She walked slowly around. The church had evidently been subject to some pretty brutal restoration, and its most striking feature was a set of memorials to the local gentry spanning some three hundred years. The earliest was a statue of an Elizabethan gentleman leaning on his elbow with an expression of fastidious boredom, as if death were the last in a long series of social duties which he had undertaken without enthusiasm or complaint. After that the style turned chilly and classical for a century or so, all marble urns and garlands, before Victorian earnestness took over. The last plaque, near the door, was a brass plate with incised red and black lettering. It commemorated two brothers: Rupert Jeffries, 1898–1916, Duke et decorum est pro patria mori, and Maurice Jeffries, 1898-, Et in Arcadia ego. The missing date seemed rather bizarre, as though suggesting that the person concerned might not really be dead. The little leaflet on the history of the church, which Aileen found on the table next to the hymnals and for which she was urged to make a contribution of ‘at least 6d’, proved unhelpful. It mentioned only that the Hall had been uninhabited for some time following the deaths of both heirs to the estate during the Great War and was now, ‘like so many of our great country houses, virtually derelict’. It was only when she made to put her contribution in the collecting box that Aileen realized that her purse was in the pocket of her coat, which she had left on the rack in the train.
Outside, the sky had clouded over quite considerably. It had grown almost uncomfortably close. The loss of her purse was a blow, for although it only contained about ten pounds, it was all she had with her. The attractions of this improvised day in the country were rapidly beginning to fade. She would have to find a phone box and make a reversed charge call, but first she had to find the way into the village. Regaining the path she had been on before, she came to another imposing set of gates leading out of the estate. Unlike the ones by which she had entered, however, these were locked and chained and clearly no longer in use. This was doubly frustrating, because she could see the rooftops of the village through the foliage beyond the gates, not more than a few hundred yards away. There was no way out, however. The alternatives were to return the way she had come, to take a narrow path to the right marked ‘Staff Only’, or to turn left up a track which skirted the wall of the estate. This seemed to offer the best possibility of finding a short cut to the village, and Aileen started along it.
The track was at first covered in gravel, but this soon gave way to a rough surface of dried mud, deeply rutted, with a strip of grass and wild flowers in the middle. The parkland surrounding the manor house gradually turned to rough meadow as the track had started to climb the open hillside. This proved surprisingly steep, and despite her impatience to get to a phone, Aileen found herself pausing frequently for breath, once even taking the opportunity to pick some overripe blackberries from the bushes in the ditching beside the track. The berries burst as she pulled them off, staining her fingers. Afterwards she wished she had left them alone, for she had nothing to wipe her hands on. It was already going to be difficult enough to come up with a story to tell her parents without making herself sound totally scatty. The last thing she needed was to turn up with her hands and dress apparently stained with blood. There was no sign of any path or road leading off to the village. The track ran straight ahead to the top of the hill. Aileen kept looking about her as she walked, hoping to find a bit of waste paper she could clean her hands on, but the only things she saw were useless to her: a work glove of some shiny red rubberized material lying palm up on the ground, and a large piece of torn plastic marked Gro-More, which had become trapped in the barbed-wire fencing and was flapping loudly in the wind. Finally she came to a dew-pond beside the track, a deep crater lined with black plastic sheeting. As she bent to wash the blackberry juice off her hands, she caught sight of her reflection in the water. She looked frail and fragile. The sleeveless white dress clung to her body like a shift. She put her hands into the water, blurring the image.
The land to either side grew barer and more exposed as she neared the crest of the hill. The traditional drystone walls had been swept away to create large efficient spaces for the cereal crop whose severed stalks covered the ground. Clouds of smoke started drifting across the track, light and tenuous at first, then suddenly thick, billowing and impenetrable. It looked as though some tremendous disaster had taken place. There were flames blended in with the smoke, orange turning to brown or brilliant red. The air was filled with their crackling. When the smoke thinned for a moment, Aileen saw figures running about with pitchforks, carrying smouldering straw to spread the blaze to the unburnt stubble. But they were too far away for her to ask for directions, and the next moment the wind changed direction, plunging her back into the smoke, which grew so thick that she could only see intermittently. When the smoke finally cleared, Aileen paused to take stock of her situation. The track she was on looked like one of the old drove-roads which continued for miles across the hills without passing any human habitation. The clouds were getting thicker and darker every moment: it was pretty obviously going to pour with rain in the not-too-distant future. About fifty yards further on there was a farmhouse standing beside the track, and rather than walking all the way back again, Aileen decided to go and ask for directions. They might know of a footpath down to the village, or even have a phone she could use. As the building grew nearer, Aileen was surprised to see how impressive it was for an outlying tenant farm. It had three storeys, with large gables, and was built of the local stone, richly mottled with lichen. Even more surprising, it appeared to be derelict. A new corrugated iron barn had been erected nearby and was being used to store various pieces of farm machinery, but the house itself seemed to be abandoned. The garden was a wilderness, several of the windows were smashed and the front door stood open.
The first sign she had of what was happening was when the dust at her feet suddenly started to flick up into the air and the first drops struck her arms. A moment later the rain was pelting down and her dress had turned a shade darker. She ran into the garden of the house and took shelter under an enormous yew tree growing there. The rain hung across the landscape as thick as a curtain, blown in folds by the wind. Already the track had turned into a stream flowing back towards the valley. With the gusting wind, the yew provided scant shelter. Aileen now saw that a path of sorts had been cleared through the nettles and long grass to the front door of the farmhouse. As the storm showed no sign of slackening for the moment, she decided to make a dash for it.
Once across the threshold, everything was dry and hushed and still. The place seemed at first to be in reasonably good order, which only increased the mystery of why it was uninhabited, given the property values in the area these days. But as soon as she started looking around, it became clear that this was an illusion. There had been no vandalism or wanton destruction: the house had just started to collapse under its own weight. The hallway and stairs were still intact, but the other rooms were a shambles, the flagstones of the floor covered in fallen joists and chunks of lath and plaster. Aileen stood looking about at the vast space above her head, cleared of all partitions, listening to the wind roaring in the cavernous fireplace and the rattle of rain against the leaded window panes. She felt very tired suddenly, deeply weary. She longed to be home. Then, quite distinctly, high overhead, she heard a cry.
Slowly and calmly, as though she had been expecting this, Aileen turned and made her way back to the hall, stepping carefully over the lengths of wood and lumps of plaster on the floor. Outside in the garden, the yew was tossing to and fro like a head in pain, but within the house all was still. When she gripped the banister her hand came away covered in dirt, and the stairs creaked loudly as she started to climb them. They advanced towards a blind wall, then reversed direction and continued up to a landing lit by one of the broken windows. It was only when she looked to her left, through a doorway that opened on to nothing, that Aileen felt any fear. But even then it was only for a moment, and the cry she had heard was consta
ntly repeated, plaintive and pleading, impossible to ignore. The next set of stairs was narrower and steeper, one long, continuous flight spanning the entire width of the house. The steps were tall and heavily worn and the bare plaster wall was discoloured by rubbing shoulders, as though generations had passed that way. Gradually Aileen’s body blocked out the light from the window below until she could see nothing. She groped forward into the darkness, where her outstretched hands encountered a rough wooden surface. Beyond it, the cry sounded again and again, louder and more urgent than before. Aileen pushed and struck the door in vain, almost panicking as she failed to find any handle. Then her frantic fingers stumbled on a latch set high up. As soon as she pressed the release, the door sprang open like a trap and something came straight at her face, speedy and mobile, inhumanly crying. She threw herself to one side, holding up her hands to protect her face. At the last moment the bird veered round in a tight curve and flew straight at one of the windows. It struck the glass hard and fell to the floor, where it fluttered about dazedly, uttering its mournful cry.
The attic ran the whole length and width of the house, an expanse of bare planks lit by the three windows, one in each of the gables. Overhead, rafters supported the overlapping stone tiles of the roof. It was here, no doubt, that the bird had got in, slipping through a chink between two tiles. Unable to find its way out again, it was staring at Aileen with an expression which seemed full of pride and hurt, of baffled resentment. All she had to do was open one of the windows. She had covered about half the distance, moving slowly so as not to alarm the bird any further, when she heard something snap and felt a jolt underfoot. The bird promptly took to the air, perching on a tie-beam as the centre of the floor sagged several inches. When she tried to turn back, Aileen fell on her side, deceived by the slope of the boards. Under this impact the floor opened up completely, but Aileen was aware of this only for an instant. Then night fell, warm and black and luminous. The lawn stretched smoothly away, flowing out and around the two great beeches. The grass was heavy with dew, which gleamed flawlessly in the moonlight as she glided across it, her feet not touching the ground, the air softly lifting and enfolding her. The vision can have lasted only the few seconds that it took her falling body to reach the stone slabs below, but it was of such power and beauty that it seemed a more than adequate recompense for everything that had ever happened to her, and for whatever was about to happen.
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The Tryst Page 19