Sadness flits across his face like moonlight over the sea. It’s an open and honest countenance, nothing hides there, and it’s a face you instinctively trust. For a moment I teeter on the brink of telling him that I understand because my husband also died far too young, but I stop myself in time. Rosecraddick is supposed to be my new start and the last thing I want is pity.
“Sue says the Kernow Heritage Foundation are restoring the house?”
Matt nods. “That’s right. We’ve got some money together, a mixture of EU funding, lottery money and a legacy – although I’ve a feeling this will be a drop in the ocean. We’re hoping to bring Rosecraddick Manor back to the way it would have been in 1914 when Kit lived here. It’s a massive undertaking, as you can probably see just from standing in the entrance hall!”
I glance around. Mildewed curtains hang limply from sagging poles and it’s hard to visualise how smart the hall would have looked in the nineteen-hundreds. There would have been a blazing fire in the big hearth at the far end and the wooden panelling must have glowed with beeswax polish. Intimidating family portraits would have eyeballed new arrivals as a butler stepped forward to greet them. I imagine Kit, blond and full of life, striding across the room dressed in riding gear or maybe sitting by the fire reading poetry. Was he an outdoors person? Or did he spend his time in the library? I’d love to know.
“It’ll be worth it in the end,” Matt’s saying, oblivious to my drifting thoughts. “We’ll do all the usual stuff with tea rooms and visitor trails, but the real jewel in the crown will be Kit’s story. I’m hoping that will attract school parties too, as well as helping his work to reach a wider audience. He was such a talent and deserves to be recognised, so I’m going to do my very best to make sure that happens.”
As he says this excitement lifts the tiredness from his face and his eyes light up. This is Matt’s passion and suddenly I feel foolish. What am I thinking, bowling up here because I have a hunch about some graffiti on a pew and a growing fascination with a long-dead poet? It’s hardly academic stuff. In fact, it sounds ridiculous.
“It sounds like you’re really busy. I’m sure you could do without me turning up and wasting your time,” I say.
“Not at all. I love sharing what I know about Kit. His life and poetry have been my passion ever since I first read his work when I was a teenager. I think it was partly him who inspired my love of history, so coming here to work on his house is a dream come true, especially for a Cornish lad like me. What can I help you with?”
“I don’t know where to start,” I say tentatively. “I’m horribly ignorant. I Googled Kit and read his poems. They’re pretty harrowing.”
“I know,” Matt agrees. “Kit certainly didn’t pull his punches. God Hid His Face gives me nightmares.”
I nod. “Me too. I can’t put it out of my mind.”
It’s not an exaggeration. The images drawn in verse haunted me before I fell asleep. My dreams, half recollected when I woke up this morning, were filled with fire and shells and mud, and I’ve made a mental note that in the future I won’t read anything by Kit before bedtime.
“And what did you think?” Matt’s dark grey eyes pin me and I really, really want to get my answer right. This matters.
“I thought the poems are terrible but in the true sense of the word,” I tell him. “Full of dread and with such heaviness. They made me feel weary and full of despair. It’s hard to shake off.”
“That’s exactly it,” Matt agrees. “So how can I help you? Was there something in particular?”
I pause. If I tell him about the daisy carved on the pew, will he think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill? The fear of appearing crazy haunts me these days. The questions. The concern. The worried looks. The spiral.
“Sort of,” I say.
“Sort of?”
“OK then, yes. Yes, I want to know more.”
His eyes crinkle. “That’s more like it. So, more about what? His poetry? His life? His war?”
I take a deep breath. I really want to tell him but I can’t find the words. Maybe I don’t want to share this strange conviction that there’s a message in the window and on the pew.
Matt regards me thoughtfully, as though he knows I want to say something, but when the words aren’t forthcoming, he just inclines his head and smiles. “All of it?”
I laugh. “That sounds like a big ask, but yes. I’d like to know more. I’m intrigued.”
“How about I start by showing you the house? I’m afraid it’s all quite a muddle at the moment. The place has been a school, a hotel, barracks for the army in the Second World War and even a commune in the sixties. The attics are stuffed full of God knows what and I’m going to be sifting through them for quite a while. That’s why I’m here on a Sunday afternoon instead of having a life.”
“If you don’t mind showing me, I’d love to have a look. I’m fascinated by what I’ve learned about Kit and I’d love to see where he grew up.”
And see if there are any daisies, I add silently. It’s a long shot, I know, but it’s a possibility…
Matt seems delighted to give me a tour and we spend an hour or so exploring the house. It’s not a huge stately home built to impress or to entertain monarchs; rather, it’s a place that feels as though it’s grown organically out of the Cornish earth and settled gently into itself over the centuries. Matt shows me the Elizabethan long gallery, the kitchens, the library and the drawing room, and although the rooms are stripped of furniture and scarred with the additions of blackboards or fire doors, his words paint such a vivid picture that I feel as though I’m seeing the place Kit would have known. We climb up the grand staircase and pause on the return, where a large window faces out over the village. Rainy fingernails scrape the glass and the sea’s a low leaden line hemming a smudge of green. From this vantage spot, I can see the cedar tree on the Old Rectory’s front lawn, and the roof of my own home.
“You can see the Rectory from here!”
“It’s a wonderful view, isn’t it?” Matt rests his hands on the banisters. “The family would have owned all the land for miles around, and they’d also have been able to influence the appointment of the parish clergyman. It’s hard for us to imagine just how much power they would have had. Most of the villagers would have depended upon them for their employment and their housing.”
“It’s real Downton Abbey stuff,” I remark. I can picture it all: the servants, the horses, the elegant dinners…
“Absolutely. The family was very important. They would have owned most of the farms and the parkland around the place too. A lot of that’s been sold, of course, and the new housing estate where Sue lives is built on some of it, but in Kit’s time it would have been there to ride and walk in. The park was ploughed up and farmed during both wars and I believe the US Military were practising manoeuvres here at one point. There are layers and layers of history in Rosecraddick and I like to think of it as being a bit like an onion; the more I peel away, the closer I get to the heart of it.”
This idea chimes with me. Grief is my onion but I daren’t peel away the layers because I’m afraid of what I may find at the centre.
“After Kit died the place fell into decline,” Matt continues, still gazing out across the rainy Cornish landscape. Dark squalls march across the sea but on the horizon the faintest line of gold is appearing, and I find myself wondering how I’d paint this. I’d need to show the might of the elements and the fury of the storm but temper these with the promise of light to come. Acrylics would work, and bold strokes.
My heart lifts to discover I’m thinking about painting again. Maybe Matt would let me set up my equipment here and try? I think I could start again with this view.
“His father didn’t survive him by many years,” Matt says softly, almost to himself, as though repeating a familiar and much-loved tale for comfort. “And Kit’s mother died in the early 1930s. Without an heir, the estate passed to a distant cousin who rented it out and sold off parcels o
f land and any valuables. Times had changed anyway and the glory days of big country estates were drawing to a close. Eventually the place fell into disrepair and we managed to buy it last year, albeit with lots of help.”
“And if you hadn’t bought it?”
Matt shakes his head. “Then I think Kit Rivers’ story and his work might have faded away. There’s a memorial to him in the walled garden too – I’ll show you if this rain ever stops – and I couldn’t bear to think of it being lost.”
We continue upwards and I think about time and how it erases all kinds of things, from mighty empires to (according to Perky Pippa) grief. This once prosperous house is now dusty and almost derelict, a far cry from its heyday. The stair carpet’s worn thin, the chandeliers have long since been sold, bare patches scar the wall where works of art once hung, and the beautiful banisters are blemished from decades of schoolboys scrambling up and down them. Even so, the dignity of the place is intact. It feels as though Rosecraddick Manor is watching Matt Enys to see what will happen next. The lost world of the early twentieth-century upper classes is waiting in the shadows; it hasn’t gone away.
“What do you think of this?” Matt asks when we reach the top of the great staircase. He’s pointing towards a portrait of a stern gentleman with grey mutton-chop side whiskers and a determined chin, who gazes through his monocle in such a fierce and critical manner that I gulp. He’s dressed in full military regalia, with medals emblazoned across his chest, and under his scrutiny I can’t help feeling nervous.
“We found this portrait in the cellar,” Matt tells me. “It was wrapped up very carefully, one of the few family portraits that we have managed to find. This is Colonel Rivers, Kit’s father, who was a decorated hero of the Boer War and by all accounts a very exacting individual.”
“I can believe it,” I say. Colonel Rivers doesn’t look as though he would approve of much at all. I wonder how life with such a father was for his poetic son? Did Kit enlist straight away because he was keen to follow in his father’s footsteps, or were there conflicts? Did they argue? Or were they alike?
“I should imagine Colonel Rivers would have been a hard act to follow,” Matt remarks. “The Rivers family had a military background and Kit seems to have bucked the trend by being educated at home rather than at public school. From what we know of the family, his mother wanted him kept with her. He was due to go to Oxford when war was declared. He may have flourished there and become famous if he’d had the chance. Who knows?”
“Life can change in a heartbeat,” I say before I can help myself. Matt gives me a long and searching look but doesn’t ask me to elaborate.
“Very true,” is all he says. “Come on. I’ll show you the attics. They’re full of interesting bits and pieces.”
He leads me through some dusty attic rooms where lowly servants would have been quartered, before we retrace our steps to the middle floor. Here the wooden shutters are closed and the rooms swim with gloom, but as Matt talks I picture the nursery and the bedrooms as they would have been, and I almost see Kit sitting in the window reading. Keats, perhaps? Or was he more excited by Byron and Shelley’s revolutionary verse?
“Which one was Kit’s room? Was this it?” I ask when Matt shows me into a large chamber with three big windows. The shutters are closed tightly but, were they open, we would have a view of the formal gardens and the wooded hills beyond.
Matt sighs. “I have absolutely no idea and I can’t imagine how we’d ever find out. It would certainly have been on this floor though and at the back of the house with the views over the gardens. There are bathrooms there too, which again suggests the family used those rooms.”
“But you’ll never know for sure.” For some reason this thought fills me with sadness. Our time here is so fleeting; it’s unbearable that we aren’t remembered. Who else will remember Neil the way I do? Who else would know or care in a hundred years’ time that he slept on his stomach or hated tomatoes or loved a girl called Chloe?
Matt studies me, his dark brows drawing together as though he guesses there’s a subtext.
“I suppose not,” he says eventually. “There are so many gaps in Kit’s story, mostly because he died so young and before he even had a chance to make his mark. If it wasn’t for the poems he’d be almost forgotten. Even the stained-glass window in St Nonna’s would be little more than a curiosity.”
“Doesn’t that distress you?”
“What? The not knowing? Or the passing of time?”
I shrug. “Both, I guess. I hate the idea that the years rub us out.”
Matt frowns. “But I don’t think that’s true. I think we all make our mark in some way. OK, not everyone changes the world by landing on the moon or creating great works of literature, but we all make a difference. And what’s the world anyway, except our experience of it? How do we know that a kind word or a smile doesn’t alter the course of somebody else’s history? What seems small to us can be huge to another person. I think the thing I enjoy the most about history is trying to uncover those small acts and the little details that make a bigger picture. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you anything more about Kit Rivers, but I’m going to do my very best to tell his story.”
I really want to tell him about the daisy scratched on the pew. It could be just the small detail he needs – but Matt is into his stride now and telling me all about his plans for the house.
“So eventually we’ll mock up one of the bedrooms as Kit’s and create an exhibition. Maybe a trunk being packed for war, a dress uniform and some moving images of the Western Front to accompany recordings of his poems? What do you think?”
I shiver. What I think is that it sounds desolate and unbearably sad, but I don’t want to say this out loud. I have an overpowering feeling that something vital’s missing from all this, something that’s been overlooked, and that from the shadows Kit’s trying to tell us so. It’s all fanciful stuff, of course, and my stomach lurches with the fear that I might be having some sort of relapse. I must make sure I don’t start to slide backwards. Feelings and instincts are all very well, but doctors don’t tend to like my wilder flights of imagination.
“I think it could be interesting,” I reply doubtfully.
“But there’s a long way to go?” Matt adds on my behalf. Then he sighs. “There’s tonnes to do, but that’s what I’m here for and I have a great team too. And my kids love playing in the grounds.”
He’s mentioned his children several times so, to be polite, I ask him about them and am rewarded with a smile of such joy that it feels as though the sun’s coming out.
“I’ve got eight-year-old twins, Merryl and Lowenna, and they’re brilliant. They live with their mum in Exeter, but they stay with me some weekends and during their school holidays. They love Rosecraddick.”
“I bet they do. My husband spent his holidays here as a child and he was always talking about it, even years on.”
The words are spoken before I can stop myself. Instantly I long to reach out and grab them, stuff each syllable back down my treacherous throat. Now that I’ve mentioned Neil, Matt’s bound to ask about him. Where he is. What he does. Alternatively, if it occurs to Matt that Neil’s no longer alive he’ll be sympathetic – which will be ten times worse. I won’t be Chloe anymore but a widow and an object of pity. The easy conversation I’ve enjoyed will dry up. I hadn’t realised until I met Sue and now Matt just how much my life has been governed recently by my status as a widow. It’s all people see me as now. I’m not a wife or an artist or even myself, but somebody who inhabits the awkward edges of society. I don’t belong anywhere and they have no idea what to do with me.
I hold my breath and wait. Can I talk about Neil without crumpling? What should I say anyway? And when I know, can I even say it without falling apart?
But Matt doesn’t ask about my husband.
“Cornwall’s made for kids, isn’t it?” he agrees. “Beaches and crabbing and ice cream and chips. Heaven for them and not
bad for the rest of us, once you’re used to reversing in lanes and driving ten miles to the supermarket, of course! And don’t get me started on the erratic weather. Although, talking of that, I think we may be through the worst of the rain.”
He heads to the window and gingerly prises open a shutter. A stripe of pallid sunshine bisects the floorboards and I realise that the patter of rain and the song of drops falling into buckets ceased a while ago.
“Yep, looks to me as though the rain’s eased off. Still, we’d better not take that for granted. Let me show you Kit’s memorial before the weather decides we need another drenching.”
We leave the bedroom, turning left and ducking through a low door leading to a narrow stairwell. This would have been where the servants hurried up and down, carrying firewood or hot water or even chamber pots. The steps are made of stone and worn from all those feet scurrying to do the bidding of the Rivers family. At the bottom of the stairwell is the kitchen; its huge fireplace is still blackened from centuries of smoke, but the room is empty of all furniture except stacks of school desks.
“They’re from when the house was a boarding school in the fifties,” Matt says, seeing me looking. “God knows why they’ve ended up in here.”
“I see what you mean about having a lot to do,” I say sympathetically.
“In fairness, it’s not just down to me. I have a great team of experts and specialists to call upon. Come on, let’s go outside. I’ll show you the gardens.”
There’s an arched door at the far end of the kitchen that has two big iron bolts. Matt slides these across and we step outside into a courtyard.
“This would have been the herb garden at one point,” Matt says as we walk across it. “The Foundation has plans to restore it, but that’s really not my area of expertise. I’m hopeless with plants. How about you? Do you like gardening?”
I consider the question. To be honest, I don’t know. Our flat was on the second floor of a converted Victorian house situated on a main road. The only bit of greenery we had was a sparse earthy patch outside the front door where the communal bins were kept. A fine collection of thistles and dandelions thrived there, but without any help from me. Neil and I had hoped to move out to Buckinghamshire when we talked vaguely about having a house with a garden; we took it for granted that we’d have children one day and that they’d need space to play. I supposed he would have mowed the lawn while I’d have attempted to grow flowers. The vision drifts before my eyes and I blink it away. That version of my future is long gone.
The Letter Page 7
