Deborah St. James braked the car to a halt on a breath of laughter and
turned to her husband. "Simon, have you never been told you"re quite the
world"s worst navigator?"
He smiled and closed the road atlas. "Never once. But have a heart. Consider the fog."
She looked out the windscreen at the large, dark building that loomed in
front of them. "Poor excuse for not being able to read a road map, if
you ask me. Are we at the right place? It doesn"t look as if a soul"s
waited up for us."
"I shouldn"t be surprised. I told them we"d arrive at nine and now
it"s…" he peered at his watch in the weak interior light of the car,
"good God, it"s half past eleven." She heard the laughter in his voice.
"Are you for it, my love? Shall we spend our wedding night in the car?"
"Teenagers grappling hotly in the backseat, do you mean?" She tossed her
long hair back with a shake of her head. "Hmm, it is a thought. But I"m
afraid in that case you should have hired something larger than an
Escort. No, Simon, there"s nothing for it, I"m afraid, but banging on
the doors and rousing someone. But you shall make all our excuses." She
stepped out into the chilly night air, taking a moment to study the
building before her.
It was a pre-Elizabethan structure by initial design, but one which had
undergone a number of Jacobean changes that added to its air of rakish
whimsicality. Mullioned windows winked in the moonlight that fi ltered
through the wispy fog which had settled on the moors and was now
drifting down into the dales. Walls were covered with Virginia creeper,
its leaves burning the old stone to rich russet. Chimneys germinated
upon the roof in a helter-skelter pattern of capricious warts against
the night sky. There was a contumacy about the building that denied the
very existence of the twentieth century, and this quality spread to the
grounds that surrounded it.
Here enormous English oaks stretched out their branches over lawns where
statuary, encircled by flowers, interrupted the fl ow of the land.
Pathways meandered into the woods beyond the house with a beckoning,
siren charm. In the absolute stillness, the play of water from a
fountain nearby and the cry of a lamb from a distant farm were the only
auditory concomitants to the whisper of the breeze that soughed through
the night. They might have been Richard and Anne, home to Middleham at
last.
Deborah turned back to the car. Her husband had opened his door and was
watching her, waiting in his usual patient fashion for her
photographer"s reaction to the beauty of the place. "It"s wonderful,"
she said. "Thank you, my love."
He lifted his braced left leg from the car, dropped it with a thump onto
the drive, and extended his hand. With a practised movement, Deborah
helped him to his feet. "I feel as if we"ve been going round in circles
for hours," St. James remarked, stretching.
"That"s because we have," she teased. "‘Just two hours from the station, Deborah. A wonderful drive.""
He laughed softly. "Well, it was, love. Admit it."
"Absolutely. The third time I saw Rievaulx Abbey, I was positively
enchanted." She glanced at the forbidding oak door before them. "Shall
we try it then?"
They crunched across the gravel drive to the dark recess into which the
door was set. A pitted wooden bench was tipped drunkenly against the
wall next to it, and two enormous urns stood on either side. With the
perversity of plants, one urn held a burgeoning beauty of flowers while
the other was home to a withering colony of geraniums whose dried leaves
fluttered raspingly to the ground as Deborah and her husband passed.
St. James applied some considerable strength to the large brass fixture
that hung in the centre of the door. Silence greeted its fading echoes.
"There"s a bell as well," Deborah noticed. "Have a go with that."
The ringing far back in the deepest reaches of the house immediately
roused what sounded like an entire pack of hounds into furious howling.
"Well, that"s certainly done it," St. James laughed.
"Dammit, Casper! Jason! S"only the bell, you devils!" Pitched very much
like a man"s but with the unmistakable cadence of a country woman born
and bred, a raucous voice shouted brisk reprovals behind the door.
"Down with you! Out! Get back t"the kitchen." A pause, followed by some
desperate scuffling. "No, blast you! Out in the back! Why, you
blackguard fiends! Give me my slips! Damn your eyes!" With that, a bolt
shrieked back from the inside of the door, which was pulled briskly
open. A barefooted woman hopped back and forth on the icy stones of the
entry, her frizzy grey hair flying about her shoulders in bursts of
electricity. "Mr. Allcourt-St. James," she said without preamble. "Come
in with you both. Damn!" She removed the woollen shawl she had thrown
about her shoulders and dropped it to the floor, where it immediately
became a rug for her feet. She tugged the edges of a voluminous, crimson
dressing gown more closely round her and, the moment the others
entered, energetically slammed home the door. "There, that"s better,
thank God." She laughed, a bellow both ungoverned and unrefined. "Pardon
me, both. I"m generally not so awfully Emily Brontë. Did you get lost?"
"Extensively," St. James admitted. "This is my wife, Deborah, Mrs. Burton-Thomas," he added.
"You must be frozen solid," their hostess noted. "Well, we"ll take care
of that soon enough. Let"s get out of here and into the oak hall. I"ve a
nice fire there. Danny!" she shouted over her left shoulder. Then,
"Come, it"s just this way. Danny!"
They followed her through the old, stone-flagged room. White walled,
dark beamed, it was bonechillingly cold, with recessed windows uncovered
by curtains, a single black refectory table in the centre of the floor,
and a large unlit fireplace sinking deep into the far wall. Above it
hung an assortment of fi rearms and oddly peaked military helmets. Mrs.
Burton Thomas nodded as St. James and Deborah gave their attention to
these.
"Oh yes, Cromwell"s Roundheads were here," she said. "They had a nice
bite out of Keldale Hall for a stretch of ten months in the Civil War.
Sixteen forty-four," she added darkly, as if expecting them to commit to
memory the year of infamy in the history of the Burton-Thomas clan.
"But we rid ourselves of them just as soon as we could. Blackguard
devils, the lot!"
She led them through the shadows of a darkened dining room and from
there to a long, richly panelled chamber where scarlet curtains were
drawn across embrasured windows and a coal fire roared in the grate.
"Well, Lord, where"s she got herself to?" Mrs. Bur-ton-Thomas muttered
and went to the door through which they"d just come. "Danny!" That
brought a responding running of footsteps, and a tousle-haired girl of
about nineteen appeared in the doorway.
"Sorry!" the newcomer laughed. "Got your slips, though." She tossed
these to the woman, who caught them deftly. "Chewed a bit here and
there, I"m afraid."
"Thanks, pet. Will you fetch some brandy for our guests? That dreadful
Watson man finished off a good third of a decanter before he staggered
off to bed tonight. It"s gone dry and there"s more in the cellar. Will
you see to it?"
As the girl went to do so, Mrs. Burton-Thomas examined her slippers,
frowning at a hole newly chewed in one heel. She muttered beneath her
breath, put the slippers back on her feet, and replaced the shawl—which
she had been using as a sort of earthbound fl ying carpet in their
progress through the house— on her shoulders.
"Please do sit down. Didn"t want to light the fire in your room till you
arrived, so we"ll have a bit of a chat whilst it heats up. Bloody cold
for October, isn"t it? Early winter, they say."
The cellar was obviously closer than the word itself implied, for within
moments young Danny returned with a fresh bottle of brandy. She opened
and decanted it at a Hepplewhite table which stood under a portrait of
some glowering, hawk-featured Burton-Thomas ancestor, then returned to
them with a tray on which three brandy glasses and a decanter sparkled.
"Shall I see to the room, Auntie?" She asked.
"Please. Get Eddie for the luggage. And do apologise to that American
couple if they"re wandering about wondering what all the uproar is, will
you?" Mrs. Burton-Thomas poured three healthy drinks as the girl left
the room once again. "Ah, but they came here for atmosphere, and by God,
I can dish it up in spades!" She laughed uproariously and threw down
her drink in a single gulp. "I cultivate colour," Mrs. Burton-Thomas
admitted gleefully, pouring herself another. "Give them a bit of the old
eccentric and you"ll make every guidebook from Frommer to Ronay."
The woman"s appearance served as complete verification of this last
statement. She was a combination of stately home and gothic horror:
imposingly tall, with a man"s broad shoulders, she moved with a
loose-limbed indifference to the priceless furniture with which the room
was filled. She had the hands of a labourer, the ankles of a dancer,
and the face of an aging Valkyrie. Her eyes were blue, deep-sunken above
cheekbones jutting across her face. She had a hook-shaped nose that
with the passage of years had grown more pronounced, so that now, in the
uncertain light of the room, it seemed to be casting a shadow upon her
entire upper lip. She looked about sixty-five years old, but age to Mrs.
Burton-Thomas was obviously a very relative matter.
"Well," she was looking them over, "hungry at all?" You did miss dinner
by about…" a glance cast towards the grandfather clock ticking
sonorously against a far wall, "two hours."
"Hungry, my love?" St. James asked Deborah. His eyes, Deborah saw, were alive with amusement.
"Ah…no, not a bit." She turned to Mrs. Burton-Thomas. "You"ve others staying here then?"
"Just one American couple. You"ll see them at breakfast. You know the
sort. Polyester and showy gold chains. God-awful diamond ring on the
man"s little finger. Kept me howlingly entertained last night with a
discourse on dentistry. Wanted me to have my teeth sealed, it seems. The
very latest thing." Mrs. Burton-Thomas shuddered and downed another
drink. "Bit Egyptian-sounding. Something for posterity, you know. Or was
it to prevent cavities?" She shrugged with grand indifference. "Haven"t
the slightest. What is this fi xation Americans all have with their
teeth, I ask you? All straight and shiny. Well, God! Crooked teeth give a
face a bit of dash, I say." She poked ineffectually at the fi re,
sending a shower of sparks out onto the rug, then stomped on these with
terrific energy. "Well, delighted you"re here, is all I can say. Not
that Grandpapa isn"t still doing fl ip-fl ops in the grave at my opening
the place up to the tourist trade. But it was that or the bleeding
National Trust." She winked at them over the rim of her glass. "And
pardon me for saying so, but this sort of life is ever so roaringly more
amusing."
There was a clearing of the throat from the direction of the doorway,
where a boy stood awkwardly in plaid flannel pyjamas, an antique smoking
jacket several sizes too large belted clumsily round his slender waist.
It gave his appearance an anachronistic panache. He carried a pair of
crutches in his hands.
"What is it, Eddie?" Mrs. Burton-Thomas asked impatiently. "You"ve done the luggage, haven"t you?"
"These"re in the boot, Auntie," he responded. "Shall I do "em as well?"
"Of course, you ninny!" He turned and scurried from her sight. She shook
her head darkly. "I"m a martyr to my family. An absolute religious
martyr. Well, come now, little ones, let me show you to your room. You
must be dropping with fatigue. No, no, bring the brandy with you."
They followed her back through the dining room to the stone hall and
from there through another doorway that took them to the stairway.
Polished, uncarpeted oak stairs led to the upper regions of the house,
swathed in deep shadows. "Baronial stairway," Mrs. BurtonThomas informed
them, slapping her hand on its thick wood railing. "Don"t even make
these dandies anymore. Come, it"s just this way."
In the upper hall she led them down a dimly lit corridor in which
ancestral portraits battled with three Flemish tapestries. Mrs.
Burton-Thomas nodded moodily towards the latter. "Simply must move them.
God knows they"ve been hanging there since 1822, but no one could ever
convince Great-grandmama that these things look better from a bit of a
distance. Tradition. You understand. I battle it everywhere. Here we
are, little ones." She threw open a door. "I shall leave you here. All
the mod cons. But you"ll find them, no doubt." With that she was gone,
dressing gown fl apping round her ankles, slippers slapping comfortingly
upon the fl oor.
A tumble of coals upon the hearth welcomed them into the bedroom. It
was, Deborah thought as she entered, the most beautiful room she had
ever seen. Oak panelled, with the beguiling faces of two Gainsborough
women smiling down from either end, it embraced them with centuries" old
welcome and grace. Small table lamps with rose shades put forth a
diffused radiance that burnished the mahogany of the enormous
four-poster. A looming wardrobe cast an elongated shadow against one
wall, and a dressing table held an array of crystal atomisers and
silver-backed brushes. At one of the windows stood a cabriole-legged
table on which an arrangement of lilies had been placed. Deborah walked
to this and touched her fingers to the fluted edge of one ivory fl ower.
"There"s a card," she said, pulled it off and read it. Her eyes filled
with tears. She turned to her husband. He had gone to the hearth and
lowered himself into an overstuffed chair that sat to one side of it. He
was watching her as he so often did, with that familiar reserve, the
only communication coming from his eyes. "Thank you, Simon," she
whispered. She tucked the card back into the flowers, swallowed an
emotion she couldn"t define, and forced herself to speak lightly. "How
did you ever fi nd this place?"
"Do you like it?" he asked in answer.
"You couldn"t possibly have chosen anything more wonderful. And you know it, don"t you?"
He didn"t reply. A knock at the door, and he looked at her, a smile
dancing round the corners of his mouth, his expression plainly saying:
What"s next? "Come in," he called.
It was the girl, Danny, a pile of blankets in her arms. "Sorry. Forgot
these. There"s an eiderdown already, but Auntie thinks the world"s as
cold as herself." She walked into the room with an air of friendly
proprietorship. "Eddie get your things in?" she asked, opening the
wardrobe and plopping the blankets unceremoniously inside. "He"s just a
bit thick, you know. Got to excuse him." She studied herself in the wavy
mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, fingered a few wandering
hairs just a bit more out of place than they"d been before, and caught
them watching her. "Now you"d best beware of the baby"s cry," she
pronounced solemnly. It was as if she"d spoken exactly on cue. The
hounds would surely howl next.
"The baby"s cry? Have the Americans a child with them?" Deborah asked.
Danny"s dark eyes widened. She looked from woman to man. "You don"t know? Has no one ever told you?"
Deborah saw from the girl"s behaviour that they were soon to be
enlightened, for Danny wiped her hands prefatorily down the sides of her
dress, glanced from one end of the room to the other for unwanted
listeners, and walked to the window. In spite of the cold, she
unfastened the latch and swung it open. "Has no one told you about
that?" she asked dramatically, gesturing out into the night.
There was nothing for it but to see what "that" was. Deborah and St.
James joined Danny at the window, where, in the distance, the skeletal
walls of a ruined building rose through the fog.
