The House On The Strand Part 7

"Nothing," I said, "come on..."

The first thing Vita noticed when we reached the modern kitchen on the first floor was the debris of my supper on the table. The remains of fried eggs and sausages, the frying-pan not cleaned, standing on one corner of the table, the electric light still on.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "Did you have a cooked breakfast before your walk? That's new for you!"

"I was hungry," I said. "Ignore the mess, Mrs. Collins will clear all that. Come through to the front."

I hurried past her to the music-room, drawing curtains, throwing back shutters, and then across the hall to the small dining-room and the library beyond. The piece de resistance, the view from the end window, was blotted out by the mizzling rain.

"It looks different", I said, "on a fine day."

"It's lovely," said Vita. "I didn't think your Professor had such taste. It would be better with that divan against the wall and cushions on the window-seat, but that's easily done."

"Well, this completes the ground-floor," I said. "Come upstairs."

I felt like a house-agent trying to flog a difficult let, as the boys raced ahead up the stairs, calling to each other from the rooms, while Vita and I followed. Everything had already changed, the silence and the peace had gone, henceforth it would be only this, the take-over of something I had shared, as it were, in secret, not only with Magnus and his dead parents in the immediate past, but with Roger Kylmerth six hundred years ago.

The tour of the first floor finished, the sweat of unloading all the luggage began, and it was nearly half-past eight when the job was done, and Mrs. Collins arrived on her bicycle to take charge of the situation, greeting Vita and the boys with genuine delight. Everyone disappeared into the kitchen. I went upstairs and ran the bath, wishing I could lie in it and drown.

It must have been half an hour later that Vita wandered into the bedroom. "Well, thank G.o.d for her," she said. "I shan't have to do a thing, she's extremely efficient. And must be sixty at least. I can relax."

"What do you mean, relax?" I called from the bathroom. "I imagined something young and skittish, when you tried to put me off from coming down," she said. She came into the bathroom as I was rubbing myself with the towel. "I don't trust your Professor an inch, but at least I'm satisfied on that account. Now you're all cleaned up you can kiss me again, and then run me a bath. I've been driving for seven hours and I'm dead to the world."

So was I, but in another sense. I was dead to her world. I might move about in it, mechanically, listening with half an ear as she peeled off her clothes and flung them on the bed, put on a wrapper, spread her lotions and creams on the dressing-table, chatting all the while about the drive down, the day in London, happenings in New York, her brother's business affairs, a dozen things that formed the pattern of her life, our life; but none of them concerned me. It was like hearing background music on the radio. I wanted to recapture the lost night and the darkness, the wind blowing down the valley, the sound of the sea breaking on the sh.o.r.e below Polpey farm, and the expression in Isolda's eyes as she looked out of that painted wagon at Bodrugan.

"...And if they do amalgamate it wouldn't be before the fall anyway, nor would it affect your job."

Response was automatic to the rise and fall of her voice, and suddenly she wheeled round, her face a mask of cream under the turban she always wore in the bath, and said, "You haven't been listening to a word I said!"

The change of tone shocked me to attention. "Yes, I have," I told her.

"What, then? What have I been talking about?" she challenged. I was clearing my things out of the wardrobe in the bedroom, so that she could take over. "You were saying something about Joe's firm," I answered, "a merger of some sort. Sorry, darling, I'll be out of your way in a minute."

She seized the hanger bearing a flannel suit, my best, out of my hand, and hurled it on the floor.

"I don't want you out of the way," she said, her voice rising to a pitch I dreaded. "I want you here and now, giving me your full attention, instead of standing there like a tailor's dummy. What on earth's the matter with you? I might be talking to someone in another world." She was so right. I knew it was no use counter-attacking; I must grovel, and let her tide of perfectly justifiable irritation pa.s.s over my head.

"Darling," I said, sitting down on the bed and pulling her beside me, "let's not start the day wrong. You're tired, I'm tired; if we start arguing we'll wear ourselves out and spoil things for the boys. If I am vague and inattentive, you must blame it on exhaustion. I took that walk in the rain because I couldn't sleep, and instead of pulling me together it seems to have slowed me up."

"Of all the idiotic things to do-You might have known... And anyway, why couldn't you sleep?"

"Forget it, forget it, forget it."

I rose from the bed, seized armfuls of clothes and bore them through to the dressing-room, kicking the door to with my foot. She did not follow me. I heard her turn the taps off and get into the bath, slopping the water so that some of it ran into the overflow. The morning drifted on. Vita did not appear. I opened the bedroom door very softly just before one, and she was fast asleep on the bed, so I closed it again and lunched downstairs alone with the boys. They chatted away, perfectly content with a 'yes' or 'perhaps' from me, invariably undemanding when Vita was absent. It continued to rain steadily, and there was no question of cricket or the beach, so I drove them into Fowey and let them loose to buy ice-creams, peppermint rock, western paperbacks and jig-saw puzzles. The rain petered out about four, giving place to a l.u.s.tre-less sky and a pallid, constipated sun, but this was enough for the boys, who rushed on to the Town Quay and demanded to be water-born. Anything to please, and postpone the moment of return, so I hired a small boat, powered by an outboard engine, and we chug-chugged up and down the harbour, the boys s.n.a.t.c.hing at pa.s.sing flotsam as we bobbed about, all of us soaked to the skin.

We arrived home about six o'clock, and the children rushed to sit down to the enormous spread of tea that the thoughtful Mrs. Collins had provided for them. I staggered into the library to pour myself a stiff whisky, only to find a revitalised Vita in possession, smiling, the furniture all moved around, the morning mood, thank heaven, a thing of the past.

"You know, darling," she said, I" think I'm going to like it here. Already it's beginning to look like home." I collapsed into an armchair, drink in hand, and watched through half-closed eyes as she pottered about the room rearranging Mrs. Collins brave efforts with the hydrangeas. My strategy henceforth would be to applaud everything, or, when occasion demanded silence, to stay mute, play each moment as it came by ear. I was on my second whisky, and off my guard, when the boys burst into the library.

"Hi, d.i.c.k," shouted Teddy, "what's this horrible thing?" He had got the embryo monkey in its jar. I leapt to my feet. "Christ!" I said. "What the h.e.l.l have you been up to?"

I seized the jar from his hand and made for the door. I remembered only then that when I had gone out from the lab in the small hours, after taking my second dose, I hadn't pocketed the key but had left it in the lock.

"We weren't doing anything," said Teddy, aggrieved, "we were only looking through the empty rooms below." He turned to Vita. "There's a little dark room full of bottles, just like the stinks lab at school. Come and look, Mom, quick-there's something else in one of the jars like a dead kitten-"

I was out of the library in a flash, and down the small stairway in the hail leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The door of the lab was wide open, and the light was on. I looked quickly around. Nothing had been touched except thejar holding the monkey. I switched off the light and stepped into the pa.s.sage, locking the door behind me and pocketing the key.

As I did so the boys came running through the old kitchen, Vita at their heels. She looked concerned.

"What did they do?" she asked. "Have they broken something?"

"Luckily, no," I said. "It was my fault for leaving the door unlocked." She was peering over my shoulder down the pa.s.sage. "What is through there anyway?" she asked. "That object Teddy brought up looked perfectly ghastly."

"I dare say," I answered. "It happens that this house belongs to a professor of biophysics, and he uses the small room behind there as a laboratory. If I ever catch either of the boys near that room again there'll be murder!"

They stalked off, muttering, and Vita turned to me. "I must say," she said, "I think it's rather extraordinary of the Professor to keep a room like that, with all sorts of scientific things in it, and not make certain it's kept properly locked."

"Now don't you start," I said. "I am responsible to Magnus, and I can a.s.sure you it won't happen again. If you had only come next week instead of turning up this morning at an unearthly hour, when n.o.body expected you, it would never have happened."

She stared at me, startled. "Why, you're shaking!" she said. "Anyone would think there were explosives in there."

"Perhaps there are," I said. "Anyway, let's hope those kids have learnt their lesson."

I switched off the bas.e.m.e.nt lights and walked upstairs. I was shaking, and small wonder. A nightmare of possibilities crowded my mind. They might have opened the bottles containing the drug, they might have poured the contents into the medicine-gla.s.s, they might even have emptied the bottles into the sink. I must never again let that key out of my sight. I kept touching it in my pocket. Perhaps I could get an impression made of it, and keep both; it would be safer. I went into the music-room and stood there, staring at nothing, thrusting my finger-tip into the little hole in the key.

Vita had gone upstairs to the bedroom. Presently, I heard the tell-tale click of the telephone from the bell in the hall. It meant she was speaking from the extension upstairs. I went and washed my hands in the downstairs lavatory, and then wandered into the library. I could still hear Vita talking from the bedroom overhead. Listening to conversations on the telephone is not a habit of mine, but now some furtive instinct made me cross to the instrument in the library and pick up the receiver.

"...So I just don't know what to make of it," Vita was saying. "I've never heard him speak sharply to the boys before. They're quite upset. He doesn't look awfully well. Very hollow-eyed. He says he's been sleeping badly."

"High time you got down there," came the answer. I recognised the drawl; it was her friend Diana. "A husband on the loose is a husband on the prowl, I've told you so before. I've had experience with Bill."

"Oh, Bill," said Vita. "We all know Bill can't be trusted out of your sight. Well, I don't know... Let's hope it will be fine and we can all be out a lot. I believe he's arranged to hire some boat."

"That sounds healthy enough."

"Yes... Well, let's hope that Professor of his hasn't been putting d.i.c.k up to something. I don't trust that man. Never have, and never will. And I know he dislikes me."

"I can guess why that is," laughed Diana.

"Oh, don't be idiotic. He may be like that, but d.i.c.k certainly isn't. Very much the reverse."

"Maybe that's his attraction for the Professor," said Diana. I replaced the receiver very gently. The trouble was, with women, they had one-track minds, and to their narrow view everything male, be it man, dog, fish or slug, pursued but a single course, and that the dreary road to copulation. I sometimes wondered if they ever thought of anything else.

Vita and her friend Diana nattered on for at least another fifteen minutes, and when she came downstairs, fortified by feminine advice, she made no reference to my scene in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but, humming gaily and wearing an ap.r.o.n of bizarre design-it looked as if it had apples and serpents all over it-set about cooking us steaks for supper heaped about with parsley b.u.t.ter.

"Early bed for all," she announced as the boys, heavy-eyed and silent, yawned their way through the meal-the seven-hour journey in the car and the jaunt in the harbour was catching up with them. After supper she installed herself on the sofa in the library, and set about mending the rents in my trousers torn in the valley. I sat down at Magnus's desk murmuring something about unpaid bills, but in reality looking once agaln through the Lay Subsidy Roll for Tywardreath Parish for 1327. Julian Polpey was there, Henry Trefrengy, Geoffrey Lampetho. The names had meant nothing when I first read through the list, but they could have registered unconsciously in my mind. The figures might still be phantom figures that I had followed to the valley, pa.s.sing the farms that still bore their names today.

I noticed an unopened letter on my desk. It was the one the postman had given me that morning; in my flurry at the family's arrival I had laid it down. It was just a sc.r.a.p, typewritten, from the research student in London.

'Professor Lane thought you might like this note on Sir John Carminowe,' it read. 'He was the second son of Sir Roger Carminowe of Carminowe. Enrolled in the military 1323. Became a knight 1324. Summoned to attend Great Council at Westminster. Appointed Keeper of Tremerton and Restormel castles April 27th, 1331, and on October 12th of the same year keeper of the King's forests, parks, woods and warrens, etc., and of the King's game in the county of Cornwall, so that he had to answer yearly for the profit of the pannage and herbage within the said forests, parks and woods, by the hand of the steward there, and deputy keepers under him.'

The student had written in brackets, 'Copied from Calendar of Fine Rolls 5th year Edward III.' He had added a further note beneath, 'October 24th. Patent Rolls, for same year (1331), mentions a licence for Joanna, late wife of Henry de Champernoune, tenant-in-chief to marry whomsoever she will of the King's allegiance. Pay fine of 10 marks.'

So... Sir John had got what he wanted and Otto Bodrugan had lost, while Joanna, in antic.i.p.ation of Sir John's wife dying, had a marriage licence handy in some bottom drawer. I filed the paper with the Lay Subsidy Roll, and getting up from the desk went to the bookshelves, where I rembered seeing the numerous volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, legacy of Commander Lane. I pulled out Volume 8, and turned to Edward III. Vita stretched herself on the sofa, yawning, her repeated sighs following one another in swift succession. "Well, I don't know about you", she said, "but I'm off to bed."

"I'll be up in a moment," I told her.

"Still hard at work for your Professor?" she asked. "Take that volume to the light, you'll ruin your eyes."

I did not answer.

Edward III (1312-1377), king of England, eldest son of Edward II and Isabella of France, was born at Windsor on the 13th of November 1312... On the 13th of January 1327 parliament recognised him as king, and he was crowned on the 29th of the same month. For the next four years Isabella and her paramour Mortimer governed in his name, though nominally his guardian was Henry, Earl of Lancaster. In the summer of 1327 he took part in an abortive campaign against the Scots, and was married to Philippa at York on the 24th of January 1328. On the 5th of June 1330 his eldest child, Edward the Black Prince, was born.

Nothing there about a rebellion. But here was the clue.

Soon after, Edward made a successful effort to throw off his degrading dependence on his mother and Mortimer. In October 1330 he entered Nottingham Castle by night, through a subterranean pa.s.sage, and took Mortimer prisoner. On the 29th of November the execution of the favourite at Tyburn completed the young king's emanc.i.p.ation. Edward discreetly drew a veil over his mother's relations with Mortimer, and treated her with every respect. There is no truth in the stories that henceforth he kept her in honourable confinement, but her political influence was at an end.

Bodrugan's too, what he possessed in Cornwall. Sir John, only a year later appointed Keeper of Tremerton and Restormel castles, a good King's man, was in command, with Roger, playing it safe, imposing silence on his valley friends, the October night forgotten. I wondered what had happened after that meeting at Polpey's farm when Isolda risked so much to warn her lover; whether Bodrugan, brooding on what might-have-been, returned to his estates and thought about his love, and whether she, when her husband Oliver was absent, met him perhaps in secret. I had been standing beside them both less than twenty-four hours ago. Six centuries ago...

I put the volume back on the shelf, switched off the lights and went upstairs. Vita was already in bed, the curtains pulled back so that when she sat up she could look through the wide windows to the sea.

"This room is heaven," she said. "Imagine what it will be like with a full moon. Darling, I'm going to love it here, I promise you, and it's so wonderful to be together again."

I stood for a moment at the window, staring out across the bay. Roger, from his sleeping-quarters above the original kitchen, had the same dark expanse of sea and sky for company, and as I turned away, towards the bed, I remembered Magnus's mocking remark on the telephone the day before, "I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant." It was not true-in fact, the contrary.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE NEXT DAY being Sunday, Vita announced her intention over breakfast of taking the boys to church. She did this sort of thing from time to time during the holidays. Two or three weeks would go by with never a mention of devotional duty, and then suddenly, without giving any reason, and generally when they were otherwise happily employed, she would burst into their room saying, "Come on, now, I'll give you just five minutes to get ready."

"Ready? What for?" they would query, looking up from fitting together a model aeroplane or something momentarily engrossing their attention.

"Church, of course," she would answer, sweeping from the room again, deaf to their wails of protestation. It was always a let-out for me. Pleading my Catholic upbringing, I would lie late in bed, reading the Sunday papers. Today, despite sunshine flooding our room as we awoke, and the beaming smile of Mrs. Collins as she bore in our tray of toast and coffee, Vita looked preoccupied, and said she had had a restless night. I at once felt guilty, having slept like a log myself, and I thought how this thing of how well or how badly one had slept was really the great test of marital relationship; if one partner came off poorly during the night hours the other was immediately to blame, and the following day would come apart in consequence.

This particular Sunday was to be no exception to the rule, and when the boys came into the bedroom to say good morning dressed in jeans and tee-shirts, she immediately exploded.

"Off with those things at once and into your flannel suits! she said. Have you forgotten it's Sunday? We're going to church."

"Oh, Mom... No!"

I admit, I felt for them. Sunshine, blue sky, the sea below the fields. They must have had one thought in mind, to get down to it and swim.

"No arguing now," she said, getting out of bed. "Go off and do as I say." She turned to me. "I take it there is a church somewhere in the vicinity, and you can at least drive us there?"

"You have a choice of churches," I said, "either Fowey or Tywardreath. It would be easier to take you to Tywardreath." As I said the word I smiled, for the very name had a special significance, but to me alone, and continued casually, "As a matter of fact, it's quite interesting historically. There used to be a priory where the churchyard is today."

"You hear that, Teddy?" said Vita. "There used to be a priory where we are going to church. You always say you like history. Now hurry along." I have seldom seen a sulkier pair of figures. Shoulders hunched, mouths drooping. "I'll take you swimming later," I shouted as they left the room.

It suited me to drive the party to Tywardreath. Morning service would be at least an hour, and I could drop them off at the church, and then park the car above Treesmill and stroll across the field to the Gratten. I did not know when I might get another chance to revisit the site, and the quarry with its surrounding gra.s.sy banks held a compulsive fascination.

As I drove Vita and the reluctant boys, dressed in their Sunday suits, down Polmear hill I glanced over to the right at Polpey, wondering what would have happened if the present owners had discovered me lurking in the bushes instead of the postman, or, worse, what might well have happened had Julian Polpey bidden Roger and his guests inside. Should I have been found attempting to break into the downstairs rooms? This struck me as amusing, and I laughed aloud.

"What's so funny?" asked Vita.

"Only the life I lead," I answered. "Driving you all to church today, and yesterday taking that early morning walk. You see the marsh down there? That's where I got so wet."

"I'm not surprised," she said. "What an extraordinary place to choose for walking. What did you think you were going to find?"

"Find?" I echoed. "Oh, I don't know. A damsel in distress, perhaps. You never know your luck."

I shot up the lane to Tywardreath elated, the very fact that she knew nothing of the truth filling me with a ridiculous sense of delight, like hoodwinking my mother in the past. It was a basic instinct fundamental to all males. The boys possessed it too, which was the reason I backed them up in those petty crimes of which Vita disapproved, eating snacks between meals, talking in bed after lights out.

I dropped them at the church gate, the boys still wearing their hard-done-by expressions.

"What are you going to do while we are in church?" Vita asked.

"Just walk around," I said.

She shrugged her shoulders, and turned through the gate into the churchyard. I knew that shrug; it implied that my easy-going morning mood was not in tune with hers. I hoped Matins would bring consolation. I drove off to Treesmill, parked the car, and struck off across the field to the Gratten. The morning was superb. Warm sunshine filled the valley. A lark soared overhead bursting his heart in song. I wished I had brought sandwiches and could have had the whole long day ahead of me instead of one stolen hour.

I did not enter the quarry with its trailing ivy and old tin cans, but stretched myself full-length on a gra.s.sy bank in one of the small hollows, wondering how the place would look by night when the sky was full of stars, or rather how it had looked once, when water filled the valley below. Lorenzo's scene with Jessica came to my mind.

In such a night, Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night...

In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love To come again to Carthage.

In such a night, Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs That did renew old Aeson Enchanted herbs was apt. The point was that, when Vita and the boys were getting ready for church, I had gone down to the lab and poured four measures into the flask. The flask was in my pocket. G.o.d knew when I should get the chance again...

It happened very quickly. But it was not night, it was day, and a day in summer, too, though late afternoon, judging from the western sky, which I could see from the cas.e.m.e.nt window in the hall. I was leaning against a bench at the far end, with a view of the entrance court with its surrounding walls. I recognised it at once-I was in the manor-house. Two children were playing in the courtyard, girls, aged around eight and ten possibly-it was difficult to tell, with the close-fitting bodices and ankle-length skirts-but the long golden hair falling down their backs, and the small clear-cut features so much alike, proclaimed them miniature editions of their mother. No one but Isolda could have produced such a pair, and I remembered Roger saying to his companion Julian Polpey at the Bishop's reception that she had grown stepsons amongst the first wife's brood, but only two daughters of her own. They were playing some chequer game upon the flags, on a square marked out for them, with pieces like ninepins dotted about, and as they moved the pieces shrill arguments broke out between them as to whose turn was next. The younger reached forward to seize a wooden pin and hide it in her skirt, and this in turn led to cries and slaps and the pulling of hair. Roger emerged into the court suddenly, from the hall where he had been standing watching them, and thrusting himself between them squatted on his haunches, taking the hand of each in turn.

"You know what comes about when women scold?" he said to them. "Their tongues turn black and curl into their throats, choking them. It happened to my sister once, and she would have died had I not reached her side in time to pluck it back. Open your mouths."

The children, startled, opened their mouths wide, thrusting out their tongues. Roger touched each in turn with his finger-tip, and waggled it.

"Pray G.o.d that does the trick," he said, "but it may not last unless you let your tempers cool. There now, shut your mouths, and only open them for your next meal, or to let kind words fly. Joanna, you're the elder, you should teach Margaret better manners than to hide a man under her skirt." He pulled out the ninepin from the younger girl's dress and set it down upon the flags. "Come now," he said, "proceed. I'll see that you play fair." He stood up, legs wide apart, and let them move their pieces round him, which they did at first with some hesitation, then with greater confidence, and soon with peals of delighted laughter as he rocked sideways, stumbling, knocking the pieces down, so that all had to be set straight once more with Roger helping. Presently a woman-their nurse, I supposed-called them from a second doorway beyond the hall, and the pieces were taken up and given solemnly to Roger, who as he took them, promising to play again next day, winked at the nurse, advising her to examine both their tongues later, and let him know if they showed signs of turning black.

He put the pieces down near the entrance and came into the hail, while the children disappeared into the back regions with their nurse; and it seemed to me for the first time that he had showed some human quality. His steward's role, calculating, cool, very possibly corrupt, had been momentarily put aside, and with it the irony, the cruel detachment I a.s.sociated with ail his actions. .h.i.therto.

He stood in the hall, listening. There was no one there but our two selves, and looking about me I sensed that the place had somehow changed since that day in May when Henry Champernoune had died; it no longer had the feeling of permanent occupancy, but more of a house where the owners came and went, leaving it empty in their absence. There was no sound of barking dogs, no sign of servants, other than the children's nurse, and it came to me suddenly that the lady of the house herself, Joanna Champernoune, must be away from home with her own brood of sons and daughter, perhaps in that other manor of Trelawn, which the steward had mentioned to Lampetho and Trefrengy in the Kilmarth kitchen on the night of the abortive rebellion. Roger must be in charge, and Isolda's children and their nurse were here to break their journey between one house and another.

He crossed over to the window, through which the late sunlight came, and looked out. Almost at once he flattened himself against the wall as though someone from outside might catch sight of him, and he preferred to remain unseen. Intrigued, I also ventured to the window, and immediately guessed the reason for his manoeuvre. There was a bench beneath the window, with two people sitting on it, Isolda and Otto Bodrugan, and because of the angle of the wall, which jutted outward, giving the bench shelter, anyone who sat there would have privacy unless he was spied upon from this one window.

The gra.s.s beneath the bench sloped to a low wall, and beyond the wall the fields descended to the river where Bodrugan's ship was anch.o.r.ed.