by Eric Brown
Langham chewed his toast. ‘I think that might explain why they have a soft spot for young Roy.’
She thought about it. ‘I still don’t understand why he makes do with that caravan when he could live in the house.’
‘Perhaps he wants his independence – doesn’t want to impose.’
She sat back, cupping her coffee in both hands, and closed her eyes with the contentment of a satisfied cat.
Langham fetched a map of the area he’d bought from a stationer’s in Bury St Edmunds, showing the village and others in the area, and the various walks through common land and woods. He spread it across the table.
‘If we set off just after midday, leave the village to the west and walk up and around Cock Hill, we could swing round and arrive at the manor at two thirty, just in time for refreshments.’
‘Let’s do that,’ Maria said.
‘I wonder if the professor will be at all contrite today, after his little performance last night?’
‘That kind of man, my darling, is never contrite.’
They spent the rest of the morning unpacking crockery in the kitchen, and just after twelve wrapped up well against the cold wind and set off.
They turned along the lane and walked around the village green, blanketed with untrodden snow. Few people were abroad. Newton, the publican, was sweeping the new fall of snow from the path before the Green Man and waved cheerily as they passed. The postman acknowledged them with a nod and stepped carefully across the icy road.
They left the village along West Lane, then cut through an area of forest known as Culkin’s Wood. Only a limited scattering of snow had settled beneath the cover of elm and ash, and the going was much easier. Ahead, orange sunlight splintered through trees as bare and stark as witches’ brooms. Far off, rooks cawed raucously and wood pigeons gave throaty, muffled coos.
The land rose, climbing the hillside; halfway up, Langham realized how out of condition he was after his sedentary life in London.
Maria laughed as he puffed his way along. ‘You need a dog, Donald – that would be one way of ensuring you got out of the house. You did suggest we get one.’
‘Maybe once we’re settled in,’ he said. ‘They are something of an expense and a tie.’
She gripped his hand. ‘We can afford it, you cheapskate!’
‘Touché.’
They came to the crest of the hill and the trees petered out. They stood, panting, and gazed down on the village in the vale. What was striking from this elevation was the near-total lack of movement, the frozen stillness of the place. Smoke drifted from a dozen chimneys; sunlight dazzled from windows. The postman hurried on his rounds, and Langham pointed out Reverend Evans crossing from the rectory to the church. They were the only figures moving in the silent winter landscape. The stream twisted, a braided silver thread, along the southern margin of the village.
‘No cars,’ Maria said. ‘No vehicles at all.’
Beyond Ingoldby, the land rose and fell into the misty distance; other villages showed as collections of tiny cottages, church spires, and drifting pennants of smoke.
‘Look,’ Maria said, pointing.
Beyond Crooked Lane and the stream, the manor house stood in isolated splendour. A figure moved on the front lawn, reduced to the size of a tiny doll. Bill the dog danced in attendance.
‘Isn’t that Nancy?’ Langham said. ‘I wonder what she’s doing?’
She was bent over, rolling something that looked like a big white barrel, her breath pluming in the freezing air.
Maria laughed. ‘I know! She’s building a snowman.’
‘We might arrive just in time to help her finish it off.’
A path wound down the hillside, and the going was more difficult now that they were no longer under the cover of the trees. They held hands for support, before realizing that this was not the safest ploy: if one went down, so did the other. They finished the descent in single file, by some miracle remaining on their feet all the way.
They came into the village from the east and passed a row of tiny, thatched cottages which, long ago, had been the abode of farmworkers. By the time they reached the green, more villagers were venturing out, hurrying back and forth between their houses and the shops. They stopped to exchange pleasantries with a neighbour, then struck off along Crooked Lane and crossed the bridge to the manor house.
Langham checked his watch. ‘We’re early – it’s just after two.’
‘Then we’ll have to do as you said, Donald, and play out here in the snow.’
They walked down the drive, passing the Morgan Coupé Langham assumed belonged to Randall Robertshaw. Nancy was still labouring away on the lawn, so absorbed in the task of rolling snow to make the upper section of the snowman that she didn’t see their approach. Bill romped back and forth, a white tennis ball clutched in his teeth.
The lawn was criss-crossed with bare tracks where Nancy had rolled up the snow.
The girl looked up. ‘Oh, hello there,’ she panted, rosy-cheeked and exhausted.
‘You look the very picture of rude health, my girl,’ Langham said.
She scowled at them. ‘I’m angry!’
Bill trotted up to them and dropped the ball at Maria’s feet.
‘Ah, oui, about last night,’ Maria said. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to do something – or at least say something.’
‘But I stopped her,’ Langham said. ‘I had a better idea to help you get back at your uncle.’
Nancy lodged her mittened hands akimbo on her hips, panting still. ‘You have?’
‘Do you think the professor would let you come to dinner tonight, if we asked him nicely?’ Maria said.
Nancy compressed her lips, looking dubious. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Maria said. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with him.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Your uncle invited us to afternoon tea, but we’re early.’
‘Then you can help me with this.’ The girl indicated the vast snowball she’d created. ‘I need to lift it on to the base. It’s taken me ages because every five minutes I have to stop and play ball with Bill. You can be a pain, boy!’
Between them, they lifted the packed snow – more like a fat section of Swiss roll than a snowball – on to the base, then scraped up loose snow to fill in the join and create a seamless torso.
‘Now for the head,’ Nancy said, and rolled a much smaller ball.
While Nancy worked on the head, Langham fashioned an arm at either side and Maria scraped a line with a stick from the snowman’s crotch to its base to denote a pair of legs.
The tip of her tongue poking between her lips, Nancy concentrated on moulding a face. She made it squarish, slab-like, adding two nubbins of coal for eyes and, above them, bushy brows fashioned from moss. She made a big nose from the thick end of a carrot, and a downturned grumpy mouth, then stood back and admired her handiwork.
‘My word,’ Langham said, ‘I do believe it’s the professor!’
Nancy grinned at them. ‘I was reading all about voodoo the other day. Did you know, in some countries they believe that if you mould a likeness of your enemy and stick pins in it or burn it, then that person will be stricken with bad luck?’
Maria put a gloved hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh.
‘As I don’t have any pins, and I can’t burn a snowman,’ Nancy said, delving into her coat pocket, ‘do you think these will do instead?’
She proceeded to stick a dozen short twigs into the snowman’s torso with malicious relish, then stood back and laughed.
‘There! That should show him!’
Langham looked up to see the front door of the manor swing open and Professor Robertshaw peer out. ‘Ah,’ he called, ‘there you are. Well, come on in, all of you. What are you waiting for? Nance, run along to the kitchen and prepare the tea things, would you? There’s a good girl.’
Bill nosed the ball closer to Maria’s feet, and she picked it up and threw it through the open door. Bill bou
nded inside after it.
Laughing, Nancy took Maria’s hand and hurried into the house. Langham followed them inside.
As Nancy disappeared along a corridor to the kitchen, Professor Robertshaw said, ‘This way, this way. Xandra will be down presently. She’s just preparing herself.’ He looked at Langham. ‘You know what women are like, Langham,’ he went on, as if Maria were invisible. ‘Here we are.’
He opened the door to the living room and they entered, Bill squirming through their legs to claim his place before the fire.
The three large settees had been pushed back from the fire to make room for an oval teak coffee table. Standing before the fire was a tall young man in a blazer and white flannels, who looked as if he’d just stepped from the deck of a yacht. All that was missing was a cravat and a nautical cap.
He was slim and good looking; he had a thin face, a high forehead and black hair brilliantined in place, with comb furrows as pronounced as corduroy. He appeared much older than his nineteen years.
‘Randall, my son and heir,’ the professor said. ‘Randall, this is Donald Langham and his charming wife, Maria.’
Randall shook Langham’s hand. ‘Delighted.’ He turned and smiled at Maria, his lifted lip making him appear almost vulpine. ‘Enchanted, as they say across the water. I understand you’re French?’
‘That’s right,’ Maria replied coolly, ‘but I’m feeling more English every day. I’ve lived here for almost twenty years.’
‘I was going to ask you what you made of the place, but that would be something of a faux pas, wouldn’t it?’
‘I think it would, all things considered.’
‘Won’t you take a seat, Donald, Maria?’ the professor said. ‘Xandra will be here lickety-split, and then Nance will be along with the tea things.’
They sat side by side on the sofa, Maria shooting Langham a glance which he intuited as indicating her surprise at Robertshaw’s blasé attitude: the professor was acting as if the little contretemps last night at the Wellbournes’ had never occurred. The convenient amnesia of the tyrant, Langham thought.
Randall sat back in a commodious armchair, crossed his legs and eyed Maria up and down. ‘My father mentioned you’d moved here from London,’ he said. ‘Which rather begs the question: what on earth possessed you?’
Langham was about to reply but Maria beat him to it. ‘We’d come to dislike the hustle and bustle of the capital,’ she said, smiling at the young man without warmth, ‘and we both like this area of Suffolk.’
‘Where in the Smoke did you live?’ Randall asked with a superciliousness Langham found annoying. ‘Shoreditch?’
‘Kensington, actually,’ Maria replied, taking Langham’s hand and squeezing. ‘We still have a nice apartment across from the park, which we’ll use from time to time when we’re in London on business.’
The professor said, ‘Always nice to have a base in the city. I use my club, the Explorers.’
‘And I understand you scribble?’ Randall said to Langham.
‘I write novels.’
‘Thrillers, my father told me. Don’t read the things myself.’ He turned to Maria. ‘And you?’
She was saved from replying when the door opened.
Langham had expected Xandra Robertshaw to be approximately her husband’s age – in her sixties – but she appeared to be in her mid-forties, a tall, thin woman with piercing grey eyes, who might once have been beautiful. Now her face was haggard, and she moved circumspectly, wincing with every step she took. She wore a canary-yellow silk dressing gown which hung from her bony shoulders.
Langham stood up as she slowly crossed the room, and the professor made the introductions. Randall moved to his mother’s side, took her elbow and assisted her to an armchair. She thanked him with a murmur and a pained smile.
The woman looked from Langham to Maria, grimacing as she arranged herself more comfortably in the chair. Her breath rasped in her chest.
‘It is nice to have guests,’ she said in a husky voice, and Langham wondered if this was an affliction of her illness. ‘We’re so sequestered out here. I did prefer it when we had a little place in Oxford. It was closer to London and, you know, in the swim.’
For the next five minutes, Professor Robertshaw took over the conversation and held forth on life in Oxford and the archaeological excavations he’d overseen in Greece and beyond. Langham glanced across at Randall. The young man was looking supremely bored and did nothing to hide the fact from his father.
Professor Robertshaw said, ‘Xandra’s read one of your books, Langham.’
Langham winced inwardly and wished Nancy would hurry up with the tea.
Xandra leaned forward and placed a claw-like hand on his knee, her fingernails as yellowed as old ivory. ‘I very much enjoyed it,’ she wheezed. ‘So exciting. I do appreciate a good story, well told.’
Maria saved him from having to reply, and said to Xandra, ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’
The question surprised Langham; he looked at Maria who was frowning as if trying to recollect exactly where she might have met the woman.
The professor looked surprised. ‘Your fame precedes you,’ he muttered.
‘Why, it’s so nice to be recognized,’ Xandra said. ‘Long ago, in another life, I was on the stage, and I even appeared in two or three films.’
‘Of course,’ Maria said. ‘A Quiet Wedding.’
‘My word, your memory! Yes, my very best role, even if it was a minor part.’ She went on to regale the company with stories of the film’s production and scandalous tales of one or two of its cast.
Randall lit a cigarette from a silver lighter, his attention elsewhere.
‘I couldn’t land film parts in the mid-thirties,’ Xandra said, ‘so I returned to the stage. Repertory, for my sins. That’s where I met Edwin. He was something of a stage-door Johnny in those days.’
‘I was nothing of the sort!’ the professor objected, scowling at his wife. ‘Though I did meet Xandra after some West End production. Wangled myself an invitation backstage.’
‘And the rest,’ Randall drawled, ‘is history.’
Xandra’s eyes darkened. ‘In the winter of ’48 I fell ill with tuberculosis and was treated with … what was the name of that awful stuff, Edwin?’
‘Strepto-something or other,’ he said.
‘That was it. Streptomycin, by injection – and my, were they painful!’ She smiled bleakly from Langham to Maria. ‘It worked, cured the TB – but at a cost. I now have the kidneys of an eighty-year-old.’
‘Xandra,’ the professor said, ‘I’m sure that Donald and Maria don’t want all the gory details.’
‘I was merely saying, dear …’
The professor drummed his fingers on the settee arm. ‘Where is the girl? Is she baking the blessed cakes?’
‘Go easy on her,’ said Xandra. ‘She really does do her best.’
The professor muttered something under his breath.
Randall said, ‘Don’t know if you’ve met my little cousin, Langham? She really is a pain. Physically twenty but mentally ten – and truly nauseating when she puts on her jolly-hockey-sticks act.’
Langham was about to say that they had not only met but had got along very well when Xandra snapped, ‘That’s enough, Randall. As if you’ve got any room to accuse anyone of acting beneath their age.’
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, would you, old boy?’ the professor said ineffectually.
As if in reply, Randall blew an unconcerned plume of smoke into the air.
The door opened and Nancy wheeled in a silver trolley loaded with a teapot, china cups and a trefoil tray of assorted cakes.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Whew! I thought the kettle would never boil!’
Randall said, ‘We were wondering if you were baking the cakes from scratch.’
‘No,’ the girl replied with an equable smile. ‘I’m afraid they’re shop-bought – but they’re
very good,’ she went on.
She transferred the cakes to the coffee table and poured the tea, then smiled around the gathering. ‘There, I’ll leave you to it. If you need anything, just ring.’
Maria said, ‘Nancy – you must join us. I insist!’ She patted the sofa beside her. ‘Come.’
Nancy looked unsure. ‘Uncle?’
The professor harrumphed and muttered, ‘Very well, then. Don’t see why not.’
‘I’ll run and fetch another cup!’ she said, and hurried from the room.
‘“I’ll run and fetch another cup”,’ Randall mimicked in a high-pitched voice as she left the room. ‘See what I mean about her playing the schoolchild, Langham?’
Maria said something under her breath, and Langham was relieved that it was in French.
Nancy returned with a cup and poured herself a tea.
The professor passed around the tray of cakes. ‘Go on, help yourself,’ he said. ‘Dig in. I rate the Bakewells, myself. The local confectioner’s is rather good.’
Langham took a date slice, Maria a Bakewell. They ate in strained silence for a while, Langham racking his brain to come up with a topic of conversation.
Nancy said, ‘I helped Maria unpack yesterday. I’ve never seen so many books!’
‘They’re mostly Donald’s,’ Maria said. ‘He collects obsessively, don’t you, darling?’
‘I find it impossible to go out without going into a bookshop, and even more impossible to leave a bookshop without purchasing at least one book.’
‘And he’s obsessive, too, about shelving his collection,’ Maria said. ‘They must be in alphabetical and chronological order.’
‘I understand that,’ Nancy said. ‘I’m neat and tidy, too.’
‘In complete contrast to me,’ Xandra said. ‘I’m the untidiest person in the world. Isn’t that so, Edwin?’
‘I’ll say. She’s sometimes hard to find amidst the piles of debris and cast-off clothing that litter her damned bedroom.’
Randall sat back in his chair, smoking his cigarette and staring at the ceiling with a studied air of boredom.
At the next lull in conversation, the young man said, ‘I heard all about the fracas at the Wellbournes’ last night, Nancy.’
