Of course, the following day, amid the devastation fire and water and the tramp of auxiliary fire-fighters had caused, Ratton returned.
I met him on the gravel sweep, my hair and face crusted with soot, my clothes singed, almost dead with fatigue. I looked, I suppose, quite dreadful. But he greeted me with a chaste kiss, and said he was happy that I was safe, and enquired after Awan, who had gone with Patricia Coombes to be bathed and put to bed in one of her guest rooms.
We surveyed the remains of Tall Chimneys together. The entire crater reeked of ash, soot, sodden plaster and charred wood. The wet-hot, desiccated dampness was a contradiction it was impossible to assimilate. The sturdy stone of the old house was blackened and compromised, the filth and greasy residue of smut a stark anachronism to the freshness of the forest and the heartless blue of the sky.
The whole of the upper north wing had been destroyed; the attic storey was gone altogether, the roofless bedrooms stood open to the elements, blackened stumps of age-old purlins pointing impotently at the sky. The heavy joists still smoked. It was shocking to see what had been private for so long now exposed; in some way shameful and dissipated. The odd tattered remnant of brocade bed-hanging flapped carelessly in the light breeze. The beds themselves were reduced to tortured springs and twisted frames. The rest of the furniture was charred beyond recognition; eviscerated armoires gaped, their doors warped all out of shape. In places the heavily figured wall-paper was just visible beneath thick brown scorching; peeled, shrivelled, in some cases even melted. The windows had smashed in the inferno leaving jagged edges round the burnt frames. The stain of last night’s flames was imprinted on their weathered mullions. Hand-woven silks - shredded and ruined, and once-lustrous velvet hangings seemed to have attempted to evacuate themselves from the building - they dangled from the apertures, snagged on the sharp edges of glass like hanged children. The shattered remains of the roof tiles and the decimated chimneys littered everything like scree.
The rooms on the ground floor had fared better; most of the furniture was untouched although everything reeked of smoke and there was much water damage. But the joists which supported the rooms above were suspect, weakened, and we had been told not to venture inside until they could be shored up. Fortunately these rooms held little of value, opening as they did onto the stable yard and kitchen gardens - the accommodations Kenneth, Rose and I had occupied, larders and laundry rooms, the kitchen and other areas of mere utilitarian purpose.
To my amateur eye the east wing was largely untouched. Even the chimneys which had collapsed had done so over the north wing. The three remaining ones seemed intact, blackened of course, like the attics below them which had been impregnated with smoke and desiccated by heat. The east wing bedrooms appeared structurally intact and also the ground floor staterooms. Heat had caused considerable damage, smoke more, water from the hoses had perhaps caused the worst ravages of all but architecturally, as far as I could see, the east wing could remain even if the rest had to be demolished.
‘I’m sure I can make something of it,’ I said, turning to Ratton. ‘The east wing, at least, seems…’
He shook his head, and put a gentle hand of my arm. ‘No, my dear,’ he said. His tiny eyes, through the prism of his thick-lensed glasses, glinted with genuine sadness. ‘It’s finished. You must marry me, now, don’t you see? What else is there for you?’
I cast around me. The garden remained, though churned and ploughed by the tyres of the engines and puddled with water from the hoses. The trees still stood, the kitchen garden and greenhouse remained. I turned again to the house. ‘I can live here, still,’ I asserted. ‘There is still furniture, a roof. The kitchen can be shored up…’
‘It isn’t safe,’ he said, smiling sadly. ‘Why would you stay here when I can offer you so much more?’
‘Because it’s my home’ I cried out. ‘It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s all I want to know. I can’t leave it, I can’t!’
Ratton sighed. ‘Look at you,’ he said, not unkindly, and raised his hand to my singed, straw-like hair. I allowed him to weigh a tress of it in his palm. ‘Look at your face,’ he went on, running a finger from my brow to my jaw. ‘You’re tired and thin and hungry,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like a hot bath? A good meal? A comfortable bed with clean sheets?’
I started to cry. He had described my heart’s desire. ‘No, no, no,’ I sobbed.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, and gently took my arm. His car was parked up the drive and he began to lead me towards it. We passed some pieces of furniture supposedly salvaged. They stood around haphazardly on the sweep like people waiting for a funeral to start. They were variously scratched and scored. I didn’t know if they had been damaged the previous night or if they had always been so shabby, their dilapidation hidden by the gloom of the house. Two fire tenders remained, one half on and half off the rose-bed, the other slewed across the lawn, hoses snaking from their bellies. Inside the house, firemen roved from room to room dampening the last smouldering remnants, careless of their muddy boots on the carpets, shoving furniture around, shouting to one another like costermongers. From the corner of my eye I could see the two bundles I had hauled from the house. They were pushed against a hedge which shielded the stable yard from the drive. I had stashed them in a panic when the fire engines had arrived, and forgotten about them in the ensuing chaos. They had been kicked around and trampled on in the melee, and looked woebegone and filthy. Our precious belongings peeped from their folds as though ashamed. I allowed Ratton to lead me past the carnage, towards his car.
Then a shout went up from inside the house, panic and alarm. Two firemen rushed down the steps from the front door, another shoved up the casement of the drawing room window and scrambled out of it, a fourth put his shoulder to the French windows in the dining room and burst out as though pursued by demons. A deep moan echoed from inside the house, inhuman and yet perfectly intelligible, articulating despair, resignation, a final letting go. The firemen rushed away from the house, across the lawn towards the sloping woodland, urging us to do likewise. Ratton took a firmer grip on my arm and began to hurry me across the gravel, past his car and into the shade cast by the inner rim of trees. I resisted him, and looked back, over my shoulder. High above the house, at the topmost chimney pot, two crows gave cries of alarm and launched themselves into the sky. The noise from the house intensified - how can I describe it? It was like I imagine ships’ timbers to sound in a storm - tortured, stretched, twisted and pressured by the onslaught of elements. It was the noise a volcano might make as the last plug of rock gives way to allow the molten magma to flow. Two of the remaining chimneys shuddered, and began to descend, gracefully, like opera singers taking a final curtsey. The roof tiles shattered, began to slither towards the gutters and then cascaded in a fountain onto the terrace. The house seemed to implode, to collapse in on itself as the supporting trusses gave way. Through the broken windows I could see furniture jostling, sliding crazily across the rooms. A manic cacophony of breaking glass and splintering wood emanated forth. Plumes of dust - or smoke - issued from the windows and doors and rose from the fractured roofs. The massive stones of the east wing appeared to crumble as though made of pumice and the Talbot family crest, which had adorned a panel above the door since 1620, fell away and smashed into a hundred smithereens on the steps below.
I felt as though my own skeleton had collapsed, melted, and would have sunk onto my knees had Ratton not caught me.
‘Come,’ he said, and carried me to his car.
He took me, not, as I had half expected, to a seedy hotel or even to his own house, there to be sequestered until such time as the marriage lines could be attained, but to The Plough and Harrow, where my friend Patricia looked after me. He helped me from the car and into the lounge bar of the pub (a place I had never set foot in before) and handed me over to Patricia’s brisk but kindly ministrations. Before leaving me he took my hand and gave me a direct and unambiguous look. ‘It is agreed, then?’
I nodded,
and lowered my eyes. ‘Yes, it’s agreed. As long as you…’ I thought of Tall Chimneys, decimated. How much would it cost, now, to repair? But this was the price I demanded.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding once. ‘I know the condition. It will be done. So?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘Good. You will hear from me soon.’
Patricia made me a cup of tea and presented me with food which she insisted I ate, and then ushered me upstairs where a hot bath had been drawn. I sat in it listlessly while she shampooed my hair and washed the smut and grime from my body. It was greasy, stubborn, and she scrubbed at me with a loofah until my skin was raw. All the while she kept her mouth pursed in a harsh line.
‘Don’t judge me,’ I wailed, at last, as she pulled one of her nightdresses over my head. ‘What else can I do?’
‘Go to sleep,’ she said, showing me into a twin bedded room where Awan slept. The curtains were drawn against the bright summer day but the window was open, and I was glad. The soft, fresh air was intoxicating after the acrid stench of burning. ‘Things will seem better in the morning.’
‘It is morning,’ I corrected her, pedantically.
She narrowed her eye, and shut the door.
I slept all that day and the following night. From time to time I was aware of Patricia in the room, or others, perhaps. I was given water to drink and led like an automaton to the lavatory. At some point I felt Awan kiss me and tip-toe from the room. The room was quiet and cool, the sheets comfortable against my skin, and when I dreamed of burning timbers falling around me, or of being choked by ash and fumes (as I did), their softness and safety was a welcome reassurance, soothing my troubled brow, and I slept again.
In the morning I ate breakfast in Patricia’s parlour while Awan bottled-up in the public bar under the direction of Patricia’s incapacitated husband. I eyed the piles of clothes, toiletries, bedding and kitchen requisites which had been delivered for me.
‘Ann went round the village,’ Patricia told me. ‘Most people donated something. You’ll have to start afresh,’ she said, ‘they know that. They want to help.’
‘People are so kind,’ I murmured, thinking their kindness would be wasted. I wouldn’t need these things as Mrs Ratton.
‘It’s no more than you would have done,’ Patricia said, ‘if their house had been burned around their ears.’
‘I suppose…’ I began, stirring my tea, ‘I suppose there’s nothing left, down there?’
Patricia shrugged. ‘The gates have been locked.’
‘Locked?’ The gates had never been closed, let alone locked, in my lifetime.
‘Yes. There’s a sign saying the place is unsafe and trespassers will be prosecuted.’ She paused, tweaked a wisp of her hair back into its chignon. ‘So naturally, the world and his wife have been down to look. School children in droves, a proper village picnic, if you ask me. Ghouls.’
‘Awan?’ I didn’t want her to be confronted with the waste and destruction, and if the place really was unsafe…
‘Oh no. I’ve kept her here, with me.’ Patricia straightened an antimacassar. ‘She’s been trying on her new uniform, though,’ she said, brightly, to change the subject. ‘Looks really smart in it. I had to take in the skirts - those Manse girls eat like horses - but everything else fit perfectly.’
‘You’re very kind,’ I said, picking at an invisible thread in my hand-me-down skirt. Awan’s Grammar school debut would be cancelled, I supposed. Ratton had mentioned a boarding school. Perhaps that would be best, I mused. I didn’t think I wanted Awan to witness my ultimate humiliation.
A soft tap at the outer door announced Mrs Greene. She stepped into the parlour and shut the door in a way that suggested to me she had done it many times before. She brought a cake, still warm, and laid it on a table, along with an envelope. ‘This came in the post for you,’ she said. ‘Not the cake, of course…’ she tittered a little, at her own joke.
‘I can bake, you know!’ Patricia laughed.
‘I know dear, but not very well,’ Mrs Greene replied, not unkindly. ‘And, my dear,’ she turned to me, ‘I wanted to say, how very sorry I am. I don’t know how you must feel, and I’m sorrier than I can say, truly I am. And Kenneth says… well, Kenneth sends… Oh! You know Kenneth, he doesn’t say anything much but I know he’s devastated for you. I’ve never seen him so white as when he came back from - you know, he thought he’d better have a look, just to see.’
‘To see if he could fix it all up?’ I smiled, sadly, and patted the chair next to me. She came and perched on it, like a little bird. ‘That would be just like him. I can’t think of anything in my life he hasn’t fixed, or improved, or had a hand in one way or another. I seem to recall, after I’d had Awan, he was there, in the shadows, watching over us. And when John was ill, he helped…’ Suddenly I was crying, and Mrs Greene put her small, capable hand on my shoulder.
‘There now, dear,’ she said, as she might to one of her grandsons. ‘Things will look better, in a day or so.’
But I knew that no matter how many days went by, things would look just the same, and I would have to marry Sylvester Ratton.
I didn’t look at the letter until later that morning. It was from Giles Percy, and was written on prison notepaper.
You will see immediately [it read] that my circumstances are not of the best. There is no way to sugar the pill so I will tell you plainly that I am incarcerated pending trial for committing acts of ‘indecency’ with another man. I shall plead not guilty since there is no evidence to prove that an indecent act was committed, however, I have small hope of being acquitted. I shall be imprisoned, fined or subjected to chemical castration.
My resources are inaccessible to me and so I am unable to supply funds, but I have not been behind-hand in ensuring my responsibilities can be met and have made arrangements with an old acquaintance of mine from Bletchley[19], now Headmistress at Casterton School, near Kirkby Lonsdale in Lancashire, so that, if necessary the girl can be placed on the roll. The school is of good repute, founded for the daughters of impoverished clergymen and the like, closely associated with neighbouring Sedbergh (my alma mater). I am told it has a homely and gentle ethos and that girls do exceptionally well there academically and personally. It is in a part of the countryside not unlike your own.
Naturally these arrangements will make no financial burden on you and are entirely at your discretion to take up or pass by.
The letter lay in my lap as I considered this possibility. To send Awan to school would be a terrible wrench for both of us - we had hardly spent a single night apart. But it was no good thinking things would mend themselves - they wouldn’t - and this opportunity was one I didn’t think I could pass up. To have Awan at a school of my choosing, paid for by a means which owed nothing to Sylvester Ratton, would mean that she, at least, would be free of his manipulation and influence. Casterton, although in Lancashire, was hard against the border with Yorkshire; only a very few miles away. I imagined I would be able to visit often. She would be independent, she would make friends, she would have openings which had been denied to me. She would be able to go out into the world, as John had always said she ought to. And if mine was to be an uncomfortable, awkward life of compromise and compliance, she would not have to see it.
All I had to do now was break the news to her.
It turned out not to be the only unpleasant tiding Awan was to receive that day.
Patricia kept Awan busy all day, helping in the bar before opening time and then very properly shooing her into the kitchen once the bar was open. She helped make sandwiches and plate up ploughman’s lunches. In between she stroked the cat which slept on the kitchen window ledge in a patch of sunshine, and chatted to Enid, Patricia’s girl-of-all-works, who washed the dishes, made up the guest room beds and sluiced out the urinals as occasion required. Enid was a simple soul, not well endowed with discretion or imagination but very voluble; a constant stream of inconsequential chatter issued from her mouth
from morning till night. Whether she repeated gossip heard elsewhere, or took it upon herself to inform Awan I do not know, but towards two o’clock Awan came into the parlour looking white and trembly.
I pulled her onto the sofa next to me thinking that she was finding herself subject to sudden vivid flash-backs and repeated heart-stopping reminders that our home was gone, as I was. ‘Tell me,’ I said, settling her in the crook of my arm.
‘Enid says you and Daddy weren’t married,’ she burst out. ‘That isn’t right, is it Mummy?’
I quailed, but took a deep breath. ‘We didn’t go to church,’ I told her, ‘and we didn’t have the certificate. But we were married in the most important way two people can be married.’
‘What way is that?’ Awan asked me, her little face looking up into mine.
I thought about it for a moment. ‘Some marriages are made from the outside in.’ I said at last. ‘The couple’s parents decide it will be a good thing for their families to be joined, and an alliance is agreed. The minister at the church lays his hands on theirs and declares that they are wed. The registrar writes the certificate, and signs it, and makes it so. All those things can happen without the couple loving each other or even knowing each other very well. They agree, because they see it’s a good thing and they decide to make a go of it. And that’s all right. Many, many happy marriages have been made that way in the past: from the outside in. But some marriages are made from the inside out. The couple have a connection - there’s a spark between them. Something - I don’t know what - lights them up from the inside, both of them; they are two branches of the same candelabra. They make each other laugh, they have the same thoughts, they feel the same way about things, they share the same values. It’s as though their hearts beat as one heart, almost that they are one person. It may be their families don’t approve, or the minister won’t speak the words, or the registrar sign the paper, but it doesn’t matter. In their hearts - in their hearts, Awan - they are married. That’s how it was with your daddy and me. We lit each other up in that way. We knew each other inside out and we loved each other through thick and thin. We were true to each other…’ I gave a fleeting thought to Giles Percy and Cameron Bentley, and to Amelia and Monique and the other women who may or may not have been part of John’s life when he was away from me. ‘… in the way that really matters,’ I qualified. ‘In the end, he always came home to me, no matter what, and I was always there waiting for him.’
Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years Page 33
