The House on the Strand (15 page)

"She is on her way to Carminowe", said Bodrugan, "and, guessing my movements, has broken her journey here at Polpey." We came to the other side of the house, which fronted upon the lane leading to Tywardreath. A covered vehicle was drawn up outside the gate, similar to the wagonettes I had seen at the Priory at Martinmas, but this was smaller, drawn by two horses only.

As we approached the curtain was held aside from the small window, and Isolda leant from it, the dark hood that covered her head falling back upon her shoulders.

"Thank God I am in time," she said. "I come straight from Bockenod. Both John and Oliver are there, and believe me half-way to Carminowe to rejoin the children. The worst has happened for your cause, and what I feared. News came before I left that the Queen and Mortimer have been seized at Nottingham Castle and are prisoners. The King is in full command, and Mortimer is to be taken to London for trial. Here is an end, Otto, to all your dreams."

Roger exchanged a glance with Julian Polpey, and as the latter, from discretion, moved away into the shadows I could see the conflict of emotion on Roger's face. I guessed what he was thinking. Ambition had led him astray, and he had backed a losing cause. It now remained for him to urge Bodrugan to return to his ship, disband his men and speed Isolda on her journey, while he himself, having explained his volte-face to Lampetho, Trefrengy and the rest as best he could, reinstated himself as Joanna Champernoune's trusted steward.

"You have risked discovery in coming here," said Bodrugan to Isolda. Nothing in his face betrayed how much he had lost.

"If I have done so, she replied, you know the reason why." I saw her look at him, and he at her. We were the only witnesses, Roger and I. Bodrugan bent forward to kiss her hand, and as he did so I heard the sound of wheels from the lane, and I thought, She came too late to warn him after all. Oliver, the husband, and Sir John have followed her.

I wondered that neither of them heard the wheels, and then I saw they were not with me any longer. The wagonette had gone, and the mail van from Par had come up the lane and stopped beside the gate. It was morning. I was standing inside the drive leading to a small house across the valley from Polniear hill. I tried to hide myself in the bushes bordering the drive, but the postman had already got out of his van and was opening the gate. His stare combined recognition and astonishment, and I followed the direction of his eyes down to my legs. I was soaking wet from crutch to foot: I must have waded through bog and marsh. My shoes were water-logged and both trouser legs were torn. I summoned a painful smile.

He looked embarrassed. "You're in a proper mess," he said. "It's the gentleman living up Kilmarth, isn't it?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, this is Polpey, Mr. Graham's house. But I doubt if they're up yet, it's only just turned seven. Were you intending to call on Mr. Graham?"

"Good heavens, no! I got up early, went for a walk, and somehow lost my way."

It was a thumping lie, and sounded like one. He seemed to accept it, though.

"I have to deliver these letters, and then I'll be going up the hill to your place," he said. "Would you care to get in the van? It would save you a walk."

"Thanks a lot," I said. "I'd be most grateful."

He disappeared down the drive and I climbed into his van. I looked at my watch. He was right, it was five past seven. Mrs. Collins was not due for at least another hour and a half and I should have plenty of time for a bath and a change.

I tried to think where I had been. I must have crossed the main road at the top of the hill, then walked downhill across country and through the marshy ground at the bottom of the valley. I had not even known that this house was called Polpey.

No nausea, though, thank God, no vertigo. As I sat there, waiting for him to return, I realised that the rest of me was wet as well, jacket, head, for it was raining—it had probably been raining when I left Kilmarth almost an hour and a half ago. I wondered whether I should enlarge upon my story to the postman or let it go. Better let it go... He came back and climbed into the van. "Not much of a morning for your walk. It's been raining hard since midnight."

I remembered then that it had been the rain which woke me up originally, blowing the curtain at the bedroom window.

"I don't mind the rain," I told him. "I get short of exercise in London."

"Same as me," he said cheerfully, driving this van. "But I'd rather be snug in my bed this weather than take a walk across the marsh. Still, there it is, it wouldn't do if we were all the same." He called at the Ship Inn at the bottom of the hill and at one of the cottages near by, and as the van raced up the main road I looked leftward over my shoulder to the valley, but the high hedge hid it from view. God only knew what swampy meadowland and marsh I must have traversed. My shoes were oozing water on the floor of the van. We left the main road and turned right down the drive to Kilmarth.

"You're not the only early bird," he said as the sweep in front of the house came into sight. "Either Mrs. Collins has had a lift up from Polkerris or you have visitors."

I saw the large open boot of the Buick packed tight with luggage. The horn was blowing continuously, and the two children, with macs held over their heads to protect them from the rain, were running up the steps through the front garden to the house. The shock of disbelief turned to the dull certainty of impending doom.

"It's not Mrs. Collins," I said, "It's my wife and family. They must have driven down from London through the night."

CHAPTER TEN

THERE WAS NO question of driving past the garage to the back entrance. The postman, grinning, stopped his van and opened the door for me to get out, and anyway the children had already seen me, and were waving.

"Thanks for the lift," I said to him, but I could do without the reception, and I took the letter that he held out to me and advanced to meet my fate.

"Hi, Dick," called the boys, tearing back down the steps. "We rang and rang, but we couldn't make you hear. Mom's mad at you."

"I'm mad at her," I told them. "I didn't expect you."

"It's a surprise," said Teddy. "Mom thought it would be more fun. Micky slept at the back of the car, but I didn't. I read the map." The blowing of the horn had ceased. Vita emerged from the Buick, immaculate as always, wearing just the right sort of clothes for Piping Rock on Long Island. She had a new hair-do, more wave in it, or something; it looked all right but it made her face too full.

Attack is the best form of defence, I thought. Let's get it over. "Well, for God's sake," I said, "you might have warned me."

"The boys gave me no peace," she said. "Blame it on them." We kissed, then both stood back, eyeing each other warily like sparring partners before a shadow feint.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"About half-an-hour," she said. "We've been all round, but we couldn't get in. The boys even tried throwing earth at the windows, after they'd rung the bell. What's happened? You're soaked to the skin."

"I was up very early," I said. "I went for a walk."

"What, in all this rain? You must be crazy. Look, your trousers are torn, and there's a great rent in your jacket."

She seized hold of my arm and the boys crowded round me, gaping. Vita began to laugh. "Where on earth did you go to get in a state like this?" she asked.

I shook myself clear. "Look," I said, "we'd better unload. It's no good doing it here—the front door is locked. Hop in the car and we'll go round to the back."

I led the way with the boys, and she followed in the car. When we reached the back entrance I remembered that it was locked too from the inside—I had left the house by the patio.

"Wait here," I said, "I'll open the door for you," and with the boys in close attendance I went round to the patio. The boiler-house door was ajar—I must have passed through it when I followed Roger and the rest of the conspirators. I kept telling myself to keep calm, not to get confused; if confusion started in my mind it would be fatal.

"What a funny old place. What's it for?" asked Micky.

"To sit in", I said, "and sun-bathe. When there is any sun."

"If I were Professor Lane I'd turn it into a swimming pool," said Teddy. They trooped after me into the house, and through the old kitchen to the back door. I unlocked it, and found Vita waiting impatiently outside.

"Get in out of the rain", I said, "while the boys and I fetch in the suitcases."

"Show us round first," she said plaintively. "The luggage can wait. I want to see everything. Don't tell me that is the kitchen through there?"

"Of course it isn't," I said. "It's an old basement kitchen. We don't use any of this." The thing was, I had never intended to show them the house from this angle. It was the wrong way round. If they had arrived on Monday I should have been waiting for them on the steps by the porch, with the curtains drawn back, the windows open, everything ready. The boys, excited, were already scampering up the stairs.

"Which is our room?" they shouted. "Where are we to sleep." Oh God, I thought, give me patience. I turned to Vita, who was watching me with a smile.

"I'm sorry, darling," I said, "but honestly—"

"Honestly what?" she said. "I'm as excited as they are. What are you fussing about?"

What indeed! I thought, with total inconsequence, how much better organised this would have been if Roger Kylmerth, as steward, had been showing Isolda Carminowe the lay-out of some manor house.

"Nothing," I said, "come on..."

The first thing Vita noticed when we reached the modern kitchen on the first floor was the debris of my supper on the table. The remains of fried eggs and sausages, the frying-pan not cleaned, standing on one corner of the table, the electric light still on.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "Did you have a cooked breakfast before your walk? That's new for you!"

"I was hungry," I said. "Ignore the mess, Mrs. Collins will clear all that. Come through to the front."

I hurried past her to the music-room, drawing curtains, throwing back shutters, and then across the hall to the small dining-room and the library beyond. The piece de résistance, the view from the end window, was blotted out by the mizzling rain.

"It looks different", I said, "on a fine day."

"It's lovely," said Vita. "I didn't think your Professor had such taste. It would be better with that divan against the wall and cushions on the window-seat, but that's easily done."

"Well, this completes the ground-floor," I said. "Come upstairs."

I felt like a house-agent trying to flog a difficult let, as the boys raced ahead up the stairs, calling to each other from the rooms, while Vita and I followed. Everything had already changed, the silence and the peace had gone, henceforth it would be only this, the take-over of something I had shared, as it were, in secret, not only with Magnus and his dead parents in the immediate past, but with Roger Kylmerth six hundred years ago.

The tour of the first floor finished, the sweat of unloading all the luggage began, and it was nearly half-past eight when the job was done, and Mrs. Collins arrived on her bicycle to take charge of the situation, greeting Vita and the boys with genuine delight. Everyone disappeared into the kitchen. I went upstairs and ran the bath, wishing I could lie in it and drown.

It must have been half an hour later that Vita wandered into the bedroom. "Well, thank God for her," she said. "I shan't have to do a thing, she's extremely efficient. And must be sixty at least. I can relax."

"What do you mean, relax?" I called from the bathroom. "I imagined something young and skittish, when you tried to put me off from coming down," she said. She came into the bathroom as I was rubbing myself with the towel. "I don't trust your Professor an inch, but at least I'm satisfied on that account. Now you're all cleaned up you can kiss me again, and then run me a bath. I've been driving for seven hours and I'm dead to the world."

So was I, but in another sense. I was dead to her world. I might move about in it, mechanically, listening with half an ear as she peeled off her clothes and flung them on the bed, put on a wrapper, spread her lotions and creams on the dressing-table, chatting all the while about the drive down, the day in London, happenings in New York, her brother's business affairs, a dozen things that formed the pattern of her life, our life; but none of them concerned me. It was like hearing background music on the radio. I wanted to recapture the lost night and the darkness, the wind blowing down the valley, the sound of the sea breaking on the shore below Polpey farm, and the expression in Isolda's eyes as she looked out of that painted wagon at Bodrugan.

"...And if they do amalgamate it wouldn't be before the fall anyway, nor would it affect your job."

Response was automatic to the rise and fall of her voice, and suddenly she wheeled round, her face a mask of cream under the turban she always wore in the bath, and said, "You haven't been listening to a word I said!"

The change of tone shocked me to attention. "Yes, I have," I told her.

"What, then? What have I been talking about?" she challenged. I was clearing my things out of the wardrobe in the bedroom, so that she could take over. "You were saying something about Joe's firm," I answered, "a merger of some sort. Sorry, darling, I'll be out of your way in a minute."

She seized the hanger bearing a flannel suit, my best, out of my hand, and hurled it on the floor.

"I don't want you out of the way," she said, her voice rising to a pitch I dreaded. "I want you here and now, giving me your full attention, instead of standing there like a tailor's dummy. What on earth's the matter with you? I might be talking to someone in another world." She was so right. I knew it was no use counter-attacking; I must grovel, and let her tide of perfectly justifiable irritation pass over my head.

"Darling," I said, sitting down on the bed and pulling her beside me, "let's not start the day wrong. You're tired, I'm tired; if we start arguing we'll wear ourselves out and spoil things for the boys. If I am vague and inattentive, you must blame it on exhaustion. I took that walk in the rain because I couldn't sleep, and instead of pulling me together it seems to have slowed me up."