by Simon Parke
‘Don’t distract, Abbot, it won’t help. I’m holding every card in this room and I want to know where she came from. Was she in the cupboard?’
‘You do know Barnabus didn’t die of stab wounds.’
Abbot Peter wanted to make this clear, but Bella wasn’t interested:
‘She was in the cupboard, yes?’
‘She may have been.’
‘That’s all I needed to know, Abbot! Wasn’t so hard, was it? And you’re spared the knife - if not much else.’
‘You didn’t murder Barnabus.’
‘And I didn’t murder you - it was suicide!’
With dainty ballet steps, she approached the condemned and his scaffold, and would have finished the short journey but for a force of nature which removed her from her feet.
Eighty One
‘I should have thought of it,’ said Peter.
‘You should have thought of what?’ asked Tamsin, on entering the kitchen.
She was a late arrival, Virgil and the Abbot already settled at the table, hands holding cups of strong tea with two sugars. She’d overseen the removal of Bella Amal to Lewes police station; and Pat, or Patience as her mother called her, to Brighton Hospital. Rebecca had accompanied her there.
‘A priest hole in Henry House,’ said Peter.
‘It was all those damnable Catholic plots against Good Queen Bess,’ said Virgil.
‘A monarchist in our midst?’
‘Too bloody right I am,’ declared Virgil.
‘The Abbot’s still adjusting to a land without pharaohs,’ said Tamsin.
But Virgil is stirred:
‘And Elizabeth was way too lenient, giving them all that benefit-of-the-doubt nonsense.’
‘Not something her sister Mary had done,’ said Peter.
‘God, no! But the papists got their comeuppance in the end!’ Tamsin coughed.
‘Is there a beginner’s version available - for those who don’t subscribe to Obscure History Weekly?’
It was Peter who spoke:
‘To understand the origins of priest hole in English society, you need know only this: under Elizabeth, the saying of the Roman Catholic Mass was made illegal. So if Catholic households wanted to continue the practice, they had to take precautions.’
‘Precautions against what?’
‘Sudden and unannounced searches by priest-hunters.’
‘Avoiding priests I can understand, but seeking them out?’
Peter says: ‘Whatever you think of their beliefs - and you think nothing of them, I know - you couldn’t fault them for courage.’
‘Fair point,’ added the monarchist Virgil. ‘It was a damnably risky business being a Roman priest in those days. Today, and no disrespect, a Mass is just a Mass, but in those days, it could be fatal. In 1591, a priest was hanged outside a house in London, where three months earlier, he’d conducted an illegal service.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘So if you wanted a priest in your house, you needed to be able to hide him and hide him jolly well! False walls and all that, some very clever builders, creating secret space, not only for the priests but also for all their religious tat - chalices, copes and candlesticks, the whole caboodle.’
‘I was at East Riddlesden Hall last year,’ said Peter, rubbing his neck unconsciously. He could still feel the wire and perhaps he always would. ‘The priest hole there is an offshoot of the chimney, which as we now discover, is the same in Henry House.’
‘But here in Henry House,’ added Virgil, ‘it’s larger than most, much larger - which was just the best discovery for a boy like me, in need of another world to escape to.’
‘Your very own Narnia.’
‘It was in a way. I mean, generally the priest holes were small, seriously small, no fresh air, no toilet, cramped and dark; and with searches sometimes lasting two weeks, it was pretty hellish for the poor priests stuck inside.’
‘A lonely vigil.’
‘And sometimes a fatal vigil. It wasn’t uncommon for priests to die of starvation or lack of oxygen.’
Tamsin seeks clarification: ‘So the government knew about the existence of the priest holes?’
‘Oh yes, they knew about them,’ said Virgil. ‘That’s why the search would take so long: they’d know they were there, but could they find the damn things? And the answer was, no, they couldn’t always. They’d rip out panelling, tear up floors - with the terrified priest perhaps just a foot away, behind a wall and scared to breathe.’
Abbot Peter took up the story:
‘Nicholas Owen was the most famous builder of priest holes. He built the hideouts at East Riddlesden Hall, the one I saw, and at Chesterton Hall, where he incorporated it into a water closet.’
‘And from what I remember,’ said Virgil, ‘the government thanked him with a river trip to the Tower of London where they tortured him to death on the rack.’
It was something of a conversation-stopper.
‘We need to get on,’ said Tamsin. There was only so much history and torture she could endure, and much work to be done. But Peter had a little further digging to do.
‘You clearly became fascinated by history as a child, Virgil.’
‘Well, living here, it was hard not to be,’ replied the force of nature who’d flown out of the wall, and smashed and crashed into the Lord of Misrule, now nursing five cracked ribs in a police cell in Lewes. ‘Especially after I found the hideout, which my parents knew nothing about. History was my escape, no pun intended.’
‘And my saving tonight.’
‘Pleased to be of assistance, Abbot. So three raucous cheers for Nicholas Owen and the hole-builders!’
‘I remember your father calling you a “disappearing child”.’
‘And I was, it was such a great hole, and unusual of course, providing not only a hiding place but also a laddered chute down to the floor below, coming out in what is now the office - but used to be the morning room.’
‘The “morning room”?’ said Tamsin. ‘What on earth is that?’ She’d not grown up in a large country house.
‘The room you go to in the morning,’ said Virgil. What else would a morning room be?
‘Why?’
‘Why? Well, you’d go to read the paper, receive guests, write poetry, that sort of thing.’
Tamsin thought you should go to work in the morning, rather than sit around wasting time.
‘So it’s not surprising that Bella didn’t see me coming.’
Peter: ‘She saw everything in this place, except the priest hole.’ Virgil: ‘Who said the study of history’s worthless, eh?’
This was aimed at Tamsin.
‘Virgil, we may need to speak to you again,’ she said. ‘But thank you for your night’s work.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Peter.
It was the cue for the saviour to leave.
‘Not at all,’ he said, jumping to his feet. ‘It must be good to know the investigation’s over. Wretched business, of course.’
Abbot Peter walked with Virgil into the hall where he suddenly seemed on edge.
‘Would you mind if I just took a quick look upstairs, Abbot?’
‘Well, I suppose not.’
‘It’s just the room I’d like to see.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Peter felt embarrassed at his hesitation, and this was the trouble with murder: it nurtured suspicion and destroyed the trust from which all good things grow. He was meant to be guiding Virgil to the exit, seeing him off the premises, a crime scene once again. But what harm a quick look upstairs? How could you deny a man one last glimpse of his childhood bedroom?
‘You go up,’ he said. ‘I’ll tarry awhile, as they say.’
Virgil climbed
the wooden stairs and disappeared down the corridor. Peter climbed slowly behind him, not wishing to intrude - but aware of the police presence. He stood in the gallery, loitering, there but not there, like a prison guard when his hand-cuffed escort must relieve himself by the side of the road. He looked around the darkness. It was here in the gallery, of course, that Tamsin had seen the ghost of the Irish Harlequin, and he was remembering her hallway scream... when suddenly he was brought back to the present, a heavy sobbing, the sound of choking, jerky tears. It came from down the corridor, the sound of a male lament, heaving grief followed by silence. Peter waited. A further minute passed, and then Virgil appeared from the darkness, returned to Peter’s side and together, they descended the stairs and walked out to the car in silence.
‘Hard for you to leave?’ said Peter.
‘Very,’ said Virgil, looking down at his feet, as he fumbled for his keys. ‘But we won’t open that can of worms, nothing good to be achieved by that, what’s done is done.’
With eyes that could neither look on the house, nor say goodbye, he got into his car and drove away.
Eighty Two
Peter watched Virgil go... and remembered his own childhood bedroom: a bland room, in a bland house in a bland road. What would he do now if he were allowed back? And what would he say to the boy who once slept there, suffocated there, hoping against hope for something better?
Needing cold air and solitude, he wandered round to the side of the house where the bonfire had burned on the lawn. It was like going back stage after the play, when the machinery of performance is revealed.
‘So that’s how it was done!’
Of the terrible conflagration, there was little left now, just a rim of untouched wood around the edge, blackened by flame but not destroyed; and the heat, smouldering still in orange embers beneath the settling veil of ash.
Twice saved from the noose tonight, a prisoner two-times reprieved, the events of the evening remained fresh and chaotic and he wanted the chaos to leave. He listened to the breath he had no right to breathe, and felt both the panic and calm of the scaffold. Had Hafiz known such things and survived? He smiled as he remembered more lines from the Persian craftsman:
Now that all your worry
has proved such an unlucrative business,
Why not find a better job?
So much had happened, and so intensely, he’d almost forgotten how the evening had begun, with a phone call from Kate Karter. And such a fine performance from then on, a performance he hadn’t seen coming, and better than many he’d endured at the Theatre Royal. But now? Now everything for thespian Kate would change. He wasn’t meant to be alive, this had not been her plan. So had the police knocked on her door yet? Had they interrupted the household calm and asked if Mrs Karter was in? And had they yet mentioned that they were arresting her for being an accessory to attempted murder on two counts, and that she did not have to say anything but that it may harm her defence if she didn’t mention when questioned something which she later relied on in court - and that anything she did say may be given in evidence? Perhaps they had, and perhaps she’d left with them quietly, telling her husband she’d done it for him, done it for them, love you!
And in the silence of the empty house, would he finish his half- drunk hot chocolate? And would he keep the TV on for company or turn it off and cry? And how would he feel about no more parents’ evenings, no more marking, no more rude and ungrateful young people, no more reason for living? A supply teacher would be taking his classes tomorrow, every downfall good for someone, every disgrace a joy for another. And what would the headlines say and would there be pictures, and would he be recognised, and how now to speak with his neighbours and what to say to his friends?
***
‘We’ll be all right now, Gerald,’ said Kate. ‘Believe me.’
She sounded confident in the safety of their front room.
‘How so?’
‘I’ve sorted things.’
‘You’ve sorted things.’
Why could Gerald not believe her?
‘Yes, I’ve sorted things, not easy but I have, so for God’s sake sound a little grateful at least!’
Pause.
‘How did she know, Kate?’
Kate had finally told him about the threats Bella had made. She hadn’t told Gerald the full story of events since then, just that she’d sorted things.
‘I don’t know how she knew, but she did know.’
‘And where were you tonight?’
‘Sorting things.’
Silence, a weary quiet... some news programme but neither of them listening.
‘I’m tired of this,’ he said.
‘You’re tired?’
Gerald could be so self-obsessed sometimes, like he had any reason to be tired!
‘I’m tired of the chase.’
‘There’s no chase now, that’s what I’m saying.’
‘There’s always a chase, Kate, the past is a tracker dog, always getting closer.’
‘And who’s to blame for that?’
There was no answer, there’d never been an answer, not a good one, just the exhaustion of the fox at the end of the run, aching lungs and weak-legged, staggering from one hide to another, the baying hounds and the dull terror of a future closing in.
‘What makes us free, Kate?’
‘Not getting caught, my dear old fool.’
There was a knock on the door, and then another, harder.
‘I’ll go,’ said Kate. ‘Love you.’
***
Peter looked across the lawn, back towards Henry House, towards the office window, events lived once again.
Bella, the terrifying Bella, with three scores to settle, three suspects tried and found guilty: the husband, the lover and the monk - the monk adjudged guilty of ‘unnecessary assistance in the desert’. Barnabus had left his marriage for the desert and somehow never returned. The blame would be spread evenly and cruelly.
And how was Pat tonight? The fighting, hurting, fainting Pat, receiving treatment after her office heroics. She’d been deceitful herself, false identity and address to keep her life free from her father’s gaze. Her account of events would be heard soon enough. And Bella’s role in an evening she didn’t attend would be interesting to hear as well. But now? Now something was gnawing at Peter’s peace.
‘It must be good to know the investigation’s over,’ Virgil had said, as he left the kitchen.
But it wasn’t over, Peter knew that. The investigation was advanced but not over. Bella had stabbed with intent to kill, but she hadn’t caved his head in with the poker. The killer of Barnabus Hope was still out there, preparing for bed, sipping their tea, watching the same sparkling explosions now lighting the Stormhaven sky.
So who would that be?
Eighty Three
‘So what happens in therapy, Uncle?’
Peter and Tamsin sat on the small sofa in the hallway of Henry House. After the drama of the evening, they sought vague conversation, musings of a wandering nature. Tamsin even tucked her arm inside Peter’s. They could have been father and daughter.
‘It isn’t rocket science.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
‘Above all else, a therapist is simply a witness to your story, a companion in your search for the truth of your life.’
‘But how does that happen?’
‘It varies. But the client tells their story as best they can, they share their pain, their hopes, their nightmares.’
‘And the therapist?’
‘The therapist simply mirrors their truth back to them, so the client can better see it.’
‘That all sounds very passive.’
‘No, good mirroring is active and the result of active listening which can be exh
austing.’
‘But it’s still an unequal exchange.’
‘It’s an unequal exchange in terms of information shared. It’s not a normal conversation. Apart from anything else, it’s a conversation that must always stay on the territory of the client. The therapist isn’t there to talk about their own problems.’
There was a pause in the dark hallway.
‘Still wouldn’t be my first port of call.’
‘It’s not anyone’s first port of call, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘In fact, it’s usually the last resort, when nothing else has worked. No one crawls onto the therapist’s shore, unless their boat is full of holes - or sunk.’
‘So people walk in and spill their secrets?’
‘They’ll probably want to test the therapist out.’
‘Make sure they’re competent?’
‘To make sure they’re safe. To enter into the world of the client, the therapist must first receive an invitation, and that has to be earned. They have to prove themselves safe.’
‘How?’
‘By listening... by never believing the label the client - or anyone else - has put on themselves... and by paying careful attention to the life and mystery behind the label.’
‘Well, it’s a nice idea.’
‘No, for most people it’s a pretty scary idea, the idea of being discovered.’
‘You can always bluff.’
‘No one can bluff. People’s words reveal who they are.’
‘Words can deceive.’
‘Not for any length of time.’ Pause.
Peter: ‘You really don’t trust therapists, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Whenever I see the word, I see two words, “the rapist”.’
‘Savage.’
‘It’s how it is.’
‘And that’s probably a story in itself,’ said Peter.
There was no way Tamsin would allow anyone a peep behind the scenes of her carefully constructed life, absolutely not, this she knew.
‘And I certainly wouldn’t come here,’ she said, ‘no matter how many qualifications Frances has. I mean, would you tell her anything?’
