The House on the Strand (13 page)

"Well, it's not urgent," he said, "but it could be a lot of fun. Besides I'd like to take a look at Isolda Carminowe." His flippant voice restored my jagged nerves. I even smiled. "She's Bodrugan's girl, not ours," I told him.

"Yes, but for how long?" he queried. "They were always changing partners in those days. I still don't see where she fits in amongst the rest."

"She and William Ferrers seem to be cousins to the Champernounes," I explained.

"And Isolda's husband Oliver Carminowe, absent at yesterday's death-bed, is brother to Matilda and Sir John?"

"Apparently."

"I must write all this down and get my slave to check for further details. I say, I was right about Joanna being a bitch." Then, abruptly changing his tone, "So you're satisfied now that the drug works, and what you saw was not hallucination?"

"Almost," I replied, with caution.

"Almost? Don't the documents prove it, if nothing else?"

"The documents help to prove it," I countered, "but don't forget you read them before I did. So there is still the possibility that you were exercising some kind of telepathic influence. Anyway, how's the monkey?"

"The monkey." He paused a moment. "The monkey's dead."

"Thanks very much," I said.

"Oh, don't worry—it wasn't the drug. I killed him on purpose; I have work to do on his brain cells. It will take some time, so don't get impatient."

"I'm not in the least impatient," I replied, "merely appalled at the risk you appear to be taking with my brain."

"Your brain's different," he said. "You can take a lot more punishment yet. Besides, think of Isolda. Such a splendid antidote to Vita. You might even find that—"

I cut him short. I knew exactly what he had been going to say. "Leave my love life out of this," I said. "It doesn't concern you."

"I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant. It happens every day, without drugs, when a man keeps a mistress round the corner and a wife at home... That was a major find on your part, by the way, landing on the quarry above Treesmill valley. I'll put my archaeological friends on to digging the site when you and I have finished with it."

It struck me, as he spoke, how our attitude to the experiment differed.

His was scientific, unemotional, it did not really concern him who was broken in the process so long as what he was attempting to prove was proved successfully; whereas I was already caught up in the mesh of history: the people who to him were puppets of a bygone age were alive for me.

I had a sudden vision of that long-buried house reconstructed on concrete blocks, admission two shillings, car park at Chapel Down...

"Then Roger never led you there?" I asked.

"To Treesmill valley? No," he answered. "I strayed from Kilmarth once only, and that was to the Priory, as I told you. I preferred to remain on my own ground. I'll tell you all about it when I come down. I'm off to Cambridge for the weekend, but remember you have all Saturday and Sunday for self-indulgence. Increase the dose a little—it won thurt you."

He rang off before I could ask him for his telephone number, should I want it over the weekend. I had hardly put down the receiver before the telephone rang again. This time it was Vita.

"You were engaged a long while, she said. I suppose it was your Professor?"

"As a matter of fact it was," I told her.

"Loading you up with weekend chores? Don't exhaust yourself darling." Acidity, then, was the morning mood. She must blow it off on the boys, I could not cope.

"What are you planning for today?" I asked, ignoring her previous remark.

"Well, the boys are going swimming at Bill's club. That's a must. We've a heatwave here in London. How's it with you?"

"Overcast," I said without glancing at the window. "A trough of low pressure crossing the Atlantic will reach Cornwall by midnight."

"It sounds delightful. I hope your Mrs. Collins is getting on with airing the beds."

"Everything's under control, I told her, and I've hired a sailing-boat for next week, quite a big one, with a chap in charge. The boys will love it."

"What about Mom?"

"Mom will love it too, if she takes enough seasick pills. There's also a beach below the cliffs here, only a couple of fields to cross. No bulls."

"Darling," —the acidity had turned sweet, or at any rate mellow— "I believe you are looking forward to our coming after all."

"Of course I am," I said. "Why should you think otherwise?"

"I never know what to think when your Professor's been at you. There's some sort of hoodoo between us when he's around... Here are the boys, she went on, her voice changing. They want to say hullo." My stepsons voices, like their appearance, were identical, though Teddy was twelve and Micky ten. They were said to resemble their father, killed in an air crash a couple of years before I met Vita. Judging by the photograph they carried round with them, this was true. He had, they had, the typical Teuton head, hair cropped close, of many American young. Blue eyes, innocent, set in a broad face. They were nice kids. But I could have done without them.

"Hi, Dick," they said, one after the other.

"Hi," I repeated, the phrase as alien to my tongue as if I had been speaking Tongalese.

"How are you both?" I asked.

"We're fine," they said.

There was a long pause. They couldn't think of anything more to say. Neither could I. "Looking forward to seeing you next week," I told them.

I heard a lot of whispering, and then Vita was back on the line again. "They're raging to swim. I shall have to go. Take care of yourselg darling, and don't overdo it with your pail and broom."

I went and sat in the little summer-house that Magnus's mother had erected years ago, and looked down across the bay. It was a happy spot, peaceful, sheltered from all winds except a south-westerly blow. I could see myself spending a lot of time here during the holidays, if only to get out of bowling to the boys; they were sure to bring cricket stumps with them, and a bat, and a ball which they would continually hit over the wall into the field beyond.

Your turn to get it!

No, it's not, it's yours!

Then Vita's voice chiming in from behind the hydrangea bushes. Now, now, if you're going to quarrel there won't be any cricket at all, and I mean it, with a final appeal to me—Do something, darling, you're the only adult male.

But at least today, in the summer-house, looking up the bay as a ray of sun touched the horizon, there was peace at Kylmerth. Kylmerth... I had pronounced the word in thought as originally spelt, and quite unconsciously. Confusion of thought becoming habit? Too tired for introspection, I got up again and wandered aimlessly about the grounds, clipping at hedges with an old hook I found in the boiler-house. Magnus had been right about the lilos. There were three of them, the kind you inflate with a pump. I'd set to work on them in the afternoon, if I had the energy.

"Lost your appetite?" asked Mrs. Collins, when I had laboured through my lunch and asked for coffee.

"Sorry," I said, no reflection on your cooking. "I'm a bit out of sorts."

"I thought you looked tired. It's the weather. Turned very close."

It was not the weather. It was my own inability to settle, a sort of restlessness that drove me to physical action, however futile. I strolled down across the fields to the sea, but it looked exactly the same as it had from the summer-house, flat and grey, and then I had all the effort of walking up again. The day dragged on. I wrote a letter to my mother, describing the house in boring detail just to fill the pages, reminding me of the duty letters I used to write from school: I'm in another dormitory this term. It holds fifteen. Finally, physically and mentally exhausted, I went upstairs at half-past seven, threw myself fully clothed upon the bed, and was asleep within minutes.

The rain awoke me. Nothing much, just a pattering sound on the open window, with the curtain blowing about. It was quite dark. I switched on the light; it was four-thirty. I had slept a solid nine hours. My exhaustion had vanished and I felt ravenous, having had no supper. Here was the pay-off for living alone: I could eat and sleep entirely as and when I pleased. I went downstairs to the kitchen, cooked myself sausages, eggs and bacon, and brewed a pot of tea. I felt fighting fit to begin a new day, but what could I possibly do at five o'clock in this grey, cheerless dawn? One thing, and one thing only. Then take the weekend to recover, if recovery was needed... I went down the backstairs to the basement, switching on all the lights and whistling. It looked better lit up, much more cheerful. Even the laboratory had lost its alchemistic air, and measuring the drops into the medicine-glass was as simple as cleaning my teeth. Come on, Roger, I said, show yourself. Let's make it a good one.

I sat on the edge of the sink and waited. I waited a long time. The thing was, nothing happened. I just went on staring at the embryos in the bottles as it grew gradually lighter outside the barred window. I must have sat there for about half-an-hour. What a frightful swindle! Then I remembered that Magnus had suggested increasing the dose. I took the dropper, very cautiously let two or three more drops fall on to my tongue, and swallowed them. Was it imagination, or was there a taste to it this time—bitter, a little sour? I locked the door of the laboratory behind me, and went down the passage into the old kitchen. I switched off the light, for it was already grey, with the first dawn in the patio outside. Then I heard the back door creak—it had a habit of grating on the stone flag beneath—and it blew wide open in the sudden draught. There was the sound of footsteps and a man's voice.

God! I thought. Mrs. Collins has turned up early—she said something about her husband coming to mow the grass.

The man pushed past the door, dragging a boy behind him, and it was not Mrs. Collins' husband, it was Roger Kylmerth, and he was followed by five other men, carrying flares, and there was no longer any dawn light coming from the patio, only the dark night.

CHAPTER NINE

I HAD BEEN standing against the old kitchen dresser, but there was no dresser behind me now, only the stone wall, and the kitchen itself had become the living quarters of the original house, with the hearth at one end and the ladder leading to the sleeping-room beside it. The girl I had seen kneeling by the hearth that first day came running down the ladder at the sound of the men's footsteps, and at sight of her Roger shouted, "Go back out of it! What we have to say and do does not concern you."

She hesitated, and the boy, the brother, was there too, looking over her shoulder. "Out of it", shouted Roger, "the pair of you," and they backed away again, up the ladder, but from where I stood I could see them crouching there, out of sight of the group of men, who entered the kitchen behind the steward.

Roger set his flare upon a bench, lighting the room, and I recognised the boy he was holding—it was the young novice I had seen on my first visit to the Priory, the lad who had been forced to run round the stable yard to make sport for his fellow-monks, and later had wept at his prayers in the Priory chapel.

"I'll make him talk", said Roger, "if the rest of you cannot. It will loosen his tongue to have a taste of Purgatory to come." Slowly he rolled up his sleeves, taking his time, his eyes upon the novice all the while, and the boy backed away from the bench, seeking shelter amongst the other men, who thrust him forward, laughing. He had grown taller since I had seen him last, but it was the same lad, there was no mistaking him, and the look of terror in his eyes suggested that the rough handling he dreaded this time was not sport.

Roger seized him by his habit and pushed him on to his knees beside the bench. "Tell us all you know", he said, "or I'll singe the hair off your head."

"I know nothing," cried the novice. "I swear by the Mother of God—"

"No blasphemy", said Roger, "or I'll set fire to your habit too. You've played spy long enough, and we want the truth."

He took hold of the flare and brought it within an inch or so of the boy's head. The boy crouched lower and began to scream. Roger hit him across the mouth. "Come on, out with it," he said. The girl and her brother were staring from the ladder, fascinated, and the five men drew nearer to the bench, one of them touching the boy's ear with his knife. "Shall I prick him and draw blood," he suggested, "then singe his pate afterwards where the flesh is tender?" The novice held up his hands for mercy. "I'll tell all I know," he cried, "but it's nothing, nothing... only what I overheard Master Bloyou, the Bishop's emissary, say to the Prior."

Roger withdrew the flare, and set it back upon the bench. "And what did he say?"

The terrified novice glanced first at Roger and then at his companions. "That the Bishop was displeased with the conduct of some of the brethren, Brother Jean in particular. That he, with others, acts against the Prior's will, and squanders the property of the monastery in dissolute living. That they are a scandal to the whole Order, and a pernicious example to many outside it. And that the Bishop cannot close his eyes to the situation any longer, and has given Master Bloyou all power to enforce the canon law, with the aid of Sir John Carminowe." He paused for breath, seeking reassurance in their faces, and one of the men, not the fellow with the knife, moved away from the group.

"By the faith, it's true," he muttered, "and who are we to deny it? We know well enough that the Priory, and all within it, are a scandal. If the French monks went back where they belong, we'd be well rid of them."

A murmur of agreement rose from the others, and the man with the knife, a great hulking chap, losing interest in the novice, turned to Roger.

"Trefrengy has a point," he said sullenly. "It stands to reason we valley men this side of Tywardreath would stand to gain if the Priory closed its doors. We'd have a claim to the surrounding land, on which they grow fat, instead of being pushed to graze our cattle amongst reeds."

Roger folded his arms, spurning the still frightened novice with his foot. "Who speaks of closing the Priory doors?" he asked. "Not the Bishop up in Exeter, he speaks for the Diocese only, and can recommend the Prior to discipline the monks, but nothing further. The King is overlord, as you are perfectly aware, and every one of us who are tenants under Champernoune has had fair treatment, and received benefits from the Priory into the bargain. More than that. None of you have held back from trading with the French ships when they cast anchor in the bay. Is there anyone amongst you who has not had his cellars filled because of them?"