Don't Read Alone
Page 19
“What the hell are those for?” Troy asked, suddenly noticing the croquet mallets Rob and I were carrying.
“Self-defence,” Rob said.
“Against who?”
“Against what , don’t you mean?” Rob replied. “The New Forest’s full of wild boar. You knew that, didn’t you, Troy?”
Generally speaking, Troy was difficult to ruffle. But not on this occasion. Clearly he hadn’t known about the wild boar, and neither, I must admit, had I, and if the colour drained from our manager’s face like ink down a drain, then I’m pretty sure that it did the same with mine.
“Jesus,” Troy breathed. “Wild boar?”
“Having second thoughts, are we?” Rob asked.
Fleetingly, it looked as though Troy might be, but then he shook his head and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Er … no. Course not. Why should I?”
“I dunno,” Rob said. “But he who turns and runs away …”
And with that merry thought, he drifted off in pursuit of Charlie, Barbara and Miss Ryder-Howe, who were now ambling towards the lawn and the dark wall of trees that marked the edge of the Plantation. We set off walking too, in a straggling procession. Lionel had got back on his quad bike, and now chugged up to the front, Luke slumped in the carriage behind him.
If Troy had genuinely been unnerved by Rob’s comment about boar, it didn’t last for long. By the time we were on the grass, he’d reverted back to his glib, chatty self.
“Listen Rick,” he said conspiratorially. “Sorry about earlier. That row we had near the coach.”
“Wasn’t really a row, was it,” I replied.
“No. But … I mean, you weren’t serious about pulling out of the project, were you?”
“Not sure yet. We don’t seem to be doing much about it, Troy. I mean, nothing creative. We’re not even discussing it.”
“We will, we will. You know, Rick … this film score. If you lot put something together that works, well … it might be a way back into the big time for you.”
I glanced sidelong at him. “What, you mean the band? As the band?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Because the sort of heavy rock we used to play doesn’t cut it anymore.
“Really?” He chuckled. “Heard The Darkness? Heard Queens Of The Stone Age? Iron Maiden are still doing it. So are Saxon.”
And I had to admit he did have a point there. To some extent, quite unexpectedly, hard-edged but melodic rock was regaining some of its old popularity, while the stuff that had finally killed off our interest in the ’90s – the thrash-speed genre, and then the wailing, bearded, grunge vintage – had now died its own death. There was one key problem still remaining, of course.
“The trouble is, Troy … we’re all old blokes.”
“So what? So’s Keith Richards … and look at the fucking renaissance he’s going through.”
The Plantation now loomed before us. Ash-grey shadows lurked beyond its bulwark of trunks and leafy boughs. Fleetingly, this distracted me.
“Rick,” Troy said, “… these fucking manufactured acts they’ve got out there now. They’re trash. And everyone knows it. These boy bands, these girl bands, these airbrushed pop idols … sure, they’re news now, but they haven’t got the depth to leave a real mark in this business. At the best, they’re fucking lounge singers. They’d never fill Madison Square Garden like you buggers did, I’ll tell you that.”
“And the world’s really waiting for Wolfbane to make a comeback?”
“Listen … you imprint yourselves on this movie, and they’ll give you a chance.” Troy was now in full flow, in classic manipulation mode. “You’ve seen the marketing crap that surrounds these box office slammers. The publicity machine will have your faces on billboards, on buses, you name it. If the film’s a real hit, you’ll never be off the radio. Then there’ll be CDs … DVDs … ‘making of the soundtrack’ documentaries. What more do you want?”
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Bloody right I am, pal. The wolf’ll howl again, you’ll see.”
10
The trees of the Plantation closed around us like a pair of dusty, green curtains.
That must sound like a very over-the-top description of an English coppice on a warm spring evening, and I can’t really deny it. Of course, my previous night’s experience in this place had left me prejudiced, though twenty-four hours later, even I, who had run for my life, or so I’d thought, was becoming detached from that experience. It was as if it had been a dream or an active imagination working overtime. To look at the Plantation now, as we wound our way through it, nothing even vaguely sinister came to view. It wasn’t as thick and entangled as I remembered; we passed countless open dells knee-deep in bluebells and dog’s mercury, and aglow with the setting sun. Somewhere out amid the avenues of trunks, a cuckoo called; above our heads, breaks in the canopy revealed a lilac-tinted sky.
Even when we reached the Lamuratum itself, there was a solemnity and grandeur about the standing stones that I hadn’t noticed before. The deep, lush stillness in the surrounding trees seem to compliment it rather than render it frightening or mysterious.
Barbara strode forward, fascinated. “To think that something so fine has been buried at the end of someone’s garden all this time.”
“It’s only a folly, remember,” Charlie said.
“It’s impressive, though.”
I glanced at Rob. He regarded the circle of monoliths with dislike and visible trepidation. Their upper portions were flame-red where they caught rays from the setting sun. I imagined evening shadows slowly clustering in the woods around us. Lionel turned off the engine of his quad bike, and a heady silence exploded. Momentarily, there wasn’t even a twitter of birdsong.
“Something about this place creeped you out yesterday, uh?” Joe said, coming up alongside me. He too was staring at the monument. Blue smoke spiralled from the end of his cig.
“Something about it, yeah,” I confessed, still loathe to admit to the phantom shapes that we’d imagined we’d seen.
“Pagan, you see,” Joe replied.
I glanced sidelong at him. “Pagan?”
“Yeah … pre-Christian.”
“And that automatically makes it bad?”
“No. But it makes it scary.”
And I don’t suppose he was too far wrong about that. Britain is planted thick with the relics of lost cultures: barrows, dykes, hill forts, stone circles and the like, and though all of them attract a high degree of superficial saturnalia, many have a genuinely menacing aura, especially when you see them deserted or at twilight. Their very ancientness commands an awe and respect that most other tourist attractions can only dream about.
“It’s only a folly!” Charlie reminded us again, with rather more force than was necessary.
I gazed at him, startled, wondering who he’d been trying to convince; Joe and me, or himself.
We unloaded our gear after that, with more speed and precision than our combined lack of experience merited. Luke, who really was out for the count by now, was left on a bed of sponge-like moss under the low boughs of a holly tree, while the rest of us unpacked everything. Troy told us there were four tents in all, and paced out an area directly in front of the Lamuratum where he felt we could set them up and get a good campfire going. Lionel assisted in the unloading, but once we had everything we needed, he seemed eager to be off. He hadn’t said a word to us – but then I hadn’t heard him say a word since we’d arrived here. He hurriedly re-straddled the quad bike, only for Rob to step into his path.
“Er … just leave the quad bike, eh?” Rob said. “There’s a good lad.”
The burly gardener stared at him with a brutish lack of understanding, but made no effort to climb off the bike.
“Does anyone have a problem with that?” Rob asked, turning to look at the rest of us. “I mean, someone may want to nip back to the house for something during the night.”
And that did seem to make at least a modicum of sense.
Lionel glanced at his mistress, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Doggedly, he climbed from the vehicle, and set off along the path at a trudge.
“Lionel,” Rob said, “it’s no good without the key, mate.”
Lionel glanced back, then, rather disconsolately, walked over to Rob and handed him the key. A second later, he was sloping away along the path again. I watched his huge back as it retreated through the spreading gloom. Almost certainly he’d set off with the key because he was a big, cumbersome ox who made oversights like that all the time. On the other hand, he was the only gardener here, and he was clearly good at it, so perhaps he wasn’t quite as muddled as he seemed. And that wasn’t an encouraging thought.
“Well,” Troy said. “First croquet, now quad bike riding. You planning a sports evening, Rob?”
Rob turned and looked at him. “Why are you sweating, Troy?”
Troy touched his brow, which was indeed damp with sweat. This seemed to surprise him, and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief. “Lack of exercise. Quite a walk to get here.”
“You’re not nervous about anything, are you?” Rob wondered.
“You’re making me nervous,” Troy said.
“I’ll tell you what.” Rob offered him the key, dangling it temptingly by its metal ring. “Why don’t I give this to you?”
Troy stared at it. New beads of sweat had already replaced those he’d just wiped away. “What for?”
“A quick getaway, maybe.”
“And why would I need to make a quick getaway?”
“You’re saying you don’t want it?”
Irritably, Troy snatched the key. “I’ll hold it, if I must!”
When Rob turned round to me, there was a knowing look on his face, which unnerved me. It seemed to imply that Troy had just failed a very important test.
11
The four tents were each designed to hold two occupants. Barbara and Charlie were obviously going into one, while Troy and Miss Ryder-Howe had bagged another. This meant that either Joe, Rob or me was going to have to share with Luke. Joe volunteered before it became embarrassing. He didn’t think it was such a bad idea, he said. Yeah, Luke stank, but he was so stoned that it wouldn’t be difficult to shove him over into a corner and get most of the room. This meant that Rob and I would take the final tent, which ordinarily wouldn’t be much fun, Rob being so massive and all, though on this occasion I felt it was a good idea.
By nine o’clock that night, with darkness hemming us in, we were all packaged against a gathering chill and seated around the campfire. As well as sandwiches, pies, cold chicken drumsticks and several flasks of rum-laced coffee, Mrs. Hacket had provided us with jacket potatoes wrapped in foil, which we were now baking on the ends of sticks. It wasn’t the sort of thing any of us had done recently, so the novelty lasted longer than it might normally have. As we did it, Barbara, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, regaled us with tales of the Girl Guides camping holiday she’d been on up in the wilds of Scotland. Apparently, they’d pitched for one weekend in a pinewood belonging to a remote monastery. It hadn’t taken long for some of the monks – and not just the younger ones – to work out that several of the older, more buxom lasses in the party – Barbara in particular, I imagined – knew a bit more about the ways of the world than they should have. Joe, less subtle by far, chipped in with his reminiscences of hippy festivals in the late-’60s, before we’d formed our own band. Once the sun went down, you only had to walk out among the sleeping bags, and apparently “there was shagging for England, going on”.
“Sex under the stars, eh,” Charlie said, giving a luxurious stretch. “Dreamy stuff.”
Joe unwrapped his potato and stabbed at it with a plastic picnic fork. “Don’t suppose there’ll be much opportunity for that tonight?”
“Speak for yourself,” Barbara retorted, putting an arm around Charlie’s shoulders.
I glanced across the flames at Miss Ryder-Howe. She was watching me with interest, but no longer the predatory anger of earlier. When she realised I was looking back, she shifted sideways, closing the gap between herself and Troy – as though to hint that I’d missed my chance and that he was next in line for her affections. Troy, for his part, didn’t seem to notice. He was peering into the fire, preoccupied and frowning.
“So what exactly are we supposed to gain from this night, Troy?” I asked.
He glanced up. “What? Oh … atmosphere. Enthusiasm. Spiritual enlightenment.”
“Spiritual what?” Joe said, his lips flecked with potato fragments.
Troy prodded at his own sizzling, foil-wrapped orb. “Today’s a special day.”
I eyed him with interest. Was this it then? Now that we were out here, was he finally going to come clean? “Go on,” I urged him.
He looked up again, the flames reflecting brightly in the lenses of his glasses. “Don’t know your classics, I see. Well … today is May 13th , otherwise known as the Ides of May. It’s a very old Roman festival.”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the spitting of the fire.
“I’ve heard of the Ides of March,” Charlie said, “but …”
Troy shook his head. “Every month has its Ides. March is only famous because Julius Caesar got killed on that day. But that was coincidence. The Ides of the month is a benign festival, a good luck thing, even though it always falls on the 13th .”
The fire continued to snap as we pondered this, and at the same time baked and ate our potatoes. We’d, all of us, looked the Lamuratum over thoroughly on our arrival, and the others had been quite impressed by the Latin characters under the sticky black mess on its central plinth. I’d even brought the dog-eared Anglo-Latin dictionary along with me in case we found any other inscriptions. But none had come to our attention before, and none did now, even when Rob, Barbara and I, all equipped – somewhat melodramatically – with burning torches, went back and looked inside the thing again.
“Now this really does seem spooky,” Barbara said.
With the darkness and the fire, and the dancing shadows caused by the encircling monoliths, the interior of the little temple felt tighter, more confined. There was a strong odour of charcoal. Above us, framed between the flickering orange branches, the night sky was an awning of black silk.
“You could be right back there with the Romans, couldn’t you,” she added. “It makes you wonder even more why that old bloke … what’s his name?”
“Thomas Ryder-Howe,” Rob said.
She nodded. “Thomas Ryder-Howe … makes you wonder why he kept it hidden.”
“There are quite a few things you could wonder about where Thomas Ryder-Howe was concerned,” Rob replied.
Detecting a tone, she glanced at him. “Do tell.”
I got the impression Rob was about to, when there came a sudden, rude interruption.
“Barbara!” It was Charlie, shouting from the tents. Yet again, he sounded uncharacteristically terse and flustered. “Barbara, I can’t get this sodding zip on the sleeping bag down! Give us a hand, will you!”
Barbara rolled her eyes. “Duty calls, I’m afraid. See you in a minute.”
She turned and walked out of the Lamuratum. We watched her go. The reflections of our torches flowed rose-red up and down the inner facades of the aged stones.
“So?” I said.
Rob glanced at me. “So what?”
“So what about Thomas Ryder-Howe?”
“Oh that, yeah.” He looked guilty, like a schoolboy caught doing something disgusting behind the bike sheds. “Well … I might as well tell you I suppose. I’ve done quite a bit of reading today. There are a few good books on those shelves in that room where we had the séance. There’re wills, deeds, all that sort of stuff. To do with the estate, you know.”
“Sounds like prying.”
He nodded. “It was prying. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. Why should I be when our lives might be i
n danger?”
I stared at him. By his expression, he was perfectly serious.
“Come on Rob, our lives ?” I didn’t want to sound incredulous, but even after everything else that had happened that seemed excessive.
“Just hear me out, Rick. Thomas Ryder-Howe … remember, he was the bloke who first bought this place from the Rillingtons? Well, get this … he was broke. He was a gambler, a ne’er do well. He bought Rillington Chase entirely on credit.”
“Credit? But a place like this would have cost a fortune even then.”
“Yet he’d paid all his debts within a year. Including the mortgage on this property.”
I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t have the facts at my fingertips, but it sounded so unlikely as to be almost nonsensical. Drunks and gamblers – even good gamblers – do not just conjure up vast fortunes.
“He was no antiquarian either,” Rob said. “Judging by some of the stuff I’ve been reading, he was more of an occultist.”
“Am I missing something here? That book you were absorbed in was all about the Romans.”
“No. It was about Roman rituals. Roman religious observances, Roman folklore.”
He was about to say more when a long low ululation, like the yowl of a wounded animal, interrupted us. It broke off abruptly, and then was followed by another similar sound, this one longer, more drawn-out. And it was this second one that we recognised.
We slipped back out between the pillars into the camp, where Joe and Charlie were half carrying Luke across the clearing towards the tent that he’d been allocated. He’d revived sufficiently to grin inanely, and then to throw his head back and howl like a wolf. At least, it was supposed to be a howl, though in actual fact it was deliberately a very human sound. On Boys Who Run With The Pack , the opening track on our Eagle Road album, we’d felt it essential in order to capture the essence of Romulus and Remus, the twins who would later found Rome but who at birth had been abandoned in the wild and reared by wolves, that all the animal sounds must issue from human throats – and Luke had obliged us most impressively.