The Ely Testament (15 page)

‘If you'll forgive us, my dear,' said Lydia to her husband after a pause. ‘We have things to catch up on, you know.'

The cousins went off towards the morning room. Tom was wondering what sort of ‘catching up' was required but Ernest told him, as they made their way up the stairs, that Tomlinson had very recently reappeared in his wife's life after many years of absence. He'd been voyaging in the Far East and other exotic places. No doubt they had family memories to share while Charles had traveller's tales to impart.

‘Tomlinson is a capital fellow, full of . . . instructive and amusing anecdotes,' said Ernest Lye, pausing for breath as they reached the upper floor after climbing a narrower and steeper set of stairs. ‘Yes, a capital fellow,' Ernest repeated. Something in the man's tone seemed to cast doubt on his own words.

They went down one passageway, then another at right angles. Tom peered down what was almost a tunnel, interrupted by a few doors, for which the only illumination was a gleam from a small window at the far end.

‘These are the older parts of the house,' said Ernest. ‘In those days it was on an east-west axis, now the front faces south.'

They stopped outside a door. Working more by touch than sight, Ernest produced a key, unlocked and opened the door.

‘There.'

‘There' was a lumber room. The light was brighter inside since, though the window was small, it gave directly on to the wide Cambridgeshire skies. Tom glimpsed a rocking horse and a doll's house, as well as some broken kitchen chairs, an armchair which was oozing stuffing, and other items of furniture. There were trunks and cases, and in the corners lay bundles of paper secured with string or ribbon. The fireplace was occupied with another pile of paper. The objects in the room were dusty and neglected but the space did not have the almost wilful disorder of Alexander's study.

‘My mother's playthings,' said Ernest, gesturing towards the doll's house and the rocking horse. ‘She grew up in this house.'

Ernest threaded his way between the items on the bare boards until he came to a studded leather trunk that sat on the floor near the window. He reached down and threw back the lid so that it clattered against the wall. Tom saw more piles of paper in the trunk.

‘I suppose you might find what you're looking for in here, Mr Ansell. It contains the documents that brother Alexander sent on to me – oh, some eight or nine years ago now – material which is mostly to do with our father. His name was Roderick Lye. As I said, Alexander occasionally suffered from fits of organization and he obviously thought the contents of this trunk were more appropriately stored here than in his own house. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, I imagine, that he included among these items a copy of his own will.'

Standing in the light from the window, Ernest Lye opened his palms in a gesture that expressed the futility of the idea.

‘Thank you, Mr Lye. I know it seems unlikely but . . .'

‘No stone unturned, eh? The light is good enough in here? I can have a lamp or two brought up.'

‘I'll manage,' said Tom.

‘Very well then.'

Ernest closed the door behind him. Tom ran a hand through his hair. He walked across the creaking floor to the window. The view was to the east and so looking across the open fenlands, the land stretching flat and level until it met the sky. Down below, the lawn of Phoenix House was interrupted by clumps of shrubs and ornamental beds, all somewhat bedraggled.

It was chill in the room. Tom decided it would be best to get on with his task. Soonest started, soonest finished. He dragged the leaking armchair closer to the window, raising little clouds of dust. He settled himself into the lopsided seat and took the topmost sheaf from the pile of papers belonging to Mr Alexander Lye. The rocking horse was close by and the single glass eye that was visible seemed to Tom to be looking at him with amusement. The first half-dozen sheets he glanced at were brittle and yellowed with age. They were invoices for items of furniture. One, for a mahogany bookcase, was dated 13th November, 1763. The bookcase cost three guineas. Tom sighed. He looked the rocking-horse in the glass eye. He replaced the invoices and reached for the next handful of papers.

Ernest Lye came to himself with a start. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs on the ground floor of Phoenix House, but he could not remember arriving there. He could remember what he had been thinking beforehand, the gist of which was: I don't believe that Mr Thomas Ansell is going to find anything at all. I don't believe my brother ever made a will in the first place. But Ernest Lye did not recall descending from the top of the house to the bottom. A small matter perhaps, but these little bouts of forgetfulness were happening with increasing frequency. He would suddenly become aware that he was not quite where he had been when last conscious of his surroundings. In a different part of the house or its grounds. Even sometimes on a different street in Ely or Cambridge. Habit had carried him along, while his mind was otherwise engaged. It occurred to him that perhaps he was suffering from some disorder in the brain, but it was more comfortable to think of it as a relatively harmless symptom of encroaching age.

However, now Ernest Lye was at the bottom of the stairs he paused in the hallway, and paused with a purpose. In front of him was the door to the morning room. It was shut. On the other side of the door were his wife and her cousin. Ernest hesitated. He looked about to confirm that he was unobserved and then moved rapidly towards the closed door. He pretended to have dropped something and, in stooping to examine the floor, brought his ear nearer to the door.

He was able to hear voices inside but not what they were saying. The two were talking in low tones. He heard Lydia's throaty laugh. She had not laughed at anything he had said for . . . a long time. Well, he told himself, Charles Tomlinson did have the advantage of novelty, and he was full of those amusing stories, and they were cousins after all. Not only was Charles spending quite a bit of time at Phoenix House, but he and Lydia sometimes went on expeditions to Ely or Cambridge. They went to the shops, they called on family members like Lydia's mother and father, who was also a cousin to Tomlinson. Lydia and Charles were all very cousinly, Ernest told himself. Nothing to object to. He straightened up and walked in the other direction towards his library.

Inside the morning room Lydia Lye was complaining to Tomlinson. Her laughter, which was not really happy but rueful, had been caused by a remark of his to the effect that she was stuck away in this place. It was as if she were buried in Phoenix House in the village of Upper Fen. He said this with genuine concern, as if he wanted to be the one to rescue her. The remark about burial might have been prompted by the conversation he'd just had with the sexton.

This wasn't a very cheerful topic, but Lydia didn't object. She enjoyed almost everything that cousin Charles had to say. She relished his accounts of strange and barbaric foreign customs, many of which he had witnessed at first hand. She enjoyed his tales of savage courtship rituals and pagan funeral rites. As a citizen of the world, it was only natural that he should take an interest in local burial conditions, whether in Upper Fen or the islands of the South Seas. And she had to acknowledge the harsh truth that her life here was a bit like being buried.

‘I know, I know,' she said, to forestall any further comment from cousin Charles. ‘It is a fate I have chosen for myself. To be married and to come and live here.'

‘Could you not persuade Ernest to purchase or rent a place in town, somewhere in Cambridge or even London?'

Lydia knew that there were not even the funds for some very necessary repairs to Phoenix House, let alone anywhere else, but she said, ‘He likes it here too much. It was his mother's family's house.'

‘Even so . . . I should think that you could twist Ernest round your little finger if you wished to.'

Lydia did not answer directly. Instead she went to gaze out of the window.

‘I prefer to think of being here as being like a perpetual Sunday, a Sunday afternoon of eternity.'

‘You have a gift for metaphor, Mrs Lye,' said Tomlinson. ‘A Sunday afternoon of eternity. How poetic.'

‘The only saving grace is that there is only
one
church and
one
set of bells in this place and not the cacophony of ringing which you are forced to listen to in a town.'

Tomlinson came to stand at the window near her. He said, ‘I sometimes forget how very used you must be to the sound of bells.'

‘They are music to my father's ears.'

‘It seems to me that your mother and father – especially him, especially the Reverend Coffer – are somewhat less severe than I remember them, less inclined to judge one to one's disadvantage.'

‘Are they?' said Lydia. ‘That is probably because you are accustomed to real despots and tyrants among the tribes you have seen.'

‘It's true I have seen some strange things.'

‘Let us talk no more of death and burial, Charles. Tell me again about that ceremonial dance which you witnessed in . . . somewhere in the South Seas.'

‘The dance in which the maidens of the village parade themselves in front of the young men, in order to be chosen as brides?'

Lydia suddenly found something of great interest to look at from the window of the morning room. Even so, she nodded slightly and said ‘Yes' under her breath. Tomlinson was watching her closely.

‘Well,' he said, ‘the day before the ceremony the young men are not supposed to eat any food at all and to drink nothing apart from a few sips of water. They must sequester themselves in the jungle that surrounds their village on every side. The girls, meanwhile, undergo rituals of purification while the older women prepare the garb they are to don on the morrow. Perhaps “garb” hardly describes what they wear – or rather what they do not wear . . .'

Two of Charles Tomlinson's Enemies

W
hile Charles Tomlinson was turning away from the subject of death and burial in favour of premarital rites, his sometime friend Cyrus Chase was settling down to his favourite reading matter in his house in Prickwillow Road, Ely. This was a quarterly periodical called
Funereal Matters
and it contained a wealth of news, information and even gossip on everything pertaining to the business of interment. Cyrus kept all the old copies, arranged by date.

Cyrus was aware that Bella did not care for the magazine. If his wife caught sight of the title, she pulled a face or instinctively looked away. For her, it was a reminder of his morbid interests. Accordingly, Cyrus usually hid his copy away when it arrived and waited for some private hour when he might devote himself properly to
Funereal Matters
. He resented having to do this. Really, he thought, Bella was most unreasonable. To judge from his wife's attitude it was as if he were proposing to look through the kind of salacious material – books, postcards, photographs – which a gentleman could obtain from certain emporia in Holywell Street off the Strand. Or so he had heard. Yet
Funereal Matters
could not be a greater contrast. What was more respectable and necessary than to meditate not on the world or the flesh or the devil, but on last things?

Now, since Bella was out of the house, having taken the train to Cambridge to do some shopping, Cyrus had more than a spare hour. Time enough to read the magazine from cover to cover. Cyrus took up his paper knife and slit the uncut pages. He replaced the knife on the small table next to his chair. It was his habit to flick through the pages of the magazine to give himself a taste of the treats to come. With approval he read an editorial that deplored the growing taste for simplicity in funerals and the move away from what ignorant critics called ‘ostentation'. He glanced at a feature about making the cast of a hand after death and another about the propriety of taking photographs of the deceased in his coffin. Yes, this promised to be a good issue.

Then Cyrus arrived at a particular favourite of his: the column of notes, observations and chat which was signed simply ‘Mute'. Each item occupied one or two paragraphs and was introduced with a sub-heading that was frequently punning or humorous. Cyrus could permit himself a smile at Mute's dry wit. Whoever penned the column was a knowledgeable fellow – probably a Londoner since he made frequent references to the capital's undertakers – and conversant with the latest trends and fashions whether above or below the ground. Cyrus enjoyed the aptness of an anonymous writer styling himself ‘Mute' as well as the fact that the term described a paid funeral attendant. He began to read Mute's latest offerings.

Moments later, the housemaid Mattie, passing the door of the room, was startled to hear the thud of an object striking the floor. Then some incoherent words and a loaded silence, followed by another meaningless babble. Mattie hesitated before tapping on the door. After a muffled ‘Yes?' she turned the handle.

‘Is everything all right, sir?'

‘Yes.'

Cyrus Chase's face was suffused with red. He was staring down in bewilderment at the floor where an occasional table lay on its side next to his chair. He must have knocked it over as he stood up. As far as she could see, no damage had been done.

‘Do you want me to pick that up, Mr Chase?'

‘No, no. I'll do it,' he said, waving her away with a distracted hand. Mattie withdrew, quietly closing the door. The appearance of the maid had partly restored Cyrus Chase to himself. He had no idea what words he'd uttered or what gestures he'd made during the last few minutes. He righted the overturned table and groped his way back to the armchair. He picked up
Funereal Matters
from where it had dropped to the floor out of his nerveless grasp. He fumbled through the pages until he came once more to the column by Mute. He blinked several times, as if to remove a bit of grit from his eye, and read again two particular paragraphs. Then he read them several times more.