Before the Ruins

by Victoria Gosling

  It was becoming overcast, the sky threatening to split open like a bag of flour. There would be one last drive. The beaters fanned out again and I took the furthest edge through a copse, pressing forward through tangles of ivy and briar. I heard a noise and turned expecting to see one of the dogs, but it was David. It had been over three years since we’d seen one another. If he was shocked, horrified, or delighted to see me, he didn’t show it. If anything, he looked at me with weary recognition, like he was facing a familiar and unwelcome vision.

  “Not like you to be waving the white flag.” The guns were still firing, the shot raining among the trees, the sound of the pheasants breaking cover. “Listen, I wanted to—”

  Only I didn’t get to find out what David wanted. A gun fired close by, too close, and there was a shout of pain, and then another voice shouting, Stop! And then I was running, sure that it was Marcus I’d heard.

  It had been one of the young ones. He hadn’t shot a bird all day and there was one, so near, and he let off one barrel and missed, and then tracked it downward, firing again. There was blood when I got there, trickling down Marcus’s wrist and spattering the ground. He was sitting on a log and his face was set and I did not know how bad it was, and I threatened to kill the boy, Alexander, so that his dad quickly led him away, Marcus calling after him saying he was all right.

  I got his coat and shirt off; even I could see it wasn’t much, but I kept checking. Even though Marcus was trying to calm me down and make me stop. It wasn’t till David touched me, laid a hand on my shoulder and said evenly, “Come on, Andy, he’s going to freeze to death. Let’s get him to the doctor,” that the earth steadied under my feet.

  A green Land Rover was brought round and we helped Marcus into the back. Zack was at the wheel and soon we were joined by Priss, Alice, Rob, and finally David. Zack kept apologizing, stopping only long enough to introduce the others. I had my arm round Marcus’s shoulders, one finger resting on his neck, warm and living.

  “How do you three know each other then?” Rob was in the front. I could see his eyes on me in the rearview mirror. Alice had her head cocked to one side, listening.

  “That summer I was on the lam and hiding out at your parents’ house, Marcus and Andy were very good to me. Only I don’t think they like me now because I disappeared without a word,” David said.

  “Is that why you were staring at me in the pub that time? I thought she wanted to rape and murder me,” Rob said.

  “You were half right.”

  “I’m flattered.” His voice was amused. He clutched at his heart. “Anytime, Andy is it? Anytime. I promise I won’t fight.” And then quickly in response to the looks he was given, “Sorry. Inappropriate me. It’s the tension, like when people laugh at funerals. Shock. I can’t be held accountable for anything I say. Zack, you’re a total prick. Maybe we should all have sex. How about a massive loan?”

  The Land Rover bumped down the track. Behind us came the game cart. There were ninety birds, including eight partridges and a mallard, plus a rabbit that one of the dogs had stumbled over and brought in. As the light failed, I watched Col become a silhouette, a straight-backed figure swaying as the pickup lurched over the ruts, a silent Charon with his cargo of dead.

  * * *

  Zack took us to Accident and Emergency, and he fetched Mars bars and coffees and poured brandy into them from a hip flask and kept us entertained while Marcus waited to be seen, but it was Rob who invited us to the manor. He phoned Zack while the doctor, having checked the x-rays and given Marcus a shot of something, dug four lead pellets out of him. Afterward, I washed them off and slipped them into his pocket.

  “Now you can tell everyone about that time you got shot.”

  “Back in ’Nam.”

  “Cheltenham.” It was an old local joke.

  When he was patched up, Marcus shook the doctor’s hand and then walked gingerly back to the car with Zack and me dancing attendance.

  “Rob wants you to come for dinner tomorrow.” Tomorrow was a Friday, the seventeenth of December. “We’re all staying at his place. He says you’re to stay over, if you’d like, so it won’t spoil the drinking. There’s umpteen bedrooms and Priss has offered to cook.” There was a slight hesitation in his stride. “He said to tell Andy that he’s sorry for being rude to her and that he wants to make up. He said to invite your friends, Peter and Em. David would love to see them. He said to say that you’re all welcome.” Zack’s voice was completely at ease, but his brow was slightly furrowed. It was a bit out of proportion in his book, I could see that.

  “Get shot and win a weekend in a country house?” But before I could say anything else, Marcus cut in.

  “What time?”

  “Rob says eight.”

  “Fine. We’re in.”

  Zack took me home first. As I got out he said, “We dress for dinner. Just for fun, really, and you can wear whatever you like, but just so you know.”

  “You sure you’ll be up to it?” I said.

  Marcus nodded. He had to go pick up the van, and then he was going to drop in on his mum.

  Once inside, I moved from room to room, keyed up but with no idea quite what I should be doing. After a few minutes the phone rang.

  “Is he all right?” It was Em and she was livid. News spread fast.

  “Reckon so. They had to scrape a few bits of lead out of him.”

  “The whole thing is fucking stupid. It’s not a sport. It serves him right. It fucking serves him right.” It wasn’t like her to be so angry.

  “David was there.”

  “What?”

  So I told her.

  “And no explanation for the disappearing act?”

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  “You want us to go then?” I heard her doorbell ring. She was home for another couple of weeks. Her parents were away visiting relatives in Salisbury. They’d taken Faye with them.

  “Marcus is keen.” It wasn’t quite an answer. The doorbell went again.

  “I best get that.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t know, do I? Bit late for carol singers.”

  I had hoped for more chat, for questions—how had David seemed? How was it to see him again? The kind of teasing out Em was good at.

  After a bit, I called the vicarage. The terms at Oxford were short, but Peter often stayed up to be close to the libraries. To the quads, and balls and punting. Or just away from home. But I was lucky and after a minute, Patricia succeeded in bringing him to the phone. After I’d told him, I listened carefully to hear what was in his voice, but he sounded flat. Perhaps it was just that Patricia was listening.

  “Will you come then?”

  “And Rob Calcraft invited me and Em? I mean by name.”

  “Yes.” I thought about it and began wondering what other information David had offered up about us besides our names.

  “If Rob’s invited us, it’s because he wants something. I’d think twice, Andy.”

  “You know him?”

  “He was in the year above me. Left Oxford last year. Perverse sense of humor.”

  “So you won’t come?”

  Peter didn’t answer straightaway. Outside, it had started snowing again. He would be in the front room, and from what he said next I knew the curtains were still open, and he was looking at the snow falling, on Patricia’s flowers beds and on the lawn and the yew hedge. “If you’re determined to, I suppose I will. It’ll be sort of funny. The manor, a weekend party, the snow. Just like that night Mortimer died.”

  I can’t say I felt any presentiment though, no shiver of apprehension or warning, although it struck me that neither of us had said anything about David. I had the TV on and the remnants of a tin of Roses on my lap, my fingers searching out any hazelnut caramels Marcus might have overlooked. There was a game show on. It involved people competing to win mystery prizes and then trying to hide their disappointment at what the prizes were.

  And I fell asleep there, and
when I woke up it was the middle of the night, and Marcus must have decided to stay at his mum’s because the van wasn’t there, and the bed was empty, and apart from the TV I was alone.

  * * *

  “Get in the back! Get in the back with us!”

  I pulled open the sliding side door to the van. Peter and Em were huddled on the cushions inside, their faces ghoulish in the blue light of a battery lantern. In one hand, Peter was clutching a bottle of sloe gin. He was wearing a tuxedo that was too big in the shoulders, and Em—underneath the blanket she had draped about her—was showing flashes of iridescent peacock green.

  “We went to Sue Ryder. You should have come. We had our pick of golf-club Christmas-ball chic circa 1975. Peter wanted to wear his boring Oxford suit, but I forbade it.”

  Snow was falling again and turning to slush on the road. As we took the corners, I felt the rear wheels slipping and Em clutched at my arm, her eyes wide.

  “You missed your chance. There was an amazing dress, green, floor-length, with sort of baubles on it, like a Christmas tree. We nearly bought it for you. But it was a tenner.”

  “A whole tenner.”

  “If it had been five ninety-nine—”

  “Or even seven pound fifty.”

  “We love you seven pound fifty.”

  “Just not a tenner.”

  Em swung the bottle in my direction. “Have some of that.”

  “Look!” Marcus had slowed right down, and as we crawled up to lean over the front seats and look through the windscreen, I could smell Em’s shampoo and the gin on Peter’s breath and Marcus’s aftershave over the van’s usual reek of cigarette ash and oil. We were at the gates to the manor: pressing in on either side were the firs, and then before us was the snowy drive, and along its length someone had been out and stuck candles in brown paper bags which flickered, casting shadows on the ground. Fat flakes were lazing downward as though in no particular hurry. The sight reminded me of something, that is to say, I had a sense of déjà vu, but then Em was taking my hand and putting something in it and I couldn’t locate it.

  “I did bring you something.” She had her mouth to my ear. Her palm was warm against mine. It was the necklace, the one from our games. I’d forgotten she even had it.

  “Put it on.”

  I nodded and then I gave it back to her, turning so she could thread it round my neck. As we swayed up the drive, she struggled to fasten it, but as we ground to a halt the catch caught and at the same moment, my mind fastened on the connection I’d been trying to make: it was not a memory, but an imagining, that had struck me—because, of course, I had pictured the manor like this many times.

  * * *

  Zack’s dogs were the first to greet us, their breath steaming, pink tongues lolling as they circled us, drawing tracks in the snow. Priss and Alice came next, and then Zack and Rob, each carrying a bottle of champagne and a handful of glasses, and behind them David. We stood on the steps, above the frozen fountain. Icicles hung from its tiers like crystal teeth. Priss was saying over and over again, “It’s so warm, isn’t it? Somehow the snow makes it warm,” and Peter and Em were introduced to everyone and Marcus was asked about his wounds while Rob lined up nine champagne flutes on the stone balustrade.

  David had bent down to fuss the dogs. They were working cockers, brown and white with ringlets curling from their ears. The little one, Goli, pressed her muzzle into his hands and he caressed her face with quick little strokes and she wagged not just her tail, but everything from the neck down while the other dog tried to nose her out of the way for a turn. I saw Peter watching and I wanted to give him a look, a look that said, And to imagine we were once like that over him, only I couldn’t catch his eye.

  “To living to tell the tale!” Zack raised his glass.

  “To being able to bloody shoot straight,” Rob added and scooped up a handful of snow and tossed it lightly at Marcus, only it missed and hit Peter. “Sorry, Peter. Nice to have another Balliol man here. How’s it going? Final year, isn’t it? Do people still not know what you’re capable of?”

  Peter showed his teeth. Not a smile but a chimp thing, a fear thing.

  On his rare trips home, he told me about his studies and the libraries, about odd traditions and a little toy train that brought port and Stilton round the dining table. It had sounded so like the Oxford of his dreams, I had never questioned whether he was happy there. But now that I thought of it, he hadn’t mentioned any friends and I felt an awful guilty pang at how blind I’d been. As though reading my mind, Priss raised her glass.

  “To new friends,” she announced firmly.

  David straightened and took the glass Alice handed him. “And old ones,” he said, and there was a moment’s silence in which he looked lost and uncertain, eyes velvety.

  “Oh Dave’s being ever so humble,” Rob said, stooping over like Uriah Heep. “Why don’t you tell them where you were?”

  “In prison,” David said.

  “For about two seconds,” Alice said, then, “Let’s go inside. I, for one, don’t think it’s warm at all, Priss. David, you can tell them about your criminal past over supper.”

  * * *

  Darren had complained he’d lost the renovation work on the manor because the owners didn’t want to pay for the job to be done properly. That would have involved damp coursing and pulling up floorboards and new pipes and electric. Rob and Alice’s family had gone with an outfit from Devizes that he claimed would patch and plaster over the cracks on the cheap and Darren had been spitting blood. I couldn’t say I was sad about it, because inside it looked like it was meant to look: the furniture uncloaked and more of it, pictures and mirrors on the freshly painted walls, and carpets unrolled across the shined-up floorboards. But it was still our manor. Something of the same smell remained.

  We took our glasses into the dining room. A fire was burning in the hearth and the table was set with candles.

  “Tell them, then,” Priss said to David. “I’ve got to go check on the pheasants.” Then with a wink, “I’d still count the silver before he goes, Rob.”

  “Well, it’s quite simple,” David said. “Someone called the police. I heard someone coming up the stairs and I thought it was one of you. Only it wasn’t. It was Constable Stevens and his friend Constable Turnip, Turney, something like that. And after collecting up my things, they took me down to the station in Swindon. It wasn’t any good denying who I was as they had my passport, and of course the headmaster of our school,” he shot a glance at Rob, “had been kind enough to report the credit card thing in Britain as well as Italy, so of course I was arrested. And while Rob and Alice’s parents were good enough to make sure I didn’t get in trouble for the trespassing or breaking and entering, the credit card theft, the fraud thing, was a bit trickier.”

  He was pitching somewhere between rueful and apologetic with the usual humor. I wondered if only I saw it, the resentment at having to explain, his hatred of being pinned down and made to account for himself. But then perhaps that was David’s way: to offer a glimpse of a second layer, a secret layer, and by doing so involve you in a private conversation with him. And I wondered if, under this layer, there was not another and in it David was bored, bored beyond measure, and alone, and in conversation with no one.

  “Did you get sent down?” Marcus asked.

  Rob burst out laughing. “You don’t know him very well if you think that.”

  “Rob’s family helped me out. His parents got their lawyer involved and Mr. Mackenzie, the headmaster, thought better of making an example of me. I mean, the whole thing put the school in a bad light, but he did have it in for me. Visited me while I was on remand and told me with a very sad face that it was for my own good, like he was sending me down the salt mines to save me from the gallows. He had it in his head I was going to the bad and the experience would turn me around.”

  “But then Dad’s lawyer promised to paint the Italian jaunt in rather a lurid light. Underage drinking because David w
as a month off eighteen and Badger allowed us wine with dinner. An unmarried schoolmaster overly fond of Greek sculpture. You can imagine,” Rob said.

  “You were there too?” Peter asked.

  “Missed the fun, though. The rest of us thought we were being daring by sneaking off for gelato in the cafe with the pretty waitress. When we came back, Dave had disappeared, having embarked on a career of international embezzlement.” For a moment, Rob sounded bitter.

  “You could have phoned us. We’d have visited you. Baked you a file inside a cake,” Em said.

  “Did one of you shop him? He can be insufferable. God knows I would if I had anything on him.” Rob’s eyes flitted between our faces. Peter didn’t move a muscle, but in that moment I knew. Not Marcus then, Peter.

  “It was someone from the village,” David said quickly. “A dog walker, someone who’d spotted one of our wild orgies on the lawn.”

  “See. He always gets everything,” Rob said.

  “Seriously though. We weren’t exactly careful, were we?” His eyes met mine for the briefest moment before I could look away. “I’m sorry. It’s not an excuse but it already seemed very long ago. My hands were full trying to get myself out of the mess I’d created. By the time things had settled down and I could have got in touch, it seemed that ages had passed. It was only a month or two, I suppose. But it felt like thousands of years. It was unreal, the whole summer here, beautiful and magical and utterly unreal. I couldn’t believe any of you were still alive.”

  * * *

  The room was warm. There was a lot of wine, and the food was a long time in coming, so that when it arrived, the candlelight, reflected upon the table’s polished surface, seemed to swim and ripple.

  “It looks wonderful. The renovations, I mean.” Em blushed a little.

  “My parents spent a fortune on it and now they’ve toddled off to Paris so Alice and I have to come down and keep the home fires burning.”