by Lorna Gray
It was meant for the Captain and the reply was a quick, dismissive, ‘Yes.’
‘That’s not much of an answer. I saw her face—’
‘I know, Hannis.’
It was grim, harsh, final. A brief jerk of his head said it all. He really didn’t want this discussing in front of me. I couldn’t help noticing the adjustment from speaking to Danny like an old friend to this curt dismissal that took on a faintly military air.
Then I was walking ahead of them into the house and taking myself to the kitchen counter to lay out the things for the Colonel’s lunch while Danny reclaimed his tractor and the Captain briefly stepped in after me to make his excuses to his father. Only I found I wasn’t laying out salad and tins. I was unpacking a blouse and a slip and a pale green cardigan and the Captain was by my side and quietly passing me the packet of groceries and faintly teasing again as he ducked his head to say for my ear alone, ‘I think you were looking for this.’ He made me jump and suppress an unsteady smile. It was as if our moods were worlds apart.
Then, while warmth still played about the corners of his mouth, he added in the same private undertone, ‘We’ll take lunch in town before we collect your cousin if you like? There are a few things I want to discuss with you and we might as well be fed as not while we do it. And for the sake of efficiency when we go, will you bring your bags and whatnots that you’ve got here with you, and I’ll ferry you and your cousin and your baggage direct to your final destination later?’
His expression had settled to seriousness once more and it came closer to matching mine. He didn’t make it seem as though the points to be discussed were set to be particularly pleasant. I nodded my agreement because there wasn’t much else I could do and saw him note it, and then he straightened and turned away as the Colonel shuffled in through the dining-room door with Mr Winstone.
The older men seemed to have a list of things they meant to say to the Colonel’s son but I didn’t get to slip unobtrusively away while they did it to make that change of clothes as I was intending. The Captain had his hand out on the stone worktop still and I stood there behind him in the dead end of the kitchen counter and listened while the old driver told the Captain about the raven he’d spotted in one of the pheasant coveys, and asked for permission to get Danny to shoot it.
Chapter 15
I slunk away a little later to find a quiet bathroom in which to change my frock. Unfortunately, bathrooms proved to be in extraordinarily short supply in this peculiarly complicated house. I certainly didn’t find one on the first floor. I avoided the option of changing in the Colonel’s room that was set on the south-facing side of the stairs, and necessarily declined the embarrassment of making free with the room on the other side that was the son’s. That left me with the challenge of passing the length of the dank gallery and the disappointment of finding first a dusty chamber that had obviously belonged to his brother and, beyond that, a last sequence of rooms that were pretty and mournful and held the long-abandoned memory of a mother’s touch.
As I climbed the stairs to the attic level, still on the hopeful hunt for something that resembled modern conveniences, I couldn’t help wondering how much more of this once-grand family home was waiting for its turn to be left still and dry as a memorial to the dead.
The attic floor was the contrast. There was still no bathroom, but there were no sad relics here either. I’d expected austere servants’ quarters and found instead an airy passage lined on its sunny side with neat little bedrooms, stripped now of furniture, but clearly renovated in the time of John Langton’s dominion here for the sake of the men employed in his daily business. And despite the idea the Colonel had of John Langton’s resentment about being forced to make this estate his career after his riding accident, I thought there had been optimism here.
There was one final room at the end above the Colonel’s rooms that must have been the housekeeper’s domain. It too had been left orderly and empty and the only thing that remained of Mrs Cooke’s presence was a worthy print in a frame on the wall and a humble dresser. Since there was still, inexplicably, no room for washing, I chose her room as my dressing room. Her mirror showed the sad state of my frock and the uneven flush to my skin that spoke of a strained morning and a hard bicycle ride.
I remedied the first problem easily. Along with the blouse and slip, the bag yielded a blue jacket, a frock and a pair of grey slacks and it was the latter of these that I now dragged on. It was as I was completing the restoration with the judicious application of powder and a much-treasured lipstick that I noticed him in the doorway.
Or rather, I sensed the subtle shrinking of this room that came from realising that someone was creeping around the edge of the doorframe behind me.
I whirled. The lipstick fell with a crack upon the floorboards. I heard the tinny roll as it took itself off to hide under the dresser. There was no one in the doorway. There was no one in the passage either and nothing to confirm that heart-stopping impression I’d had of a brief encounter with an electric-blue gaze. The noise that met my dash along the length of it was nothing more than the thump of my own stockinged feet on uncarpeted floorboards. All of the doors into the little bedrooms were open and empty and, besides, there was no telltale snap of a door shutting. I slithered down the tight turn of the narrow attic stairs and stopped at the limit of the long gallery with all its closed doors. There was no one there.
A dry whisper of voices murmured against the panelled wood behind me. This gallery ended roughly at the wall that divided the dining room below from the kitchen in the space beyond. It seemed the Colonel was finding himself more and more at home in that place. I could distinguish his distant voice and Mr Winstone’s, seemingly chatting easily. I had the sound of my own rapid breath and also the sinister rustlings of a handful of sparrows feeding in the Virginia creeper that robbed the windows in this gallery of their light. Nothing else stirred except my own uneasy imagination.
I felt like I was the imposter when I descended the stairs fully dressed with the addition of blouse and shoes now, some five hurried, guarded minutes later. The library door was open where I thought it had been shut and I tiptoed in to complete my search. The murmur of the Colonel’s speech ran down the passage like a ghostly echo. I heard Mr Winstone laugh. Their noise was a muted undertone set against the discovery I made on the green baize of the desk of some of the survivors of Duckett’s raid. There was a stack of old accounts books there and, resting in the open drawer to one side, a new record had been begun by someone, either the Colonel or more probably his son. A regular, clear hand listed each property within the care of the estate and the rents owed and repairs ordered since their arrival only a day ago. I thought the author must have had a very long session of hard work last night after his dinner.
The set of older record books was missing the volumes that would have spanned the past two years. They proved that my guess was right and Duckett had come here to trace the present whereabouts of his friend’s wife. He had taken the newer books that clearly recorded her name as the tenant of Eddington, so he must have either discarded or overlooked the mention of her name in the older volume that covered the end of the war. There was a note dated May ’44 within its pages. Eddington: Paint, roof repairs and chimney swept. Approached by new tenant: Mrs Paul Abbey presently of Berwick House, Parliament Street. The author of these books wrote carelessly, as though he were always in a tearing hurry, and the energetic script had tacked on as an afterthought the comment, ‘Approved 15th May’.
It was strange to be handling the dry unemotional words of the dead man. I found myself examining them as if they were a formal introduction. I noted too the simplicity with which he recorded the application from this new tenant and found myself measuring its date against certain suspicions that lingered around that tenant’s insinuations. But more than that, I found that I was drawing all sorts of conclusions about the author’s personality and independence based solely on the inattention he had paid to the curl of
his Fs. I found my fingers tracing the lines in a sort of greeting and heard myself whisper a plea to the secrets trapped within these pages. Please don’t haunt me.
The Captain hadn’t yet returned when I finally slunk into the kitchen like a guilty spy and the Colonel was leaving by the kitchen door. Today was the day the old man was set to announce the sale of the estate and if imagination really had been ruling in me at this moment, I might have believed that the debilitating distress I’d encountered in him last night had been an invention of mine too. Today, control was back in force in the man, only without the red-faced temper. He still looked undersized for his clothes and slightly unsteady on his feet but alert and formidable in a way that gave his old frame power and decision. He was looking, in fact, like the prospect of marshalling worried workers and tenants into doing what he wanted had revived an old thrill of bygone glory. I only went out with them because Bertie Winstone was going too and he had something vital he thought he had to tell me about the disposal of the goat.
First I had to learn that the goat was the last remaining member of the young Master’s stable, by which I understood that John had used the goat as companion for the young stock in training until he’d died and the horses had been sold, leaving the goat alone to grow steadily fatter on the feed that remained. We were picking our way through the fierce darkness of the machine barn. As we emerged abruptly into the farmyard through a hatch within vast wooden doors that were so crusted with tar that they would never open again, I was allowed to understand precisely why Bertie Winstone should be happily talking about the dead son in such terms beside the old man. It was because here was the prospect of a good dinner and the Colonel’s return had brought the authority to pass judgement on the beast at last. And the part I was supposed to care about was the news that the task of contacting the butcher had been delegated to the Colonel’s other son, and therefore everyone else here considered it perfectly natural that the job would ultimately fall to me.
A crowd of people were waiting for their squire and just before he faced them, the Colonel had another, more immediate request to make. Luckily, it turned out to be one that I was more likely to fulfil. He had forgotten his walking stick and I was happy to run back to the house for it. As I left them, the old Colonel and his shrunken driver revealed themselves to be, for the first time, just what they were. A pair of time-worn gentlemen braced and eager for a last dance with the old world of landowners and cottagers in the sunshine.
The cane was in his bedroom. It had been hooked over the foot of the bed frame with yesterday’s trousers, shirt and a very tangled tie while the overflowing case stood upon the floor. After witnessing the man’s abiding passion for the military life, I’d expected rigid order and neatly folded stacks on shelves. But this small sign of disarray was proof of the reality of the scene I’d found last night. It was a mark of a gnawing sense of rejection following his housekeeper’s departure. It contributed to the sense of homelessness in this place. The Colonel had no one to lay out his things for him and while this could easily be dismissed as the laziness of rank, I thought that this sort of little gesture would have been taken as a mark of friendship rather than servitude. And by leaving in the manner she had, the housekeeper had made it only too clear how little she thought he deserved that friendship now.
Perhaps, therefore, I’d attempt later to set things in a better balance. The chores that had seemed last night too close to the play-acting of an ingratiating female might simply be ordinary usefulness by then. But not now. Now I turned in this room that had as glorious a view as the sun-shot study that housed the telephone, and found myself being watched again.
Chapter 16
He fled as I turned. This was no ghost. He was flesh and blood and his feet made a racket on the gallery as he raced away. I remember that he had dark hair. I remember that there was something about his hasty turn that set his physique against the fragile memory of that scene on Mr Winstone’s path, and found them to be a match. His eyes were blue, as Mrs Abbey had promised, but more muted than the electrifying glare I had been trained to anticipate.
I thought he was heading for the attic. I reached the point where the cluster of bedrooms met the mouth of the long line of the gallery as he reached the turn onto the narrow attic stairs. Only he didn’t race upwards. He put out a hand onto the dark wooden panelling on the end wall and passed silently through it.
The door swung a little on its hinges, back and forth, but it was still by the time I reached it. I had the Colonel’s cane in my hand. I don’t know why but I used it rather than my hand to prod the concealed door ajar.
It swung smoothly and no violent hand snatched from the other side. My heartbeat was a dull roar in my ears. So was my breathing. There was no one inside. I was stepping into a plain and ordinary landing lit by a window at the far end and housing a collection of various closed doors and a smell of dry dusty wood. There was also a narrow enclosed stairs that led steeply downwards to the bright rectangle of an open door. This was not the moment to marvel at the discovery that at last I’d found where the Colonel kept his bathrooms. Clattering downwards, I found myself bursting abruptly into the kitchen in the space beside the dresser through what I’d taken to be a plain, uninteresting wood-panelled wall. It was disorientating. I didn’t really know what I was doing, except that somehow there was a vital lure in the hope of snatching a closer look at this stray man. I had to choose between racing into the yard outside or back through the house into the darkened dining room. Both doorways were open and empty. He’d moved quickly to escape me.
I opted for the less intimidating space of outdoors. There was relief in the idea of air and light. I couldn’t see any sign of him. But the goat muttered something, a tentative question, and drew me to that small knotted door in the old tithe barn wall.
The cane was again my door lever. Inside was cool and dark like a cave, and quiet except for the clatter as the goat stood up at his door to peer at me down the length of the row of stables. I took a horribly reluctant step towards him along the line. There was the silence of the steps up to the hayloft at the end.
I didn’t have to steel myself for the insanity of climbing into the unknown. I was swept painfully into the rough stone wall when the nearest stable door swung open and the man crashed out and past me into the sunshine once more. I still hadn’t seen him properly. He’d designed his ambush to blind me with the swing of the heavy wooden door. The crush of it hurt. I called out to him but he didn’t wait. I thrust the door back with a bang and lurched out into the sunshine after him, squinting and following instinct rather than his trail down the length of this barn and across the wide yard to the vast gaping maw of the machine barn.
I was snatched back there on the edge of the dark by a thud of feet from behind and a hard hand that caught at my arm.
It yanked me round in a spinning turn. Now my mind had the chance to shrink from the idea that this man might take steps to stop me from pursuing. He didn’t know I only had the idiotic idea of asking his name and I should have guessed from Mr Winstone’s injuries what he might be prepared to do to stop me. I cringed and flung out my free hand to block myself from colliding with his chest and perhaps to fend him off. Only I found that the cane was in my hand and it tangled with him and in the flurry, as I stumbled and a squeak escaped, his hands thrust me onwards almost absentmindedly into the grip of another. As we passed I caught a blur of an averted profile beneath lighter-coloured hair and then Danny left, intent on continuing the hunt. The new set of hands adjusted their grip to take a firm hold of my upper arm and bore me away before I’d even really identified him.
He was marching me across the yard towards the tithe barn once more. Away from that man and away from the noise and bustle of his father’s meeting in the farmyard. Now he merely had a hand out, ushering me along. As we went, I heard him say in a voice that was inexplicably close to being torn by a laugh, ‘Emily, you need to tell me what you thought you were doing.’
Th
e sense of urgency eased. We were heading to the house, I think. He knew I would go with him. He’d released me completely. I was turning my head to ask him something when he abruptly stopped with a sound like a sharp intake of breath and made an impulsive snatch to reclaim my hand and require me to stop also.
We were at the corner of the tithe barn. He was close to me and his hand still had mine. Laughter wasn’t in evidence anywhere now. His attention had passed over my head, captivated by something deeply serious beyond. I twisted round to follow his gaze and saw Mrs Abbey.
Mrs Abbey was standing near the place where my bicycle still rested, watching us with a speculative tilt to her head. She was late for the Colonel’s meeting and she had her children with her. She had been hurrying down the length of the tithe barn but she’d stopped at almost the same moment as we had and with the same air of guilty discovery that wracked us. It was as though we’d all been caught sneaking and now she was standing there, watching us, or rather watching me first and then the man beside me and she was waiting for the friendly fuss and sympathy to explode from one or other of us, as was her due. This was because it turned out the old lady at the shop had slightly underplayed the truth when she’d told me that someone had blacked Mrs Abbey’s eye. They’d blacked the entire left side of her lower jaw.
I think I made an impulsive movement towards her. His hand still held mine, resting now behind my left hip and deliberately, I thought, out of her sight. A faint tightening of his grip begged me to check the impulse to leave him. It worked. And made her eyebrows lift a fraction because she saw my change of heart. My glance over my shoulder up at Richard was no help. The fine line of his jaw was set as he stared past me at her. I bit my lip. Uncertain, while all the guilty suppositions I’d been harbouring about her evaporated in the discovery of the full horror of that assault. She must have needed the doctor to check her cheekbone wasn’t cracked. In my head I had the grim echo of Danny’s admonishment, ‘I saw her face’ and I didn’t like to imagine what it should mean.