Dry Bones

by Sally Spencer

  I claim no credit for getting them to talk, incidentally. There is little skill in getting men who have already started slurring their words to gabble on – though there is considerable skill in getting them to shut up.

  After listening to my new pals talk for fifteen minutes or so, I began to mentally weed out some of the characters that I had brought with me in the back of the van.

  The first to go was Betsey Weaver from Kansas City – calico dress, wide smile and an all fired-up enthusiasm – ‘I knew I had to trace my ancestors right back to this cute little village of yours, or I’d just die.’ She had served me well on several occasions, but I thought the Boulting family – or at least, the family member in residence at the moment – might not exactly take to her.

  Next to fall by the wayside were Tania Taylor the estate agent – ‘We have big plans for developing this area, and anyone who comes in with us on the ground floor could make himself a real killing,’ – and Alice Blunt, the county council civil engineer and all-round bloody-minded bureaucrat – ‘Granted, it seems a real pity that the road would run right through the middle of your living room, but that’s what it says on the plans, and unless you’ve got a very good reason why it shouldn’t, that is where it’s going to run’. Again, they had been loyal foot soldiers and served my devious purposes well, but they would be of no use to me now because, quite simply, you should never try to bribe or threaten a family that has been in residence for over five hundred years.

  Linda Moore and Elaine Eccles were also posted into the reject slot, which left me with Poppy James – all wide-brimmed hat, white dress patterned with big black spots, and conspicuous cleavage.

  The costume donned, an easel and paint box tucked under my arm, I make my way up the country lane to Kneebury Manor.

  It is an old Tudor manor house with a built-in moat and, though I hate myself for being impressed, I just can’t help it.

  I cross the drawbridge (how cute is that – and so practical if you’re feeling anti-social!). I ring the bell in the massive oak door at the other side of the moat, and my ring is answered by a man in his late twenties. He is really rather attractive, in a schoolboy-ish, gauche sort of way, and if I had an afternoon to spare, and he wasn’t involved in the investigation …

  ‘I’m looking for the owner of this lovely house,’ I say, gazing at him over the top of the huge glasses that I always wear with my Poppy outfit. ‘It doesn’t happen to be you, does it?’

  ‘Gosh, no, it belongs to my parents, and they’re off on a safari in Kenya at the moment, no doubt slaughtering some animals who never wished them any ill will at all,’ he says. ‘I’m Arthur, their younger son,’ he holds out his hand to me, ‘and I’m looking after the place while they’re away.’

  Full marks to the Headless Horseman Public Bar Intelligence Unit, I think, as I raise my hand to shake his.

  The inevitable happens. My easel slips free, my paint-box follows. Microseconds later, they both hit the ground, the easel with a dull thud, the paint-box with a metallic chink and tinny bounce.

  What a ditz I am!

  Arthur and I crouch down almost simultaneously, and it is only by the narrowest of margins that we avoid our foreheads colliding.

  ‘I’m so clumsy,’ I say, reaching for my easel.

  ‘It could have happened to anybody,’ Arthur assures me, collecting up my paints.

  As we stand up again, both of us recognise that things have changed. From being complete strangers a moment ago, we have now shared in a mildly amusing incident, and there has been some bonding.

  I smile, to reward him for his efforts, and then allow my face to slowly fill with signs of nervous hope.

  ‘If you’re in charge of the house, that means you can give me the permission I need,’ I bite my lower lip slightly – Oscar-winning stuff, this is – ‘but I don’t want you to do it against your will. I mean, I wouldn’t like to think that I’m pressuring you in any way.’

  His face quickly clouds over. Perhaps he’s imagining that I’m going to ask him if I can bring fifty orphans here for the day, or maybe hold the annual conference of some nudist organisation in the great hall. Whatever he’s thinking, he isn’t exactly happy.

  ‘What sort of permission would you be wanting?’ he asks, looking really sad that he’s going to have to turn a pretty girl like me down.

  I hold up my easel to him as a sort of visual aid, even though – after our scramble on the floor – he’s already very familiar with it.

  ‘I’d like to paint a picture of the house,’ I say.

  He emits a gasp of relief and follows it with a lopsided grin.

  ‘I don’t think you need anyone’s permission to do that,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe I didn’t express myself very well,’ I tell him. ‘I know that in theory I don’t need your permission, but I like to know how people will feel about it before I begin to paint their house, because if they wouldn’t like it, well, I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it.’

  He gives me a look that seems to say that he thinks I’m the most gorgeous butterfly that he’s ever seen, and he would give anything in the world to have me in his collection.

  ‘Would you like to come in for a drink, before you get started?’ he suggests, trying his best to hide the eagerness that is starting to bubble up inside him. ‘And maybe, if you have the time, I could show you around the place. Someone with your interests might find it … er …’

  He is stuck here, because he doesn’t want to repeat himself, but he can’t think of another word to replace interesting.

  I decide to rescue him.

  ‘I might find it fascinating,’ I suggest.

  ‘Exactly,’ he agrees, with some relief.

  ‘Thank you, that would be really marvellous,’ I say.

  Do I feel guilty about exploiting a nice man like he so obviously is? No! As a reward for his kindness, he will get to spend an hour or so with a really nice girl (even if the girl he thinks he’s spending his time with isn’t actually me), so what’s there to feel guilty about?

  You would expect a house like this to be full-to-bursting with servants – serious-looking middle-aged men with side-whiskers and dressed in frock coats, young women with white starched aprons and white crochet caps.

  Not here!

  Here, we seem to have the whole place to ourselves.

  ‘My parents are forced to rely on agency workers,’ Arthur says, reading my puzzlement. ‘It’s been virtually impossible to get reliable, permanent servants since the war. There’s just no respect for tradition, any more.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that you don’t feel like being a domestic servant when you’ve played your own small part in defeating Adolf Hitler.’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh, not that war,’ he says dismissively. ‘It’s the Great War I’m talking about.’

  ‘Do you mean the one that ended thirty years before you were even born?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s right,’ he agrees, his puzzled look suggesting that he can’t even begin to guess at the point I’m trying to make.

  I don’t think I’ll ever understand these people.

  After drinks (a glass of dry sherry for Arthur, a demure iced grapefruit juice for me), we begin our tour in the banqueting hall with its minstrels’ gallery. Under normal circumstances, I’d find this part of the house fascinating, but what I want to see now – what I’m positively bursting to see now – is the famous family portrait gallery, of which my late-morning drinking club in the public bar of the Headless Horseman spoke at some length.

  Eventually, we do get to the gallery. It is a long, thin room. The paintings in it have been ordered chronologically, which means that, after we pass a few late Tudor portraits (all caps and ruffs), we are thrown into the world of the Stuarts and immediately surrounded by men in short unstiffened jackets and wide breeches hanging loose at the knee – men who strike heroic poses, but whose faces betray a disappointment (though this may just be me being fanciful) that they are not being im
mortalised by the great Van Dyck, but instead merely captured on canvas by some far less talented Dutchman.

  As we move along the gallery, I can almost smell the powder on the wigs of the gentlemen painted by a number of would-be Joshua Reynolds. And then it is work in the style of David Wilkie – heroic men and beautiful women posing woodenly against backgrounds so depressingly detailed that I could almost count the dog hairs trapped in the carpet.

  I know, I know, it’s very hard to please me!

  We have reached the beginning of the twentieth century and, though we have thus far been promenade viewing, I now come to a decided halt.

  ‘Who are those two?’ I ask, pointing to two portraits of young men set side-by-side.

  ‘Ah, they are my great-uncle Albert and my great-uncle Oswald,’ Arthur tells me.

  I quickly assess the paintings. Oswald looks cautious and dry, Albert quixotic and selfish.

  ‘It’s easy to see where you inherited your good looks from, Arthur,’ I say – shamelessly. ‘What happened to these two?’

  ‘Uncle Oswald studied law, and then joined the colonial service. He was a high court judge in several of the empire’s most important possessions. Of course, once we lost the empire, he had to come home.’

  ‘Where he died of a broken heart, brought on by thoughts that the good old days had gone forever?’ I suggest, mischievously.

  ‘No, actually, he got a job as professor of constitutional law in a provincial university, and now lives in a retirement home in Western-super-Mare. He’s quite gaga, of course, but perfectly harmless.’

  ‘And I bet Albert made a name for himself, too,’ I say.

  Arthur chuckles. ‘I suppose he did, though probably not in the way you imagine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was the black sheep of the family – altogether a bit too much of a ladies’ man.’

  He says the words with a certain amount of grudging (or do I mean guilty?) admiration.

  Most men will tell you that womanising is wrong and irresponsible, but – by God – it cheers their spirits to know that there are at least some men out there who can be both wrong and irresponsible, and can get away with it!

  He doesn’t realise it, but this particular bit of family history had already been through the wash several times before it got anywhere near him.

  A ladies’ man! A bloody ladies’ man!

  He wasn’t a ladies’ man at all, I want to scream. When girls got beyond the age of eight or nine, he lost interest in them.

  I want to scream it, but of course, I don’t.

  ‘So what happened to your great-uncle?’ I ask Arthur. ‘Did he sail away to America, and become a legendary lover in the silent pictures?’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Arthur says. ‘I rather wish he had, because that would have become a really good story. What actually happened was that, early in January 1916, he completely disappeared.’

  ‘What do you mean – he completely disappeared?’

  ‘That’s just what happened. He was a student at Oxford at the time, and one morning, when his scout took him his cup of tea, there was no sign of him. The scout thought nothing of it, because all Uncle Albert’s things still were there – his clothes, his banjo, etc. – so wherever he was, he couldn’t have gone away for long. But he had. He was never seen again.’

  ‘And what do you think happened to him?’

  ‘There’s a theory in the family that he was recruited by the secret service, and died somewhere overseas, while carrying out an important – and totally hush-hush – mission.’

  ‘And do you believe that?’

  ‘Well, I think it has to have been something of that nature, otherwise he would have contacted the family, especially when his father died, and he was entitled to a third of what was a very large estate. I mean, any man would naturally claim his birthright, wouldn’t he?’

  Yes, I think, but it’s very difficult to claim it when you’re walled up in the cellar of St Luke’s with your skull bashed in.

  I look at my watch. ‘I have to go,’ I say.

  He looks disappointed. ‘But what about your painting?’ You haven’t even made a start.’

  ‘Maybe another day,’ I lie.

  And as I cross the drawbridge, I’m thinking, ‘That’s one down – and one to go.’

  TEN

  22 October 1943

  There was no moon that night, and the whole of the Oxford that Charlie Swift had learned to love was in darkness. It was not the same sort of darkness as had existed pre-war. Back then, even when the streetlights had been switched off, there were still sources of man-made illumination – chinks of light seeping through the drawn curtains of bedrooms and living rooms, bursts of light as a car or a motorcycle passed by. Now, the exclusion of the light was total and ruthless, because there were no car headlights, and the bedrooms and living rooms were tightly sealed with blackout blinds.

  The blackout was all Germany’s fault, Swift thought sardonically, as he made his way slowly and cautiously along the High, with only a pinprick light from the centre of an otherwise blacked-out flashlight glass to guide him.

  It wasn’t that he blamed the Germans for the Blitz – that heavy aerial bombing campaign against Britain’s industrial cities, which had lasted from September 1940 to May 1941. That had been no more than an understandable retaliation for what the Royal Air Force had already done to Germany. No, what he blamed the Germans for was not sending the prime minister, Winston Churchill, a postcard to tell him the Blitz had been called off.

  He composed such a postcard in his mind.

  Dear Winston (you poor, confused, deluded old-age pensioner), This is just a quick line to let you know that you’ll have to do without the excitement of air raids from now on, because we won’t be bombing you anymore. This is a pity, after you’ve gone to the trouble of building all those air raid shelters, but you would insist on shooting down our beautiful shiny planes, so you only have yourselves to blame. We are now bombing Russia and they are not being half as unpleasant about it as you were. So now that we’ve stopped bombing you, why don’t you end this ridiculous blackout of yours? All it does is make you look foolish.

  Yours

  Adolf.

  P.S. Wish I was there (in Buckingham Palace, of course!)

  And yet, even if Hitler had been so whimsical as to send that sort of postcard (and he was more widely known for his ranting frothing-at-the-mouth speeches about annihilating his enemies than he was for his whimsicality), it wouldn’t have made any difference, Charlie thought. The government already knew that the measure was no longer necessary, but the war effort – or at least that aspect of it involved with manipulating the civilian population – rested on the twin pillars of theatre and sacrifice, and the blackout was such a perfect embodiment of both these things that the war would have to have been almost won before Churchill and his cabinet would consent to abandon it.

  Charlie grinned into the darkness, aware that his particular brand of cynicism was the very anathema of the patriotic spirit that Winston Churchill, with his bombastic and oratorical nightly radio speeches, had been doing his very best to engender.

  Well, he, Lord Charles Swift, was a patriot, too – patriotic enough to sign up for front line duties, a personal decision which could well result in his being sent home in a box (and possibly in several pieces) – but his patriotism was no reason for him to drown his mind in the sludge of crude wartime propaganda.

  He estimated he was almost at the corner arranged for his rendezvous, and whistled.

  Another whistle – slightly more tuneful than his own – answered.

  He took another cautious step forward, and felt a pair of hands rest on his shoulders. He cocked his head to one side, and kissed the man who had been waiting for him.

  The blackout had its advantages after all!

  He didn’t like James Makepeace, he thought, as he felt the other man’s tongue expertly exploring his mouth – he didn’t like him at all �
�� but it was beyond question that he was mad for him.

  Makepeace broke away, so unexpectedly soon that it might almost have been called prematurely.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Makepeace countered. ‘That was like kissing my grandmother – only not quite as exciting.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said, ‘I’m just not really in the …’

  ‘Do you have a problem with me?’ Makepeace demanded.

  In an attempt to avoid seeming petty, Charlie was about to say that no, he didn’t have a problem with anything. Then he decided that the matter which had been bothering him, had been bothering him so much that it wasn’t really petty at all.

  ‘I don’t like the way you’ve been sniffing around Lucy Jenkins,’ he said. ‘I really don’t like it.’

  ‘Ah, you’re still her knight errant, are you, defending her just like you did that first night in the refectory?’ Makepeace asked.

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ Charlie replied.

  Nor was it, because although James was right, and his aim on that particular occasion had been to defend Lucy Jenkins, this feeling he had now really wasn’t about the woman at all.

  ‘Well, are we going to stand here all night, or should we head for the pub?’ Makepeace asked.

  ‘We’ll head for the pub,’ Charlie said.

  They set off, each with his own tiny pinprick of light to guide him. They could hear each other breathing, but if they occasionally caught a glimpse of a black shape, neither could be really sure whether it was the other man they were seeing or merely a lamppost.

  They’d gone perhaps no more than fifty yards when Makepeace burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Charlie Swift demanded.

  ‘Is that really what you think I’ve been doing?’ Makepeace asked. ‘Can you possibly be imagining that I’ve been sniffing around Lucy Jenkins and doing my best to talk my way into her knickers?’

  ‘Yes – and there’s no thinking about it,’ Charlie Swift said angrily. ‘Every time I see you together, you’re stuck in some corner, giggling away like children. I noticed that you had the sense to restrain yourselves a little while her husband was here on leave, but I think he sensed that something was going on anyway, and since he doesn’t strike me as the kind of man you can mess with, I’d tread very carefully indeed the next time he comes home.’