Burnt Norton
In memory of Charlie Coram James and David Sloane
May they have wings to fly
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow?
T. S. Eliot
In later life Edward could never recall why he had returned to the rose garden, or what had made him look up at that window once more. He did remember that it had only been a glance, yet in that instant, everything changed. He saw the girl leaning towards him, regarding him through a clear pane, her fair hair falling in tendrils about her face. He would remember those sea-mist eyes, reaching out to him, yet distant and unattainable. He stood beneath the window and raised his hand, but a cloud’s reflection grazed the glass. When it cleared, the girl had vanished. Once more the window was dark and dingy; only the small face with the down-turned mouth that he had drawn in the dirt remained.
The morning had been hot, September’s last stand against the autumn. Across the valley, sheep grazed in the rough pasture and a gossamer haze hung above the ripened wheat. ‘Look, Eddie,’ his mother said as she stopped the car and pointed across the fields, ‘Burnt Norton.’
As Edward followed her gaze towards the wooded hillside, his eyes rested on a Cotswold manor house. Four gables faced north towards the Malvern Hills, and in the changing light, shadows shifted across the thick stone walls. When she restarted the engine, they continued slowly along the drive and over the cattle grid. Below them, amongst the laurels, a stew pond glittered, and lower still, pushing its way through the tangled grass, Edward could make out the ruins of an ice house. A courtyard lay beyond a red-brick archway, and as they drove underneath, Edward could see his future stepfather crossing the cobbles towards them. Conroy smiled warmly as Edward’s mother stopped the car and opened the window. Edward could hear the tenderness in his mother’s voice when she greeted Conroy, and he recognized the enormity of this new step in their lives. As he climbed out of the car, his mother got out too, shutting the dogs inside.
‘This house, Eddie, was once simply known as Norton,’ Conroy said, putting his hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. ‘But after the fire of 1741, it has always been known as Burnt Norton. I hope you’ll grow to like it.’
The fifteen-year-old smiled at his future stepfather and shrugged. ‘I hope so too,’ he said.
The four gables of the north façade rising before him were too severe to be beautiful, but they had another quality, something intangible in the endless stone walls, the countless mullioned windows and the solitary bell suspended beneath the eaves. The coat of arms set above the main doorway held an indefinable fascination. Something deep within Edward made him feel as if he had been there before.
‘Curious, isn’t it?’ Conroy watched the boy’s sensitive face. ‘Norton can have a strange effect.’
Edward, unable to look away, spoke at last. ‘You go on; I’ll catch up with you in the garden later.’
‘Good idea, we’ll leave you to explore.’ Conroy and his mother linked arms and walked towards a small gate at right angles to the house. Edward waited until they had disappeared into the garden beyond, leaving him alone in the courtyard.
Burnt Norton.
The name echoed in his head.
A broken door led to a small internal cloister. He entered and climbed the worn steps to the back door. He turned the handle, it wouldn’t move. He pushed his whole weight against the weathered oak, until at last it gave way and he tumbled into the dimly lit hallway. On the wall above him a row of bells from another century remained. He read the names: Drawing Room, Dining Room, Boudoir, Library. He stopped in front of a mirror, and as his face distorted in the mottled glass he remembered Conroy’s words: ‘In a month or so, you can choose your own bedroom, but you must wait until the builders have replaced the broken boards.’
Ignoring this, Edward crossed the flagstones, unhooked the
Danger
sign from the bottom of the wide staircase and stepped over the first missing tread. He paused for a while on the half-landing and looked over the rose garden below. The two beds were each split into four quarters, separated by a central gravel path. Each bed was enclosed by a low box hedge, but the roses themselves were dying, their petals drifting silently to the ground. Behind them, in the shade of a sycamore tree, a statue of a young horse stretched its neck.
The air was hushed, heavy with sadness. Edward ran his finger across a pane of glass, drawing a small, cheerless face in the thick dust that had gathered there. Then he stood and climbed the last five treads to the first floor.
An old mattress lay propped on its side. He prodded it, watching the dust burst into tiny particles. Beneath a broken skylight, books and magazines littered the floor. He picked up a copy of
Punch
, opened the yellowed cover and was reading the caption to an old-fashioned cartoon when a chair in the corner caught his eye. It had large wooden wheels. He ran his hands along the back, and as the chair moved, the wheels creaked in protest. Edward wondered at its history, for everything had a history in Edward’s imagination.
A small doorway disguised as a bookcase further intrigued him. He pulled it open to reveal a winding stairway to the attics, where two rooms led off a small landing. In the first, sixties wallpaper peeled from the pink plaster and forgotten idols posed on faded posters. He entered the second bedroom. The small leaded windows fractured the sunlight into a thousand patterns on the wooden floor. An iron bedstead with rusting springs rested against one of the heavily beamed walls and in the corner a painted cupboard lay open. Flies buzzed on the ceiling, and the room had the air of having been untouched for centuries. This was the room he would choose. Edward lingered there, oblivious of time passing, until the dogs’ muffled barks reminded him that they had been left in the car. He ran out of the house, retracing his footsteps into the empty courtyard.
When he opened the car door the dogs jumped out, free at last. He followed them into the rose garden, where they raced ahead of him – galloping beyond the rose beds, past the sycamore tree and the statue of the horse he’d seen from above – leaving Edward alone once more. Admiring the gentle west wing with its three identical gables, he recognized with pride the leaded panes of his new bedroom far above him, and below it, the large and dirty bay window where he had paused only a short time before. He turned away, walking up the bank onto a large flat lawn. At one end, the lawn was enclosed by a crumbling balustrade; at the other, two gateposts were buried in the undergrowth.
He thought he heard his mother’s voice. He ran towards it, calling her name, but there was no reply. Only a statue of Diana the huntress, her arm shattered, her face pitted by centuries of weather, stared back at him from below.
Slightly unsettled, Edward returned to the rose garden. He stopped in front of the window, where he looked up again and saw the girl.
The dogs’ barking broke the spell, and Edward darted away from the house, under the brick archway, down a gravelled path, and into a wide-open space that merged with the woods beyond. Great oaks bordered two empty pools. He stopped there and leant against the entrance pillar. Shutting his eyes, he breathed deeply, and for an instant the pools filled with water, and children chased each other in and out of the shadows. Edward sat on a stone bench, the echoes of their laughter ringing in his ears. As the sun warmed his face, he reflected that Conroy was right: this house had a strange effect.
His mother’s voice recalled him to the present. He opened his eyes and looked around: the pools were empty once more. Following the sounds of their voices, he found his mother and Conroy half hidden by the wild grasses. Edward threw himself onto the bank beside them.
‘I thought you said the house was empty, Conroy?’
‘The last tenants left thirty years ago, so, yes, it certainly is.’
‘But there was someone in the window.’
Conroy smiled as if everything was suddenly clear. ‘When I next see you, I will show you something very special. It is a first edition of
Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot, given to me by my grandmother on my twenty-first birthday. The opening part of the work is “Burnt Norton”. I believe Eliot happened upon our garden sometime in the thirties when my family was away, and he sat down to write one of the greatest poems in history. Perhaps one day you will find an explanation, but for now, you can read this astonishing work and appreciate the mystery.’
Looking at the scarred and empty pools, the trees towering above them, Edward wondered if Eliot had closed his eyes and leant against the same stone wall, and if he, too, had seen the children.
1731
No memorial is guaranteed permanence. Thirteen hundred years ago, a Roman was buried on Kingcombe Hill. The grave overlooking the Vale of Evesham was thought an enduring place for the soul to seek the afterlife, and it remained undisturbed until one frosty November morning when a plough bit into the elaborate stone coffin, the lid was dislodged, and the Roman’s peace was destroyed. The fragile bones disintegrated on the morning breeze, the plough moved on, reducing all traces of vanity to useful rows.
But something was left behind: a ring made of gold strands twisted like a serpent’s coil. Dorothy knew this ring well; her father wore it until the day before he died. She suspected that this ring had changed her family’s fortunes.
The room was dark when Dorothy opened her eyes. She lay quite still, letting the last strands of a dream slip from her. As her dolls stared at her from the shelf, she remembered Miss Byrne’s words from the night before.