Embrace Me
Authors: Roberta Latow
Embrace Me
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1999 by Roberta Latow
For Claude Ury
in gratitude for his long, continuing and patient friendship
A soul that loves you
and a heart that beats to the tune of
memories.
Embrace me.
The Epic of Artimadon
Nothing remarkable ever happened in Sefton Under Edge until in the early hours of one June morning when a car was found between the Oxfordshire village and a neighbouring stately home, Sefton Park. Abandoned, doors left open, headlamps still on, the BMW was parked across the road, keys still in the ignition.
The village postman, Arthur Harris, stopped his small red van some distance from the offending vehicle. With the motor still running, he contemplated the somewhat sinister sight of the abandoned car by the early morning light filtering through the luscious green leaves of the woods to either side of the narrow private road.
The strangeness of the scene was compounded by the contrast: birds bright with song splitting the luscious silence, mist rising from the woodland floor, dew drops still on the grass. Free-standing, three-storey high stone walls and arches, alone, on a blanket of bright green grass: the ruins of a Tudor stately home on the rise at the end of the road looked all powerful, proud, arrogant against the pearly grey sky.
The postman was surprised to see the obstacle barring his way to Sefton Park, the beginning of his round. It was out of order, an intrusion into a place that reeked of solitude, undisturbed beauty, civilised lives, and it would ruin his schedule. Suddenly he saw the incident as somehow threatening, more serious than a mere car blocking his way.
Arthur had been delivering the post to the village and Sefton Park for so many years he felt protective of the community and the people living in it. He saw himself as a lifeline to the outside world for the villagers and especially the Buchanans, Miss Marguerite Chen who lived in the Dower House, and old Miss
Plumm. They were his favourites. Six days a week, he delivered the post and fresh brioches to Sir James and his sisters who lived in the stately home that had been occupied continuously by their family, the Buchanans, for four hundred years. Arthur did odd bits of shopping for old Miss Plumm, as well as deliveries for the village shop, the butcher-cum-fishmonger, and Miss Marble who ran the tea room.
After a moment he cut the motor, and walked briskly to the car. To his initial relief he saw nothing terribly untoward – he tried to ignore the red fingerprints on the window next to the driver’s seat. He could not. Back in the van he wondered what to do next. Jethroe Wiley, he decided. Yes, the publican of The Fox would know what to do. He was, after all, a retired policeman.
Arthur sped back to the village, trying to reassure himself there was nothing in the least sinister in his discovery. Just another abandoned vehicle, in fact. He parked the van and started his usual tour around the village, delivering the post and asking at every door whether they knew who owned the abandoned car. No one did.
There was something timeless and romantic about Sefton Under Edge, something fragile and vulnerable. It was a place from another time, maybe even another world. Several large period houses, including a manor house enclosed by high Cotswold stone walls, overlooked a duck pond edged with bullrushes and flag iris. The surrounding woodland was dense with specimen trees: and wild rhododendrons twice the height of a man.
But Arthur could not put out of his mind the discovery of the abandoned car. Thanks to that the stop that should have been his first would now have to be his last, making him late for Sir James and Miss Chen.
He was just about to ring the pub’s bell and report his find to Jethroe Wiley when he realised there could be a perfectly simple explanation. The driver was most probably up at the house. Sir James Buchanan and Marguerite Chen, who lived in the Dower House among the ruins, were well known for their policy of keeping open house for friends. Arthur smiled with relief. Yes, that was by far the most likely explanation. No need to go troubling Jethroe Wiley after all.
Arthur’s last stop in the village was always at old Miss Plumm’s cottage. He walked in, calling out, ‘Miss Plumm, it’s Arthur. I’ve brought you the linen you asked for.’ In the kitchen he went directly to the kettle and switched it on. He looked around him. Miss Plumm had already laid out two cups and saucers, the tea pot, and a plate of biscuits. The postman and the eighty-two-year-old spinster had been having a morning cup of tea and a gossip for the last twelve years. She was the adored friend of everyone in the village, had lived here all her life and stories about her abounded.
‘Good morning, Arthur,’ she said, as she entered the kitchen from the garden carrying a basket of freshly cut roses.
‘Good morning, Miss Plumm.’ The postman was charmed as always by the old lady’s beauty and grace, as was everyone who met her. How he would like to have known her when she was in her prime! At her late age she was still a seductive creature.
‘I’m running late this morning because a very strange thing has happened. An abandoned car, doors open, the keys still in the ignition, is blocking the Sefton Park road about halfway between the village and the house. I’ve questioned everyone I can find except Jethroe Wiley and the people at the Park. I wonder if I could borrow your bicycle to get around the car? I really should get up to the big house and see what’s going on.’
Miss Plumm seemed to pale slightly at this news, but said nothing. She took a sip from her cup before she told him, ‘I don’t think you should delay in speaking to Sir James and Marguerite. If they have no idea whose car it is, I think you should call the police. Who knows what happened to the driver? You didn’t touch anything, did you?’
He left soon afterwards, placing the post and fresh brioches in the bicycle’s reed basket and waving goodbye to Miss Plumm. True, he could have phoned the residents of the Park but he still had his job to do, delivering the mail. Seeing the car a second time a sense of blackness – almost of evil – descended on him again. Cycling as fast as he could to get around the BMW, Arthur didn’t even bother to look into the car this time but kept his eyes on the outline of Sefton Park.
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
The Fox was renowned for its antiquity, its home-brewed beer and real pub food: steak and kidney pudding, Lancashire hot pot, grilled trout, ploughman’s lunch, a board of English cheeses, sticky toffee sponge pudding, jam roly-poly.
People from the surrounding villages as well as Sefton Under Edge frequented the pub, a clutch of interesting characters some of them with famous faces. Jethroe Wiley was a born host. He disliked strangers who behaved intrusively, yuppies and lager-louts, and was clever about deterring undesirables, knowing how to create an atmosphere that drove them away with no desire to return.
Occasionally a tourist strayed from the beaten track to The Fox’s front door. Enchanted by their find, the hidden England of their imagination, they spoke in whispers so as not to intrude.
Jethroe received enough custom from the locals and their friends that he could afford to be fussy. The three bedrooms on the first floor were charming and usually rented out to writers who were there to work or friends of the villagers who did not wish to impose as house guests.
Had Arthur rung the bell at The Fox he would not have found the publican in, which would have been the second strange thing he’d encountered that morning because Jethroe never left the pub unattended, and the cleaner and barmaid did not arrive till gone eight. Selina, the cook, and her helper, Chippy, having done the day’s shopping arrived anywhere between eight and nine.
As he approached the iron gates before the Park, the postman heard a shot. He braked and nearly fell off Miss Plumm’s bike. There was a rustling in the wood nearby; a flurry of barking and growling by at least two dogs. A hunter or a poacher looking for game? His heart racing, Arthur mounted the bicycle and pedalled as fast as he could through the open gates, wondering who could be in the wood at that hour. At this time of year it was rough shooting only unless Sefton Park was culling? He turned round to look back over his shoulder and recognised Jethroe Wiley’s Dalmatians as they burst from the wood on to the road.
A large man appeared from the dense wood behind them. A hunter without a gun? At first glance, Arthur thought it was
Jethroe but there was something strange about this man’s gait. The red cap was right, and the dogs, but the way he moved was all wrong. Jethroe did not have a limp. Yet another thing out of order this morning. The publican never allowed anyone else to run his dogs for him.
The drive by passed the Tudor ruins and the Dower House, a miniature version of Sefton Park, and carried on up the avenue of ancient limes for nearly three-quarters of a mile to the house itself. By the time Arthur arrived he had convinced himself the right thing for him to do was to put the entire matter into Sir James’s competent hands. He himself was, after all, only the postman. What had he to do with such things? He knew for certain now that he was out of his depth and instinct told him the police would have to be called in.
The usual form for delivering the post to Sefton Park was to go up the stone stairs to the front door, enter the house (the door was always left open), placing the post and the brioches on a tray left on the hall table. He only rang the bell when something had to be signed for. Today he rang it anyway and entered the house, placing a parcel and the rest of the post on the table. Sir James appeared from the morning room, dressed in jeans and a fine white linen shirt, a navy blue cashmere pullover draped over his shoulders with the sleeves tied across his chest.
‘Morning, Arthur, you’re late. Anything wrong?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t hear your van,’ quavered Fever, the ancient butler, as he entered the hall from below stairs. The house was notoriously badly run. It was not for lack of trying but more because James and his sisters, Angelica and September, liked living an unstructured life when they were at home. The Buchanans were considered to be somewhat grand gone eccentric or bohemian, depending on who was talking about them.
‘I came by bicycle.’
‘How odd,’ said Fever, and walked off with the brioches.
‘That’s why I’m late. Well, one of the reasons, Sir James.’
‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked, realising that the postman was not at all himself.
‘Yes, but I’m not exactly sure … I rang the bell because there’s an abandoned car on the road between here and the
village. It’s parked askew, doors open, the headlamps still on, the keys in the ignition. No one in the village knows anything about it and I wondered if you did? Maybe a guest …’
‘We have none at present. One of our friends might have arrived late, I suppose, and slipped into one of the bedrooms, not wanting to wake everyone. I’ll check. You wait here.’
James was halfway up the grand staircase when the postman called after him, ‘I’m sorry about this I should have called the police straight away and been done with it.’
Continuing up the stairs two at a time, James turned to look back and replied, ‘No, you were right to come here before calling the police.’
James looked in each of the eleven guest bedrooms, then Angelica’s and September’s, even though he knew very well there was no one in the house save family. The evening before, he and his sisters, Marguerite Chen and one of her young men, had ridden over the estate by the light of a full moon, had dined on a sumptuous meal then drank, smoked and talked the night away until nearly dawn. Though Angelica and September had slept, James had not. He believed he would surely have heard if someone had entered the house. Yet still he made a pretence of searching for an unexpected guest.
Returning to the postman James told him it was as he’d thought: no one had arrived unexpectedly. He thought it best to go and see if he could recognise the car. Together they walked through several rooms and down the servants’ staircase into the kitchen. Only Cook and the cleaners were visible, having breakfast. James greeted them as he and Arthur walked through the kitchen and out into the courtyard where they climbed into a Range Rover.
‘Miss Plumm’s bicycle … I can’t leave it here,’ said Arthur.
James drove round to the front of the house, flattened the rear seating of the Range Rover and placed the bicycle inside. They took a short cut over the fields, passing through a ruined Tudor gateway as they approached Marguerite’s house.
‘There is always the possibility the car belongs to one of Miss Chen’s friends,’ James suggested.
Amazingly they found Marguerite on a ladder deadheading
the climbing old-fashioned white roses that festooned the front of her house. James adored Marguerite for her energy, her lust for life. He wondered how she could possibly be up, never mind working on the roses. He was certain that she had had no more sleep than he, yet only he felt wrecked.
Today her waist-length silken black hair was gathered into a loose braid that reached the small of her back. Her fine pale skin was gently flushed with pink, and her almond eyes were clear and unshadowed. Marguerite had been a feminist celebrity for more than twenty years though, looking at her today, it was hard to believe she had turned forty.
Still on the ladder, she turned and waved as he pulled up close to the house where from Elizabethan times the Sefton dowagers had lived on the death of their husbands. Until, that is, James had met Marguerite Chen.
Looking as fresh and bright, sexy and charismatic, as she always did, Marguerite climbed down the ladder, saying, ‘James, you’re the last person I expected to see at this hour. You didn’t go to sleep at all! But why am I so surprised? Neither did I. Too much drink and conversation, laughter and – well, you know the rest.’
She kissed him on the lips, lingeringly. She was always reluctant to let him go. Sexual attraction was still strong between them, an impossible kind of love that burned bright and taunted them. Eventually she stepped out of his arms and took her post from Arthur. Marguerite always had a lot of mail. Her arms were soon laden with it: brown manila envelopes bulging with books and manuscripts, letters from all over the world requesting an appearance, an endorsement, an autograph. And fan mail. She received fan mail in every post.
‘Good morning, Arthur. How come you have help with your delivery today?’