Fiercombe Manor (19 page)

I couldn't hear any birdsong now. It was eerily quiet in the clearing, a quiet somehow expectant, a breath held in anticipation. I looked around, not knowing quite what I expected to see. All was still. There is something about empty, abandoned buildings that is melancholy in company but unnerving when you are alone. The cottages would have been bucolic in the estate's heyday, but not any longer. The window glass had long since gone, and one front door was missing, the other ajar. As I moved off in search of the forbidden glasshouse, I heard a creak that I could have sworn came from that old door, its blue paint half peeled off in long, uneven ribbons to reveal silvery wood beneath. But there wasn't even the faintest whisper of wind in the valley that morning to move it, and so I forced myself to keep walking, and not look back.

The glasshouse was only a little farther on. It was empty of anything except half a dozen bare trestle tables and a good deal of smashed glass, which liberally littered the ground beneath.

“You've no business poking round here,” said a voice just behind me. I swung round, audibly gasping, and only just stopped myself from screaming out in fright. It was Ruck.

“Oh! I'm sorry, I—” I came to a breathless halt, aware that my face was red.

There was no dog in sight; he seemed to be alone. Even as close as I had been to him on the journey from the station, it was difficult to guess his age. He could have been fifty or seventy, his skin roughened and deeply creased by the sun but his body trim.

“I wanted to stretch my legs,” I said eventually. “I thought the exercise would be good for me. I didn't mean to intrude anywhere I wasn't supposed to . . .” My voice trailed off.

He stared back at me, his expression unreadable. He probably thought I was a little fool to be wandering around on my own in my condition. I wondered how much he knew of my story.

“You shouldn't be here,” he said shortly. “It's not safe.”

“I know—Mrs. Jelphs told me about the glasshouse last night, and I suppose I couldn't resist coming to have a look myself. I wasn't going to go inside or anything.”

His eyes narrowed further. “What did she tell you about it?”

“Just that it was dangerous. That the glass was loose and I mustn't go in under any circumstances. She was very firm about that.”

“You ought to heed her. Here's not a nice place to be.”

“I wanted to see where Stanton House stood, if you can point me in the right direction,” I stammered. “I know there's not much left, but . . .”

He gestured reluctantly towards the remains of a long red-brick wall, its length breached in some places—presumably stealthily, over time—by the thick ivy that was also doing its best to overpower the glasshouse's rickety frame.

“Beyond there is where the house stood. That used to be the wall of the kitchen garden. You'll sometimes see the foundations in winter, but you'd be lucky now. Might see some rubble.”

There was nothing to indicate that a great mansion had ever stood there.

“Mrs. Jelphs told me it was only there for a few years. It's as if it never was.”

“The weeds get everything in the end. Them cottages—the glasshouse too—there won't be any sign of them either, soon enough.”

There was a silence. Ruck was staring towards the wall's remains.

“So you live over there?” I said eventually, gesturing vaguely, my voice slightly too loud in the stillness.

He nodded curtly. “I'm about as far away from the manor as you can be, right up at the southern end of the valley in the woods.”

“Ruin Wood, I think Mrs. Jelphs called it. I wondered where the name came from.”

“It's an old name. Older than Stanton House, though some would say the cap fits.” He coughed and spat over his shoulder. “I'll be off then. You go careful now, girl. Do you know which path takes you back to the manor?”

I nodded dumbly and watched him go. He didn't look back, and though I didn't particularly want to be alone amongst the abandoned buildings, I was relieved that the encounter was over. Something about Ruck put me on edge: he seemed to emanate disapproval one moment and then laugh at me the next. It's a strange truth that we often seek favour from the people we're not even sure we like. Ruck was one of those people to me, and I felt sure I would always stumble over my words and act idiotically in front of him.

The nettles, ivy, and other weeds grew high around the ruined remains of the kitchen garden. I stepped around the thickest clumps gingerly, wishing I was wearing trousers. I could already feel the pinprick stings of the nettles through my stockings. Farther on, I bent to pick a dock leaf, even though my father had always said their soothing powers were just an old wives' tale. It was then I realised I was standing right on part of the vanished house's foundations.

Some loose rubble lay close to my feet, and I picked up a few pieces. They were uniformly grey, just as Mrs. Jelphs had said. It was a cold colour, almost dirty-looking, and quite different from the buttery stone everywhere else. You could understand why the locals hadn't approved.

I looked around me, but there was no sign of Ruck. It was odd, though; I still didn't feel as though I was completely by myself. A flutter of movement on the periphery of my vision made me drop one of the stones I held, which landed with a dull thud on the dry,
packed earth. It was a barn owl, taking flight from the apex of the glasshouse's decaying roof.

As it flew over me, it made its shrieking cry, and I remembered how in old folklore it had been thought of as a harbinger of doom and killed for it. The sound echoed discordantly around me as the bird flew out of sight. The acoustics were peculiar here in the steepest part of the valley. I wondered if I stood close to where Mrs. Jelphs had once sat, watching the party.

I had the notion then that if I stayed a moment longer, I would somehow summon it all back to life: the glasses clinking, the hum of the crowd, and Elizabeth Stanton drawing everyone to her like a planet orbited by its moons. In that moment it did not seem a romantic idea but a threatening one, the fabric of time suddenly straining at its seams.

As I turned to go, the sky darkened like a spreading bruise, and a gust of wind charged through the combe, sending the old beeches into a frenzy of movement. The air filled with the sound of new spring leaves rustling, the noise building from a shimmer to such a roar that I put my hands to my ears. The glasshouse began to shake a little, or so it seemed to me, and I thought I heard a loose shard fall and smash. A tinge of menace coloured the air, and I knew, as instinctively as anything I have ever felt, that the place wanted me gone. I didn't hesitate then. I ran.

This scene has become a recurring dream of mine whenever I am anxious. The hissing of the leaves, the shattering of the glass, and the barn owl's scream over it all return to me in the night, and they are just as they were that day. I've sometimes wondered if it has stayed so fresh in my mind because I've barely spoken of it in detail to anyone, never worn it out and dissipated its power through the retelling. I've never even written it down until now—my diary of that summer is oddly selective, as though I was writing with
the knowledge that someone was reading over my shoulder. The worst of the dream is that my legs turn to lead. I try to flee, but I haven't got the strength to move my own limbs. I stand like a helpless statue, hands over my ears, until I will myself to wake up, my heart hammering and my pillow damp with sweat.

In reality I could and did run, and I ran faster than I had done since I was a girl, though much more awkwardly, of course. Stupidly I didn't think to run in the direction I had seen Ruck go; I made for the path I had taken through the woods. In amongst the trees the noise was louder, and I kept one ear covered, my other hand clamped to my belly. Old dry branches groaned under the strain of the wind, and a few broke off and crashed to the ground close to me. As I ran, I saw a flash of movement and colour off to my right, but when I slowed to look, there was nothing but the thick ranks of trees and the very last of the year's bluebells in a solitary cluster. I didn't stop again.

I arrived back at the kitchen garden out of breath and tearful. I was aware I might easily have taken a wrong turn in the state I was in, and in my relief at glimpsing the manor through the trees, a sob rose to fill my throat. I stopped to catch my breath and registered that whatever I had sensed had gone, the air becalmed again, the threat—if that's what it had even been—ebbed away.

If I had expected anyone to be in the kitchen as I went through the door, it was Nan. Instead, standing over the range, was a man too tall and nonchalant to be confused with Ruck. He turned at the disturbance and regarded me with amused detachment. His eyes, lit by the clean morning light, were an unusual pale blue. After a few moments of silence, when I couldn't think of a thing to say, he raised his eyebrows.

“So you must be our mysterious houseguest,” he said over his shoulder. He clearly hadn't spent his boyhood running about
with the farmhands; his accent belonged to a type of ex–public schoolboy I had come across before, in the secret pubs James had taken me to. Languid and comfortable in his own skin, he barely bothered to open his mouth to enunciate. “You're up with the lark, aren't you? I've just driven up from London myself. Haven't been to bed yet—I always seem to leave getting here till the last minute.”

When I remained silent, wondering what he meant, as well as what I must look like, he started whistling and went over to the dresser to get another cup.

“You do take tea, I presume?”

I nodded mutely.

“Why don't you sit down while I get it? You look a bit green around the gills.”

I was glad to do as I was told, my legs shaking now that I had stopped running. I racked my brains to work out who he was. He was in a dinner suit, I took in now, though his tie had gone and his shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. Then I remembered what Mrs. Jelphs had said.

“You're Thomas Stanton,” I said, my voice sounding shaky. Beneath the table my knees still trembled with the exertion of running, and the growing embarrassment of an unexpected encounter with one of the family.

“That's right,” he said with a smirk. “Who did you think I was, the odd-job man?”

His fair hair was all over the place, and a vivid image came into my head of him driving through the night in a fast little motorcar, the roof down all the way. As if reading my thoughts, he put his hand to his head, ruffled his hair, and yawned enormously.

“Did Mrs. J not tell you about me, the heir to all you survey?” He smiled sardonically, gesturing around the kitchen. “I suppose she's more concerned with the ghosts of old. I was only ever intended to
be the spare, you know. My older brother Henry was the real heir, the firstborn son and all that.” He stopped abruptly. After a pause he turned to pick up the teapot.

“Did he . . . ,” I began tentatively as he sat heavily down next to me.

“Die in the war? Actually, no. He didn't get that far. He died in the summer of 'fourteen.” He stopped again, and suddenly looked exhausted.

The only thing I could think to ask was how his brother had died, but the expression on his face warned me off it. Eventually, with a visible effort, he continued.

“I don't know why I'm telling you this, and I doubt you're old enough to remember it, but it was sweltering, at least here it was. All we did that summer was wait for news from Europe and try to stay tolerably cool.”

I thought about myself at that time: a little girl at the seaside with my parents, the grey stripe of sea visible beyond the promenade from our boardinghouse's window. How strange that events had conspired to bring me to the kitchen he had known all his life—and such a different life from mine. He poured me a mug of strong tea, and added milk and sugar without asking if I took them, which brought me back to the present. He seemed to read my mind again.

“You look like you need it sweet.” He leant back in the wooden chair, his legs folded lazily in front of him, and smiled properly for the first time. It gave his face a completely different aspect: open and kind, his eyes sparkling.

“Apparently Mother was quite taken with your story when she got the letter about it. I think she imagines you to be some sort of fragile creature, but I'm not so sure about that, now that I've seen you.”

I blushed and looked down into my teacup. He sat up straight then.

“I'm sorry. That was an insensitive thing to say. It's not a story to you, of course. I know you weren't long married when it happened. What a ghastly situation.” His cheeks were now as hot as mine.

“It's quite all right,” I said quietly. I didn't want to talk about it any more than he did. After all, he had hit the nail precisely on the head—it was nothing but a story. “I'm very grateful to be allowed to come here,” I finished in a rush.

“Well, someone might as well be living in the old place,” he replied. “Apart from Mrs. Jelphs, it mostly stands empty. I come back a few times a year, when I have to—to catch up on estate business for my father. He thinks it's good for me to learn the ropes, so that when it's my turn, I won't bankrupt the estate in a month.” He took a noisy gulp of tea. “As for you, I wasn't quite sure why you'd ended up here rather than stayed in London. Mother mentioned you in passing on the telephone when I said I was coming down here, but she only told me the bare bones. I mean, it's a bit rotten sending you away, after what happened, isn't it?”

He got up and rooted in a cupboard for the biscuit tin. “God, stale gingernuts. Where's Nan when you need her?”

I cleared my throat awkwardly; I realised I hadn't even introduced myself. “I'm Alice Eveleigh, by the way, and in case your mother didn't tell you. I should've said before, but—”

“But you haven't been able to get a word in edgeways. How do you do, Alice?”