Black Rabbit Hall (9 page)

Lorna

A liver-spotted hand emerges from the frayed flap of tweed cape. ‘Mrs Caroline Alton.’ It’s the poshest voice Lorna’s ever heard, roughened only by a faint wheezy whistle. ‘Delighted.’

‘Hi,’ Lorna stutters. The woman’s arthritic knuckles are like golf balls. But the handshake is firm. Out of the corner of her eye Lorna sees Dill shrinking back into the hall. She wishes she’d warned her that Mrs Alton would be in the bridal suite. ‘I’m Lorna. Lorna Dunaway,’ she says, trying not to stare rudely.

‘Bones don’t age,’ as her mother always said. Mrs Alton’s haven’t: she’s clearly the handsome woman from the portrait in the hall. But her face is etched with knife-cut wrinkles now. These are not laughter lines, like Lorna’s late nan had, the result of a good life, lived cheerfully. The lines on either side of Mrs Alton’s mouth and the arrowhead V stamped between her eyes suggest she has spent her privileged life in a state of perpetual disapproval.

‘So you’d like to get married at Pencraw?’ Mrs Alton pins Lorna with unstable pale blue eyes, eyes that stare out hard, rather than let you in. ‘I am pleased.’

This is the moment when Lorna should point out that she’s just exploring the option. She doesn’t.

‘Do take a proper look around.’ Mrs Alton leans on a brass-tipped wooden cane, keeping her back perfectly straight. The hand clasping the top is locked with rings, their diamonds glinting dully in the evening light. ‘Tell me your thoughts. And please refrain from politeness.’

Lorna smiles hard – she hears her mother’s voice in her head: ‘If you don’t know the rules, just smile!’ – and looks properly around the room. The ceilings are lower in the tower than they are in the rest of the house, the walls covered with cottagey floral wallpaper. The relative lack of dusty grandness is a relief, although there is a nod to it with the giant mahogany-black bed, vines and flowers carved into its four posts, which will surely impress even Jon. ‘It’s lovely, Mrs Alton.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she replies, in a manner that warns against thinking otherwise. That Mrs Alton lives in this remote spot almost alone makes perfect sense now. She is clearly not the kind of old woman – late seventies? – who could be settled into a comfy armchair in a retirement home off a seaside promenade and placated with sponge puddings. ‘I suspected you might like it from the moment I saw you getting out of the car.’

So someone had been watching them, Lorna thinks, gratified that she hadn’t imagined it.

‘So, Lorna …’ She fingers the row of skin-buffed pearls in the crêpe of her neck. ‘Enlighten me. A little bit about yourself.’

‘I’m a primary-school teacher from Bethnal Green, east London.’

‘A teacher? Oh. My sympathies.’

Lorna is stunned. She wishes Jon was with her so they
could discuss it all to death later. Also, she just wishes Jon was with her.

‘Your fiancé?’

‘He works for his family’s building firm,’ she stutters, bracing herself for the reaction. ‘Carpentry, that’s his passion,’ she adds, hating herself for trying to justify it, wishing she could convey quite how talented Jon is, the extraordinary deftness of his huge hands, the way his fingertips read the grain of wood, like braille.

‘A carpenter?’ Mrs Alton stamps her cane on the floor, turns to Dill. ‘This could prove most useful, Endellion, most useful indeed. My goodness, we always need carpenters.’

Dill smiles apologetically at Lorna, stares down at her feet.

‘Come closer, my dear.’ Mrs Alton beckons Lorna forward with a long finger, crooked to the left, armed with jewels.

Lorna hesitates for a second, then steps forward. There is something about Mrs Alton that makes non-compliance an unappealing prospect.

Without warning, the cane slips, clatters to the ground. Lorna bends down and hands it back with a smile.

‘Damn thing,’ says Mrs Alton, pulling it to her side again. ‘Bad hip, legacy from my time on the slopes. A terrible bore. Do you ski?’

‘Oh, no. Not really,’ says Lorna, not daring to cite the time she spent on an Austrian nursery slope two years ago, being overtaken by three-year-olds.

‘Now, that dress …’ Mrs Alton murmurs softly. Her head tilts to one side, trying to place it. Standing so close, Lorna catches an unpleasant sweet smell on her breath. ‘It reminds me of something.’

‘Well, it’s vintage,’ Lorna explains brightly, always happy to talk about clothes, crunching the yellow cotton between her fingers. Modern cotton doesn’t crunch in the same way. Neither does it hang properly. To get this quality now you’d have to pay hundreds, which she’d never be able to afford. ‘Late sixties, the woman in the shop said.’

Mrs Alton looks amused. ‘Late sixties? Gracious. You like old clothes?’

‘I’m prone to a rummage in a charity shop. I guess I just kind of like old things.’

‘Well, that is probably just as well, isn’t it?’ says Mrs Alton, wryly.

‘Oh, no.’ Lorna hopes that Mrs Alton realizes she was referring to the house, not its owner. ‘I meant that –’

‘The funny thing is one
assumes
life is linear,’ Mrs Alton interrupts, with a stagey sigh. She starts to walk to the window – very slight limp, otherwise perfect deportment – her cane tapping on the wooden floor. ‘But then, as you get older, as ancient as me, Lorna, you realize life is not linear at all but circular, that dying is as hard as being born, that it all returns to the point you think you’d left long, long ago. Like the hands of a clock.’

‘Really?’ Lorna has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. Still, she thinks old people are hugely underestimated and that too often it’s only children and old people who speak the truth. You just have to slow down and listen.

‘Fashions come around again.’ Her eyes sweep up and down Lorna’s dress. ‘Events. People. Yet we all imagine ourselves unique. You wear that dress without giving a thought to its previous life.’

Lorna is too polite to say that she frequently wonders about her vintage items, who wore them, if they’re still alive. She’s been known to make up biographies for them too, which Jon finds hilarious.

‘As we never learn from those who go before us, we are all doomed to repeat mistakes afresh,’ Mrs Alton adds wearily. ‘Over and over. Like mice in a scientist’s cage.’ She gazes out of the window, as if she’s quite forgotten anyone else is there.

Lorna glances at Dill for some kind of direction, some sign that it may be time to leave. But Dill offers only a nervous smile, gaze slipping away.

They really are the oddest couple. And this is the oddest day, Lorna decides. One of those extraordinary surreal days that pop up unexpectedly in an ordinary life, unrelated to anything that has gone before it or will come after.

‘And when might we expect the first payment, my dear?’ Mrs Alton whips around, smiling properly for the first time, revealing peculiarly small, antique-ivory teeth. ‘In cash.’

‘Oh.’ Lorna is flustered. She’d thought posh people didn’t discuss finances.

‘I do hope I haven’t embarrassed you by mentioning money.’

‘No, no, not at all. The thing is, I … I love this house, Mrs Alton, I really do. It’s wonderful, quite unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. But my fiancé is not yet convinced … I need to talk to him first,’ she blathers, feeling a tide of heat sweep her face.

‘
Talk
to him?’ repeats Mrs Alton, looking puzzled. ‘And you, a modern girl.’

‘It’s really about the little details.’ Lorna takes a deep breath, tells herself sternly not to be intimidated. ‘We need a bit more information, that’s all.’

‘In-for-
ma-
tion?’ Mrs Alton enunciates slowly, as if the very idea is preposterously bourgeois. Her lip catches on a dry tooth, staying hitched for a moment before falling. ‘What sort of information might you require?’

‘Um, where we’d actually have the reception, the dancing, the catering arrangements.’ She reaches for her hair and twists it, feeling a wave of self-consciousness under the pin of Mrs Alton’s gaze. ‘That sort of thing.’

‘But there are so many rooms! You could have four weddings going on and you’d never bump into each other.’ She glares at Dill. ‘Is there one job on earth that you could not mess up?’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong! Dill has given us a fantastic tour,’ says Lorna, quickly, hoping she hasn’t got Dill into trouble. The meeting is unravelling fast. ‘But we arrived rather late and we’ve run out of time.’

On cue, the car horn hoots jauntily from the drive below.

Mrs Alton frowns at Dill. ‘Surely we haven’t another visitor. Are the masses at the gate?’

‘Oh, no. That’s Jon.’ Lorna wrings her hands, not quite sure how to make her exit gracefully, fearing he might hoot again if she doesn’t hurry up. ‘Thank you so much for taking the time to show me the bridal suite.’

Mrs Alton, sensing she might be about to lose her first customer, sharply changes tack. ‘Endellion tells me you’d love to know more about the house.’

Dill nods enthusiastically in the corner.

‘I’m just nosy, really,’ Lorna says, a little wary now.

‘Excellent. I like an enquiring mind. I don’t get many around here, as you can see.’ She tilts her head, considers something. A seagull shrieks, wheels past the window. ‘The answer is obvious. You must come and stay. Then you can gather all this … information that you seem to need before you pay the deposit.’ She sets her jaw. ‘I must have that deposit.’

‘I don’t know what to say. That’s … that’s extremely generous of you, Mrs Alton. But –’

‘Not at all generous,’ says Mrs Alton, with a dismissive flap of her hand, the diamonds trailing a shimmer of light. ‘Quite the opposite. It is imperative that I get this wedding business off the ground if the house is to remain in private hands, if it has any future at all. And that is all I care about. The house. Oh, and the dog too, of course.’

Lorna laughs nervously.

Mrs Alton smiles. ‘Lorna, you are to be my guinea pig.’

‘I am?’ She’s feeling more confused by the moment. Has she really just been invited to stay here?

‘I’m no fool, Lorna.’ Mrs Alton raises one smudged pencilled eyebrow. ‘I’m perfectly well aware that the fees for such a house, even given its decorative state, are rather modest.’

Lorna blushes: she had assumed Mrs Alton and Dill knew nothing of the marketplace.

‘But as I’m sure you are
also
aware, it is hard to get bookings until there is some evidence of past success. Such is the tiresome trepidation of modern couples. However, I can see that you are a young lady of imagination, style and …’ there is mischief in her eyes now ‘… pluck.’

Even though she knows it’s shameless flattery, Lorna
cannot help thrilling to the idea of being a young lady of pluck. It’s such a wonderful old-fashioned word. She makes a note to share it with her class, come September.

Mrs Alton’s smile hardens. ‘I no longer have the constitution for suspense. Tell me, are you to be my guest?’

The urge to say yes is almost overwhelming.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, there’s just no way I can stay at Toad Hall this month.’ Jon accelerates up the drive, gravel popping beneath the wheels. It is a clear evening now, smelling of rain and grass and blowy big sky. ‘I can’t take any more time off work, not with this big new project in Bow …’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Lorna sighs, digging through the detritus of the glove compartment for the mints. She’s ravenous. All those stairs. ‘I’ll ask my sister.’

The atmosphere in the car tightens slightly. They drive for a few moments in silence. When they get to the end of the drive, Lorna gazes at the house’s battered white enamel sign – stuck in the bushes, like a lost handkerchief that needs to be returned to its owner – and feels a wash of longing and frustration. She is certain that now she’s seen Black Rabbit Hall nothing else will do.

They crunch off the pot-holed drive into the country lane. Behind the foam of cow parsley, farmed fields start to rush past. Electricity pylons, zingy road markings, stone cottages in the valley, all return the sense of normality, the shift from one world to another. Jon relaxes back in his seat. ‘Am I allowed to point out now that Black Rabbit Hall is completely loony? Sort of like being trapped in a Kate Bush song.’

‘It’s a tad eccentric,’ Lorna acknowledges, unwrapping a sticky mint. ‘But I love it.’

The corners of his mouth twitch with a smile. ‘Like you love flea markets and dusty little shops that smell of wee?’

She flicks the mint wrapper at him, laughs. ‘Vintage shops don’t smell of wee!’

‘At least in a shop you can only waste a few pounds on something that’s coming apart at the seams.’ He changes gear a little too firmly. She can always tell his mood shifts by the way he changes gear. Something is bugging him. ‘And there is also the minor matter of rats, my beauty, that manky mongrel having been bought to catch them.’

‘Oh, rats are everywhere in the country,’ she says authoritatively, even though she hasn’t a clue if this is true or not.

‘Just what I wanted at my wedding. A bit of bubonic plague.’

Lorna unwraps another mint, feeds it between his lips, skimming the grain of his evening stubble, pushing the sweet in a little too hard. He bites down on her finger, trapping it in his mouth. She feels the serrated ridge of his teeth, almost hurting but not, the wet heat of his tongue curling around her fingertip and something starts to clench inside. Their eyes catch and spark in the mirror, and it is this abrasion, this tension, that has always made things so exciting. They are such different people – Jon steady, considered, able to simplify any situation, she impulsive, instinctive, prone to over-complication – that most of the time they balance each other perfectly. But other times, the rare occasions when they don’t agree on something – something big – it feels like those oppositions might pull them apart.

Not breaking her gaze, he releases her finger. She turns to look out the window, annoyed by her own arousal.

‘Lorna, I know you love that house.’ Their eyes meet in the mirror. ‘I want to love it too.’

‘You’ve decided you don’t.’

He turns the radio on, swivelling the silver knob, trying to change the mood. But the dance anthem jars. Lorna turns the volume down in silent riposte.