by Lorna Gray
‘Is this the time when he’d begun to take steps to resolve the company’s problems himself?’
‘Yes, and it wasn’t going terribly well. Night had fallen by then. I’d arrived about half an hour before. I didn’t have enough money in my pocket for a hotel and I’d stalled where the last gas lamp from the platform fades into the terrace of filthy brick railwaymen’s cottages. I presume you know the spot?’
I did. The place was dirty with soot and the debris from the nearby factory workshops, and fearsomely bleak at that time of day.
‘I was standing there, just wondering if I had the energy to think my way through this latest pitfall. I let my bag slip from my shoulder to the ground just as this tired old fellow passed me. I heard him murmur, “You too?” Then he offered me a meal. You have to understand,’ added Robert in a tone that certainly didn’t match the vision I had of the kind of weariness that defeated a person at the darker end of a rain-soaked day, ‘that I’d walked out of my medical school about three months before. And when I say I walked out, I mean I started walking and kept walking. Or moving by bus or train, or a lift in a stranger’s car. I picked up the odd rough job in return for bed and board here and there along the way, and that path led me to Moreton.’
‘You were a vagrant?’
He made one of those tips of the head that conveyed both agreement and yet an adjustment to the term to make it fit. Slowly, he settled on saying, ‘Close to becoming one.’
He said, ‘I certainly chose an awfully hard time of year to take to moving about the country. A “Gentleman of the Road” is what they call us, isn’t it? Referring to those war-damaged old soldiers who can’t quite settle to normal life. Only I wasn’t fully down to my last penny, and I wasn’t hopelessly unemployable. I was rejecting the life I was being moulded to. And I was barely a soldier at all when you think about it. Is this the house that’s destined to become a new hotel?’
His eyes had abruptly fixed upon the tattered façade before us. It looked both really grand and painfully tired of its former life today too, and I presumed that this was his way of neatly closing the subject. I was willing enough to let him do it.
But in the last few yards before we approached the steps, he added the next part with sudden steadiness as if it wasn’t so much that he thought I wished him to explain any more, but that he felt it necessary. ‘I never wanted to reclaim my place as a medical student as if the war had never happened, but I would have borne it. Just. Do you know what really drove me to finally abandon my studies once and for all?’
I shook my head.
‘It was the endlessness of going home after all those years away and realising that I was set to forever hear myself being called Doctor. When I like being merely Rob, or Robert.’
There was the smallest emphasis in the way he added that last variation of his name. As if the addition belonged here, with me. After the easier back and forth of the moment before, it chilled me a little. It made me think of the sting I had given him yesterday when I had briefly reverted to calling him Mr Underhill.
And because of that, I found myself saying a shade too briskly, ‘So are you telling me that you’ve stayed and helped Uncle George out of gratitude? Because of the way he and my aunt gave you back your name? I don’t believe you.’
I saw his jaw lift in a manner that somehow met my challenge and countered it. ‘I didn’t say that, Lucy, did I?’
He had drawn to a halt on the strip of gravel before the steps and so I stopped with him. This ridgetop walk wasn’t desolate any more. It was rattling with the secret whispering of those dormant trees. Their black fingers crowded, and I was almost wishing that I could break this intimacy because it was perfect, and yet at the same time it was making me feel strangely uncertain.
I watched as his head turned away to run his gaze up to the open door of the house. Then his eyes dropped back to mine and there wasn’t any difficulty in them to mirror mine. He seemed entirely unaffected by the current running beneath all this honesty when he confided, ‘It’s idiotic to admit I threw away an entire career for a name, isn’t it? Particularly when I’ve studied enough medicine to know that a sense of rootlessness is a pretty common experience for newly demobbed souls. And I knew that with time the feeling might pass; or at least reduce itself to a dormant undertone. So, by all logical means I could have stayed and qualified and established my practice. And eventually I probably would have even found some idea of normality within my old family home.’
With an effort, I swept the hair back from my face with my free hand and found a lighter tone. ‘Do you know, I realise I’ve never asked where you’re from?’
‘I was studying in Birmingham, but my childhood home was Coventry.’
‘Good heavens. Were your parents bombed?’
‘Not at all. Perhaps the easiest way to convey the life I’ve left is to ask you to imagine a respectable house filled with dark wallpapers, glass cabinets and clocks that tick.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘Whereas I gather you were significantly closer to the dust and rubble during your years of service in Bristol?’
I didn’t rise to the reference to yet more tales my aunt and uncle had been telling about me. The rooms my sister and I had shared were hit once. Instead, I countered it with an unguarded retort to rival his own idea of a teasing note. ‘I suppose all those clocks and things explain why you’re so at home in my uncle’s office – with the endless yards of dark wood, and the thoughtful silences which practically grow in the corners?’
I shouldn’t have said that. I was already beginning to frame a retraction because my sort of instinctive humour had the capacity to ruin things. And, besides, there was a private concern of my own in there to do with my relationship with the place, and I didn’t want him to see it.
But I found that I had made him laugh. ‘You think I sought the familiar? Not a bit of it. If you knew my childhood, you’d know the idea of working at the office of a small, unambitious printworks counts as very careless indeed.’
He caught my eye. I saw him cast a brief sigh into the cold wind, like a release from the past in one breath of air. He told me on quite a different note of confidence, ‘My parents wanted me to treat my return to my studies as the cure for all their years of unhappy worry. But I’m nearly thirty years old now and it turns out there is a world of difference between the idea of responsibility held by this man before you today, and that of the reckless youth who hurt them terribly by dashing off with his friends to do something very patriotic but entirely foolhardy.’
He added, ‘I’ll make amends and go back for visits as I did last week – my sister’s just had a baby, by the way, so we were all very polite to one another. But I didn’t expect them to approve of my part in your uncle’s absorbing, challenging work. And I certainly didn’t forget how easy it was to leave them and come back to your Uncle George, or your Aunt Mabel. Or you.’
His declaration of his commitment to return to us after his trip away absolutely stunned me.
Whereas he seemed oblivious, as if he had barely noticed the strength of those last few words while the nearby house snared his thoughts. There had been movement in there.
Then the man beside me turned his attention back to me with a suddenness that made my heart miss a beat.
I heard him say quickly, ‘By the way, before there’s any confusion in that house, I’m not here to take over responsibility for the book. I’m here to make amends for laying you bare to Jacqueline’s manipulations, and also to carry anything she gives us. Your bruised hand is terribly sore, isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’ Now my heart was beating in a different way.
‘Lucy,’ he said severely. ‘You’ve been trying to keep your hand raised by gripping the collar of your coat, so I know you wish you had it in a sling to ease the ache a little. Do you want us to attempt to fashion one out of your scarf?’
‘Fashion what? A sling?’ Suddenly, my
attention was upon the injured limb; instinctively releasing its grip upon my coat like a guilty secret. ‘No. It’s fine really. It’s more habit than anything. The swelling’s reduced already, as you can see.’ To prove the point, I showed him the neatly turned bandage and then thrust it into a coat pocket.
He didn’t mean it to but his observation cooled every heating feeling. It hardened me all of a sudden, and not because he was wrong to suspect that the throbbing of the bruise still ran as an undertone to every thought. This was an unexpected tumble back into the sense that it wasn’t so much that he didn’t speak about himself, but that getting to know him made everything more complicated.
I had barely absorbed the description he had just given of his retreat from his sense of obligation to his parents. Now he was bewildering me because I could perfectly recall the undeniable strain he had shown in the course of his recent management of my uncle’s affairs, and yet it had never even occurred to me to ask him if he could cope with the trip to this place.
His decision to ask me about my own fitness now, all of a sudden, as a footnote to all that intimacy, struck me like an act of sabotage.
It was as if all along he had been working towards laying me open to this when he said insistently, ‘If you’re sure? Just, please, don’t wear yourself out.’
My nerves were on edge. I was bristling.
He had done this to me once before, when I had planned my last visit to this place. This time the injury was worse, because now I had the memory of all our recent minutes of companionableness, and I had the sudden chance to realise that, before him, the last man to cut this close to my idea of confidence had been my husband.
‘Robert,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
From my tone and posture I might as well have reverted to calling him Mr Underhill. And then it was too late to explain the sudden defensiveness because I was too cold to find words that would be more like my usual manner; and then Jacqueline was coming out of the house.
Chapter 14
Jacqueline’s first act was to prove that it was all my own fault that I’d been unsettled by the way she had sought to increase my commitment to her book. Because she certainly hadn’t tried to use Archie’s memory for that purpose. She greeted Robert as though she believed he was my Mr Peuse.
It was possible, of course, that she had simply forgotten that detail about me. The business of my previous visit was all old news today – even her scheme to use her photographs of the young ward of the house, Harriet Clare, to prove the existence of the giraffes had faded. This time, she was passionately determined to show us the present-day repairs to her stairs.
‘Come in, Lucy,’ she said excitedly. ‘The workmen have begun the process of smoothing the damaged plaster on the walls, and the staircase has been made safe so I can finally take you up to the first floor.’
She was terribly stylish again. She was also a little flushed and wafting graceful hands to show us the vast entrance hall and to take in the sweep of the stairs and the marble, and the heavily ornate newel post.
I stopped the rapid flow of her enthusiasm when I said firmly, ‘Jacqueline, this is Robert Underhill. He’s the editor you dealt with when you first got in touch with Kershaw and Kathay Book Press.’
She turned to stare at him at the moment of setting a foot upon the first step. She looked, in fact, a little bewildered, because as well as forgetting most of the details from my last visit, she had apparently also forgotten who she had greeted at the front door just now. It was flattering in its way because I thought it was my presence that counted.
‘Oh,’ she said, aghast at the oversight. ‘I wasn’t really thinking about the book, but of course you’re the editor. And you’re very welcome.’
She didn’t notice the way my formal introduction had briefly made Robert’s mouth compress into a line. Whereas I heard the way he added his own amendment as Jacqueline shook his hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad to finally meet you too. But I will just make it clear that Lucy is in charge of the edits to your book now.’
It was an odd experience, being aware that it mattered to me that he should say that, but still feeling the way my mind had been irritated outside. It showed in the brief sideways glance he and I shared as we followed Jacqueline onto the stairs.
And that was where my irritation abruptly ceased. Because although I had been thoroughly unsettled by Robert, it wasn’t the memory of his caution to take care that hit me as I climbed to the midpoint of the sweeping staircase.
These stairs were set to be the equal of the grand staircase that had climbed through the heart of the other Dunn hotel I had visited – the Blaze Hotel near Bristol. Here, a tall and arched Regency window lit the turn before the final rise to the first floor.
The last time I had seen a similar fall of light, I had been running upstairs with my hand firmly enclosed in my husband’s.
It had been a late summer’s evening then, and the hotel had been full of noise because the men were celebrating their last night before travelling to Portland. They would pass from there to their various stations on board their new ships. We wives and lovers had come for the dancing and the bustle and the idea of pretending that such a send-off was heaven.
Today, in this great derelict house, the step onto the landing of the first floor marked the end of that memory. I had only Robert and Jacqueline for company, and, instead of the jangle of a gramophone, the floor was empty and echoing, and lined by open doors.
They were elegant panels of painted wood. Jacqueline’s voice ran up and down the row as she stepped towards the room at the brighter end of the house. ‘I’m pleased to say that I’ve uncovered the plans of the house within my collection of documents.’
I observed, ‘And, clearly, they’re proving useful?’
She grinned as we joined her. ‘They are. They state clearly that this bedroom here is the one that belonged to Graham Hanley Ashbrook. And the view is absolutely perfect, isn’t it?’
Against my expectations, this wasn’t the beginning of discussion about the giraffes.
Instead she said wistfully, ‘This is the same view over the ha-ha that he had in his library. I think it gives a wonderful insight into the spirit of the man.’
I could see why the giraffes might have lost their allure. The parkland was dipping away uninterrupted into distant hedge lines and, even on a day like this one, it was spectacular. There was a tangible sense here of the life and tastes of an old Victorian gentleman who had sought retirement after his great African quest for dangerous diseases.
Behind me, Jacqueline conceded, ‘The bedroom itself is less perfect. The recent war has left the walls stiffly whitewashed and the floorboards bare.’
In fact, the bare floor meant that every footstep, every breath sounded brash.
‘But,’ she added, turning in an arc, ‘the fireplace is still present with its alabaster surround. And, if I ignore the chips in the ribbed plasterwork on the ceiling, I really do get a sense of the man he was. The son, Walter John Ashbrook, claimed the bedroom at the eastern end of this floor. Shall we go up to the second floor?’
She said that last part rapidly, and then she whisked us back to the stairs.
Jacqueline was already at the head of the stairs when Robert and I hurried up to join her.
She had barely even glanced at Walter’s bright, silent room with a view over that avenue of limes. For me, the son’s choice was prettier than his father’s and there was something odd, I realised, in the way Jacqueline had used his name.
I was used to her manner of giving respect to the dead by using the name in full, but the emphasis this time was different somehow. And it was unlike her to steer us past any remnant of the Asbrook existence without giving it a friendly greeting.
Now she was merging with the flood of light that was dancing its way along the gallery, even on this cold, wintery day. She said in the manner of the best tour-guides, ‘This floor is where Graham’s grandchildren slept and learned their l
essons.’
The second floor was less grand, stretching in a corridor along the length of the house to be lit by high windows that overlooked the stable yard. It was cold enough to make our breath mist, but still there was a kind of cheeriness here, in the form of a faint whistling.
The muted tune was coming from a workman who was attempting to restore some usefulness to the much narrower staircase that rose in a damply neglected corner to the servant’s floor in the attic. He was whistling a popular song from the music halls. For a moment, this might have been another return to the bright cheerfulness of the Blaze Hotel, if only he had been fighting to be heard above forty or so boisterous young men wearing the Royal Navy uniform who were diving in and out of every doorway after drinks.
‘Did I tell you, Lucy, that I managed to unpick where each of the family members must have slept?’ Jacqueline was beckoning at me from a narrow doorway at the end of the row.
‘In here?’ I asked as I passed her. Robert was already inside.
I turned to meet her smile as she followed me in through the door. I remarked on a sudden note of understanding, ‘Whose room was this? You’ve been waiting to tell us this all along, haven’t you?’
Then I answered the question for myself. ‘This was Harriet’s?’
She beamed, triumphant. But for a moment, the merest portion of a second, I thought there was a brittle note behind the expression in those shining eyes.
Then she swept it away by sending an expressive hand in a thoughtful curve towards the doorway before conceding, ‘It’s actually disappointingly ordinary in here, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said. The room was utterly empty. The walls were plain and uncomplicated, and whitewashed like all the rest. This space was, in fact, completely devoid of, well, anything significant at all.
It was almost funny. The disappointment was my own fault. Or perhaps Robert's. I suppose I had been braced, after all his cautious words outside, to enter into a further dark encounter with my past. Those fleeting memories of running up the stairs at the Blaze Hotel with my husband had felt like a forerunner to something bigger. And I had known, even without Robert’s warning, that it was only a matter of time before Jacqueline gave me a second brush with the sad story of the girl with the thick dark hair and the dress from a genteel era.
