‘It is almost certain that when this road is widened the main shopping centre for the new area will be over to your right. About three-quarters of the land is ours, but the other quarter belongs to a man called Jenkins, a farmer, who will make a fortune if he plays his cards properly. Of course all this will take a long time, but it’s the intention of our Company that it shall all be done very well, with two supermarkets and parking space for a hundred cars. The housing development should mainly begin in those woods to your left, but of course in time it will spread north as well to envelop the village.’
Rooks flew low overhead, their wings creaking like paper.
‘And what will become of the village?’ Pearl said.
‘It will stay exactly as it is. In fact one of the features of the scheme is that the existing village will remain completely untouched and will become an offshoot of the development, yet a centre in itself.’
‘But if you surround it with a new town, put supermarkets and all that, and smother it in brick and cement, mightn’t you just as well pull it down? It will have lost all its beauty, all its quietness, all its dignity. It might as well be dead.’
‘My dear, I know many unattractive things are done in the name of progress, and possibly this is one of them. But it is not we who conceived this scheme, it is the Government of the day, a government faced with a pullulating electorate who demand decent new houses in decent new towns so that they can reproduce their kind in ever greater numbers. Someone must serve such developments. If Land Increments did not, there would be another company anxious to step in. Eager and anxious!’
He unlocked the front door, and they walked into the big hall.
‘Of course all towns have developed this way,’ he said. ‘It is only that now we have to create new towns, out of almost nothing, and this gives a greater impression of vandalism. Some cities have gradually removed all the evidences of their village origins, some preserve them. Even an industrial town like Wigan, surrounded by gaunt factories and coal mines, has some beautiful timbered houses in the centre. Wigan, like many others, was a victim of the Industrial Revolution. Handley Merrick in its small way is to be a victim of the social revolution of this century. Better to preserve what we can than try to fight the inevitable.’
Unconvinced, Pearl walked round the hall with him. She did not understand Wilfred’s exact position in the Land Increments empire, but she instinctively distrusted arguments based on profit.
She said: ‘This perhaps. It’s not much to look at. It could go. But to destroy all the village … And the peace and the quietness.’
Angell stared disparagingly at a suit of armour. ‘Taste is not the perquisite of one class. Everyone knows the common man lacks it. One forgets how unforgivably some of these old landed families were equally lacking.’
Pearl went towards the great double doors on the right. ‘It doesn’t look as if it’s been lived in for ages.’
The door creaked and she went in. Wilfred followed her but found it dark inside, as all the shutters were closed. He couldn’t see Pearl, but chinks of light showed it to be a ballroom or a very large reception room. Such furniture as there was was swathed in dust sheets. He clicked the light switch.
‘I’ve tried that,’ said Pearl from the darkness. ‘I suppose we’re not trespassing here, are we?’
‘Of course not,’ said Angell, colliding with a chair. ‘The property is ours.’
‘But not the furniture. Well, I certainly wouldn’t like to buy it. But Lady Vosper couldn’t have lived here, Wilfred. It’s like a tomb.’
‘She lived in some rooms. She hadn’t the money or the staff to keep it all up.’ He took out a slab of chocolate, broke off a piece and began to eat it.
Pearl was at one of the tall windows. ‘I wouldn’t think these shutters have been opened for years.’ She rattled them.
Wilfred struck a match and the feeble smoky flame cast a jumpy light over the dust sheets and the iron work. ‘I wonder where the master switch is for the electricity.’ The match went out.
‘There’s a door at the further end,’ Pearl said. ‘If this is the dining room it might lead to the kitchens.’ She went on towards it.
‘No, this isn’t the dining room!’ Wilfred said in irritation, putting another piece of chocolate in his mouth. ‘How could it be? Let’s go back to the hall.’
But she was moving down the room, her eyes growing more used to the darkness. She avoided the chairs and the two shrouded statues and reached the other end. Impatiently he waited where he was, like a parent with a disobedient child. She opened the door at the end.
‘There’s another passage,’ she said. ‘It’s only curtains.’ She disappeared.
The soft milky flavour on his tongue, he groped his way down the chamber and reached the further door. He could hear her but she had gone on. The light was better, and after a moment he caught up with her. She was in a small hall with stairs leading up. They were narrow stairs, but it was daylight for she had pulled back the faded velvet curtains.
‘There’s pictures here,’ she said.
‘Engravings. Not even good ones. I think this may be the staff staircase.’ Chewing, Angell threw away a piece of silver paper. ‘I’m not interested in the staff quarters.’
‘It’ll all lead the same way in the end.’ She looked in another door but the room was quite empty. A second door led into what might have been a sitting-room.
‘We’ll go back to the hall,’ Wilfred said.
‘Let’s try this way …’ She went up the stairs and after a moment, deciding that he must humour her, he followed.
But half way up they stopped at the sound of a door being slammed somewhere. On the narrow stair Pearl peered down at Wilfred’s face.
‘Did you leave the front door open?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
‘I didn’t think there was that much wind.’
‘Well, there must be. In a house like this, the draughts …’
On the landing above were three doors. Two led into small bedrooms. The third had green baize on its further side and led to a long passage with doors off either way and two shuttered windows. They went in each room in turn.
‘I don’t think this is leading us back at all.’
‘Look,’ Pearl said. ‘Look.’ There was a small unshuttered window and they peered out towards the back of the house, at the overgrown lawn, the tree, the rotted apples, the broken wheelbarrow, the clouds lowering.
Angell said irritably: ‘You’ve led me completely wrong. There must be better furniture at the front of the house.’
They turned back and found a door they had missed in the dark. It led to a wider passage. Pearl gave a sharp exclamation as a flag hanging from the wall brushed her hair.
‘What is it? What is it?’ said Wilfred. ‘Oh, the third Dragoon Guards. I wonder when that was used … Ah,’ he added, moving on, ‘this is one of the rugs. Open that door.’
She opened a door onto a bedroom. There were no shutters here, and the light helped Wilfred in the passage to examine the rug he had found on the wall. She waited by the door, aware that her hands were dirty and that there was a smear on her coat. She was vaguely uneasy. The slamming front door had disturbed her, and the house was like a giant sarcophagus. She thought of Flora Vosper and her friendship with Godfrey. She thought of Godfrey’s disappearance. She wondered where he had gone. She was not happy about it.
‘It’s not first-class,’ said Angell, rubbing his glasses and slipping them back in the breast pocket of his suit. ‘ It might fetch four or five hundred pounds. But I don’t want it. The colours are not good. There isn’t the usual taste in choice of colour …’
‘Let’s go, Wilfred,’ Pearl said. ‘ If there’s nothing here. It’s so dirty.’
‘There’s much more to the house than this. There’s a big library, and also a gallery, though I tremble to think what horrors of Victorian art there may be in there. And Flora Vosper converted a wing, which may hav
e a few tolerable things.’
They looked in the rest of the rooms and then came out at the top of the main staircase which more properly they should have come up. From here the hall looked like a museum that had been closed to the public for a year. Two crossed tattered flags hung above a coat of arms. A cannon on a pedestal, swords, muskets, and the two knights in armour silently waiting. The front door was shut.
They went down the stairs together, not speaking now. Through the windows Pearl could see the slim poplars at the edge of the road. Their tops were not waving.
As they got to the bottom Wilfred rested his hand on one of the armoured shoulders. ‘ This time if we go the other way, there are probably two comparable rooms on the other side …’ He went off to the right, but Pearl stayed where she was, looking at the front door.
Wilfred opened the door he had chosen and said: ‘Yes, this is the library.’ He went in.
Pearl’s heart was trying to beat a little harder than usual. She was cold and getting colder. She went to the front door and turned the knob and pulled. It did not move. It was a very big door, of course, but it should have opened. Then she looked up and saw that the top bolt was across.
Her head went swimmy. She leaned against the door. The bolt was too high to reach without standing on a chair. She did not feel up to standing on a chair. Like a sick woman she walked across the hall to the library. It was a long room but Wilfred was not there. The door beyond was ajar. She opened her mouth to call but changed her mind.
She made her way down between the long dusty shelves which were heavy with old books grinning in faded gilt. She stumbled over a pile on the floor. Rain was freckling the windows. She reached the other end and found Wilfred in the next room holding a picture he had taken down from the wall.
‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘It’s not an old master but—’
‘Wilfred, somebody’s bolted the front door!’
‘The trouble with these genuinely old – What?’ He stared at her over his library spectacles. ‘What d’you mean, bolted the door?’
‘From the inside. Since we came in.’
He frowned down at the picture again, reluctant to divert his attention. ‘ Oh, impossible, Pearl. There’s no one here but ourselves.’ He looked up again, her alarm communicating at last. ‘ I expect the door is heavy and hard to move.’
‘The bolt’s across. I’ve seen it. It’s the top bolt.’
He put the picture down. ‘Perhaps the auctioneers have left a caretaker. In that case perhaps we should make ourselves known.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
Neither of them moved. He said, almost absently: ‘ This way leads to the part of the house she occupied. You see the new central heating pipes … A caretaker … He might have thought the door blew open.’
‘I think we should go,’ said Pearl.
‘Yes … yes. There should be a way out this way, shouldn’t there?’
‘Let’s go back, Wilfred.’
He had been slow to catch any idea of the fear that was in her mind. Now his colour changed. He said with an assumption of calm: ‘Oh, very well. If you think so.’
He led the way past her, almost pushed past her, and walked down the library. Half way he stopped and she caught him up. They had both heard something. It was a movement in the hall. They listened. There was no further sound. Angell rubbed a moist hand down the side of his coat. Then he straightened up and walked into the hall.
Little God was waiting for them.
He was on the first step of the stairs so that his head was level with the suit of armour. He had not shaved since leaving hospital and the rough black beard was an inch long. The stitches had been taken out but his face was still lumpy. His nose was bent.
It was the first time in all their association that they had confronted each other together, and for a few seconds they were all quite still, existing in an unlucid incredulous border world between the imagined and the actual. Outside the rooks cawed and water dripped from the rain-wet branches of the trees. Then Godfrey laughed.
The sound stiffened Angell, who had looked as if he was going to fall. He cleared his throat, swallowing down panic like a morning sickness.
‘What business have you here, Brown? You’re trespassing.’
‘I’m trespassing,’ said Godfrey. ‘ So’re you. You’re trespassing on your luck, and it’s going to let you down.’
‘Godfrey!’ Pearl said.
‘Shut up! I’m just going to even with your fat husband that’s all.’
Angell’s knees were threatening to give way. ‘You must be insane, man.’
‘I’m going to fight you, see. Kio made a mess of my face, didn’t he. I’ll see what I can do to yours.’
‘If you touch me it will be a police matter! I’ll see you in prison!’
‘Maybe afterwards you’ll see me in prison.’ He stepped down into the hall.
‘Godfrey—’
‘Get lost!’ he snarled.
Angell grabbed Pearl by the arm and pulled her back into the library: with trembling fingers he slammed the library door: by chance there was a key. He turned it as Godfrey reached the other side and rattled the handle and then thumped on the door.
‘Quick,’ Angell panted. ‘ Help me!’
Together they pushed a glass-fronted bookcase across the door. When it was there Angell leaned against it, hands vibrating with fear. They listened. Godfrey began to laugh. He laughed unpleasantly for about fifteen seconds. Then there was silence.
Angell collapsed on the nearest chair, took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. He could not stop sweating from every pore. It was as if the ducts were emptying, losing the juices of a lifetime. A car passed along the main road outside; a cow lowed in a nearby field; a dog barked. In the hall there was silence. Pearl was horribly reminded of her second meeting with Godfrey.
She put her face close to Wilfred’s and whispered: ‘We’d better try to find our way out this way. It’s better not to stay here.’
Angell levered himself up, instantly on the move again. Trying to make no noise they stole back through the library, opened the door into the next room. The picture standing against the wall was now of as much interest to Wilfred as a looted necklace to a soldier lost in the desert. They moved through into the next room, which was a well furnished sitting-room with an electric fire switched on and the remains of a meal on the table. A coat hung over a chair-back; a newspaper lay on the floor opened at the strip-cartoons. A pair of slippers, a white dressing-gown with red letters on the back, a transistor radio.
Pearl, slightly ahead of Wilfred now, opened the further door into another and smaller hall. Little God was waiting for her as she stepped out.
Angell fell back into the sitting-room, fumbled his way round the table, backed towards the other door. Pearl stood her ground, taller than Little God.
‘Out of my way, Oyster.’
‘Godfrey, I don’t know how—’
‘Out of my way!’
‘ – I can tell you that—’
He put his hands on her shoulders, and shoved her. She reeled back into the centre of the room, upset a chair. He ran round her after Angell who had already gone.
Angell blundered panting back the way he had come, through into the library. In despair he saw the bookcase he and Pearl had pulled across the further door. By the time he …
He reached it, scrabbled at it, half got it away; footsteps behind him; he turned like a baited rabbit, not even his hands up, waiting to be killed.
Godfrey hit him a glancing blow on the side of the head and then a right to the stomach. Angell collapsed across the bookcase and retched. Godfrey tried to haul him upright, but even his distended strength could hardly manage seventeen stone of dead weight.
‘Godfrey!’ Pearl behind him. ‘You’ll kill him! You—’
‘Stand up!’ Godfrey screamed at Wilfred, and then turned on Pearl. ‘Look at him! Call this a man! This foul-up? He ain’t got the spunk of a fat ca
nary, so he fixes it so I shall get beaten up! This … Call this a husband? Why don’t you sweep him under the carpet—’
‘Stop it, Godfrey! You fool! The police—’
Angell incautiously straightened up, and Godfrey turned on him again, punched him in the eye; Angell’s flailing defensive fists blocked two blows and then Godfrey hit him once more in the soft part of the belly. The great figure slowly collapsed like a deflated balloon and thumped down upon the floor.
Chapter Eleven
When Heath the chauffeur drove up twenty minutes later the front door was open and Pearl came to the door urgently signalling him to enter. He went in and found Angell lying on a settee in the hall, conscious but with a heavy bruise on his face and groaning with pain.
‘There was a man in the house, stealing things! He tried to get away and my husband tried to stop him! There was a fight …’
‘That man I just saw turn out of the drive in a grey car? Little man with black hair and a wild sort of face.’
‘Yes,’ said Pearl, doubtfully. Recognition would be inconvenient. ‘Yes, that’s the man.’
‘Breaking and entering,’ groaned Angell, with his hand to his stomach. ‘Breaking and entering and grievous bodily harm …’
‘Shall I go fetch the police?’
‘I think we should get my husband straight back to London. I don’t think he’s seriously hurt but it’s been a nasty shock—’
‘You’re going to have a black eye, sir. And your cheek’s swelling. D’you think if we ran him into Sudbury?’
‘He wants to go home. Do you think you could get up, Wilfred … walk to the car?’
‘I don’t at all think so. I feel very ill indeed …’
‘It’s only at the bottom of the steps. We can stop at the first hotel and buy some brandy. Take his other arm, Heath.’
Wilfred had been felled and was not easily got on his feet again. All the bulk had collapsed, and his frame no longer had the strength to reanimate it. Somehow they got him down the steps and into the car. He fell back in the seat, sighing heavily and Pearl dabbed at a smear of blood on his cheek. Then she ran up and pulled the door of the house shut as Heath re-started the car and turned. She climbed in and gingerly he drove off.
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 39
