‘Touch not the cat,’ said Cathy, and reached past my shoulder for the ring of the knocker. She rapped sharply at the door.
There are few sounds so dead and hollow as the knocking on the door of an empty house. I felt a kind of goose-feather of superstition brushing my skin, and must have made an instinctive movement of protest. Cathy, unmoved, sent me a smile.
‘Just to wake Wicked Ashley up,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. You made me jump. Anyway, one’s always better not waking things up that are sleeping.’
‘I thought you said there weren’t any ghosts.’
‘I’ve never met one,’ I said. ‘But if there are any at Ashley, this is where they’ll be.’
‘Well, whether he’s awake or not, he’s not answering,’ said Cathy. ‘Anything against me trying the door?’
‘Nothing at all, but you’ll find it’s locked.’
‘You’re right. Oh dear, can’t we get in after all?’
‘There’s a way in through one of the side windows. Round here.’
There was a way of opening the window shutters at the south side of the pavilion, and we were soon inside and pushing the creaking leaves open to let in the light and air.
The pavilion was larger than such places usually are. It had once, of course, been elegantly furnished, but now all the furniture had gone except for some relatively recent garden stuff, a table and a day bed and a couple of cane chairs.
‘Well, here you are,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather a dusty end to the romance.’
‘Would that be the table he wrote the poems at?’
‘I doubt it. That’s late Victorian. I’m afraid all the original stuff has gone.’
Cathy’s eye fixed itself on the one impressive feature which remained. This was the ceiling, which was made of one huge looking-glass framed in gilt and mounted within the elaborately moulded cornice. Its smeared and flyblown surface was slightly angled, its frame of dirty gilt scrollwork supported, apparently, by birds and ribbons and swags of roses. The glass caught the sunshine from the open window, and laid a rhomboid of gritty light across the foot of the day bed and along the floor.
‘Surely that’s part of the original building?’ she asked. ‘What a pretty idea, to have a mirror ceiling. If those brackets in the walls held sconces, the place must have seemed just full of candle-light. Is this in any of the old pictures?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
‘“Afraid”?’
‘There’s a set of rather randy engravings,’ I told her. ‘I’m afraid the mirror’s not a bit romantic, really. Oh, yes, it’s certainly old, but I think it was put in by your Wicked Ashley, William and Julia’s son. It rather gives one ideas about all the wild parties he had, and the lady-loves he brought here, till the brother of the last one shot him. The engravings are rather imaginative about it, anyway, and the mirror certainly shows in those, right over where the bed was.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, is that what it was for? You know,’ said Cathy, pivoting on her heel and watching herself in the tilted mirror, ‘I cannot imagine it would be any fun at all watching oneself having sex. Can you?’
‘Distinctly off-putting, I’d have thought.’
She turned again, slowly, on her heel, and her look round the grubby, echoing room was sad. ‘It surely is a dusty answer,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t be. I don’t know why the past is always sadder if there’s something a bit beautiful about it. And this place must have been beautiful.’
‘Keats says that about melancholy.’ I quoted it for her:
‘She dwells with beauty, beauty that must die,
And joy whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding farewell.’
‘Yeah, I remember that. He was right, too.’ Cathy’s look dwelt on me for a moment, with something in it that I couldn’t understand. Then she looked past me. ‘Oh, look, there’s a little bit of Julia left here, after all.’
Above the day bed, on the wall against which presumably Nick Ashley’s big bed had once stood, was a moulding in plaster, a sort of bed-head applied to the wall itself. At its apex was the familiar coat of arms, thickly grimed and grey, with its motto and its rampant wildcat. This looked as if it had been moulded from one of the carvings in the house; it showed the grainy texture of the stone, and even a chip or two. There were still traces of paint, but time had done badly by it; it was rubbed and flaking, and in places barely distinguishable.
Cathy leaned across the day bed to look at it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what do you know, here’s the map again. Just to make sure you could get out of the place, even if you’d forgotten how you got in.’ She licked a finger and rubbed the grimy plaster. ‘Did you notice? I think someone’s marked the way? Yes, there’s the bit just before we got here, when we were heading straight back towards the house.’
I followed her, kneeling on the day bed and peering up at the dirty moulding. ‘I believe you’re right. I’d never noticed.’
She rubbed harder. ‘They’re not done like that in the house, because I was looking.’ She laughed. ‘I expect Nick Ashley drew it in so that his girlfriends could slink off home to their husbands, and leave him still peacefully sleeping it off. Hey, this plaster’s crumbling a bit, I’d better leave it alone.’ She straightened, rubbing her hand down the patched jeans. ‘This place really could do with a paint job, couldn’t it? I only hope that mirror’s safe. It certainly doesn’t look it. You know, with a good clean up and a rug and some furnishing, this could be quite a place, still, wouldn’t you say? It would make a guest cottage if you put a bed back in, and a few other things.’
‘For people you didn’t like? Show them the guest cottage and forget to tell them the way out?’
She laughed. ‘Well, it’s an idea. Anyway, what would you want a guest cottage for, with a place the size of the Court? No, it’s fascinating just as it is.’
I wondered if the gaze she sent around the pavilion was more than just idle. My next question came straight out of the speculation, but it sounded casual enough. ‘How long have you known Emory?’
‘Not long. We only met last month, but it seems longer. I mean, he’s easy to know, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I can imagine. And James?’
‘I met him soon after, but I’ve only seen him a couple of times. My, but they’re alike, aren’t they?’
‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee,’ I agreed. ‘Could you ever get them mixed up, do you think?’
She laughed. ‘I hope not. Could you?’
‘I don’t think so. I never did as a little girl, but that’s a long time ago, and we don’t meet so often now. I admit that when I saw him today at the Court I wasn’t quite sure which it was till he told me.’
We had gone outside while we were talking, and I pulled the long windows shut and fastened the louvres across. We went down the steps. The honeysuckle let its arras down behind us, and the pavilion was shut in once more with its dust and its silence.
‘I guess,’ said Cathy, ingenuously, ‘I could still get them mixed up if they tried to fool me, but they’re too nice to do that. Besides, Emory—’ She stopped. ‘Say, what’s that perfume? I don’t see any flowers except daisies and those yellow things.’
‘Lilies of the valley. They’ve gone wild there under the hedge in the shade. You can’t see the flowers – those stiff green leaves, see? Let’s pick some for your mother, shall we?’ I stooped and pushed the leaves aside, hunting for the waxy bells. She kneeled beside me, and did the same. I said: ‘You were saying. Emory?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
I let it wait for a minute. ‘Emory’s special, isn’t he?’
‘Special? Why, of course! Bryony, I’m just crazy about him!’ She laughed up at me, her eyes brilliant. She meant, it was obvious, every word; but it came a thought too easily, as if she had said it before, and would say it again. Paradoxically, I found the over-emphasis soothing; it ga
ve her confession the flavour of powder-room gossip, the easy euphoria of the evening out. ‘Don’t you think he’s just fabulous? I’d do just anything for him!’
She stopped, seeming to catch some echo in her own voice that embarrassed her. She bit her lip, and coloured up, turning quickly away from me, her hands searching busily among the green spathes. The long hair swung down to hide her face.
‘Bryony, about Emory. Do you mind?’
‘Mind?’ Taken by surprise, I sat back on my heels, regarding her averted head. Then I answered as she had spoken, directly and without guile. ‘No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. There’s no reason why I should.’
She, too, sat back at that, turning to face me once more. The flush had subsided; she gave me a clouded, smiling look, where some obscure hint of trouble showed still. She started to speak, broke off, considering something else, then rejected that, too. Kneeling there among the flowery grass, with the rhinoceros-folds of the enormous sweater dwarfing her body, and her hair anyhow over brow and shoulders, she looked far younger even than eighteen.
I said, easily: ‘I don’t wonder you’ve fallen for him: when I was your age I was wild about him. But then, I was wild about the others, too.’ I smiled at her. ‘Tell me, where’s the difference when it comes to being “special”? Why not James?’
‘Well, for one thing, I haven’t seen all that much of him, and for another—’
‘Yes?’
The fabulous mink lashes dropped suddenly to shadow her cheeks. She bent to the flowers again. ‘He has a girl already.’
‘How do you know that?’
I hadn’t meant the question to come out quite so sharply, but she appeared to have noticed nothing. ‘Because he said so,’ she said simply.
‘Oh.’ I bent to add another flower to the spray in my hand. ‘Have you met her? Did he say who it was?’
‘No. There.’ She straightened. ‘Mom’ll be wild about these. Shall we go back?’
‘Sure. Let’s go back by the path along the Overflow.’
We came out of the maze into full sunlight, and crossed the little bridge. Primulas were out along the stream, nodding in the draught made by the running water.
‘Why do you call it the Overflow?’ she asked as we followed the mossy path along the edge.
‘Because it’s just that. It controls the level of the moat. There are two sluices, the High Sluice, on the other side of the house, that lets the water from the river into the moat, and this one here that lets it out into the Pool. The Overflow wasn’t much more, originally, than just a ditch to carry floodwater away, but a few years ago the High Sluice broke in a storm, and the lower sluice couldn’t cope with the flooding, so parts of the house were damaged. They put a new High Sluice in, and dug this channel deeper as a safety precaution.’
‘Gee, I’d never thought that living with a moat round you could be dangerous.’
‘It’s not really. And if the sluice had been kept properly it never would have been. Actually—’ I laughed ‘—the moat is pretty useful. Its main use being that it reduces the fire-insurance premiums.’
‘Well, and that’s another dusty answer,’ said Cathy. ‘Here was I thinking that a moated grange was the most romantic thing ever – Oh!’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
She had stopped, and was pointing. I had been walking behind her. I came up to her shoulder and looked.
Between the moat and the lake below it, cutting down through a corner of the grassed bank, was one of the prettiest monuments in the Court gardens, a cascade with a fishing cat. At the head of the bank was the heavy sluice gate, which was normally kept shut, and to either side of this the normal outflow from the moat was channelled to lapse, fall by fall, towards the Pool. The water-stairs, a natural-looking cascade of rock, thickly set with ferns and trailing plants, led the fall into a corner of the Pool from which, through bigger rocks green with the moss of many years, the water ran down into the deeply cut channel of the Overflow. On one of these rocks, just where the water slid towards the first rush of the Overflow, was a stone cat, its outstretched paw reaching into the flow, gracefully curved as if to hook a fish.
Or rather, the cat had been there. Now there was nothing but the gate with the water cascading down the rocks beside it, and, on the stone where the cat had been, the ugly iron staples stuck out, rotten with rust and twisted crooked with the fall of the statue. The cat itself was lying in the basin under the water, with the fish tranquilly shuttling to and fro across it, under the broken paw.
Ashley, 1835.
A sound from the door dragged him from the shallows of sleep. Someone was there, on the verandah.
He was alert, instantly up on one elbow. Perhaps Fletcher had come: something was wrong? His uncle had arrived before he was expected? This little world of peace and love had been broken before its time; the too short night was over.
But all was silence. He relaxed again, to see her eyes, darkly shining, watching him.
‘What is it, love?’
‘Nothing. Something waked me. Look, the moon’s almost down. A little while, and it will be getting light. No, do not go yet. I have something to tell you, but it will wait. It will wait a little longer.’
11
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t.
Romeo and Juliet, III, v
As I had promised, I went back to tea with Cathy and her mother, then took myself off to my cottage, to see if Rob had brought my baggage in from Worcester.
He had, and had even carried it upstairs for me and dumped it on the tiny landing.
Before I unpacked I went to the telephone and dialled the number of the second-hand bookshop in Ashbury.
‘Is Mr Oker there, please? Oh, Leslie, it’s you. This is Bryony, Bryony Ashley, Yes, I came back a couple of days ago; I’m back at the cottage . . . How are you? Good. How’s everything going . . . ?’
Talking to Leslie had about it something (I imagined) of the ritual of Eastern bargaining; you had to go through the routine of question and answer first, the answer being the shorter exercise of the two. Mr Oker loved talking, and there was no hurrying him; one got to business eventually, but by way of health, the weather, trade prospects, the latest news, and any extra juicy items of local gossip that were worth passing on. The routine, I suppose, had originally been evolved as part of a softening-up process, the patter before the hard dealing. In sober fact, Leslie gave very little away, but the impression he fostered, of a genial and impulsive gossip, stood him in very good stead: strangers who were deceived by his effusive and rather camp manner into hoping for an easy bargain, would come suddenly, and to their disadvantage, up against a very knowledgeable and wily operator. Leslie Oker was about as impulsive as a two-toed sloth, and rather less effeminate than a tomcat. The kindness, though, was real.
Thanks to it, the preliminaries today were short. After only three minutes, at least two of which were devoted to my welfare, and to praise of my father, Leslie paused, and then said, directly: ‘But you didn’t ring me up just to tell me you were home, dear. What can I do for you?’
‘Well, something’s come up, and I wonder if you could help me, please. Just a quick query. You remember showing me that limited edition of Rip Van Winkle last year, the one illustrated by Arthur Rackham? I wondered what sort of price his work was fetching now? I don’t mean the books, I mean the original illustrations?’
‘Well, it’s not exactly my line, as you know, but I’d say you’d be lucky if you came across one at all. Is this some particular drawing you want to buy?’
I laughed. ‘You know me better than that. I don’t want to sell one, either. I just want to know the sort of value, if you wouldn’t mind. Just an idea.’
‘The last one I saw listed in a catalogue,’ said Leslie, crisply, ‘was a water-colour drawing from Comus, and it was priced at eight hundred pounds.’
‘Oh. I see. Thank you. Leslie—’
‘Yes?’
‘If you shou
ld by any chance come across some mention of Rackham drawings for sale, would you not say anything about this, but just phone me straight away?’
‘Of course. But how very intriguing.’ The light voice showed little but a gentle and sympathetic interest. ‘I gather one is not allowed to ask why?’
‘For now, no. But I’ll come in as soon as I can, and tell you all about it.’
‘This is exciting,’ said Leslie comfortably. ‘Of course, Bryony dear. Count on me. And perhaps I could give the grapevine just a teeny, teeny shake? But tell me soon, won’t you, before I die with curiosity?’
‘That’ll be the day,’ I said, and he laughed, and rang off.
James came down after supper, just as I was finishing the washing-up. He hoisted the empty cases into the roof space for me, accepted a cup of coffee, then followed me outside to the seat under the lilac tree facing the Pool. Dusk was falling, and the air was very still. The surface of the Pool lay quiet and shining, ringing into ripples here and there as fish rose for the evening hatch. There was a heron still fishing among the reeds at the far side. The rooks were settling for the night, and making a great to-do about it. Like clouds behind the cottage roof, the orchard trees showed pale and frothy with blossom, and tallest of all, the pear tree, like a central fountain in a water garden, held up its plumes of springtime snow. A thrush was singing in it, alone, as freshly and as passionately as if this was the first song in the world. From somewhere in the middle distance, towards the Court, came the sound of someone hammering.
‘Rob puts in long hours,’ said my cousin.
‘I wonder if he’s mending the fishing cat.’
‘Fishing cat?’
‘The one at the sluice where the Overflow leaves the moat. It’s broken. I saw it this afternoon when Cathy and I were coming back from the maze.’