Sail Upon the Land (13 page)

Was he a bit underpowered in comparison to his friends? Living in a small house under the eye of his mother, he had suppressed that side of himself out of shame. She seldom let him out of her sight, clinging to him as a reminder of the man and marriage that had gone. Escaping to Armishaw’s had been an enormous relief. Being with boys and men day and night was alarming, the noise, the smell, the lack of privacy. Gradually he relaxed, the tense vigilance melting away.

From being quiet and retiring to begin with at Armishaw’s, Munty began to imitate the rushing starts, loud bangs and impulsive plunges of his peers. It helped to conceal his uncertainty and shyness. When he came home, it was hard to rein his limbs back in. It didn’t help that he had also grown to over six foot in the space of a year, so he was never quite sure where he ended. His mother had ornaments, small tables covered with lace cloths, fragile, tinkly things that were begging to be sent flying. At home he had to shrink himself down, and creep around leaving a lot of sea room in order not to break anything. When he forgot there was always a crash and tears. He associated women with tension, fragility and grief, but also a kind of businesslike independence. Outside the home, his mother was a very different person.

Her second marriage had undoubtedly made her happier and more relaxed at home. His stepfather was a very quiet presence, and Munty didn’t have much to do with him, even after he moved in. He was relieved by the decrease in responsibility for his mother’s emotions that Reg’s presence brought. The clinging focus on every detail of his life dropped away and he had had some privacy at last. Leaving Eastbourne for good had been so much easier as his mother had Reg to keep her company.

Freddie had advised Munty to hire an MG from a small garage that he knew. And now there she was, Melissa, sitting demurely beside him, the scarf he had bought on Freddie’s advice tied around her head, keeping her new short hair under control, the sunglasses balanced on her small nose. He’d prepared with military precision. There were blankets on the back seat, a camping stove with a little tank of butane, a kettle to make tea and a large hamper of food and drinks to keep them going. He hadn’t bought the French letters that Freddie had also recommended.

‘It’s not going to be a dirty weekend, Freddie. I told you. It may not be a weekend at all.’

Freddie had just smiled his own secret lascivious smile.

They stopped at a pub on the way for a late lunch, and arrived in the bright afternoon, entering the grounds between two dilapidated lodges with boarded-up windows at the bottom of the drive. As they swung around the curve, the long low pink brick façade, with its grey cornerstones and crenellations, confronted them, arched windows shining in the sun.

Melissa gasped.

Turning to him and taking his arm, she said, ‘Do you come here often?’ and then giggled. Munty laughed down at her.

‘I’ve only been here once before. With my mother. We came to have a look long before the Army gave it back last year. They hadn’t used the house since 1946 and it was all closed up. Since they left, the trustees have installed a caretaker who lives in the North Lodge, but there was no one there then, so we couldn’t get inside. We just walked around the grounds a bit and peered through the windows. It’s new to me too. It’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘Is that true?’

‘Is what true?’ He replied, bewildered by her change of tone.

‘That you’ve never been inside before.’

‘I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true.’

He was slightly hurt, but then realised she had a point. He looked down at her to reassure her, and saw she was anxious. He kissed her lightly on the lips and said, ‘You’ve got quite an imagination.’

‘It’s just that some people might say that kind of thing to make some sort of impression.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ Munty said. ‘Oddly enough, it’s completely true. I have never explored inside before. We just need to go to the North Lodge and pick up the key from Mr Stokes.’

They drove around the side of the house and up another drive overshadowed with birches and beeches coming into full leaf. The verges were bosky with grass and cow parsley, and Melissa took great breaths of the delicious air.

‘I love it here,’ she said. He just glanced at her and then seemed to concentrate on negotiating the car through the drive, narrowed with springing undergrowth.

‘There it is,’ he said.

The lodge was overgrown with ivy and hidden by saplings that grew right up to the walls between the older trees, next to a gate that looked jammed shut and overgrown. There was something dank and unappealing about the air just there.

‘I’ll stay in the car,’ said Melissa.

Munty jumped out and went to the door, knocking. It was opened quickly, there was a brief conversation, and Munty came back holding a bunch of keys in his hand. Then he was forced to reverse the car all the way back to the house as there was nowhere to turn.

The last time Munty had seen Castle Hey was a dead November day, chilly and still. Rain had fallen, pitting the small lake. The trees shone black and dripping, seeming to close in on the house. Everything was overgrown and tired, the paint peeling off rotten window frames.

What a difference the sunshine made. Everything sparkled and the trees had burst into an electric firestorm of acid green leaves. The house itself glowed a soft pink – a Strawberry Hill Gothick pavilion. There were two floors of ogee-arched windows along the south front, the edge of its roof deckled with frivolous crenellations in pale grey limestone gilded with lichen. The silvery slate roof, planted with tall and twisting brick chimneys, rose steeply behind.

A well-grown buddleia sprang from the porch roof, and some of the windows were boarded up. But the house was tucked away enough to have avoided vandalism, and no one had broken in. Any remaining furniture and pictures were in storage, at least those that had not been sold to pay death duties. That was something else he needed to take seriously now. His mother’s parents were prepared to give him his share of their eventual legacy whenever he wanted it, and this would provide seed capital for Castle Hey.

It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to get things started. He knew his grandparents had made a good thing from supplying all the camps up on the South Downs in the run up to D-Day, and had no particular use for the money themselves. The house was definitely not self-supporting now all the land was sold off.

He’d asked Melissa to go away with him on a whim which was unlike him given his usual anxious planning. But then Melissa had stepped into his life by chance, halting and shy – he ’d had no suffocating sense of being pursued and trapped. Her reappearance at the Queen Charlotte’s so soon afterwards seemed like some kind of delightful fate. As they climbed out of the car her eyes seemed extra wide open as she looked about her. She’d told him she loved old houses and she appeared completely unlike the kind of society girl he was used to but didn’t much care for. Those girls would have thought a great big dilapidated house one great big bore unless it came with a very large income.

The trustees had been patient but had written regularly asking if he’d managed to make a decision. As he watched her the girl and the house began to tangle themselves up in his heart. Both longed for, both feared. This was an unusual sensation, to want something so much that he was prepared to do anything in his power to get it. He was not quite sure what his power was. He just prayed this visit would be a success. He slipped an arm around Melissa’s waist for reassurance, confident that she had not rejected a single advance so far but he was absolutely determined not to go too far. One of the things he liked about her was her innocence. She cuddled up to him, standing there on the muddy gravel in her little flat pumps, her head only just topping his shoulder.

‘It’s lovely, Munty,’ she sighed. ‘Absolutely beautiful. Yes, it’s a bit tatty, but I’m sure you could do something with it.’

‘It is lovely, isn’t it? Shall we have a look inside?’

He opened the door with the big key, and they were in a small outer hall with a dusty beige velvet curtain hanging on brass rings right in front of them. Pushing it aside they found themselves in a large double-height hall that took up at least six of the windows in the façade. On one side, pushed against the wall, was an old sedan chair, but the rest was empty, the flagstone floor grubby and the walls rubbed and tired, painted a poisonous shade of green below the dado rail and cream above. It was still and silent, and the air was chilly and stale after the sunlit breeze outside. Munty held Melissa a little closer as they stepped together across the threshold, warily, like deer leaving the shelter of a forest.

‘I think I need my cardigan,’ said Melissa, pulling away from him and going back through the curtain and out of the front door. He stared around.

‘My house,’ he murmured.

The scale of the task ahead daunted him. But it was beautiful, the lovely height of the ceiling, the little Gothick arches around the top of the wall in place of a cornice, the pretty shape of the windows, all gave him pleasure. It didn’t seem grand and frightening, but rather feminine. He wanted to rescue it. At either end of the hall were double doors pulled shut, and two doors also led from the back wall. He went to the front door to fetch the bunch of keys, thinking some of the doors within the house might be locked, just as Melissa returned, pulling on a white cardigan.

‘Shall we explore?’ He took her hand, and hesitated.

‘Let’s try in there first,’ she said, leading him to the left.

They found a series of reception rooms, following one from the other, connected by double doors, and empty apart from some grey-painted metal desks and filing cabinets. Behind the reception rooms, with their antique wallpaper sadly damaged by pin holes, were the kitchen, pantry, sculleries, wine cellars, laundries and larders, reaching back into a courtyard, surrounded by repulsive-smelling sheds. Munty suspected they had been used as latrines, and was annoyed by the lack of care the Army had taken with his property.

To the right was a flat rectangle covered in brick rubble. ‘What was that?’ Melissa asked.

‘There was another whole Victorian wing, destroyed by a German bomber discharging its load before it headed out to sea. Good thing too, the house is quite big enough as it is.’

Behind the rubble were the stables. Built of the same pink brick as the main house, and surrounding a courtyard, they boasted a Gothick clock tower with what looked like a bullet hole pocking the enamel clock face. Melissa was quiet, and Munty wondered what she was thinking as they walked around holding hands. In one stall was a little governess cart which made her exclaim with pleasure, in another a rusting old Austin Seven which did not elicit the same joyful reaction.

They wandered back inside and up the main stairs to the first floor, which they found behind the right-hand door in the back wall of the hall. Munty hoped Melissa would enjoy the adventure of exploring the house. He wondered if they might stay the night as it was getting late and he remembered she had brought an overnight bag with her. He liked the idea of being there to protect her. Freddie’s laughter echoed in his mind, but he dismissed it.

Most of the bedrooms were empty but for dust and sunlight, until they came to the main suite. The door was locked, and Munty had trouble getting the key to turn. Inside was an extraordinary room, rising into the roof above the porch and looking out over the lake. In the centre was the most enormous bed either of them had ever seen, with carved posts twisting like barley sugar. It was covered in dust sheets and Munty stepped forward to pull one away. There were no draperies, but the mattress was there, and they could see the canopy, carved with Gothick decoration like a church screen.

‘What a strange bed.’ Melissa walked towards it, running her hands over the writhing pillars. ‘I’m not sure I like it. It looks like it belongs in a Hammer Horror film.’

‘I think it’s beautiful, and it does go with the house. Must have been too big to take out of here. I wonder why they didn’t dismantle it.’ Munty crossed the room and opened one of the triptych of windows, letting in air and sunlight. On the other side of the room was an Army cot with a thin grey mattress covering its rusty mesh base.

Melissa was quiet, looking at the large room and the huge bed.

‘Do you know?’ Munty was saying. ‘It’s getting late, I think we may have to stay the night after all. Would you be OK with that?’

He hesitated.

‘I promise I won’t pounce.’

They would be arriving back in London in the middle of the night, even if they set off quite soon, and she hadn’t ever planned in her own mind to do so. She’d burnt her boats when she had told her mother and her aunt that she was going to a dance outside London.

‘I think you’re right, Munty.’ It made her nervous to say it. Did she trust him to save her from herself? She was confused by her own feelings.

She confined herself to saying: ‘We can camp somewhere in the house, can’t we? You’ve got blankets and stuff?’

Munty nodded uncertainly, so Melissa took charge.

‘We can think about all that later. I’d like some tea now, please,’ she said, backing out of the room. ‘Only, Munty, what about washing and so on?’

‘Damn, I should have turned on the stopcock when we arrived. I’ll go and find it. No hot water, so no baths. Look, Melissa, it is a bit Spartan. We can go and stay in Rye if you like, we don’t have to stay here and rough it.’

It had been so daring of her to come all this way with a man. It was one thing to stay with him in seclusion and privacy, but quite another to go to a hotel in public. What if he wanted them to be Mr and Mrs Smith or something? Better to stay here, hidden away. Lying to Mummy was wrong, but so far there was nothing to be ashamed of and she meant to keep it that way. Looking out of the window, she noticed that evening had begun to creep towards the house, trailing chill across the grass. Mist lifted from the surface of the lake.