by Wendy Holden
Dylan gasped and took a step backwards before realising this was that example of trailblazing lavatory technology: a Japanese toilet. In the dark heart of a Midlands forest, such Far Eastern electronic attentions were unexpected.
The rope-banister wound upwards three more times before Dylan found himself facing a small wooden door, similar to the front entrance. It was unlocked and opened on to a flat leaded roof; after the cool shadows of the tower interior, the brilliant greens and blues of the outside world were dazzling, almost painful. There was a blast of metallic warmth from the heated leading.
Beside him, as he stepped out, was the thick base of the flagpole; much bigger and more substantial than it looked from below. It was screwed to the roof with thick bolts, its empty cable snapping and rattling in the breeze. What flag would he fly, Dylan wondered, if he had the choice? A black one? But no. A mere few hours ago he had arrived here, aiming to immerse himself in misery. Now he had a job and a place to live. Perhaps even the beginnings of a future.
A low wall edged the roof-top, connecting the quartet of lead-domed pepper-pot towers. Dylan leaned against the warm stone and peered down. The drop below plunged into the trees.
They clustered below him like bright green smoke, their leaves sticky with golden evening sunlight. Beyond them, at the foot of the hill, were the formal gardens surrounding Pemberton Hall. Dylan could see statues, lawns, paths, ponds, patches of colour that were flower beds.
From above, the great house appeared a jumble of roofs and chimneys and gilded parapet urns. Beside it was the stable yard, almost as big as the house from this angle, the gold arrow-top of its weathervane shooting light in all directions. Sun blazed from the bonnets of the few cars left in the car park. Beyond this the winding silver river slid through the electric green park. Following its contours was the accompanying grey curve of the road; Dylan could see the tiny cars as they moved along it and hear the occasional snarl of a motorbike.
Hear, too, a chorus of birdsong. Never had he heard so many. The air was thick with their music; it seemed to rise from every bough and ranged from loud and insistent chanting to rippling notes of an almost unbearable sweetness. Dylan listened intently.
He stood like this for some minutes, hands in his pockets, feeling the cooling air lapping his face. A plane was passing overhead, a white scribble on the blue. He inhaled the fresh scent of leaves and felt something approaching tranquillity for the first time he could remember. Certainly, since the fire.
He closed his eyes. Perhaps here, in this peaceful place, he might finally be able to come to terms with all that had happened to him. Rebuild. Renew. He had a new name, after all: Adam Greenleaf. Perhaps now he could become a new person.
The birdsong was getting louder and more insistent. It had a sharp, shrieky, tinny edge; one of them – a blackbird, presumably – seemed to be imitating some electronic device. Like an alarm. Very like an alarm. Then Dylan realised it wasn’t a bird at all but was coming from within the tower, from down the stairs. Jerked abruptly from his reverie, he dashed over to the door and plunged down the spiral flight, the rope-banister burning his palm as he clung to it for support.
A rolling fog of grey smoke was coming up to meet him. Dylan’s brain was dissolving in panic. History was repeating itself. Bess’s Tower was on fire.
CHAPTER 24
It was the bacon. Dylan had left it under the grill and it had burned to a blackened, smoke-belching crisp.
It had taken a while to work this out, even so. His body had seized up in panic. Going back downstairs, his own legs and arms had fought him. They refused to move, staying so rigid and unyielding that he had to seize each thigh with both hands to place his foot on the next downward step. Down he staggered in this robotic fashion, the smoke filling his throat and stinging his eyes.
In the dining room, a thick pall of stinking mist bounced and ebbed against the ceiling. In the kitchen, great black smoke-snakes poured and writhed from the front of the grill.
Yanking open the window behind the kitchen sink, he had hurled the grill pan through the lattice where it fell with a crash into the grass.
Then, to his surprise, he had heard something else.
A stifled cry. Dylan had gone back to the kitchen window and seen a surprising sight. A woman with wild black hair and a flapping pink dress was hobbling away rapidly, holding her leg. She looked like the woman he had seen in the Edenville Arms earlier on. But why would she be snooping around the tower, looking in his windows?
Dylan flew to the front door and round to the side, but there was no trace of his unexpected visitor. He stared around but the woman appeared to have gone. It was all very unsettling, and he was unsettled enough as it was.
He went back inside and, to calm his nerves, poured himself some of the Countess’s wine. But his teeth chattered against the glass and he shivered as if it were January.
What the grill-pan fire had shown him was that he hadn’t recovered from what had happened. Far from it; he was only ever a few burnt bacon rashers from recalling the Bosun’s Whistle fire in all its terror. Those thundering flames cast long shadows and he would always smell their smoke. That oasis of calm on the roof had been an illusion. The moment of peace outside the pub, amid the birdsong, had been too. Trying to build a new life was pointless. A new name was pointless; Adam Greenleaf was the same useless waste of space that Dylan Eliot had been. There was nothing to be positive about.
When, much later that night, Dylan finally closed his eyes it was to see the cloven foot of Beatrice’s surf boot melting in the heat. And when, worn and exhausted, he finally fell into fitful sleep, the wall of fire in Bosun’s Whistle burned his face in his dreams.
It was Sunday morning in the Edenville Arms and Jason stood behind his shining flap. It had been, so far, a difficult morning.
The beautiful weather seemed to have got people up unexpectedly early. Which in turn seemed to be making them crabby. One woman had complained that the yolk of her egg was ‘a really weird orange’. Jason had been obliged to explain that the Countess’s Burford Browns produced eggs with yolks that particular colour and they were actually quite sought after. But the woman had not backed down and Jason had returned to the kitchen, agitated, tasked to find what the customer called a ‘normal’ egg. ‘Pearls before swine,’ he had sighed to the chef.
The matter had been solved by sending one of the sous-chefs round to a woman in the village who was known to buy everything from discount supermarkets. If the egg he came back with had ever seen a hen, Jason would have been surprised. Yet the customer had been delighted.
Now the crisis was over, Jason was allowing himself a few moments of self-congratulation. And a few more as he remembered the great triumph of yesterday: securing the first guest for Bess’s Tower. He wondered how Mr Greenleaf was settling in, and from here Jason’s mind leapt to the strange incident in the restaurant last night, when Miss Simpson from the honeymoon suite had been so keen to ensure that Greenleaf was not staying in the hotel.
In what context had the two met before? Clearly a dramatic one. Jason’s curiosity was fired, but, for once, he wasn’t going to speculate about it with Angela. Angela didn’t need encouraging with regard to Mr Greenleaf; she was behaving in a very odd way as it was. Yesterday, once she’d sobered up with quantities of tap-water, she’d lurched off, and Jason had had the distinct impression that she was going up to the tower. He’d hoped she wouldn’t make a nuisance of herself. But it was definitely good news that she had stopped obsessing over Dan Parker and the actor’s wife.
Greenleaf, Jason reflected, had certainly caused havoc among the women of the Edenville Arms. Especially given that he was so skinny and exhausted-looking and had been on the estate less than twenty-four hours. Jason couldn’t understand what they saw in him. He had eyes only for a certain bearded barman, but today, lamentably, was Ryan’s day off. He was taking his mo
ther to the garden centre, bless him, Jason thought fondly.
The manager’s thoughts returned to Adam Greenleaf. He hoped he would keep his distance from now on. For the duration of Nell Simpson’s stay, at least. Now he had assured her that Greenleaf was nowhere near, Jason could not risk him turning up in the breakfast room. Perish the thought!
He leaned over his flap and peered into Kegs. The ladies from the honeymoon suite were joining the early breakfasters, he saw.
Nell and Rachel had had no choice. Fired by the sample menus in the room information folder, Juno had been desperate to get downstairs as soon as she awoke.
Kegs, Nell thought, looked entirely different from the intimate, candlelit space of last night. In the full, strong daylight, the pink tub seats positively blazed and the neatly set tables of sparkling silver and snowy linen shone almost as white as Jason’s teeth.
Was Fake OutdoorsGuy here? She didn’t really think so, not after Jason’s reassurance. She should forget about it. To carry on fretting would be both silly and self-indulgent; worse, Rachel might start to notice, and she would have to describe the whole ghastly episode. Nonetheless, as they followed the waitress to their table, she cast a searching, heart-thumping look around. No sign of him, thank goodness.
Juno ordered a kipper. ‘I want to see what one is.’ Then she went to explore the breakfast bar.
Rachel ordered porridge and Nell, at Juno’s urging, something called ‘The Earl’s Breakfast’.
‘I want to see what a real Earl has in the morning,’ Juno said. ‘Agatha Christie’s always a bit vague about what Lord Edgware has, and while I have the highest possible opinion of her writing I do think you need to know what your characters have for breakfast.’
Juno was not wearing her Marple outfit today. Like the rest of them she wore jeans and a T-shirt. Another thrift-shop find, it had three large curling moustaches printed on it. ‘They reminded me of Poirot,’ Juno explained.
‘So,’ said Rachel, as the waitress disappeared. ‘About places for you to live. I’ve had an idea.’
Nell rubbed her face tiredly. Not this again. She was going back to London tonight and taking Gardiner Road off the market tomorrow. She didn’t care whether Romeo and Juliet were trying to move in.
‘This is a bit left field,’ Rachel went on.
‘Mmm?’ Nell poured some tea, wondering what was coming.
‘Why don’t you just stay up here?’
‘Here? You mean Pemberton?’ The tea slopped in the saucer; Nell stared at her friend. Had Rachel lost her wits?
Rachel’s sharp eyes looked more than usually focused, however. ‘OK, so it’s just a thought. But it solves all the problems. That couple I told you about can buy 19a.’
‘You seem very keen on them,’ Nell said sulkily.
Rachel extended a hand and squeezed Nell’s. ‘It’s not that. I just think there’s been enough suffering because of Joey. I don’t want any more people made miserable because of him. Especially people in love.’
Nell stared at the tablecloth, thinking that people in love should be made especially miserable. Serve them right for being such idiots.
‘And just think,’ Rachel added brightly, ‘how much further your money will go in a place like this. You could start again. Find a new job. Meet new people. Juno and I could come and visit you.’
‘But-what-would-I-do-where-would-I-live-I-wouldn’t-know-anyone-I-wouldn’t-like-it.’ Objections poured from Nell in a panicked stream.
‘OK, OK.’ Rachel was grinning and waving her hands. ‘But just think about it, all right?’
Juno returned from the breakfast bar with a glass of apple juice balancing precariously on a plate heaped with pastries. ‘What’s that cage thing?’ she asked.
‘It’s a toast rack,’ Rachel explained. ‘You never see them anywhere else but hotels.’
Nell had a sudden memory of the breakfast tray Joey had appeared with, that first morning in his flat. She forced it away.
Her cooked breakfast arrived. She stared at it, awed. Then she snatched up her knife and fork rebelliously. Who cared if this breakfast contained more calories than she had previously allowed herself in a week? She had never associated sausages with freedom, but the Earl’s Breakfast was emancipation of a sort.
Rachel stared. ‘You’re really going to eat all that?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not tempted.’ Nell dug her fork into the fattest, most glistening banger.
Rachel stuck her spoon into her oats. ‘I never eat anything with a face.’
‘Sausages don’t have faces,’ Juno pointed out. Her kipper was now placed before her and she contemplated the length of copper-coloured fish bristling with tiny bones. ‘What’s this?’ She picked up the half-lemon wrapped in muslin that garnished the dish.
Rachel explained, and squeezed the lemon over her daughter’s breakfast. ‘You have to be very careful to get the bones out. Otherwise they might stick in your throat and choke you.’
Juno looked delighted. ‘I’ve definitely got the most dangerous breakfast.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ Rachel gazed pointedly at Nell’s laden plate.
Up in Bess’s Tower, Dylan had just woken. A hangover seethed in his head; he had, last night, downed the rest of the Countess’s wine. His flailing hand hit something sharp. ‘Ow!’ He had bruised himself on one of the many prongs of the headboard.
Beneath his nausea and thumping brain was a clawing hunger. Not trusting himself to cook after the fire episode, Dylan had opened a bag of estate-labelled cashew nuts for dinner. That, patently, had not been enough and it now occurred to him that he could have breakfast at the pub. There was a menu in all the bumf Jason had given him. He remembered something about sausages from estate-reared pigs.
His clothes were all over the place and it took a while to find them. Eventually a crumpled and wincing Dylan staggered down the spiral stairs. His rioting, outraged stomach was the main focus of his attention as he got in the car. But even so he noticed the cold, mushroomy scent of morning and how the mud beneath his boots looked like chocolate. In the distance, the mist gathered between trees that looked like a silent army. The birds, by contrast, were their usual chorus of tuneful agitation: echoing, quarrelling, singing, swooping, hopping.
As he drove down through the woods, tall, straight pine trunks splintered the sunshine into spokes of light. Rabbits scampered across the road in front of him, white scuts bobbing in panic. There were pheasants with silly runs, weaving aimlessly from side to side. Darting squirrels, all fluid movement. Dylan found himself making mental notes but then he stopped himself. He had no use for the material. It wasn’t as if he was going to write again.
Jason, behind his flap, glanced through the window and saw, approaching across the car park, Mr Greenleaf of Bess’s Tower. His first reaction, alarm, was followed by the desperate hope that Greenleaf was just popping in briefly. Perhaps for a map of the estate or one of Ros Downer’s terrible brochures. Yes, that would be it; he was planning a spot of sightseeing.
Jason’s grin, as Dylan came in, was a rictus.
‘Good morning, sir! I trust that all is well in Bess’s Tower?’
Dylan nodded. Now was not the time to go into the fire in the grill pan and the stranger he might inadvertently have hit with it.
‘Map, is it, sir?’ In his eagerness, Jason lifted up the entire holder of maps on his desk.
He was very excitable for this time in the morning, Dylan thought. Much too excitable to be dealt with on an empty stomach. ‘I want breakfast,’ he said shortly.
‘Breakfast?’ Jason repeated, puzzled. The ‘Countess’ hamper had been full of breakfast items. Could Greenleaf not cook? Was there something wrong with the kitchen?
‘Breakfast,’ Dylan confirmed. He gestured at Kegs with his key fob. ‘OK if I go in?�
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Although Jason’s eyes were fixed on Dylan he could see, in his peripheral vision, the white-blond back of Nell Simpson’s head at a table halfway down the dining room. It would take only a half-turn for her to see him and the man whom, for whatever reason, she was so keen to avoid.
The prospect filled Jason’s narrow chest with panic. There might follow a scene in the dining room. And then, who knew, some kind of embarrassing administrative fall-out to do with misrepresentations to guests which could stain his otherwise unblemished managerial reputation.
‘OK if I go in?’ Dylan repeated, louder. The hotel manager seemed to be in some sort of trance. But Jason was only racking his brains for a reason to keep Dylan out of Kegs. None were springing to mind.
Dylan decided to take matters into his own hands. He was starving, and a waiter had just gone past with a vast plate of sausages nestling up to a creamy yellow pile of scrambled egg. He felt as if he could eat the plate as well. But as he started towards the restaurant, a hand shot out and grabbed his arm.
Dylan found himself staring into Jason’s agitated face. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ the manager said, ‘but I’m afraid you can’t go in there.’
‘Why not?’ asked Dylan irritably. Another plate of bacon had just gone past and he felt himself almost swooning in its savoury slipstream. ‘Because I’m not a guest in this place? Is that it?’
The suggestion struck Jason almost as divine intervention. As Greenleaf had on his usual trousers, he’d been about to go with ‘no jeans in the restaurant’.
‘That’s it,’ he said, shaking his neat head in mock sorrow. ‘Kegs is for hotel guests only at breakfast, I’m afraid. I’ll have to ask you to eat in Pumps.’
Dylan was about to object. He was paying a fortune to stay in Bess’s Tower; he should be able to sit where he wanted. On the manager’s knee if he liked. He let it pass, however. Dylan wanted food far more than he wanted an argument.
