Closed at Dusk (4 page)

Many of them had been discoloured and damaged when William began to renew The Sanctuary twelve years ago, restoring the gardens to much more than their former glory. He had scrubbed the statues clean and had some of them repaired by a young local sculptor. For the birth of Dennis, the first grandchild, William had commissioned him to make a small biblical-looking donkey to stand by the swing tree.

In the temple of Bastet at the end of the lake, the cat that had crowned the free-standing central column had long ago been smashed by marauding children. William had buried the pieces respectfully, and had the sitting goddess remodelled as an unearthly short-haired Abyssinian with long front legs and a sphinx-like stare.

Angela hung about the little pillared temple for a long time, looking at the pictures and remembrance cards, and chatting to visitors about her own cats and theirs, while William, who always had secateurs or a knife in his pocket, culled dead heads from the
primula denticulata
on the bank at the edge of the lake.

‘I love it, William.' She came and held out the wide skirt of her sundress for the dead flowers. ‘If I send you last year's Christmas card picture of my tortoiseshells, will you put it up in the temple?'

‘Bring it back yourself.'

She looked at him curiously, and he grinned. He was very taken with her.

Angela wanted to see the tomb of Walter Cobb, the mastiff's master, which was more easily approached from the water. William got the oars from a toolshed, and, as he was untying the blue dinghy, he heard a faint high pitched shout from across the lake. He looked up. Rob's head was poking through the bars of the playroom window. He was wailing, ‘Wait for me, Wum!'

Some of the visitors looked up at the house and smiled. William put his hands to his mouth and called back, ‘Hurry up!'

By the time William had pulled the boat out of the reeds and Angela was on board, looking round radiantly like Cleopatra in her barge, Rob came tearing down the opposite bank and over the wooden bridge in breathless agitation, head thrown back and mouth desperate, as if he were in the last gasps of the 200-metre dash.

‘Welcome aboard,' Angela said, and dropped her voice ominously. ‘We're cruising to the mausoleum.'

‘I know,' Rob told her, ‘but don't be afraid.'

They ducked to go under the humped white bridge. As they straightened up on the other side, a man in tank-tread hiking boots who came down the long slope from the copse stepped on to the bridge and raised a hand.

‘Afternoon, Mr Taylor. Lovely day for a sail!'

‘Hullo,' William called back. ‘Nice to see you.'

‘Who's that?' Angela asked.

‘No idea. I must have seen him here before.'

‘So have I,' Rob said. It was the man with the wild white hair who had taken him back to the house when he had run out of the basement door in terror.

‘Casing the joint,' Angela said. ‘What's he got in the green bag?'

‘Duck poison,' Rob said.

‘His lunch?'

‘A bomb.'

‘Don't scare me, Rob,' Angela said. ‘My son used to terrify me when he was your age. Creeping up behind me and whispering, or hiding behind clothes in a cupboard and groaning when I opened the door. He thought it was funny.'

On the bank of the overgrown promontory where the mausoleum and the steps leading down to it were half buried, William held the boat, so that Angela could see the winged moulding on the lead doors and the legend under the pediment: ‘Love is Eternal.'

‘Who's in there?' Angela whispered. She thought that Rob, eyes round, bottom lip sucked behind his oversize front teeth, was only pretending fear.

‘Nobody,' William said. ‘Walter Cobb died when Beatrice was only about forty-five. She had this vault made and put him inside, so that from her bedroom window up there in the turret, where Dottie and I sleep, she could look out on him across the lake.'

‘Tell about Hardcastle, Wum.'

‘Are you supposed to know about that?'

‘Mummy told me. Beatrice got a boy-friend, it was the vicar, and she and Hardcastle would look out of the bedroom window at my what-is-it – my great-great-great-grandfather alone out here in the moonlight.'

‘It's thrilling.' Angela encouraged him. ‘What happened then?'

‘I forget.' Rob was suddenly out of his depth. He leaned over the side of the boat to pull at a water-lily leaf.

William said, ‘The Reverend Hardcastle died, and she buried him here too.'

‘They're still in there?' Angela was enthralled.

‘Oh, no, her daughter-in-law was a gorgon who wouldn't
stand any nonsense like that. After Beatrice went to join her donkeys and shetlands in the Elysian fields, Geraldine sent the two blokes off to join her in the churchyard. They're not here.'

‘
They are
.' Rob stood upright to tell Angela, ‘If there's a moon tonight,
don't look out of the window
.'

‘Thanks, I won't.'

As William rowed towards the marsh, Angela told Rob that her son Peter used to dress up in a sheet and stand gibbering in the headlights of cars bringing guests for dinner.

‘He was a wild boy,' Rob said, with satisfaction. ‘Did Sir Rollo – Sir Rufus – whack him?'

‘Ralph isn't Peter's father. I was married to someone else then.'

William let the boat drift through shallow water into the soggy bank, and he and Rob got out and stood on the half-submerged boardwalk discussing conduits and sunk overflows.

‘We'll talk to George Barton. He's good on drainage. Tell you what, Rob, bring your notebook down here tomorrow afternoon, and we'll draw up some plans to show him.'

When Rob ran back to the house, Angela said, ‘You're a good grandfather, Wum.'

‘I wish I were.'

‘I like you. I knew I would.'

Did she look at every man like that, with dancing eyes and a waiting smile? William could only say, ‘Let's go and get Ruth to give us some tea.'

He quite often joined visitors to have a cup of tea, but a coachload had come and there was no room inside, so he and Angela sat on upturned half-barrels in the courtyard. A few white fantails, descendants of the huge flock Beatrice and Walter had bred, pecked about on the cobbles. There were tubs of wallflowers. The tiles of the stable roofs were rosy in the sun. A trickle of people went in and out of the toilets, which used to be a harness room for the driving horses.

William went to ask Doreen for tea and cake, and after a wait, Ruth brought it out to them, her clear, no-nonsense face looking cross.

‘She forgot,' she said. ‘That woman. You should have asked me for it.'

‘You've got enough to do.' William introduced Angela and Ruth summed her up. ‘Still having trouble with Doreen?' he asked.

‘Trouble?' Ruth rolled up her eyes. ‘If she lasts out the summer, Mr Will, I won't.'

‘She'll never leave.' William watched Ruth's broad flowered hips bustle back into the tea-room. ‘She's everything here, helps in the house and the kitchen, runs this profitable little business. Her family has been here for ages. Place is her life.'

He was happy sitting across from Angela at the rough wooden table. A flicker of guilt led him to say, ‘Ralph and Tessa are probably having a cream tea together at Avebury.'

Angela laughed.

‘Why is that funny?' he asked her. ‘It doesn't seem funny, you and me having tea here together. Seems a bit' – say it, William – ‘romantic.'

She got up. Damn! He'd bust it. But she was only going to buy another piece of Ruth's fruit cake from the tea-room counter.

The air cooled down with the end of the day. They had drinks at the garden end of the drawing-room; from the big bay window they could see the startling whites and intense pinks holding the sun in the flower border, and the deepening colours of the lake.

Angela, devastating in black trousers and a wide white silk blouse gathered into a gold dog-collar, huge sleeves braceleted with gold, made Tessa, in bright cottons, feel like a dairymaid.
Angela went over to William to look at the crest on his blazer pocket. ‘That was on the letter you sent with the map.'

‘It's The Sanctuary symbol. Two of Beatrice Cobb's gambolling lambs. She used to take the runty ones the farmers would have let die and give them a proper chance at life.'

Ralph Stern took the opportunity to give a brief dissertation on the eighteenth-century farmers of Avebury, who had broken up many of the great sarsen stones for building.

‘It's comforting to remember,' William said, ‘that we're less destructive now.'

‘Don't you believe it,' Ralph ordered. ‘All those depressing tourists scattering iced-lolly wrappers – they don't give a damn.'

‘You had a good time anyway?'

‘Thanks to your daughter.' Ralph's indigo-lidded eyes feasted darkly on Tessa, vivid in her scarlet blouse and skirt splashed with poppies. ‘I'm half in love with her.'

And I may be more than half in love with your wife, William thought. Stop that, you bloody idiot! He removed his eyes from Angela's white and gold brilliance and went out to the kitchen to get more ice.

Ruth Barton had closed the tea-room, put the cash in the safe and gone home to make supper for George and her teenage sons; now she had come back to help Polly Dix, the head gardener's wife, with the dinner.

‘Said anything to Doreen yet?' William asked her.

‘Till I'm blue in the face.'

‘She won't change.' Polly was bland and blonde with a cushiony bosom and fat calves tapering into small feet in dirty trainers.

‘Why not?' Ruth slapped some fish about in a dish of flour. ‘I've given her every chance.'

‘She likes herself like that.'

‘The customers don't. She can be quite rude,' Ruth told William. ‘Takes offence. She's very
sensitive
.' Being down-to-earth and unpretentious people, Ruth and Polly and William all made a face at that. ‘She fusses and goes all spooky. Last week she wouldn't serve a man with an eye patch. She needs the money, but she won't come to work if she's upset, and I have to get young Brenda to help, or Polly to come down, with the twins.'

‘Bloody nuisance,' William said. ‘You'd better fire her. Find someone else. Talk it round, put something in the
Gazette
.'

‘Is that what you want?'

‘Do what you like.'

‘You're the boss, Will.'

‘No, you are.'

‘Don't have me on.'

‘I mean it, Ruth. It's your show. You hired her, you fire her.'

Rob had been whining round the drawing-room, trying to nag someone into playing snap.

‘Play with me!'

‘Not now.'

But ten-year-old Dennis had only to come wandering in and remark casually, ‘Give you a game of cribbage if you like,' for Uncle Matthew to say, ‘All right, old son. Just let me get another drink.'

Nina was lying on the carpet with her legs tangled in a long fusty skirt. Rob slumped down beside her and pulled the loose sweater sleeves back from her hands, so she could read to him.

‘The children's hour.' Ralph Stern made the best of the fact that children were all over the place in the house – Rodney's wife Jill had just brought her baby down.

‘Nice,' Angela said. ‘Why didn't we have children?'

‘You were too old.'

‘Five years ago? I might have had a genius. People do, at forty.'

‘You might have had another Peter.'

‘The wild boy?' Rob looked up from the floor, remembering what he had heard in the boat.

‘That's flattering him.' Ralph could be quite offensive to his wife, and her beloved son was an easy target; but she pretended not to notice. Polite and attentive to her husband, she had evidently decided to make this marriage work.

William was afraid she must have thought him quite silly in the tea-room courtyard.

Towards the end of a long, agreeable dinner, he looked down the table and raised his glass to his dear familiar Dottie, at ease in one of her neat, all-purpose dinner dresses, tiny pearl ear-rings, but no other jewellery, no make-up – untroubled, safe.

‘All's well.' It was an age-old talisman between them.

Angela raised her glass too. ‘I like this family. I love this house. Thanks, Ralph,' she gleamed down the table at him, ‘for bringing me to The Sanctuary.'

He spread his hands, taking full credit.

When they left the table, a pitiful figure in Superman pyjamas was at the bottom of the stairs, huddled against the banisters.

‘Rob!' Tessa swooped. ‘My poor deprived child. Why didn't you come in to us?'

Cuddled, triumphant, Rob thought: Because this looks more pathetic.

‘What's wrong, darling?'

‘Cot death.'

‘Oh, Rob – don't joke about things like that.'

‘I dreamed about Flusher.'

‘Who's Flusher?' Angela asked.

‘Something terrible. I'll show you if you like.'

‘Tomorrow.'

Tessa took the child upstairs, stayed with him until he was asleep, and came down to the chairs grouped comfortably round the drawing-room fire. Beyond the uncurtained windows at each end of the long room, a still, cool night enclosed the light and warmth.

‘He's all right. He often comes wandering down in London.' Tessa sat down, and Charlotte, her little woolly dog, jumped into her lap. The yellow labrador lay dutifully by William's chair. A black cat slept on the hearth. Fool sat alert, watching Dottie from under his fierce brows as she moved about with the coffee.

‘He works himself up,' Keith said. ‘All the silly kids want to be spooked by Flusher.'

‘So did we.' William remembered locking his brother in the housemaid's closet and being chastised by Troutie when she found Matthew in hysterics. ‘Because there are no ghosts in this house, we have had to invent them.'