Marlford (3 page)

Four

L
ater, from the tangle of the rose garden, Ellie saw the metallic sheen of a strange vehicle making its way slowly along the avenue of limes.

Even at a distance it was resplendent in reds, golds and purples, flashing brilliant beams of chrome through the trees, embraced by two brightly dressed figures, advancing gracefully as though floating on a shimmering sea, like Cleopatra's barge.

She threw down her bunch of roses and ran. ‘Mr Quersley!' She pushed through the long weeds on the terrace and around to the front of the manor, but her call hardly reached the stand of oaks at the margin of the old lawns, and she did not receive an answer. She could see the track to Home Farm leading away through high hedges, but the farmhouse was out of sight; she would never reach Oscar before the vehicle arrived. The hutments were closer, the lines of corrugated metal imprinted on the distance, but she knew she could not tell the men about such a thing.

She hesitated. The visitors continued to advance. They were almost upon her, and she could not face them alone.

‘Papa… Papa!' Her voice echoed in the ample recesses of the hallway. ‘There're people coming. Papa!'

Ernest was asleep in his study. The vague impression of emergency only irritated him; he turned in his chair, pulling a cushion across his face. Ellie tugged at it but he held on hard, breathing loudly through the thick matting of old feathers and bare tapestry.

Finally, he sneezed. ‘What? What is it, Ellie, that requires so much commotion?' He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘There are people coming, Papa, up the lime avenue. I saw them.'

‘What kind of people?'

‘I don't know. They were… they've got some kind of car, in different colours.'

Ernest was unconvinced. ‘Tradesmen?'

‘Oh, no, I don't think so.'

‘Not those people who turn up demanding lumber and such like?'

‘No. Nothing like that. Real people.'

Ernest saw the way his daughter screwed her hands in her work apron, and the tense wrinkle of her brow. He wished he could soothe her many anxieties. He flapped the cushion at them so that they dispersed for a moment, nothing more than a swarm of midges, and he smiled kindly, reaching out a hand that did not quite touch hers.

‘Best ask them to supper then, I should think,' he suggested, brightly. ‘That should do it.'

‘Do what, Papa?'

‘Well, I don't know – introduce them to us. At the very least it will do that. Won't it?'

But Ellie was still frowning and, once again, Ernest felt he had failed to solve the insurmountable conundrum of how to be master of this ridiculous house. Perhaps he should set dogs on the intruders, or fire off a round above their heads? Perhaps he should have made Quersley weld the main gates closed to protect them all from trespass? Or maybe that was quite wrong: maybe he should hold court on the portico like a real gentleman, extending a gracious hand and an invitation to dine or shoot pheasants or some such. Perhaps a simple supper was ungenerous.

He did not know what Ellie meant when she looked at him in that way, demanding something impossible; he had no idea any more. It was all too confusing.

He pulled the cushion back against his face and leaned, once more, into the chair.

Ellie was not at all sure how her father's invitation could be offered. She went out to the top of the steps, standing under the shabby stone portico from where she could see the avenue of limes, the pasture stretching away on one side towards Home Farm, the slope on the other sweeping down towards the mere and the village beyond, the hutments between, where the contours of the estate seemed to meet, the ugly scar of buildings only partly obscured by a line of firs. It was all as it had always been, a landscape she could contain quite easily within her thoughts.

The incessant discord of the vehicle's extraordinary bodywork was something else. She wondered if she might have a fever, a sickness; she felt her forehead in case she had a temperature and closed her eyes, as though this might dislodge the fantasy. But when she looked again, the
visitors were making good progress, almost at the point at which the trees stopped and the drive swept round in a wide-open curve towards the manor.

She could see them quite clearly now. The first had one arm thrust casually through the open front window of the van, and Ellie could see his hand resting lightly on top of the steering wheel. He was taking in his surroundings with measured glances; once he looked behind and seemed to speak to the other figure, a taller man, his head lowered, leaning his shoulder against the rear doors.

In the end, because it seemed right, she went to meet them. They had come to a stop at the end of the lime avenue and were standing together to one side of the vehicle. She saw the way they stared and she traced with them in her mind the blotted grey dereliction of the façade behind her.

‘It's not as it was,' she said, holding herself straight, her arms fixed to her sides.

They did not respond to her apology, continuing to gaze instead at the manor: the central domes, high roofs and tall windows recalling the splendour of mighty French châteaux, the graceful chimneys of the original residence still visible behind, a square brick tower standing guard on the Victorian extensions yet further back, and the Georgian portico thrusting confidently towards them, holding them at bay.

‘Papa says you should stay for supper.'

The vibrant colour of their baggy clothing defined them too boldly against the muted histories of the old building.

‘If you like, of course… if you're able. There's no obligation.'

She thought for a moment that perhaps they did not understand, and she began to think how she might make the offer in another language. But finally one of the visitors spoke.

‘I'm Dan.' He stepped forwards but did not smile.

It was the young man she had seen at the front of the van. His dark hair was pushed back from his high forehead and curled to his shoulders – like some kind of late-Georgian wig, she thought – and he wore spectacles. With his long face and thin lips, it conspired to make him seem bookish and grave. He gestured towards the limes.

‘We're travelling around,' he went on.

Ellie frowned. ‘Yes. Well, you're welcome, of course. This is Marlford. But I suppose you knew that.'

‘Marlford? No, we didn't know.'

‘You weren't intending to call on us then, as part of your tour?'

‘Here? No way.' He threw a sharp glance at his companion.

‘People do come from time to time,' Ellie said. ‘Sightseers.'

He looked past her, taking in the impressive scale more than anything – more than the overgrown flowerbeds and sunken paths; the mossy stones and sprouts of weed from odd places, the sag of the roof.

‘Yeah, well, our van broke down, you see, back on the main road, by your gates, that's all. We thought you might let us ring.'

It only now occurred to Ellie that the vehicle might be broken in some way. She looked at it mournfully. ‘I'm sorry. I didn't realize. But, you see, we don't have a telephone…'

‘Don't you?' He squinted at her, as though to make sure of the truth of her statement. ‘No means of getting in touch with someone? Even in an emergency?'

The other visitor stepped forward quickly. ‘Look – hi, yeah, I'm Gadiel.' He smiled, wiping his palm down the faded cotton of his trousers before reaching towards her. ‘We're sorry to have barged in like this. It's like Dan says, it's the van.'

He was tall, with a broad-chested solidity which might have belonged to an older man, but there was something effortlessly, childishly tender in the way his eyes settled on her.

Ellie wondered which of them she should look at. ‘Gadiel? How lovely! Hebrew. Um…' She looked at neither of them, in the end, but fixed her gaze instead on a crisp slice of the mere visible between the trees. ‘Sent by Moses to reconnoitre the land. Yes, that's right, I'm sure of it. Isn't it? I've never met a Gadiel.'

She stopped, blushing, as though the admission might be shameful. She wished she could have turned, retreated into the house and left them. Already they demanded too much of her.

Ernest stopped at the sight of the flamboyant guests seated at his long table. He brushed energetically at the sleeves of his battered dinner jacket, sank his feet more firmly into the scarlet pumps he habitually wore on fine evenings and balanced himself. Crossing the room to take his seat, he immediately picked up his knife and sat with it clenched vertically in his fist.

‘Ah. Yes, ah… I see.' He blinked at them.

‘We were invited to come and eat,' Gadiel said, evenly. ‘We were invited when we arrived.'

Dan stared at Ernest. ‘We are allowed to be in here, aren't we?'

Ernest studied the dining room with some care, as though it might all have changed since he was last there. It was a bright evening; the low sun swept through the long windows, the splits and stains and patches unobtrusive in the generous mid-summer light, but it was as it had always been.

‘In here?' he repeated at last, perplexed. ‘But where on earth else should we be? Ellie – am I wrong again? We're quite right, aren't we? In the dining room?'

She had just entered, wearing an old-fashioned floral dress and a long necklace of green plastic beads; her hair was elaborately plaited, her bare arms straining with the weight of a huge china tureen.

Ernest took this evidence of imminent supper as a good sign. ‘I think we're right.' He looked back at Dan, relieved. ‘I think it's perfectly all right.'

Gadiel stood up and went to help, taking the tureen and placing it near Ernest's elbow. ‘It's very kind of you, to allow us in like this.' He looked around, as Ernest had done, taking in the faded splendour. ‘It's a beautiful room. The whole place – it's beautiful.'

‘Yeah, it is.' But Dan's admiration was grudging; as soon as he had spoken, he fixed his eyes determinedly on the old wood of the table, closing off the rest of Marlford from sight, stiffening against its efforts to seduce him.

Ellie put her hands to her hair, pushing at the pins, feeling so insubstantial and grey all of a sudden, such a
shadow, that she let them dig into her scalp in the hope that they might prick her back to life.

‘But we could have had sandwiches,' Gadiel went on. ‘That would have been fine.'

‘Sandwiches!' Ernest might not have known the word. He glanced at his daughter but, gathering nothing from her expression, tapped his thumb on the lid of the tureen.

‘Ellie, I rather think you should remove the soup to your place and begin serving. We're here to eat, after all. Our guests must be hungry.'

She heaved the tureen to the far end of the table and carefully ladled the thin soup into four bowls, which she passed down the table. They began to eat without speaking, only watching each other intently, as if ready for any strange movement – a jerk, a lunge. The sounds they made seemed loud.

‘Have you come a long way? To Marlford?'

Ellie's enquiry was simple, polite, nothing more, so she was confused by the quick exchange of glances between the boys, their hesitancy.

‘We're travelling,' Gadiel replied, finally.

‘Travelling where?'

He did not quite look at her. ‘In the van.'

‘Yes, I understand but—'

‘We don't have a fixed itinerary,' Dan said quickly, not allowing another question. ‘We're exploring.'

‘Drifters?' Ernest did not look up; he pushed the word sneeringly through his nose.

‘Papa!' Ellie blushed at his rudeness. ‘I'm sorry. We don't have many visitors, you see…' She found a drip of soup on the table and rubbed at it determinedly with her
thumb. ‘And you must have some idea where you're going, don't you?'

‘That's not the way we do things.'

Dan seemed to be reprimanding her. She rubbed harder at the stain.

‘I just thought… ending up here… at Marlford,' but she could prompt nothing from them, and there was a long silence.

Already Ellie felt that she had failed, and that her failure was important.

‘How long have you been here, then?' Gadiel asked, in the end.

She found she was offended by the oddness of the question.

‘I've always lived here.'

She was curt; she went back to eating her soup.

Dan watched the slide of her spoon, the unhurried elegance of the action worn smooth by years of lonely repetition. He leaned forward, studying the simple movement, and then with a deliberate flourish scraped his chair back from the table.

Ernest winced at the noise.

‘It's your house,' Dan said.

It sounded like an accusation. Ellie did not know how to respond. ‘Well, it's Papa's, yes.'

Gadiel stared at Ernest for a moment. ‘Oh, I see – but I thought you were servants,' he said. ‘Housekeepers or something – you know the kind of thing.'

Dan nodded. ‘Retainers.' He glanced at Gadiel. ‘We didn't think of it being your house.'

Ernest slurped the dregs of his soup. ‘Of course it's my
house,' he muttered. ‘Who on earth else would invite you to supper?' He pushed his empty bowl away from him and beckoned to his daughter to collect it. ‘This is Marlford,' he declared with ponderous enunciation, as though making a rail announcement over the clatter of a moving train.

‘I told them that, Papa, when they arrived.' Ellie came to his side. As she picked up his bowl she looked down the table at the guests. ‘But they said they didn't know it.'

The boys exchanged another glance; Dan's raised eyebrows encouraged Gadiel to reply.

‘Like we told you, we broke down…' he began.

‘Gadiel pushed the van the whole way up from the road.' Dan gestured at his friend. ‘Man, we hadn't thought the drive would be so long.' He braced his right arm as a demonstration of strength. ‘It's a fair push, all the way – it's a good job he's muscly.'