by Rebecca Tope
‘I imagine you feel a need to understand the place, if you’re going to be here for a few weeks,’ said Janice, understandingly.
Here, Thea realised, was another person who could easily have fed Yvonne Parker’s cats. It was becoming increasingly clear that she had other less obvious roles to perform. Like guarding the roses from Stevie Horsfall.
‘Mum!’ A girl’s voice came from somewhere behind the copper beech. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Coming, Rube,’ Janice called back.
The daughter of the house came slowly down the short drive, her head cocked enquiringly at the sight of Thea. She seemed to be about sixteen. She was probably five feet ten, making her at least an inch shorter than her mother. Together they made a formidable pair. ‘This is Thea,’ Janice introduced. ‘My daughter, Ruby. Stevie’s been up to his tricks again,’ she added.
Ruby was fair-haired, with the natural grace of a girl her age, but she had hard lines in her face, her jaw chiselled from stone. She kicked angrily at a small stone, and ground her teeth. ‘It can’t go on,’ she growled. ‘We’ve got six weeks of it, if we don’t do something. There won’t be a flower left in the garden, otherwise. The gate doesn’t stop him.’
‘We could pay to send him to a summer camp,’ said Janice lightly.
‘Or get a Rottweiler,’ said the girl.
Thea had the impression that it was a well-rehearsed conversation. The lurking sense of helplessness and frustration was all too apparent. ‘It must be a real pain,’ she sympathised.
‘You understand why Yvonne felt she had to get a house-sitter,’ said Janice. ‘We’ll have to do the same if we decide to go away. I don’t suppose you’re free, are you?’ She laughed to indicate a lack of seriousness. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added. ‘We’ll leave it until September, when at least he’ll be at school for most of the day.’
‘We can’t, Mum,’ said Ruby with exaggerated composure. ‘I’ll be at college.’
‘Oh, well …’ Janice tailed off.
‘I expect I’ll see you again,’ said Thea, aware that she was detaining them. ‘I’m off to do some exploring.’
Although tiny on the map, the village was so multi-levelled that it felt as if a plunge down one of the steep little side streets might open out into a whole new area of settlement, much as it did in Blockley. The sporadic summer traffic heading for the Manor was easily negotiated as she led the spaniel cautiously along the narrow road into the village. She could see the yellow church with a squat tower, a triangle of buildings set around it. The first landmark she noticed was a pale stone wall with strange circular shapes set into it. It bordered the route to the pub: a quiet untravelled street, several feet lower than the slightly larger and busier road to her right.
Jumbled was the word that came to mind as she scanned the scene before her. Then she quickly adjusted her impression to something more admiring. No two roofs were the same, the whole picture offering very few straight lines. The hill that rose close by felt protective on this sunny morning – in other seasons it might well seem more of a threatening, looming presence. The colours of the stone were variations on the usual Cotswold creamy-yellow, the scents all of natural vegetation and warm earth. There was honeysuckle somewhere, her nose informed her.
Nobody greeted her. There was activity in the tiny car park next to the Snowshill Arms, and people were talking somewhere close by, but she and her dog attracted no attention. Because, she realised, this was a village inured to strangers. Thousands of people came every year to see the Manor, and many of them would take a little walk down this very street, call in at the pub and perhaps the church, take a few photos and drive away again. On a summer Sunday, the only surprise was that she was not part of a much larger throng of pedestrian visitors. Most of them seemed to be firmly inside their cars.
All the houses looked satisfyingly old to her reasonably tutored eye. There was no modern sprawl on the outskirts of Snowshill, as there was in Cranham and other places. Here there remained a sense of isolation, thanks to the long featureless approach from virtually every side along rising ground, which lent itself to the growing of corn rather than the erection of dwellings. The tourists could be redefined as pilgrims to the small oasis without too much whimsy. The pub itself was plainly of ancient origins, any urge to modernise thwarted by the lack of space and impossible levels.
She admitted to herself that she was in no rush to return to Hyacinth House, with the hornets and the malicious Stevie. The cats had yet to manifest any interest in her, content to eat the food she provided and leave it at that. Perhaps she ought to climb the nearest hill, which one guidebook had claimed to be the most significant feature in the area. Oat Hill was, apparently, the highest point for some miles. It certainly looked steep, and she doubted her stamina was sufficient to comfortably reach the summit.
It was also nearly lunchtime and she was hungry. Never eager to venture into a pub on her own, she decided not to seek sustenance there. It probably refused admittance to dogs, anyway. Instead, she would take a quick exploratory walk around the church, emerging onto the higher street from which she might be able to see the famous Manor.
This, she confirmed to herself, was indeed the heart of the village, with very few further houses to be discovered. Surrounding the church was a modest area of grass, with one small patch outside the church wall, to the north, that might at a stretch designate itself as the village green. It boasted a wooden seat for good measure.
The church was much more in harmony with its immediate landscape than many she had seen, the low tower making no attempt to compete with the hills surrounding it. The houses clustered companionably on every side, quietly ignoring the tourists and pretending it was still the eighteenth century. There was no hint of a service going on in the church, despite the day of the week. After all, she told herself, this was hardly a village of sufficient size to warrant a full-time vicar – and that meant fortnightly or even monthly Sunday services. As she passed between church and pub, she noted a board listing several small churches in the same group, all represented by the same overworked clergyman.
A young man was standing close by, taking photographs of the buildings, carefully considering his angles, squinting at the sky before getting down on one knee and pointing his lens at the church tower. Thea was tempted to creep up behind him to share in the view he was capturing, but she resisted. He was unlikely to take kindly to a spaniel tangling her lead in his ankles just as he found the perfect frame.
There was nothing left to do and she began to feel conspicuous, dawdling aimlessly through the little streets. She could perhaps find somewhere quiet and send a text to Jessica. Somewhere quiet, she repeated to herself with a smile. That would not be difficult. Like many another Cotswold village, quietness was the default condition. Isolated, and secluded as well in this instance, even with the famous Manor no distance away and visitors part of the backdrop. Snowshill was not as utterly deserted as Frampton Mansell or Duntisbourne Abbots had been, but it was still very far from busy.
She sat on the seat provided, her back to the church wall, and extracted the BlackBerry from her pocket. After several months, it still gave her a little thrill as she tapped a finger on one icon after another, keyed in the message and sent it winging its way to her daughter. The signal was strong, and she wondered whether she should contact anybody else to ease her growing sense of loneliness.
But who? Drew was the first name that sprang to mind, but she really couldn’t call him on an unjustified whim. Her mother would be pleased to chat, but the sort of exchange she could offer was not what Thea was looking for. She always felt restless and somehow uneasy after speaking to her mother, as if more had been required of her than she had been able to give. She had two sisters and a brother, but they would all draw alarmed conclusions from a sudden phone call in the middle of a Sunday.
Instead, she idly thumbed some of the options on the screen, and found herself reading a list of websites featuring Snowshill. The ability to do this wit
hout a phone line or a computer, out in the open air, was still a great novelty and she could hardly believe it when it worked.
She followed a blog, selected at random, in which a keen walker had passed through this very spot a year ago, and seen a ghost in the Gents of the Snowshill Arms. Convinced of its authenticity, he had researched the history of the area and discovered a monastery on the site, with taverns and inns provided for travellers. Always fascinated by history, Thea lost herself in imaginings of bygone days on the very spot where she was sitting.
It passed a very pleasant twenty minutes, Hepzie contentedly flopped at her side. At the end of it, she had perused a repetitive series of accounts of the Manor and the man who had bought it in 1919, who dabbled in black magic in the attics and entertained famous writers, several of whom found his growing collection of bizarre objects more than a little strange. Lots of people were perfectly certain that there were ghosts abroad in Snowshill, though almost entirely confined to the eccentric Manor. Nobody else had seen a wraith in the Gents at the pub.
And still the boyish features of Drew Slocombe hovered before her mind’s eye, more insistent than any ghost could be. She wanted to know how his wife was doing, whether his business was suffering badly while he was occupied at Karen’s bedside, and what was happening to his children.
Then, within five minutes, as if she had conjured him by the power of thought, a text popped up on the screen.
Are you in the Cotswolds again? If so, would you be able to go and see Mrs Simmonds’ grave? I haven’t been for months as you can imagine. The field could do with a check, too. Best, Drew.
It was such a polite and formal message, she laughed aloud, startling her dog. Perhaps Drew too had a shiny new phone which could compose and send messages almost telepathically, with little of the painful laborious thumbing that there had been a year or two before. He certainly seemed to have mastered it at last.
She sent a quick reply.
No problem. Hope things are ok? Thea.
A shadow falling across her legs made her look up. A tall woman stood over her, her back to the sun, making her face hard to see clearly. ‘You’ve been sitting there for ages, playing with that phone.’ The tone held a hint of accusation.
‘I was reading about Snowshill. Did you know that Charles Paget Wade was a vampire?’
‘Rubbish. Of course he wasn’t.’
‘It’s a good story, though. Especially these days when vampires are all the rage.’
‘“All the rage”?’ The repetition of the phrase was made with amused scorn. ‘What an old-fashioned thing to say.’
‘I’m not making a very good impression, am I?’ said Thea, rather seriously. ‘Let me stand up, and I won’t feel at such a disadvantage.’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll sit down. I could do with a rest.’
The newcomer sank onto the wooden seat and turned sideways, offering a hand. ‘I’m Clara Beauchamp,’ she said formally. ‘I live here.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Thea Osborne, house-sitting for Yvonne Parker. I assume you know her?’
‘Oh yes. We never thought she’d finally bite the bullet, though. You know, she hasn’t seen Victor since he left. And that’s been years now.’
‘Five, apparently.’
‘Blimey! Is it really? Feels like last week.’
Thea wanted to retort ‘Blimey’? Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned? but she kept her peace. ‘Do you know a badly behaved child called Stevie? Must be nine or ten, and appears to run wild.’
Clara Beauchamp’s face tightened. ‘Little swine. He’s the bane of all our lives. You should watch out for that dog of yours.’ Hepzie met the woman’s eye with placid unconcern.
‘His mother struck me as more than capable of keeping him under control, if she made the effort. If he’s like that now, what’ll he be doing when he’s sixteen?’
‘She does her best, I suppose. I never thought I’d say it, but it’s tempting to think the kid was born bad. The whole exercise was doomed from the start.’
‘Oh?’ Thea met the woman’s eyes, registering her as roughly her own age, big-boned and fair-haired. A faint whiff of horse seemed to emanate from her, which probably explained Hepzie’s interested sniffing of her legs.
‘It’s a long story. And a lot of it’s just gossip and supposition, anyway. Two centuries ago, she’d have been labelled as a witch.’
‘Witches and vampires! I seem to have blundered into a time warp here.’ And indeed, that was how she was beginning to feel. Genuinely feral children were definitely unknown in the twenty-first century.
‘This village hasn’t changed so very much in that time, in some respects. The Manor has always brought visitors who spread stories about it and give Snowshill a reputation for weirdness.’ She waved an expressive hand at a high wall beyond the pub. Beyond it Thea could just see a roof, apparently belonging to a large old building.
‘Is that the Manor?’ she said with a frown. ‘I thought it was a mile or more away, from the signs.’
Clara Beauchamp laughed. ‘It’s a trick. You have to drive nearly half a mile to the car park, and then walk back on yourself. You can’t even get in on foot from the centre of the village.’
‘I’m amazed,’ Thea confessed. ‘That seems like something in a dream, or maybe an optical illusion.’ She shook her head, wondering why she found it so startling. ‘And those little houses. They’ve all got National Trust colours to the paintwork.’ She was focused on a row of small dwellings that looked like almshouses. The dark greeny-blue was repeated on a doorway at the end of the Manor wall. The sense of unreality intensified.
Clara laughed again. ‘It’s always good fun, watching people realise how it all fits together. Often they come back three or four times before the penny drops.’
‘It’s a whole other world,’ said Thea, not quite sure that she liked it.
‘We are rather cut off,’ Clara agreed. ‘Especially when it snows. And it does snow here, quite a lot. The parish council even has a snow warden, would you believe?’
‘Stevie,’ prompted Thea. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Okay – his mother, Gudrun, is a single parent, had him when she was forty-four. Her only one. Invested everything in him. Spoilt him rotten, so he thinks he rules the world.’
‘Good-run?’ Thea repeated. ‘Is that what you said?’
‘G-U-D-R-U-N. Like in Women in Love, the D.H. Lawrence novel. It’s Swedish or German or something, I think. Awful name, if you ask me.’
‘She doesn’t look remotely Scandinavian.’
‘No. I assume her mother liked the book, same as mine. Except it was Sons and Lovers in my case.’
Thea grimaced helplessly. ‘You’ve lost me. I don’t think I’ve ever read any Lawrence.’
Clara Beauchamp’s cheerful laugh erupted for a third time. ‘You’re too young. Our mothers were mad about him – yours too, I expect. He was “all the rage” in the sixties, apparently. In any case, it gives me and Gudrun something in common.’ She used her fingers to draw the inverted commas in the air.
Precious little, thought Thea, remembering the gypsy-like woman. ‘She must be a lot older than she looks. I guessed about forty-eight.’
‘She’ll be fifty-four next week, as it happens. She was born two days before my eldest sister – who is furious about it, because on a bad day she can look at least sixty. Not fair at all when you consider how much she spends on anti-ageing stuff. Gudrun just has the right bones and skin, apparently.’
‘Does Stevie have a father?’
Clara’s face constricted, her mouth clamped shut. Thea waited, head slightly cocked, eyes wide. The reply, when it came, was disappointing. ‘Nobody knows who he was. There are various malicious stories but I don’t believe any of them. Gudrun has never told a soul, to my knowledge. Certainly, if she has, that person knows how to keep a secret.’
‘I get the impression that you like her?’ Thea hazarded. ‘You think Gudrun’s all right?’
‘That’s entirely the wrong question. She’s elemental, a free spirit, a force to be reckoned with. It’s not a matter of liking her. Most of us just gaze on with open mouths as she forges through life without a second thought. Gudrun gets what she wants, without ever thinking about it. Even when it turns out to be a huge mistake, she doesn’t agonise, like other people would.’
‘So you’re saying Stevie was a huge mistake?’
‘Oh yes. About as huge as they come.’
‘Poor little chap,’ said Thea sadly.
Chapter Five
Sunday lunch was a late affair, comprising a bowl of soup and a cheese sandwich. Catering for herself during the house-sitting commissions was sometimes difficult and frequently boring. Now and then she would be given free access to a well-stocked freezer, as part of the deal. More usually, she was expected to fend for herself, driving ten miles or more to a supermarket in one of the larger towns. Often she grabbed basic necessities in small expensive village shops, or those attached to petrol stations. Occasional meals in local pubs were disproportionately welcomed, as a result.
It had been a relief to meet and talk to Clara Beauchamp, who had vaguely offered her company one evening in the following week, if Thea felt the need. ‘I live with my boyfriend, half a mile from here,’ she said. ‘And my mother’s in that house there.’ She had pointed to a classic Cotswold cottage halfway down the street. ‘I work in Cirencester, so I’m never here during the day. Rupert’s in town all week, so it would be nice if you could come over. I’ve got Yvonne’s landline number – I’ll call you. Or should I take yours?’ She eyed the BlackBerry still in Thea’s hand.
With a small effort, Thea recited her mobile number. How Phil would approve, she thought ruefully. Only a year before, she had been wilfully technophobic, much to her lover’s irritation. Now, not only was she enthusiastically using the thing, the yet more resistant Drew Slocombe was blithely sending texts, and perhaps even developing a website for his business.
