‘Oh dear, yes.’ She stood up. ‘Goodbye, Nan. Thank you so much for letting me see your lovely baby.’
Nan put her finger on a word to keep her place and looked up. ‘Seeya.’ Her head went down again, her mind absorbed by what was described in the headline as a raw silk pants suit.
Jode would not hear of us setting off alone and he was not a man to be argued with. He insisted not only on seeing us to the car but also on carrying me, as in his view I was looking all in. I put my arms round his neck and clung to him like the child on the back of St Christopher. He set out with seven-league strides across the moor, beneath a white whirling sky, while Dimpsie, her face hidden by the hood of her red duffle coat, ran behind carrying my crutches like an attendant dwarf. From time to time he shook his head to dash the flakes from his eyes, and strands of wet hair and particles of ice would fly into my face.
‘Well,’ said Dimpsie as we drove away, narrowly missing an oncoming milk float. ‘That was a fascinating experience.’ I was delighted to hear a note of buoyancy in her voice. ‘What an adorable baby! And such an interesting man! Poor little Nan, such a pretty girl but she seems rather lost. We must see what we can do to help her.’
I made no reply. I was watching in the wing mirror as the milk float twirled like Odile on a patch of sheet ice and slid gracefully to a standstill in the hedge.
19
‘I wish you girls would stop screeching.’ Rafe slowed to climb an almost vertical hairpin bend. ‘It’s not like you to be nervous, Isobel.’
‘Fear’s contagious.’ Isobel was sitting next to him. ‘Every time Marigold screams I feel sure there must be something to worry about.’
‘Sorry.’ I was sharing the back seat with Buster so I could put up my leg. ‘I really can’t help it.’
‘Close your eyes,’ suggested Isobel.
‘They are closed.’
‘At least Buster isn’t barking. Usually I have to put my fingers in my ears to stop myself going completely crazy.’
‘All he needs is a little firmness and consistency.’ Rafe sounded satisfied.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him the reason Buster wasn’t barking was because I was holding his paw. I only had to relax my grasp slightly for him to make the little growling sound that was preparatory to a good howl.
‘Whoever built this road was impatient to get to the top,’ said Isobel. ‘I’d have been inclined to make it more gradual. Think of the poor horses having to drag carriages up here.’
‘And from what I can remember it gets worse,’ said Rafe. ‘It doesn’t help to have a fresh layer of snow over last night’s ice. The surface is like glass. Even the snow chains aren’t gripping properly.’
I don’t believe he meant to torture me. Other people’s neuroses are baffling if you do not happen to share them.
‘I suppose there’s so little traffic they don’t bother to send the gritting lorries up,’ Rafe continued. ‘Or the road-menders, come to that. The verges are so broken down it must be dangerous at the best of times.’
‘This is probably a pimple compared with the mountains of Bavaria,’ said Isobel dreamily. ‘Anyway, I expect Conrad’ll have a new road made and fences put up.’ These days all her waking moments seemed to be spent in contemplation of Conrad’s fabulous wealth and how they were going to spend it.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Rafe, ‘I remember this. It used to be as far as you could get. Those gates have always been chained and padlocked.’
I risked a peek through spread fingers. A fence looped with barbed wire straggled down to the aforementioned gates, which stood open. The track was darkened by trees. Rafe put the headlights on and proceeded with extreme caution. Overhanging branches scraped the roof and sides of the car with teeth-jarring squeals.
‘There!’ Isobel pointed ahead. ‘I saw a light through the trees.’
‘It’s a godforsaken spot to have chosen!’ said Rafe a little crossly, perhaps thinking of his paintwork. ‘I hope there’ll be some form of heating.’
‘Darling, you’re beginning to sound like an old, old man,’ Isobel reproved him.
‘I’m beginning to feel like one. Could it have something to do with the extravagant whimsicality by which I’m surrounded? What was that scream about, Marigold? We’re going about three miles per hour.’
‘Sorry. I was afraid you were going to run over that rabbit.’
‘I thought at least you’d seen an army of Berserkers coming through the forest waving axes with bloodcurdling ferocity.’
‘You see, you too are capable of extravagant whimsicality.’ Isobel tugged her brother’s ear lobe affectionately.
‘I must put up a sign. It is an offence to molest the driver.’
‘I never met a man yet who disliked being molested.’
This sort of friendly bickering was what I chiefly remembered about Rafe’s and Isobel’s relationship. There was never any teasing in my family. Dimpsie was too easily hurt and my father and Kate instantly rushed from the defensive to the violently offensive. I suppose we were none of us confident of being loved.
‘Bloody hell!’ Rafe jammed on the brakes. We slid to a stop where the trees ended and the ground fell away. On a rocky promontory in front of us stood Hindleep House, its fairytale turrets, buttresses and pinnacles wreathed in mist that was purplish in the fading light. Spanning the gap of perhaps two hundred yards between us and the house was a narrow bridge. The floor of the valley was a terrifying distance below. ‘Did you ever see anything like it? Look at the drop! No wonder the sale went through so quickly. Whoever owned it must have been delirious with joy that someone was insane enough to want to buy it.’
‘I think it’s thrilling.’ Isobel sounded a little annoyed. ‘And very romantic.’
‘I can see why Conrad wanted it,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit like a smaller version of that castle belonging to Mad King Ludwig. We were taken to see it when we were dancing Symphonic Variations in Munich. I can’t remember what the castle was called but it’s near a lake called Schwansee, which means Swan Lake. He built it to stage Wagner’s music because he was nuts about him.’
‘I’ve always thought insanity was a necessary qualification for liking Wagner’s music,’ said Rafe. ‘All that emotional wallowing. Give me Mozart any day.’
‘I’m beginning to resent this harping on madness,’ said Isobel. ‘Conrad’s just about the sanest person I’ve ever met.’
‘Well, of course you know him so much better than I do,’ said Rafe. ‘Two and a half weeks, is it now, that you’ve actually spent in his company?’
Isobel snorted huffily and did not deign to reply.
Rafe said, ‘I wonder if it’s safe?’
The bridge looked far from well, with potholes in what had once been a metalled surface and gaps in the stone balustrade.
‘Perhaps we ought to leave the car here,’ I suggested, ‘and just tiptoe across one by one.’
‘Don’t be a baby,’ said Isobel, ‘of course it’s safe. Conrad’s expecting us. You don’t think he’d let his future wife tumble miles to her death from a wonky bridge?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Rafe. ‘Not on such a short acquaintance, anyway.’
Isobel giggled and put her arm behind his neck to pull his other ear in retaliation.
‘Ow! Don’t be so rough! I need to be in good shape to drive us safely over this collection of crumbling stones and rusty girders.’
‘They must have taken the Bentley across and that’s a much heavier car than this one.’
‘It may have been heavy enough to weaken the bridge fatally.’
‘Don’t tease poor Marigold. Can’t you see she’s really frightened?’
‘How can I see her when she’s sitting behind me? Now, Marigold, you choose. Shall I dash across on the principle that it’s better to skate fast over thin ice, or shall I crawl so as not to create shock waves like a marching army?’
‘Let’s assume the ice is the only thing holding it together,’ said Isobel. �
�I vote we go as fast as we can.’
‘Oh, please!’ My arteries seemed to jam at this idea. ‘I’d much rather we crawled.’
‘All right. Here goes.’
Rafe put the car into gear and we moved slowly forward. Though I had tried to enter into the joke, I really was terrified, and one glimpse of the tiny pinpoints of light from Gaythwaite fathoms below made my head spin and my muscles contract painfully. I shut my eyes again. If I was going to trust any man with my life it would be Rafe. And it would be a merciful death, a sensation like going down fast in a lift and leaving one’s stomach behind, perhaps oblivion before one hit the ground—‘Good God!’ said Isobel’s voice. ‘Look at those statues!’
‘Don’t clutch my arm when I’m driving to the inch.’
‘But did you ever see anything so creepy? Looming up in the dusk like the reproachful ghosts of suicides. They’re sending shivers down my back.’
‘Darling, you’re exaggerating as usual. But I admit they do look rather sinister.’
I felt the car slow and I had to open my eyes to see what they were talking about. A slightly larger-than-life-sized figure of a woman stood on the parapet. Her stone face frowned down at us, her cheeks and robes blackened by the rain and storms of a hundred years. In one hand she held what might have been a spear. The still-falling snow and the failing light made it difficult to be certain.
‘She looks fiendishly bad-tempered,’ said Rafe.
‘She looks positively sunny by comparison with this one,’ said Isobel a few seconds later.
About fifteen yards further on, on the other side of the bridge, was the statue of a woman dressed in tattered robes, holding one hand to her mouth as though she was eating something. I thought I saw a snake coiled round her body. Even allowing for the depredations of weather, her face had a savage look of pain that was disturbing.
‘She’s horrible,’ said Isobel, ‘drive on quickly.’
Every fifteen yards there was another statue.
‘I shall ask Conrad to get rid of them. I think they’re beastly,’ said Isobel as we neared the other end of the bridge.
‘Well, I don’t know … they’re magnificent in their way … but they must weigh a ton apiece so it might be wiser … thank God! Dry land.’ We drove beneath a turreted archway into a courtyard. ‘Phew! I don’t mind admitting that was pretty nerve-racking …’ He started to laugh.
Parked in the middle of the courtyard was an enormous pantechnicon. Its reversing lights came on as it started to shunt to and fro to turn round, a manoeuvre made more difficult by the Bentley parked in one corner. Rafe pulled over to let him go by. The driver grinned at us and gave the thumbs-up sign as he set off across the bridge at a spanking pace.
‘We’d better agree to keep quiet over the funk we were in,’ suggested Rafe. ‘Especially Marigold.’ His voice was affectionately teasing and I felt better at once.
‘Isn’t this heavenly?’ said Isobel.
It was heavenly. Though I knew, because Rafe had told me, that the castle had been built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it had a glorious air of medieval mystery about it. All the doors around the courtyard were pointed at the top, including the most important-looking pair at the head of a flight of stone steps. Everything was a little crooked and dilapidated, just as though it had endured five hundred years of weather and wars and the inconstancy of the human heart. It was the distillation of romance.
‘Let’s go in!’ cried Isobel. ‘I must see inside!’
The steps were steep and slippery, and more than ever I felt the frustration of my crippled state.
‘You’ll manage better without these.’ Rafe took my crutches and propped them against the wall, then put his arm round my waist and half carried me up.
The door at the top was lit by a pair of hurricane lamps hanging on iron hoops obviously intended for something far grander, like blazing torches. He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Light as a feather.’ The flames cast dramatic flickering shadows on his face, deepening the creases each side of his mouth. I had that feeling again, and very delightful it was, that being with him made me feel terrifically happy and safe.
‘Do help!’ said Isobel impatiently as she struggled to turn the huge iron ring.
‘Should we knock?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be an idiot. When I marry Conrad this’ll be home, sweet home. One of them anyway.’
Rafe grappled with the handle and the door opened with a spectral groan.
‘My God! It’s like the House of Usher,’ exclaimed Isobel.
‘Nothing that a spot of WD forty won’t cure.’ Rafe had evidently appointed himself the voice of reason. ‘Good Lord!’ he murmured less certainly as we entered a room panelled and carved to within an inch of its life. Some of the wood was rotten and leant out at an angle, exposing the stone behind. What light remained had to penetrate lace-like veils of dust-choked webs that draped the cracked and missing panes of glass. Despite the freezing wind that whistled through the gaps, there was a powerful smell of damp and decay.
Unexpectedly, strains of music came through a doorway ahead of us. I recognized Parsifal. One of my first roles as a member of the corps de ballet had been as a flower maiden in Act Two. Considering we had just been talking about Wagner, the coincidence seemed remarkable, but Rafe said afterwards when I mentioned this that anyone with the vaguest knowledge of German Romanticism would have made the connection.
The open door led us into the room that Dimpsie, Kate and I had picnicked in all those years ago. Now it was blurred by candlelight. When I saw Conrad standing with his back to the stone fireplace in which several tree trunks were emitting flames and sparks like fireworks, I could not help thinking of Klingsor, the sorcerer in Parsifal who lives in the Magic Castle. The plot of Parsifal, as I remembered it, was a cross between a children’s bedtime story and a depressing morality play about lust. But as our production had been set in modern Communist China – the flower maidens had worn denim caps and black pigtails and our faces had been painted sunflower yellow – probably the opera had not been given a fair chance. Sebastian, a devoted Wagnerian, had been withering in his condemnation of the director’s arrogance, but we needed the money.
Conrad kissed Isobel on both cheeks and shook hands with Rafe and me. He looked thoroughly relaxed, even pleased with himself. Had I been in his shoes I should have been tearing out my hair. Bits of plaster hung from the walls, exposing bare lathes, and the ceiling was black and bulging with damp. More plaster had been swept into heaps on the floor. One wall was composed of stone pillars and glass doors, the panes all broken, of course. But the view … I had forgotten the view, and when I saw it again all my reservations about the wisdom of buying Hindleep House vanished as quickly as smoke in a stiff breeze.
The nearest slopes were spiked with fir trees dusted with snow. Dun and amethyst-coloured clouds loured above them, marbling the surface of a lake that curved into a letter S. Beyond the lake rose hills that were blue in the hesitant light. Despite the icy streams of air that made my eyes water until tears ran down my cheeks, I could have gazed for hours.
‘Do look what Conrad’s just had delivered,’ called Isobel. ‘Isn’t it wonderfully impractical?’
She was sitting on the stool of a grand piano. This, the long table I remembered from my last visit, and two deckchairs were the only furniture.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t disappear through the floor.’ Rafe kicked with his toe at a rotten section of floorboard.
‘Don’t be such a killjoy,’ said Isobel. ‘Look, it’s standing on a sheet of steel. If it goes down, the entire floor’ll go with it.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘Don’t take any notice, Conrad. I adore it all. Let’s have a tour at once.’
‘I am waiting for Golly. Then we shall all look together.’ Isobel began to protest, but Conrad shook his head. ‘It will be all the better for a little anticipation.’
Usually any kind of opposition made
her defiant, but now she put her arm affectionately through his and leaned her head against his shoulder in an uncharacteristically kittenish way. I had always greatly admired Isobel’s rebelliousness. Dancers have to submit to being told what to do and how to do it every second of our professional lives, and the habit of obedience becomes ingrained. Conrad made no response to this gesture of affection, but remained with his hands in his pockets, as immovable as one of his own statues; nor did he look down at her until she wrinkled her nose and drew away from him.
‘You smell like a cross between a bonfire and a tar lorry.’
‘This chimney was choked with twigs and leaves but, as the flume is wide, it was a simple matter to tie several bamboos together and push them out.’
‘Flue, you mean. A flume is a stream for moving logs about.’
Conrad frowned. ‘I meant flume. When it snowed the chimney was a conduit for water.’
I saw that Conrad did not like to be corrected. His English was so nearly perfect and his accent was lovely. He pronounced ‘th’ like a soft ‘d’ – ‘dis’ ‘dat’ and ‘dem’ – and said ‘seemple metter’ instead of ‘simple matter’. His voice was not harsh like Nazi generals in films. On the contrary it was … mellifluous might be the word. Though he had recently been up a chimney, he wore a beautiful dark green coat and a heather-coloured jersey with grey corduroy trousers. On one finger was a ring with a black stone. By comparison with Rafe, who wore jeans and an old brown jacket, there was something of the dandy about Conrad. That, combined with his exotic dark looks, made me think of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, in which I had danced the role of Pride. I had been much taken at the time with the glamorous decadence of the Weimar Republic.
‘Vat fettle, honoured ladies and gentlemen.’ Fritz came in with an ice bucket containing a bottle and several glasses. ‘Excuse you me please for make you all to wait.’
‘What have you been doing?’ Isobel asked. ‘You look as though you’ve spent the day down a pit.’
Fritz’s delicate pink and whiteness was marred by black smudges. ‘Excuse you me, please. Vat is pit? Oh, yes. The mines. I haf try to make the oven burn. He has bird nests in his pipe. There is a dog outside who very much barks,’ said Fritz as he poured the champagne. ‘Is it permitted him to bring in?’
Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Page 24