Strangely, I was less afraid than I had been. I no longer thought that I was ill or mad, or the butt of some malicious trick.
It was bitterly cold in the room. Ice had formed delicate and beautiful leaf and fern patterns on the inside of the windows. But it was quiet, the atmosphere felt as tranquil and undisturbed as it had been all day. I had spent the evening staring into the fire, trying to make some sense of what I had found, and recover from the shock I had received. There had been no incidents, no spirits of good or evil had sought me out. It was as though, by touching upon the truth, I had vanquished them, or else laid them to rest. I hoped that they would not return. But I did not intend to leave the matter, I could not, not now, I would have to get to the heart of it. If nothing else, I must satisfy myself about the boy. Moreover my interest in Vane had changed. At first, I had planned to write some eulogistic biography of a hero. Then, as I had discovered more, to present the portrait of a fascinating, strangely divided character, to the world. I wanted both to expose and explain him. But now, in beginning to find out about Vane, I had apparently stumbled upon clues to my own history, and I cared about this most passionately of all. If the two were in some way intertwined, then I meant to unravel the threads.
I returned to London the following day. When I went across to the house to tell Dancer, he seemed surprised and also considerably relieved.
‘I am afraid that I am not taking your advice,’ I said. ‘But I have made a discovery – something I would prefer to keep to myself, and this makes it imperative for me to return to London.’
‘Then your visit to Alton has not been fruitless – the records were of some interest?’
‘Yes.’
He searched my face. ‘You seem calm,’ he said, ‘untroubled.’
‘Entirely.’
‘I pray that you will remain so.’
I thanked him, and then asked if he knew whether there had been any alterations to the corridor above the cloisters at any time. I thought that he looked wary.
‘Not in recent years. As I told you, that is the oldest part of the school, and in a way rather separate from it. Elsewhere there have been changes – the boys’ living quarters were somewhat medieval and lacking in comfort, they have been improved greatly, even since I was a scholar here.’
‘I would be glad if you could spare the time to come with me,’ I said. ‘There is something I want to reassure myself about in your presence.’
As we went through the baize door leading to the upper corridor I paused. ‘Take note,’ I said, ‘of all the doors. I will count them as we go along.’
I did so, numbering them aloud or else reading out from their brass plates, Bursar – Muniment Room – Provost – they were exactly as I had first seen them. As we walked along, I saw that Dancer’s face was clouded, his manner wary.
I stopped. ‘Here,’ I said.
He glanced at me, and then at the wall to which I was pointing.
‘What is there?’ I asked.
‘Why nothing – a blank wall,’ he replied.
‘And behind?’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Was there never a door? Might there be a room behind here?’ I touched the wall.
‘There is no way in to any room. Unless, of course, some store lies behind here, to which entrance might be gained from within.’
‘Via an inner passage?’
‘I really cannot remember the exact arrangement – this is a very ancient building as you know, a veritable rabbit warren of passages and rooms.’
I was silent. There was a blank wall before us, that much was clear. I ran the flat of my hand across it, but there was not even a slight alteration in the texture or level of the plaster that might have indicated a blocked-up door.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
Yet I was loath to leave – leave him, as it seemed, immured somewhere, sobbing and despairing of any help or comfort.
George Edward Pallantire Monmouth.
His crying echoed in my head.
I turned and almost ran from that haunted place.
At Alton, the snow had been a thing of beauty, to be admired, and enjoyed, a foil to the ancient stone buildings, and softening the landscape all about me.
But London was a city paralysed by winter, frozen to its heart, the pavements rutted and treacherous, the roads a mire of sugary brown slush. In squares and gardens where the snow still lay untrampled, save by the claws of a million birds, it could perhaps be looked upon with pleasure, but going about one’s business, even walking a short way, cold and stumbling, was misery indeed. Only the glow of braziers from workmen’s huts and chestnut and hot potato stalls warmed and brightened the dark, and made fragrant the air that seemed black with frost and tasted bitter on the tongue.
From my windows, I looked out over the half-frozen river and cabs and struggling passers-by, and my fire gave out no warmth, and the winter and the whiteness quite lost their charm for me. And everywhere, it seemed, I now saw only the cold and homeless and half-starved poor, wretches huddled in corners, shivering, and ragged, as though the bitter weather had somehow brought them to light, exposed them and left them stranded like flotsam at low tide. I was more conscious of this dark side of London than at any time since my arrival in the city.
But I did not spend much time contemplating it, nor sit as I had previously done, for hours in the window, enjoying the life of the river beyond.
I had thrown my bag unopened on the bed, cast off my coat, and, after stirring the fire into meagre life, dragged the old leather trunk out from its standing place in the passage and fumbled with the stiff clasps and locks that had bound it and been untouched for more than twenty years.
For the rest of that day, and halfway through the night, I was deaf and blind to all else save its contents and when finally, with red-rimmed eyes and breaking back, I was forced to abandon it and stagger to bed, I slept – still half-dressed – going over the piles of books and belongings in my dreams, before rising to continue my search, as the dawn came up.
For a long time, I found nothing, though I opened and flicked through every book, ripped apart every envelope, read every letter. The past, and my life as a boy and young man, growing up in my Guardian’s care in Africa, was gradually laid out on the floor as I unpacked the trunk, but for the time being I held back the memories. Later, perhaps, I could afford to give them rein, see and hear and live again that calm and happy time. Not now, now I was in a fever of mind to find something that would let me through another door into a different and wholly forgotten life.
From time to time, I paused to take a turn about the room; went once to the coffee house, where I sat in a daze, exhausted and scarcely noticing what it was that I ate and drank; I threw more coals onto the fitful fire and, eventually, got up a decent blaze. The sky beyond the windows was fiery orange, as the afternoon drew in, and later on it darkened, the frost seemed to smoke off the surface of the water.
The building below me was utterly empty and silent still, the stairs had been in darkness as I came up. Threadgold had appeared, muttering morosely at my return, but soon retreated again to his secret basement.
Once, I heard the fire engine’s frantic bell, and saw light blazing out from a house further along the walk, heard distant shouting. I switched on the lamps. It grew quiet again, as if the world outside my windows had been frozen into motionless silence by the intensity of the cold.
I found no letter, no documents relating to me, no birth certificate – which surely my Guardian must once have had – no reference at all to my existence. If there had been any papers, they had been destroyed.
Light-headed with disappointment and fatigue I began to feel like a wraith myself, it was as though I had no substance, no real existence in this world at all.
And, then, I came upon the Prayer Book.
It was a small copy, bound in soft black, with wafer-thin pages. I riffled through it, shaking it, as I had with every one of the books in the trun
k, in case some slip of paper should be inside. Nothing fell. But, as I closed it, my eye caught the line of writing inside the front cover. It was in dark ink, still strong and clear because it had not been exposed to the light,
James Monmouth
His, to remember Old Nan
Kittiscar 18-
I stared at the careful, old-fashioned handwriting, stared until I might almost have burned the words off the paper, and as I stared something deep within me stirred in response, but just out of reach so I could not grasp it – a name, a place, a time, a person, a voice – what? What? I almost sobbed with frustration, knowing yet not knowing, I felt like a man blindly running down twisting tunnels, swerving, stretching out my hands to grasp what lay ahead and hold it to me, shake it, bid it yield up its secret.
Old Nan. Old Nan.
I flung myself into the chair, and remained there, as the fire sank and slumped down upon itself, my brain straining frantically, scouring every recess of my memory.
Old Nan.
There it was! Yes, I had it … there … No. A hint, then, a slight scent, faintly, in my nostrils. Then it was gone again.
Old Nan.
But I was satisfied in one respect.
George Edward Pallantire Monmouth, of Kittiscar Hall, Kittiscar.
I had proved his connection with me.
I slept in the chair that night, beside the dying fire, and woke in the early hours of the morning cold as death, my head aching, so that I cried out in pain when I moved, and, when I stood, was giddy. All around me, the contents of the trunk lay in piles, books, papers, little half-opened packages of this and that. But the one book, the only thing I cared for, or which held any interest for me, was still clutched between my fingers, as it had been all that night.
James Monmouth.
His, to remember Old Nan
Kittiscar, 18-
CHAPTER TEN
The following morning, I received a letter from Lady Quincebridge reminding me of my engagement to spend Christmas with them, and stating that, unless she heard to the contrary, she would have me met from the three o’clock train at Hisley, on Saturday, Christmas Eve.
From what I had seen of her, and from the nature of her address and invitation, I thought it likely that the house would be a grand one and the party smart, and that I should therefore need to get myself a few more clothes. For the next couple of days, therefore, I was too busy to do anything more – even supposing I knew what more might be done – about pursuing the information I had found written inside the Prayer Book.
I went to a modest gentlemen’s outfitters off Piccadilly, and purchased a dinner suit, smoking jacket, and a new, heavy overcoat, together with various extras in the way of respectable dressing gown and slippers, shirts and shoes. I might even have enjoyed making my purchases, had I not felt tired and somewhat out of spirits, with a vague aching in my limbs and head, which I did my best to ignore.
A thaw set in just before Christmas Eve, so that the streets and roadways turned to rivers of black, frothing water. The sky was overcast, the air foul, and it scarcely seemed to come light all day. But I went for a walk among the stalls of Covent Garden market, and enjoyed the sights and smells, of fresh, piled Christmas trees and mounds of bitter-smelling holly, the geese, turkeys and capons swinging in rows outside butchers’ doorways, fetched down every so often by aproned boys bearing hooked wooden poles.
The previous Christmas, I recalled, I had spent in a remote mountain village in Tibet, drinking rancid buttered tea and listening to the eerie chants of the Buddhist monks and the tinkling of a thousand bells, across the thin, pure air. It had been as far from this murky London mire and coming Christian festival as might have been, another world, a dream – I could scarcely believe in it.
When I returned to Prickett’s Green that night to pack my belongings, I still felt somewhat depressed and thought that I might have caught a chill, but I took some powders, with hot rum, slept well, and, in the morning, a sluggish, dark, raw one, decided that I had succeeded in shaking it off before it took hold.
I dressed with some care, locked up the rooms – I had left a note for Threadgold, who was, as usual, invisible – and called a cab to take me to Waterloo. At the last minute, I slipped the small black Prayer Book into my pocket.
It was a gloomy journey, the railway train was crowded, and I ill-tempered with my fellow-passengers. I retreated into myself, hunched into my corner, and brooded, turning the inscription in the book over and over in my mind, trying yet again to catch and pin down those hints of something, something that I knew, and which would open the door into my past for me. But I was no more successful than before and almost began to wish that I had not found the book and so had nothing to tantalise me, nothing to pursue.
I realised that Conrad Vane, and what I had discovered about him, had ceased to dominate my thinking – indeed now I recoiled from the very thought of him. My attitude was quite changed. It was the boy, George Edward Pallantire Monmouth, to whom I was now in thrall.
The train rattled on and my brain seemed to rattle with it. I was in a half-daze, half-dream, and only woke with a start because the carriage seemed suddenly so stiflingly hot I was forced to fling off my coat and jacket to cool myself, though my fellows stared at me hard enough, for doing so.
The countryside beyond the windows was dull and drear, rain slashed across from the west, and mournful animals stood about, heads bowed, in the waterlogged fields. For the first time since my arrival, I longed for the heat of the tropics, for blue skies and vivid flowers, brightness, the glare of the sun and the huge open continent stretching away from me on every side, I felt cramped and oppressed, I had no purpose here, I lacked friends, and all those I saw around me had closed, dull, pallid faces.
At Hisley, I was met by a car, a dark green Bentley, and I sat back in the deep upholstery, my bags stored away in the boot, willing myself to enjoy the luxury, but apprehensive, sure I had far better have remained at Prickett’s Green, mouldering alone over a fire, for I felt uncertain as to how I might be received and whether I would be at my ease and not entirely out of place in some grand house among strangers, with a hostess I barely knew. But the car turned in through a pair of high gates and in spite of my forebodings I sat forward to look ahead for my first sight of Pyre. As if aware of my interest and to make the most of the approach, the chauffeur slowed the car. The rain had stopped and the sky cleared and lightened a little, though it was still a dull enough day and drawing in rapidly. After a short drive between uninteresting shrubs we swung round into a long, straight carriage ride between great elms, with parkland on either side, in which small deer were grazing. I imagined it in high summer, with the leafy branches meeting in an arch overhead and the sunlight filtering through the leaves. This was the England of which I had read in the stories in my Guardian’s books when I was a boy; this was the sort of picture I had carried for years in my mind.
‘Now you see the house, sir, there, ahead.’
I looked and, as I saw it, felt my spirits lift. It was indeed a magnificent, extraordinary place that rose before me, at the far end of the ride, a soft grey stone house, with a wing on either side, and a flight of steps curving up to the front doors.
Before it, set in the centre of the sweeping, circular drive, was a huge fountain, and great urns flanked the pillars of the porch. The door stood open, and light from within streamed into the gathering dusk – indeed, every window was full of light, the shimmer of glass chandeliers mingling with the softer light of candles banked on stands. I saw a classical orangery, and, as we turned into the drive at last, caught a glimpse of lawns stretching away behind the house into the darkness, of high walls and lily ponds, pleached walks and more fountains, and a slope descending out of sight towards the gleam of the lake.
Then, we were stopped, and Lady Quincebridge was at the door and coming quickly down the steps to greet me and I was swept up from that moment into the splendour and brilliance of her world, as well as the warm
th and sincerity of her welcome. When I stepped inside the house, I felt as if I were being enveloped in light and richness, and cocooned in the comforts and splendour of the Christmas setting.
The house was magnificent, with a great hall, and staircase rising up from it, dark wood panelling and old, polished furniture gleaming in the blaze of the log fires that burned in every room. The Christmas tree, decorated with baubles and painted fir cones, candles and ribbon, reached up almost to touch the high ceiling, the fireplaces and door mantles were swathed with holly and the whole house smelled sweetly of woodsmoke, pungent fruits and green branches. I stood, dazzled by it all, but at once Lady Quincebridge was at my side, concerned and full of friendliness.
‘Weston will show you up – your bag has already gone. Now do make yourself at home and familiar with everything, and wash and so forth, as you wish. You are looking tired, Mr Monmouth.’
She laid a hand lightly on my arm for a second, looking carefully into my face. ‘There is something wrong,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I can see it, sense it, something has happened to you. Well, you are safe here, we will look after you. Now – there will be tea in the drawing room, when you come down. The place is full of children, you will hear them all about, but mainly at the top of the house, and at least they take their tea together in the nursery, you will not have to face the little monsters just now!’