Black Rabbit Hall (5 page)

Only Peggy doesn’t smile, crossing her arms tight across her chest.

Not long after Momma leaves, the room flashes like a cellar bulb before it pops. Rain starts to clatter against the window, like hundreds of dropped beads. Through the open door I see that Kitty’s red balloon has come loose from the pram and is caught in a whistling draught, bouncing along the black and white tiled hall.

Peggy stares out at the storm, scrunching her striped apron with her hands and muttering something about those ‘poor fishermen out on the boiling waters’ that makes Toby and me explode with smothered laughter. No one else talks like Peggy Popple, that mix of bossiness and biblical doom. We’ve missed her.

‘Still not back?’ Daddy appears, sticking a pen into his jacket pocket. He looks worried. Or maybe when you get old – Daddy is forty-six – you just end up looking worried more easily.

‘They’re not back, Mr Alton.’ Peggy stands up straighter, sucks in her tummy. ‘Neither Mrs Alton nor Barney.’

‘When did Nancy leave?’

There’s another crack of lightning. It highlights a long fine hair on Peggy’s chin that I’ve never noticed before. ‘Hard to say. Half an hour ago?’

‘That boy has got it coming.’

The air tightens. Toby and I exchange looks. Momma and Daddy rarely fight but we all know that they disagree about ‘strictness’. Unlike Daddy, Momma believes that children shouldn’t be hit, however naughty, that our schools shouldn’t have canes. She believes children should be listened to and understood. Daddy thinks this is ‘new-fangled progressive nonsense, upon which empires rot and children spoil and great estates fall to rack and ruin’. Luckily, Momma’s in charge, even if we have to pretend otherwise.

‘I can’t leave them out there in this weather. Peggy, my coat and a big umbrella, please.’ Peggy scurries off to the boot room, a cold, stone-walled space that smells of leather, damp and, faintly, dog muck, all smells that should be horrible but somehow put together aren’t as bad as you’d think. Daddy looks at Toby, then me. ‘Amber, get your coat on.’

I don’t know why he chooses me. I’m pleased he does but feel sorry for Toby, who looks a bit crushed, and I’m wondering how I can get him to come too when Peggy starts to grapple me into last year’s coat. She pushes open the front door and the wind slams it wide open, showering the hall with rain. Outside it looks like night, not late afternoon, as if a giant mouth is sucking the light from the sky, like liquid through a straw.

As I take the last step, Momma’s Stetson worn by one of our stone falcons blows off in a gust of wind. I reach
forward to catch it. Daddy stops me, puts a hand on my arm. ‘Leave the darn hat. We need to go, Amber.’ He yanks Boris by the collar. ‘And you’re coming with us too.’

Boris pulls back from the door, whining, frightened.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Boris!’ shouts Daddy, above the howl of wind. ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you a dog or a mouse?’

Ears flat, probably deciding he’d rather be a mouse, Boris is pulled down the steps, sticking close to my ankles. ‘It’s only a storm, Boris,’ I reassure him, ruffling his fluffy yellow fur. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. Come on, lead us to Barney, good boy.’

It’s a fight to walk into the wind, down the sloping lawns to the arched Gothic iron gate, glistening with rain. Daddy shoves it hard with his shoulder and we topple into the world of the woods. It is immediately quieter, the roar of the storm muffled by the mossy padding of the floor, the ferns and leaves.

‘Where’s this den, then?’ Something about his tone makes me nervous. That and the way he’s pulling on the lobes of his ears.

‘Easiest to follow the stream.’

A thin trickle in summer, it has swollen to double its size, frothing and spitting over the small rocks, like the furious gush of a hose. We push our way through the umbrella leaves of giant rhubarb plants.

I can hear something, the brush and break of branches. Deer? I reach for Daddy’s hand. Those antlered bucks are terrifying, even if they’re not in rut. His hand is hotter than I expect, slippery with rain or sweat. I remind myself that we’ll all soon be huddling in front of a fire, drinking
cocoa, the irrepressible Barney chastened, for an hour or two at least. ‘Deer, Daddy,’ I whisper, pulling on his hand. ‘Can you hear them?’

‘Deer?’ He stops still, listening, holding my hand a little tighter.

Something is definitely coming.

Twigs cracking, the muffled rhythm of feet. The something is heavy, big, fast, too fast. Boris’s fur spikes along his spine. ‘Daddy …’

Knight bolts out of the undergrowth, eyes rolling white, nostrils flared, bucking up with a terrible snort.

‘Down!’ Daddy throws me to the ground, out of the way of the demented wheeling hoofs. I only dare look up when the sound of them dulls. Just in time to see something white snapping from the empty stirrup. Then, darkness.

Lorna

‘Remember these guys?’ Jon eyes Lorna curiously.

‘You know, I think I do,’ Lorna tells herself, partly because she wants to believe it. Memory can always be pushed into shape. ‘Yes, I definitely do.’

More than five feet high, with beaks like swords, the pair of falcons on either side of Pencraw Hall’s entrance steps look like they might stretch open their wings at any moment and lift into the sky, quite possibly having pecked your eyes out first. The evening sun – it has burnt through the rain clouds now, split open a blue sky – makes the wet stone sparkle.

‘Your face is a picture.’ He can’t take his eyes off her.

Lorna laughs, trying to control her emotions and her long dark hair, which is whipping about like streamers. It isn’t that Pencraw Hall is the grandest of houses – if anything, it’s rather smaller than she remembers, more human in scale, its roof frilled with small, square battlements, two fat chess-piece turrets, a dinky castle sketched by a child. Years of neglect have left the house embedded in its grounds: wild flowers riot in the borders; ivy bristles up its walls, its leaves the size of plates, vines and mortar fused, like tissue and bone. But the house is … monumental.
Any wedding here would feel ancient, primal, part of the natural order of things. It would feel right. It does feel right. Like the way Jon felt right the first time she’d kissed him (on Waterloo Bridge in a blizzard of snow). And, as she did on that winter’s night, two and a half years ago, she can’t wait to call her sister, Louise, and tell her.

‘Are you sure we can afford all this?’ Jon pulls her towards him, circling her waist with the spades of his hands. Her yellow dress flips up in the breeze. ‘You’ve not got jiggy with the figures?’

Lorna laughs again. ‘No!’

A dazzle of sunlight swings across the steps, like a ship’s boom. Jon shades his eyes, scans the roof with a cool, professional gaze. ‘Although, I have to say, it’s not far off being a hard-hat area.’

Lorna is not blind to the splintered upper windows, the chipped battlements or the tiles that have clearly flown off the roof and shattered on the drive, mixing with the honey-coloured gravel. But, in a funny way, the house’s dilapidated state makes it more seductive, not less. She loves that it hasn’t been turned into some soulless corporate away-day venue or a Farrow & Ball-painted tourist tearoom. It is a house literally crumbling under the weight of its past. Perfect, she thinks, with a sigh.

He rests his chin lightly on the top of her head. ‘Hard to believe that anyone actually lives here, isn’t it?’

‘I guess.’ Lorna decides not to mention that she’s sensed someone watching them as they came up the drive, that someone is watching them now. There is life here all right, she is sure of it. She glances over at the cars rusting in the
far reaches of the drive: a knackered green three-wheeler and a muddy blue sports car, wing mirrors secured with tape, a long gash running the length of its hooded roof.

Jon swivels Lorna to face him, bending down to kiss her.

‘I feel we should burst into song or dance up the steps or something,’ she whispers. ‘It’s that sort of place.’

He kisses her again.

‘Come on, we’re late.’ She grabs his hand, tugs him impatiently up the remaining steps – all seventeen of them. She can’t help counting, or imagining a white lace train sweeping behind her, although she’s long decided that she is not a flowing-train type of girl. But what she wants – or wanted – is already shifting, new possibilities rising, like steam from the wet stone steps in the sun.

Facing the door – black, ridiculously big, lion’s-paw brass knocker – she straightens her yellow sundress and clamps a little bit of fabric between her knees so that the wind won’t blow up the skirt at the wrong moment. She wants to make a good impression. ‘You do it, Jon,’ she says, suddenly nervous, hit by the odd sensation – and the accompanying mental drum roll – that she is on the threshold of far more than a house.

Jon decides on the doorbell – actually a bell! It chimes deep in the belly of the building. Slow footsteps. A dog yapping. Lorna prepares to meet a shrill, blonde, horsey type in glossy riding boots, or an older lady, like the Duchess of Devonshire, trailing plush chickens and vaguely resembling the Queen. There’s a stronger gust of wind. She clamps her knees together harder.

The door opens. Lorna can’t hide her surprise.

A tiny woman, with startled grey eyes, an orb of brown
hair frizzing around her delicate face, like a giant seed head, is dwarfed by the door. She wears not a scrap of make-up, her skin rouged and crisped by the elements, and could be in her early forties or a decade younger. Smelling strongly of woodsmoke, she’s as hard to date as her clothes: Land Girl baggy mustard jumbo cords, heavy brown boots and an enormous Fair Isle jumper, with a hole unravelling on its cuff.

‘Hi, there! I’m Lorna.’ She smiles brightly, pushes her straw bag back up her shoulder. The woman looks at them blankly. ‘Lorna and Jon.’

‘Lorna and Jon?’ The voice is girlish with a West Country burr. She cocks her head on one side, stares at Lorna quizzically, fingernail travelling to her crowded teeth. ‘Wait a minute …’

‘We spoke on the phone last week? About our wedding?’ Has the woman forgotten the arrangement? Is there something a little wrong with her? ‘I’m so sorry we’re late. I hope we’ve not put you to any trouble.’

‘We got lost. Lorna was map-reading,’ says Jon, trying to slide in a joke.

The woman doesn’t laugh. But she glances at him for the first time, visibly starting at the six-foot symphony of broad shoulders, sandy hair and hazel eyes, speckled like hen’s eggs. Her cheeks flare and she drops her gaze.

‘It’s true, no sense of direction,’ chatters Lorna, trying to keep the conversation moving, deciding against petting the small moth-eaten terrier that has appeared, snarling, dribbling, between the woman’s mud-caked boots. Not the stately Labrador she imagined might live in a house like this. ‘It’s En-Endellion, isn’t it?’

‘Dill.’ At last there’s a smile, a pretty, tentative smile with an honesty about it that makes Lorna warm to her immediately. Dill’s clearly just very shy. In need of a bit of a groom. They do things differently in the country.

‘And this is Petal.’ She scoops the dog up, its claws catching in the wool of her sweater. ‘A boy. But we didn’t realize for a while. A bit of a biter, I’m afraid. Meant to catch the rats. He prefers fingers, don’t you, Petal?’

Lorna and Jon laugh a little too loudly.

Dill rolls the dog on to his back and carries him like a baby. ‘Well, um, I suppose I should say, welcome to Pencraw Hall.’

There is a cheekiness to Lorna’s smile now. ‘Black Rabbit Hall?’

Dill’s eyes widen in surprise. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I think he was a farmer, wasn’t he, Jon?’

‘A tractor was involved.’

‘We met him on the road, just before the drive,’ adds Lorna, wishing Dill would hurry up and invite them inside. ‘He said all the locals call it Black Rabbit Hall. Is that right?’

‘They used to call it that,’ Dill replies quietly.

‘Why Black Rabbit?’ Lorna glimpses a hollowed elephant’s foot stuffed with broken old umbrellas behind Dill’s trouser leg. ‘It’s such an unusual name.’

‘Well, if you look down there …’ Lorna turns, her gaze following Dill’s pointing finger to the sweep of lawn that drops steeply away from the house, becoming a horizon for the bowl of countryside beneath it, the white studs of sheep and the silver glint of the creek through the trees as it coils towards the sea. ‘Rabbits. At dusk. We get so many
rabbits on this lawn. The warrens are at the edge of the woods there, you see. Behind the hydrangeas.’

‘Aw,’ sighs Lorna, because she’s a city girl and she thinks rabbits are cute.

‘When the sun sets – we’re facing west – it silhouettes them. The rabbits look …’ she pauses, tickling Petal’s matted belly ‘… like shadow puppets, I always think.’

Lorna flashes a joyous smile at Jon, picturing the wedding invitation, the big B, the sweep of the R. The talking point of the name. ‘Oh, I’m going to call this place Black Rabbit Hall from now on.’

‘Mrs Alton prefers Pencraw Hall,’ Dill says quickly.

They sense conflict. A moment passes.

‘I’m sure I came here as a kid with my mum,’ blurts Lorna, who’s been waiting for a gap in the conversation and can’t contain herself any longer. ‘Did it use to be open to the public, Dill?’

‘No.’ Dill rests a finger on her freckled lips. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

Lorna’s heart sinks. Has she got the wrong house after all?

‘But we’ve always had people wandering up the drive, knocking on the door, offering the housekeeper a bit of money for a quick nose, you know. That sort of thing. We still get the odd one, actually. Tourists see the sign near the turn-off, get curious …’

Sounds like her mother. Lorna remembers how she’d shamelessly dip beneath a stately house’s red rope to peep at a private bathroom. Her mother adored being horrified by toff toilets: ‘Imagine, all that class and a wooden seat!’

‘Oh dear, you’re being dripped on,’ says Dill, looking up at the flaking wet stone above their heads. ‘You’d better come in.’

At last, Lorna thinks, stepping past Dill on to the warp of black and white tiles. The smell of beeswax, charcoal and damp. ‘Wow.’

The entrance hall is the size of their flat in Bethnal Green, jaw-dropping in its battered glamour.

‘Enough staircase for you, sweetheart?’ Jon whispers in her ear. His eyes dance.

‘Oh, my God, yes.’ She’d never expected anything so beautiful. Twisting gracefully down from the floors above, sinuous, balletic, it is the sweeping staircase of old Hollywood movies. Long oyster-satin dresses. A hand-dyed silk slipper’s soundless descent.

Her delighted eye flits around. So much to look at. An enormous chandelier, furred with dust, dangles above them like a planet. The wood panelling is dark, coffee-bean glossed. Stag heads strain from the walls, as if trying to break free. There’s a petrified palm in a brass pot that looks like it might have died a century before. Above the central cave of a fireplace, a towering gilt-framed portrait of a startling blonde in an ice-blue dress that perfectly matches her eyes, head slightly thrown back, staring directly into the hall, like a ship’s figurehead might the sea. But most intriguing of all is the tall black grandfather clock opposite: an exquisite face, moon dial embedded, intricately painted in cerulean and gold. Lorna reaches out, touches it lightly. The wood is as warm as human skin. ‘I love this.’

Jon peers closer, absorbed in its craftsmanship. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Oh, that’s Big Bertie,’ says Dill, with a shy, proud smile. ‘Just don’t ask him to tell the time.’ She drops Petal on the floor. The dog scuttles off, claws skittering. ‘Um, I did mention on the phone that this is a new venture for Mrs Alton?’

‘You did.’ Details don’t matter a jot now. Lorna is gazing at the staircase again, imagining how it must feel to walk up its ragged red runner, hand on the banister, head held high. ‘No problem at all.’

‘Oh, that’s a relief. It’s better you know.’

Lorna turns to smile at Dill, wonders if she’s played a part in pricing Black Rabbit Hall. If so, they should be grateful to her. No doubt as soon as the bookings start flowing in the prices will rocket. ‘We’ll be very pleased to be the first, won’t we, Jon?’

Jon flashes her a secret look that says, ‘
Really?
’

‘So you want to get married in … ?’ Dill frowns, even though Lorna had told her twice on the phone. She tugs at a loose thread on her sweater cuff. ‘Next April, was it?’

‘October.’ Lorna loves Cornwall in autumn when the mists roll in from the sea and the earth smells damp and mushroomy. Also, it’s cheaper out of season, which will help. She reaches for Jon’s hand. ‘I know it’s a push.’

‘
This
October? That is soon.’

Lorna winces. ‘Well, it does need to be during a school holiday – I’m a teacher – but October half-term isn’t totally set in stone, is it, Jon?’

‘I suppose not.’ Jon rubs his jaw vaguely. He always tends to drift off when they start making complicated arrangements that involve a degree of uncertainty. Lorna,
for once, is thankful for this trait. She doesn’t want Dill undermining his confidence in the house.

‘Well, if you could be flexible … You see, this is all rather new for me too.’ Dill’s hands flutter. They are childishly small hands, Lorna notices, hands that look like they’ve done more than their share of hard work, the skin roughened, the nail beds black. ‘Weddings. Dealing with the public. We haven’t had people, lots of people, on the estate for years. Normally I just look after Mrs Alton, help manage the house.’

Well, at least she’s not hitting them with a hard sell, like so many other wedding people do, Lorna decides, hoping Jon might come to the same conclusion.

‘But Mrs Alton is quite determined to find a way to secure the house’s future. Yes, an income stream.’ Dill’s mouth begins to work, chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘We’ve tried various things over the years. It’s been tricky for Mrs Alton to keep it all going, you see, since Mr Alton died.’

Lorna starts a little at death joining the conversation. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘This place eats money, even if you only live in a bit of it,’ Dill continues.

‘The central heating must cost a fortune,’ says Jon.

‘Oh, we don’t use central heating!’ Dill exclaims, as if Jon had suggested they might bathe in champagne.

Jon squeezes Lorna’s hand. She knows he’s trying not to laugh. That she must not catch it.

‘It’s a Victorian system, prone to the most terrible moods and blockages, so we burn logs from the woods. Much easier. But there’s some electric heaters in the bridal
suite,’ she adds quickly, glancing down at Jon and Lorna’s entwined hands, as if she’d noticed the squeeze. ‘Not yet in the ballroom … Yes, that needs a bit of work too. But by next April …’

‘October,’ smiles Jon, letting go of Lorna’s hand and buttoning up his light cotton navy jacket. It’s quite chilly, far colder than outside. Lorna hopes he’s not going to take an annoyingly practical stance on the place later. ‘Ideally.’