‘Yes,’ she answered shortly.
‘How sad. What was it? Just old age?’
‘An accident. He was quite old. The kindest creature, he would never have hurt anyone.’ She dismissed the matter with a brisk, ‘I really mustn’t detain you any longer, you’ll have things to do.’
She stood up. Henry took the tray and walked ahead of her to the kitchen, saying, casually, ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
‘Oh?’ Her voice held a polite interest.
In the kitchen he put down the tray. ‘Look,’ he said, indicating the window catch. She looked, still polite, not understanding.
‘It’s open,’ he said quietly. ‘It was open when I arrived. Outside, the plants are trampled and broken; someone stood there and forced the catch and got in. You weren’t imagining things the other night, Mrs Marshall. Someone was in here and I don’t know who, or why.’
He thought she paled, and the fear that for an instant distorted further her odd little face had the secret quality he had seen on the faces of people who wished to hide what they knew — not merely from him, but from themselves. He studied her, neat, pathetic, unprotected; but he persisted. The moment of shock was also, so often, the moment of unwitting revelation.
‘Do you know? Can you tell me why anyone should want to break in, go about the house, leaving cupboard doors open; drawers pushed back askew; books, objects disarranged; marks in the dust.’
She stared at him, shaking her head slowly all the while he spoke. She did not know, she did not wish to know, it was nothing to do with her. ‘Is that what you found? Of course, you’re trained to observe ... No, I really don’t know, I can’t help. I find this ... distressing. I must go.’ But she did not move. In spite of her self-command she was shaken; she had voiced her suspicions, they had been confirmed — she wished to leave it at that and not be involved in any events that might ensue.
‘I’m sure there’s nothing you need worry about,’ Henry said calmly. ‘Empty houses act like magnets to a certain type. Sheer curiosity is sometimes the motive, nothing else.’
‘Of course, of course ...’ she turned away. In her confusion she had forgotten the tray.
He picked it up. ‘Let me carry this in for you.’ When she made to object, he went on, ‘Please. I’d like to see your garden. I had a glimpse of it from the attic; it seemed rather behind-the-curtains behaviour to spy on it from there.’
She hesitated, but the obvious change of subject relieved her and her response was genuine. ‘Oh, do come, I love showing off to people. Gardening is rather an indulgence with me — a private one, I shouldn’t like to have a garden that passers-by could look into. Although I do that myself, unashamedly. I try to have something flowering all through the year; now, of course, the laburnums and lilac are coming out...’ Talking easily, she walked with him down the path of his overgrown garden, through his back gate and into hers.
2
Still in the stillness of the day, her garden seemed an entranced place, an illustration to a child’s fairy tale. At the base of one wall a square well was sunk into the ground; slender ferns grew coolly around it and the grey stones breathed moisture. Henry knelt and put his fingers into the crystal water, it was numbingly cold. At his action a frog plopped and swam and darted away, indignant that its home had been disturbed.
In the centre of the lawn a sundial bore the message that it measured only the sunny hours; beside a bed of vivid, velvet-scented wallflowers an Italian greyhound, dignified as some heraldic beast, posed exquisitely. All the while Henry’s tour of the garden continued it ignored him pointedly. Lydia whispered, ‘Wanda is really a ladies’ dog, you see, not used to men. But she’ll get to know you gradually. And it’s time for her walk, that’s why I’m coming in for my share of dirty looks.’
Henry said that he must go, too, and collect his car, describing to her where he had left it: on the western side of the village by some unattractively decrepit cottages inappropriately named Paradise Row. ‘You’re not going that way, I suppose, and I could walk with you?’
‘You chose the least pleasant spot as your introduction to Marchstearn, those cottages have been condemned for years. But yes, we’ll go a slight detour if you like, and I can show you a little more of the village.’ The readiness with which she accepted his company made him wonder if perhaps she was lonely, if she was taking him on as a substitute for his aunt.
As they walked he slowed his stride to keep pace with the little woman. At one point the road crossed the river; they skirted the one street which, with its few shops, could be called the high street and took a narrow way between ivy-clung walls, down a wide, grassy path that curved gently until it found the river again. His sense of direction told him they were walking in a semicircle that would eventually take him to where he had left his car; and as his neighbour stopped occasionally to introduce him to people he was aware that news of his arrival would seep through the village by the kind of osmosis that operates in small communities.
By the edge of the river, in some rough grass, he found a ball and threw it for the little dog. She sped after it with flickering grace, bringing it back to him and putting it at his feet, dancing with impatience until he threw it again.
Lydia laughed. ‘She loves that. My aim’s terrible and I can never throw more than a few feet.’
‘It’s good exercise for me, too,’ Henry laughed, and ran further on where the ground rose, playing with the dog, pretending to race her for the ball.
At last, breathless, he stopped. ‘Once more, that’s all. I’m whacked,’ he said, looking down at the thoroughbred little face, the eyes eager, the pink tongue lolling. He threw the ball for the last time, it was slimy with the dog’s saliva and stuck with shreds of grass. He took out his handkerchief to wipe his hands. From the path below him Lydia, pausing in conversation with two people, waved; her odd figure seemed even more oddly foreshortened by distance.
He waved back and, as he stood wiping his hands, let his gaze range over the view the high ground afforded.
There were trees everywhere: singly, in avenues and clumps, their fresh leaves sifting ever-changing patterns of green about grey stone buildings. He identified as many as he could by their shape, the colour of their foliage and spring blossom: birch, sycamore, lime, elm; chestnuts and beeches girdling the common, yews in the churchyard, willows along the river. And at the edge of the village an area clustered with rowans so dense and so tall it was only the lace like frailty of their new leaves, and the height at which he was standing, that allowed him a glimpse of the house they shielded.
Wanda retrieved the ball and dropped it before him, giving an impatient yelp to claim his attention. He kicked the ball down the incline and as she spun round to pursue it he ran down after her, arriving a little out of breath to walk beside Lydia along the path. ‘A house — a fantastic house, I could see it from up there — the ground dips about round it like ...’ He thought she had not heard him for she turned back to where Wanda was standing, stubborn and pleading, the ball in her mouth.
‘No more,’ Lydia said. ‘Drop it. Leave ... That’s a good dog.’
Disconsolately, the dog obeyed, giving Henry a reproachful look before going off to sniff in some bushes.
‘Who ever lives there?’ Henry asked. ‘A sort of — spidery, sinister Gothic, like something out of a medieval nightmare. It looks ... You know the house I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Lydia answered shortly, and quickened her pace.
‘But ... who lives there?’ Henry asked, smiling in disbelief that anyonecould.
She was so small beside him he could not read the expression on her face unless she looked up, but she did not look up. ‘Some people ... It belongs to a man called Augustus Wynter.’
Somewhere in Henry’s mind the name had a place, it was simply a matter of discovering where. After a moment’s thought he said, ‘Wynter? Not the man who directed those weird films, years ago ... God, I remember being frightened out of my wits when
I was a kid — and older, too. They show them sometimes at film clubs; even now they make you look over your shoulder on the way home in the dark. He’d have to have a house like that, of course. But he must be dead, or at least a hundred and ten.’
‘No ... No. He’s still alive. Very old. No one ever sees him, no one wants to. He’s an evil man, Mr Beaumont, an evil man.’
The intensity of her tone took him by surprise, he could only answer uncertainly, ‘Is he?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
She quickened her pace even more. Her manner once again was of distracted reluctance, as it had been when they had spoken of the intruders in his house.
His curiosity prompted him to question her further but he saw this would only add to her distress. He contented himself walking beside her in silence, mentally searching out the shreds of fact teasingly embedded in a time long ago and obscured by inconsequentials. He knew something about Augustus Wynter. Heknewthat he knew something. A scandal? A tragedy? A crime? Whatever it was it eluded him, and his companion interrupted his thoughts by murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, there’sthat dog,’ and looking round anxiously for Wanda.
On the path approaching them a large mongrel pranced around a middle-aged man. ‘Is it a fighter?’ Henry asked, anticipating trouble by reaching Wanda first and scooping her up in his arms.
Lydia murmured, ‘No, just anuisance. You know, in the most ungentlemanly way. One can train dogs not to, but its master doesn’t believe in that, he says it’s only nature.’
There was only the slightest scuffle as they passed on the path: Lydia sternly saying good morning, the mongrel hurling itself at Henry’s tall figure, Henry murmuring, ‘Gerroff ...’ in a low, menacing voice and striding on. The truth was he had been longing to pick up the Italian greyhound; his responsiveness of touch to living things — animals, people, was part of the sensuousness of his nature. His hands loved the feel of the little dog, her warmth, her satiny fur, her heart beating in its cage of bird-fine bones. He held her close and she lay quietly, tentatively putting up her cold nose to sniff his cheek. He gave her a hug and quickly pressed his face against her head before reluctantly putting her down.
‘Thank you,’ Lydia said, and he realised she had been watching him. A little embarrassed, he answered, ‘She reminds me of the whippets my father had when I was a boy. He used to race them.’
The river looped to the right and they crossed it by a wooden bridge. Pausing on the planks, Henry looked to see that the path they had been walking went straight on, narrowing into the distance where trees grew alongside it, arching their great boughs to form a tunnel.
‘Is it an old trackway?’ he asked.
‘Yes, what’s left of it. Parts of it have been built over, or absorbed into some farmer’s land for pasture or crops. Of course it’s so very old, Bronze age, I think, or even before that. But you can still follow its course, right along between the hills. There are several such tracks around here ... and stories of them, particularly one that is supposed to be invisible and leads to the entrance of the underworld.’
‘Leys, they were called,’ Henry said. ‘At one time the country was networked with them, marked out by stones, or sacred groves, or notches in hills.’
‘Yes,’ she said enthusiastically, a little breathlessly as they were climbing the river bank, back to the road. ‘You’re interested in such things, I’d forgotten.’
‘Forgotten?’ he repeated. How could she forget something she had never known about him?
‘Oh — um, yes.’ For a moment she was awkward. ‘Your aunt, you see, told me. I daresay your father would have mentioned it in his letters to her. He talked about you quite a lot.’
‘Did he?’ Henry said neutrally, trying to remember if he had ever gone into any detail about his interest in prehistory; certain that his involvement with it, in a personal and strange manner, had occurred after his father’s death.
‘We have a very active folklore society, perhaps you might care to join. Mostly they meet in town, but sometimes here in the village hall. And we do keep — well, I know in an inevitably altered form — some of the seasonal festivals. Your aunt had a great store of knowledge of local folklore, it was through her I became interested. She could recount legends that had been handed down by word of mouth through her family for generations, a great many of them concerned survivals of ancient festivals and customs. She did, in fact, some years ago, publish a small book. It did not have a wide sale, being rather specialised — although not academic — and more or less only of local application.’
‘I didn’t know that. I’d like to read it.’
‘There’s sure to be a copy in your house, if not, you’re welcome to borrow mine. We still observe certain customs here that have been almost forgotten everywhere else. May Eve, and in June, we have a big fête, I do hope it will be when you’re here and you’ll be able to see it.’ Their walk had brought them to the far edge of the common; Henry looked back, his attention immediately taken by the great monoliths on the distant rise of the hill. From his window he had seen them from an angle, but from this viewpoint he saw how they appeared to form an avenue down from the earthwork.
He followed their course with his eye; some distance below where they finished he had a sight of the topmost branches of the rowans that stood guard about the strange house. He looked again, and saw how the earthwork and the stones formed a direct line down to it.
*
Paradise Row, with one murky shop at its corner, was now wide awake. Women stood talking over crumbling fences; hordes of children stampeded about, others hung, draped or contorted themselves over anything available and stared at Henry.
Lydia put Wanda on her lead, a precaution Henry approved, and paused to speak to a woman standing alone at her front door while Henry went to his car.
Beside the gleaming Triumph Stag a wheelless pram had been deposited with a certain decrepit insolence. In it crouched a ferociously dirty small boy who stared at the car with hungrily worshipping eyes and said hoarsely, ‘’Allo, mister.’
In the course of his life Henry had encountered children even dirtier and more ferocious, he said, ‘Hallo’ coolly.
‘I bin watchin’ yore car for you. Can’t trust nuthin’ ’ere.’
‘Ah,’ Henry said.
‘Me dad’s got a Mercedes.’
‘I bet he has.’ Henry unlocked both front doors and began to move packages from the passenger seat to the back, to make room for Lydia and Wanda.
The boy’s voice penetrated the interior of the car. ‘I know ’oo you are, mister. You got the witch’s ‘ouse.’
‘Have I?’ Henry said, his hands suddenly still. ‘Well, news travels in this place faster than spit.’
‘Yurs,’ the boy agreed weightily.
‘She’sdead ...’ On a nearby gate a small girl hung upside down with a considerable display of grubby knicker. The voice was hers, adamant with a pleading anxiety.
‘They never die,’ the boy stated. ‘They ’ornt.’
‘They what?’ Henry asked.
‘Theydon’t.’ Shrill now, the girl struggled upright.
‘They do. Like ’er dog. ‘E ’ornts.’
Haunts, Henry translated to himself. ‘Why should he?’ he asked sceptically.
‘Corse of the way’e was foully done to death. Up among the stones,’is froat cut from ear to ear. I know someone ’as’s seen ’im, spectral, runnin’ down the ’ill and the blood and ’owling.’
Henry turned to the girl in whom, now that she was no longer upside down, could be detected a distinct family resemblance to the boy. Girls frequently had a respect for precision that was missing in their brothers. Henry addressed her reasonably, ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Who’d do that to a dog, anyway?’
Her face had been set in an expression precipitant on a wailing denial; as she listened to Henry the panic cleared, to be replaced by a gloomy fatalism. Young as she was, she knew the anarchy of the world. ‘Well they did ... It’s true, me mum a
nd dad said. And everyone knows ... Theydid,’ she muttered.
‘Who did?’
‘They did,’ the boy insisted, with supreme scorn, obviously disenchanted by the fact that a man could own a splendid car and still be stupid.
Lydia appeared beside Henry. She was carrying Wanda and surrounded by children of varying sizes and varying degrees of belligerent enthusiasm; they were jumping up and down and demanding to have a stroke of the dog. Lydia’s expression saidhelpas plainly as the word itself; Henry opened the door and put her and Wanda in the passenger seat. She whispered, ‘They’re all the same family, you know. I’m sure there are about fifteen of them. And they’re alllethal.’
Henry laughed and shut the door. He went round to the driver’s side; his door was shut and the window closed,
Lydia could not hear him. If there was any truth at all in the story it would explain her reaction to the photograph of the dog. He said to the boy, ‘I’ll tell you what, though. If they did, I bet it was a long time ago, too long for you to remember.’
‘Christ, yurs,’ the boy agreed thoughtfully. ‘Years ... Time ’memorial.
He had no regard for the truth but an exotic way with words. ‘You should go far,’ Henry said. ‘Perhaps we’ll have another talk some time.’
‘Yurs. T’ra.’
There was a market garden beside Henry’s house, with a path wide enough between its fence and the wall of his garden for him to drive down and park outside his back gate. Beyond the clearing that lay behind the houses, tall, majestic trees clustered and from their sheltering boughs birds sang out to the golden morning.
Lydia said, ‘That was nice, we enjoy a ride. I don’t have a car. Now, is there anything I can do for you?’
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