here, which was no real surprise. With his hulking physique, carroty red hair and odd, vacant-eyed smile, I couldn’t imagine that his normal duties lay on the domestic side.

  “Anyway,” Troy said loudly, drawing us all to attention. He raised his glass. “To our new venture together, and the hostess who is making all this possible.”

  We mumbled in agreement, before taking sips of the fiery aperitif. Luke didn’t sip his, of course. He drank it down in one, and then lurched back to the table to get another.

  “The plan’s fairly simply, folks,” Troy added. “Tonight we’re just going to relax. You’ve all been allocated rooms, which I think you’ll like. Lionel will take the bags up. All we have to do this evening is enjoy ourselves. You might want to know a bit more about the place, though, and if you do, well …” he turned to Miss Ryder-Howe, “Lucille’s your man. Ridiculous as that may sound.”

  Our hostess smiled. “I’d like you all to take a leaf out of Troy’s book and call me Lucille while you’re here. Please, treat this place as your own. Refill at the bar, help yourself to snacks from the pantry. We’ve got tennis courts and a croquet lawn. There are even private fishing rights on our stretch of the Beaulieu. Feel free to wander round wherever it takes your fancy. Everything’s on the house.”

  “Sounds good,” Joe said.

  “Your rooms are ready and Mrs. Hacket will take you up whenever you want to go,” Troy added. “Any questions at all?”

  “Yeah,” Rob said, standing alone and to one side. “How is Lucille making it possible?”

  Troy glanced at him, puzzled. “Sorry?”

  “How – in what way – is Lucille making it possible?” Rob shrugged. “It’s very kind of her letting us stay here and all, but what’s this place got to do with Eagle Road ? I don’t get it.”

  Troy considered this. “Lucille, perhaps you’d like to explain?”

  If our hostess was in any way offended by Rob’s rather curt question, she didn’t show it. “Well, really … it was your manager’s idea,” she said. “But I think it’s a good one. We’re on the scene of a famous battle here at Rillington Chase, and …”

  “What battle?” Rob asked. “I’ve never heard of the battle of Rillington Chase.”

  “If you’d let Lucille explain, Rob,” Troy put in, “I think you’ll understand in a sec.”

  Miss Ryder-Howe continued: “The exact location of the battlefield is unknown, but lots of archaeological artifacts have been found around here, in the grounds. Basically, in 43 AD, several cohorts of the Roman Second Legion were destroyed in a savage fight with local tribesmen.”

  She paused, but we were still listening – even Luke, who leaned on the table as he refreshed his cocktail with yet more brandy.

  “I don’t know too much about it,” she said. “But it seems that in that year the Emperor Claudius sent a massive invasion force to Britain to try and conquer the entire island. His armies fought battles all along the South Coast, as far west as Maiden Castle. Somewhere around here, a Roman force encountered the Dumnonii tribe, who were reputedly very fierce. In the battle that followed, the Romans were massacred. It meant, at least temporarily, that a halt was called to the Roman march west.”

  She paused, and smiled again – rather hopefully, I thought.

  Rob nodded. “Okay, so that’s the history lesson over. Now perhaps you could answer my question. Like, what we’re doing here?”

  Joe turned to him. “Come on, man …”

  But Rob ignored him, regarding Miss Ryder-Howe stonily.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, I think Troy sort of hoped you’d be inspired to write something wonderful and Roman.”

  “You’ve got a museum here then, have you?” he asked. “Full of Roman art, that sort of thing?”

  Now there was a flush to her cheek. “No.”

  “Any ruins?”

  “Just the battlefield.”

  “Which we don’t even know is definitely here?”

  “It’s definitely here,” she said. “But, well,” and she smiled again, looking round at the rest of us, “the main thing is, I think, the ambience of the place.”

  We nodded warmly, as embarrassed by Rob’s attitude as she was.

  “Oh … so there’s a Roman ambience ,” Rob said. “Sorry, it’s just that … well, I didn’t notice it.”

  “You will Rob, I’m sure,” Troy interjected, not exactly glaring at him but clearly irritated. “Once you get your imag
ination in gear. After all, that’s what you’re being paid for, isn’t it?”

  Rob looked like he was about to argue further, and knowing some of the ding-dongs he and Troy had had in the past, I decided it was time to intervene.

  “So, what’s the story behind the actual house, Miss Ryder …?”

  “Lucille, please,” she said, turning to me.

  “Er … Lucille.”

  “Well …” She took a breath, as though about to give a pre-prepared spiel. “Rillington Chase was built shortly after the English Civil War by Alexander Rillington, a loyalist nobleman who only returned to England when Charles II had been restored to the throne. Apparently there had been a manor house here for centuries before then, but it was in a bad state of repair. Rillington rebuilt it with money he’d made from investments in the American colonies. I don’t know whether there was any evidence of the Roman battlefield then, but the story that it was built on the site of the battle was well known. Later on, in 1804, the estate passed into the hands of my family. A great-great-great-grandfather, or something or other, Thomas Ryder-Howe, was Marquis of Westbourne. He was also an antiquary, and fascinated by the ancient history of Britain. He allegedly bought the place purely because Roman relics were being ploughed up in the fields nearby. In 1805, he even built a folly because of it.”

  Joe looked nonplussed. “A folly?”

  “A pointless, expensive building,” Charlie explained. “Rather like that new mayoral bubble on the South Bank.”

  Joe glanced at him. “Come again?”

  Charlie sighed. “A meaningless structure. Usually quite fancy, but with no real purpose. Nineteenth century types were always building them.”

  Miss Ryder-Howe laughed. “That’s right. Ours was called ‘the Lamuratum’. It took the shape of a small Doric temple. My ancestor built it in honour of the Roman soldiers who fell here.”

  Considering the reason we’d been brought to the estate, this was starting to sound interesting.

  “Does it still exist?” I wondered.

  “Er … it does,” Miss Ryder-Howe replied. “Only I wouldn’t … well, I suppose there’s no reason why you can’t go and look at it. But it’s pretty shabby now, possibly dangerous. It’s a shadow of what it used to be.”

  “Whereabouts is it?” I asked, thinking that I wouldn’t mind checking it out.

  She gave me an odd kind of gaze, suggesting that she really was uncomfortable with this line of enquiry. “It’s in the Plantation. That’s the wood you’ll have passed on your way up the drive. On the left.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” I’d known there’d been something peculiar about that wood.

  She seemed to read my mind. “Yes, it’s a bit unsightly, the Plantation. But … well, I’m not really in a position to make major changes to the place at the moment. My ancestor had it planted deliberately to … well, to encircle the Lamuratum. To give it some privacy.”

  That confused me. Follies were normally constructed so that visitors could stand in awe of them She saw the question in my face.

  “It became a curiosity, I suppose,” she said. “For local people. Probably for vandals as well. Most folk don’t even know it’s there now.”

  “How deep is this Plantation?” I asked.

  “Extensive. Covers a good three or four square miles. The Lamuratum’s right in the middle somewhere. To be honest, I couldn’t lead you to it. Lionel works as groundsman and gardener as well as caretaker. He knows the way to it and could probably show you. There’s a path, I think, but it’s almost certainly overgrown.”

  “Sounds kind of spooky,” Barbara said.

  As always, she was right. She’d hit the nail on the head in a single short sentence.

  Miss Ryder-Howe tried to laugh that off. “Yes … well, it’s acquired a reputation over the years, I admit. But I don’t know why. I mean, it’s just a folly, isn’t it?”

  “And it would be sheer folly for us to continue nattering in here when we’ve got such a lovely evening to explore the grounds,” Troy said, deliberately changing the subject. “So, are we going to hang around in the reception hall all night, or are we going to get this show on the road?”

  4

  The bedrooms at Rillington Chase were as sumptuously furnished as the rooms downstairs. Mine had a four-poster, a large fireplace and two luxurious armchairs, and its wide window looked down on the manicured lawns and front drive.

  And on the enigmatic Plantation, which from this position lay to the right, a dense coppice, twisting, leafy and filled with greenish shadow.

  I’d now changed into a t-shirt and jeans, and feeling more homely and comfortable, was able to stand there for a few minutes and take in the view. An eventual glance at my watch told me it was nearly six o’clock, which still gave us two hours to kill. Shortly before we’d all ascended to our rooms, Mrs. Hacket had announced that dinner would be served at eight.

  I stepped out of the room into the corridor, which, in keeping with everywhere else in the house, was more like a passage in an art gallery. At least one original ornament or painting was situated every five yards or so. Apparently the floor above us was being refurbished, and at present consisted of sheets, trestle tables and buckets of paste, but that wasn’t the case down here. The walls were smoothly papered, the carpet a rich pile. I turned to close my door and for the first noticed the picture hanging alongside it.

  It portrayed what I assumed was the Lamuratum.

  It was one of those Regency landscapes, done in watercolours that always look more watery than they need to be. Clearly it had been painted before the Plantation had grown, for though there were trees in evidence, the Lamuratum stood on open ground. It was a circle of marble pillars, with a series of lintels connecting them together. A plume of brackish, foul-looking smoke appeared to be rising from the middle of it, though what was causing this I couldn’t see. I stared at the picture for a several seconds before sensing someone behind me and spinning around. Rob had emerged quietly from his bedroom.

  “You gave her a hard time down there,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. Are you buying all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this! Rillington bloody Chase. Doesn’t it all seem a bit OTT?”

  I still wasn’t sure what he meant. We started walking.

  “I mean,” he said, “if Troy wanted us to get wired up to ancient Rome and all that, wouldn’t he have taken us somewhere like Pompeii, or, well … Rome?”

  “Perhaps he couldn’t afford it?”

  Rob snorted with contempt.

  “What exactly are you thinking?” I asked.

  “You know Troy. He’s got more angles than an octahedron.”

  “I know he wouldn’t fuck us over, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I dunno. Times have changed, Rick. We’re not hot stuff anymore. What’s to be gained by trying to bring us back?”

  “We own the rights to Eagle Road , that’s what.”

  We’d now reached the top of the grand staircase. He stopped, regarding me uncertainly. “You reckon that’s all this is? I mean, genuinely?”

  “I’ve seen the paperwork from Century,” I said, as we descended. “They approached him. He’s not pulling a fast one.”

  “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be beyond him to try and get one last payday out of us before we’re consigned to the rock and roll graveyard.”

  Rob had always been the introspective one, but this level of despondency was new.

  “Look,” I said. “If all we’ve got to do is rework a few themes from an album we wrote twenty-eight years ago, maybe run out a new song to go with it, I’m up for it. I wouldn’t mind the cash.”

  “We never had a Hollywood hit, did we?” Rob said.

  I knew what he meant. It would have been nice, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you did back in our heyday. Of course there’d been some classic ones since. I remember envying Guns‘n’Roses for the publicity they go
t on the strength of the number they released to accompany Terminator 2 , while Aerosmith did very nicely from the piece they knocked out for Armageddon .

  “We left the scene too early, that’s all,” I said.

  Rob snorted again. When he felt contempt, he rarely tried to conceal it.

  “What is it with you?” I asked. “Why do you underrate your work so much?”

  “Bloody hell, Rick!” We reached the bottom of the stairs, where he rounded on me. “Eagle Road was nothing to do with real Roman stuff. It’s not like I did any research or anything. I pulled most of those tunes out of my head.”

  “So what? You got the right sound.”

  “It’s so dated.”

  And that, I had to admit, was probably true. Concept albums really were old hat now. Though – and this was the thing I was hanging onto – old-fashioned stuff can come back in, often when it’s least expected. Eagle Road had been filled with mysterious, ancient world-type themes, all produced on contemporary instruments – as had the music for the recent movie Gladiator , which had also ploughed an allegedly outdated furrow. Despite studio doubts, that picture had gone on to rocket at the Box Office, and to prove the catalyst for a whole new generation of historical epics. And if we could do for I, Caesar what Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard had done for Gladiator , then maybe we too could be looking at a major comeback. And thanks to Eagle Road , the blueprint already existed. I didn’t see how we could fail – unless we seriously screwed things up at the writing end, though evidently this wasn’t what was bugging Rob.

  Before I could say anything else, Barbara appeared, planting a plump, be-ringed hand on each of our shoulders. “And what are you two cooking up?” she asked.

  Rob gave her a weak smile. “Just discussing the project.”

  She shook her head “Working already. Well, me and Charlie are going for a boat trip.”

  “Boat trip?” I said.

  Charlie now appeared, his jacket draped over his shoulder. “Apparently there’s an ornamental lake five minutes’ walk that way.” He pointed in a vague westerly direction, then raised a sardonic eyebrow. “We’ve been given permission to take a boat out.”