by John Burke
‘You’re saying we’ve dreamed up our own curse?’
‘I’m saying that if successive generations have a fatalistic conviction that events will happen in rough parallel to events which have happened before, or are supposed to have happened before, then they may well be forced into happening, We may explain it by saying that even by the law of averages there must be a number of families in this country who suffer runs of bad luck and get more than their fair share of disaster. But there may be something more positive behind it all. What I’m warning you of is the danger of drifting into acceptance of such a sequence.’
‘I won’t, I promise you.’
‘And help Judith. Let her know that—’
‘I love her,’ said David simply. ‘And that she knows.’ He pushed his empty glass away from him. ‘On which note, I think for her sake and Bronwen’s we’d better join the ladies and rescue them from mother.’
* * * *
‘I thought you were never going to give up drinking and gossiping,’ Lady Brobury greeted them. ‘I hope David hasn’t been boring you with too many of his business problems, Dr. Caspian? If only he could get out of the habit of running to and from London, he might not have so many problems, eh?’
She sat slumped in an armchair covered in flowered chintz, with a cushion stuffed into her back so that she was hunched forward. Beside her right elbow was a cabinet behind whose glass doors were arrayed a couple of dozen pottery and porcelain pigs, snouts all pointing towards her chair. Judith was wriggling uncomfortably into another position on the chaise longue. Bronwen raised her eyes to her husband’s: wide green eyes, glowing a welcome below the glow of her coiled auburn hair.
‘My back,’ said Lady Brobury. ‘Sitting up so late. My back. And what about Judith? David, you have no consideration. I’m sure we’d all have liked to go to bed early. Though I did hope there might have been time for Dr. Caspian to perform for us.’
Caspian stared. ‘I’m afraid I—’
‘After what your wife has been telling us, I thought you might entertain us with a few card tricks.’
‘I’m no longer as skilled in that sort of thing as I was.’ He managed a mock reproachful glare at Bronwen. ‘It’s ages since I practised.’
‘Or some mind-reading,’ said Lady Brobury petulantly. ‘I’m given to understand that is a very popular diversion in the best salons nowadays.’
‘There, too, I’m out of practice.’
‘Then what do you do, doctor?’
Again he exchanged glances with his wife. Tired after the journey, she stifled a yawn and then wrinkled her nose at him in apology. Their minds brushed drowsily together. What did he do, indeed; what did the two of them do? If they had demonstrated their true talent for mind-reading, Lady Brobury would undoubtedly have been horrified. From the time of their first encounter in the distant Fens, through marriage and work in London, they had shared and developed the ability to commune in silent, secret conversation—and to probe into the consciousness of others. It was a rare gift; and one to be treated delicately. They used it as sparingly as possible: the psychic drain was physically exhausting, and even the most loving relationship could not have survived the naked reality of undisguised mental revelations. There had to be secrets, mysteries, reservations between a man and woman; and others should be free from telepathic trespass save in the direst emergency.
But as bodies grow sleepier, so minds relax their grip and float, drifting towards one another, bumping and grazing, sometimes caressing, and sometimes jolting away from a sudden unexpected contact.
Caspian felt Bronwen very close to him. Lazily she accepted the touch of his hand on her arm, although there was a wide stretch of carpet between them. Her skin lovingly warmed his fingertips. Her mouth puckered into a secret little smile.
Lost in the abstract pleasure of it, Caspian had failed to answer Lady Brobury’s question. Now she pushed herself up from her chair.
‘If you’ll be so good as to fetch me a lantern, David, I’ll see myself home.’
‘Mother, you know I always walk to the lodge with you.’
‘There’s no need for you to put yourself out. Not for me. Goodness knows, I ought to know the way well enough by now.’
Caspian and Bronwen felt the rise and fall of other minds; felt Judith, too, wanting to yawn and saw her turn her head away to conceal if, felt David’s wry irritation at his mother, and, out of the blur of Lady Brobury’s own random thoughts, her sharp stab of pleasure at knowing she had irritated him.
For no apparent reason Lady Brobury said: ‘Children. Such messy little things—and precious little help when they grow older. You’ll see, my dear.’ Vaguely she nodded at Judith. ‘Oh, you’ll find out soon enough. When I think what I went through with Margaret and David, and now.…’ She clutched at herself. ‘My back’s never been so bad as it is tonight. Never. I shan’t get a wink of sleep.’
‘Mother.’ David stood beside her. She pretended not to notice. ‘I’ll wager that when he arrives you’ll be the first and worst at spoiling your grandson.’
‘Or granddaughter,’ said Judith mildly.
Before another word could be spoken, Bronwen and Caspian were shaken by a screech of words through their minds, as harsh and startling as a railway engine letting off steam on a quiet country siding.
No, it has to be a boy. Has to be, this time. Born in this house.
As if momentarily aware of their reaction, Lady Brobury blinked from one to the other. Then she muttered something about her wrap and how she must say goodnight and how unnecessary it was for David to accompany her.
At the door she paused. Fumbling through memory for some remark which must have been made by somebody else and was only now becoming clear, she said:
‘But of course it will be a boy. You’ll see.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun rose above the eastern ridge and brought to life first the roof and then the dormer windows of Ladygrove Manor. Poising itself on the crest of the hill, it seemed ready to roll down the slope and set the village ablaze. Shadows fled across the fields. Under the trees of a distant knoll the ground brightened with a dappled pattern of leaf, branch, and sky. Leaning from her window, Bronwen looked out upon an idyllic English pastoral scene: timeless, unchanging, steeped forever in a tradition as radiant as the sunshine. The village chimneys puffed out trailers of smoke. Nothing else moved. It was all as still as one of her own photographs: captured, immutable, safe forever.
Bronwen was out and about early, making the most of the morning light to take pictures of various elevations of the house. This, too, belonged and could have belonged nowhere else: infused with the spirit of generation after generation of Broburys, each timber a sturdy limb of the family itself.
She included a study of the dower house, a lodge of more recent date than the main building, with a steeply pitched roof like a tall hat thrust down on a squat head and body, its thatched brim creased over almost to the shoulders. At one juncture Lady Brobury appeared under the diminutive porch, watching Bronwen focus her hand camera, and then dodged back indoors like some superstitious native afraid of losing her soul if she were trapped in a photograph.
For more ambitious work Bronwen still preferred the definition she could achieve with the old collodion process, but the need to take along a mobile dark-room, tripod camera, and other unwieldy material made travel difficult. To lighten the load on this journey she had brought a hand camera and automatic changing boxes of dry plates, which could be developed when they reached Caernarvon instead of having to be treated on the spot.
Lady Brobury chose not to join them for lunch, so conversation was freer. Bronwen noticed that whenever old friends in London were mentioned, Judith’s expression grew wistful. But then David would hurry on boisterously with some story about a neighbouring landowner, and remind her of a farmer’s children who had taken an especial fancy to her, and Judith was smiling again.
‘She hasn’t even ridden over the whole estate yet,�
� he said to Bronwen.
‘And won’t be doing so for a while yet,’ Judith said.
‘But,’ David went on enthusiastically, ‘there’s so much to see, there are such splendid tracks up and over the hill, you haven’t even begun to discover your own possessions.’
They sat and talked too long. The light had gone from the house and grounds disconcertingly early in the afternoon. When she went out again, Bronwen found it was too late to attempt pictures of the maze or the anchoress’s cell. She considered going in for a preliminary survey, but then decided to save it all for the next morning. It would be impossible today even to guess how the light would fall and what her best viewpoint would be. Instead, she announced her intention of taking some pictures in the village. There might be some interesting cottages, and she wanted a closer look at the church.
David supplied a pony and trap, and Caspian came along to drive and help her with the heavy plate boxes.
On the far side of the river, over the humped bridge, they were back in brightness. Roofs gleamed, and light struck along little alleys against plastered walls and out in slanting fingers across the dusty street. A cloud of midges danced above a cottage garden. Somewhere a dog barked incessantly. Seen at close quarters, the village was less compact, less of a picturesque whole than when viewed from a distance. Houses were set at odd angles, with little apparent concern for the lie of the land or the street. Some frontages were crumbling: laths and twigs showed through. A woman on her knees was scrubbing the doorstep of the inn, the Brobury Arms. A suspicious face appeared between lace curtains, watching the two strangers; but further up the street a man in a stained smock touched the brim of his billycock hat and said ‘Art’noon’ in a deep, affable voice.
They stopped by the churchyard wall. Caspian tethered the pony to a post by the lych-gate and gave Bronwen a hand with her equipment.
The church had a sandy red tower with a pierced parapet: sturdy, unpretentious, and, as a shaft of sunlight fell on it, as ruddy and wholesome as a cider apple. Within, the nave was higher than one would have estimated from outside, with octagonal piers and a simple but powerful hammerbeam roof.
Caspian had hardly set the plate boxes down by the inner door of the south porch when footsteps hurried up the path and followed them into the cool interior.
Mr. Goswell said: ‘How delightful to meet you again. Now you can see for yourselves the work we’re struggling to accomplish here.’
He led them proudly up the aisle towards the east end. Beyond the tower, with two plaited bell ropes looped up to either side, polished candlesticks gleamed on the altar within the chancel. Mr. Goswell bobbed a brief genuflection and looked raptly up at the plain glass of the east window, ornamented with only one red and green heraldic medallion in the centre.
‘That is where Lady Brobury will see her new window. Without her generosity I do not know how God’s work could be done.’
He waved at the north side of the chancel, newly plastered. The south wall was still in process of being cleaned. Lumps of plaster had fallen to the floor, and in one corner was a heap of fine white dust. The restoration had revealed a faded fragment of wall painting, and to one side was a memorial plaque into whose letters the mortar and plaster had been so compacted as to leave barely distinguishable outlines.
‘For years,’ intoned the vicar mournfully, ‘this was used as a storeroom. Can you credit it? A storeroom and cloakroom. The cleaners kept their brooms and buckets here, the congregation hung their coats here; and the parson conducted the entire service with his back to the altar.’ He shook his head, inviting their incredulity. ‘But now, with Lady Brobury’s beneficence.…’ He spread his arms to encompass in a slowly sweeping gesture the restored ceiling, the cross and candlesticks, and the unfinished work on the south wall. ‘But I must leave you to make your own observations. And your—ah—photographic studies. If in due course you have any prints to spare, I’d be most grateful if copies could be contributed to our parish records.’
Bronwen assured Mr. Goswell that he should certainly receive copies, and he went off with a loping stride, glancing back once as she set about her preparations.
Light through aisle and nave windows was good enough for some pictures of the interior as a whole, and the pulpit and organ. Then Bronwen moved into the chancel. She would try, none too optimistically, to photograph the hazy mural and that indecipherable plaque inside it.
‘I’ll leave you to it for a while,’ said Caspian. ‘Perhaps I can find you some other interesting subjects.’
* * * *
An old woman was snipping grass away from the borders of a grave. Its grey headstone was dwarfed by a veritable temple of red brick nearby, built hard against the south wall of the chancel within high iron railings. Two small openings to either side of a studded oak door were barred by ornamental iron grilles, and above the door itself a stone arch bore simply one name:
BROBURY
Caspian strolled past it and contemplated the vicarage, a square Georgian house reached by a gate between its garden and the churchyard.
The woman tending the grave turned to squint at him. ‘You a friend of parson’s?’
‘We’ve met. A very brief acquaintanceship.’
‘Hm.’ She bent over her task again, but as he continued to stand there turning his attention to the names and inscriptions on the nearer gravestones, she found more words. ‘If you were any friend of his, you’d tell him it’s high time he found himself a wife.’ The shears she held shrieked discordantly against the stone. ‘Where’s the sense in having a house that big, and him not married?’
‘It must be quite lonely there, yes,’ Caspian agreed politely.
‘Old Mr. Haines and his missus, they had a whole clutch of little ’uns. Knew what life was like, they did. Not natural, living there alone.’
She lowered her head, stole him another curious glance, and then worked her way round behind the headstone.
Caspian left the churchyard and walked to the end of the village street. From here a well-trodden path led to the riverbank. Here the river narrowed and there was another, smaller bridge with a hard-packed earth surface carrying the path to the far side. A beech plantation hid Ladygrove Manor and marked the rim of the Brobury estate for a quarter of a mile, giving way then to a long arc of wooden fencing. Caspian looked back. If Bronwen finished her work and came out of the church, she would be able to see him between the widely-spaced cruck cottages at the end of the village. He crossed the bridge and stood in the shade of the trees.
Water plopped gently against the bank. In the village the dog went on barking, but less insistently. From within the wood came a deeper note, a murmuring, which became a snuffling, and a rustling and crackling over leaves and twigs.
Caspian stared along the sun-speckled track between the trees.
Dark shapes hunched their way around a bend in the path. There were three, four, and then a dozen. They snorted and grunted their way towards the open. Heads dipped and greedily thrust into the beech mast; but a shout from behind drove them grumbling on their way again.
The leader raised his snout. Tiny eyes glared at Caspian. For a moment there was a threat of the whole herd of swine charging forward. But when they did come on, it was still reluctantly, as before, grubbing for a last mouthful of food as they moved. They were like no pigs he had ever seen in this country. With coarse brown skins like small wild boar, some of them had spiky little tusks, and their square snouts were those of central Europe rather than England and the Welsh Marches.
Now they were all about him, jostling and grunting. Bringing up the rear came a stocky, broad-shouldered man who stopped within the shadow of the wood the moment he saw Caspian.
When he forced himself to come out, glowering at the ground, he proved to be a weatherbeaten countryman of thirty or more summers. He wore corduroy breeches and a greasy corduroy jacket, and his cap was pulled down above dark, bushy brows. He sidled his way past Caspian with three jostling hogs between the
m.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Caspian.
The answering grunt might as well have come from one of the animals.
‘An interesting strain,’ Caspian attempted. ‘Whose are they?’
The man’s pace slowed. He debated whether to answer, then said: ‘The lady’s.’
‘Lady Brobury’s? I didn’t know the estate went in for pig breeding.’
The man glanced slyly back as he plodded on his way. His face was not as coarse as his manner: for all the lowering shagginess of his eyebrows there was a keenness and arrogance in his features which went ill with his clothes and shambling gait. ‘Ceridwen,’ he said. Or something sounding like that.
A Welsh name, surely. There were plenty of them in this part of Herefordshire, and perhaps the Dowager Lady Brobury was of Welsh stock. But it was hardly proper that her swineherd would be so impertinent as to refer to her by her Christian name.
Returning to the village to collect Bronwen and listen to her account of the afternoon’s work, he gave the incident no further thought until that evening. Sitting in the drawing room before dinner, his attention was caught again by the collection of china pigs.
‘The estate supports a very unusual strain of hogs,’ he commented.
Lady Brobury brightened at once. ‘Oh, you’ve seen my little herd?’
‘Very unusual,’ said Caspian again.
David said: ‘Another of mother’s little occupations. I think she started it just to keep Evan Morris out of mischief.’
‘Nonsense. What mischief could poor young Evan possibly get up to?’
‘He’s a sullen sort of customer. Something peculiar there. I wouldn’t care to cross him, I must say.’
‘My pigs,’ Lady Brobury said grandly to Caspian, ‘are unique. Bred from a very old strain, almost extinct in Britain. I’m determined to preserve it and build it up again. And David’s not going to stop me.’
