The Shell House (6 page)

‘So there is a reason?’

‘God has a reason for everything. It’s not for us to know. We just have to accept it as God’s will.’

‘So if it were you or me with duff kidneys, we’d have to say,
Oh dear! But I’m sure God must have a
reason, so I’ll have to put up with it
. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’

‘And if you’d been on your way to Auschwitz and the gas chambers? Or buried in an earthquake? Or starving in a famine? All part of the great plan?’

She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why are you so angry?’

Only now did he realize how his voice had risen; he’d almost been shouting.

‘I believe in God, you choose not to—why should that annoy you?’ Faith asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He pulled a stem towards him and plucked off the ripe berries, then released it so that it sprang back out of reach. He let go clumsily; a thorn pricked his thumb. He looked at the bead of blood before sucking his thumb clean, tasting the salt-sweetness. They carried on picking in silence, Greg trying to work out a proper answer for himself if not for her. A few times she glanced at him, seeming about to speak, but said nothing.

That
was what was annoying him! She was waiting for him to come up with a reason, so that she could trot out her ready-made answer. It was like a barrier, a safety-belt. She wasn’t having to think for herself. She was as well-rehearsed as a double-glazing salesman. Before he could find wording for this that wouldn’t be offensive, she stepped back from the bushes, tied the neck of her carrier bag and said, ‘We’ve got quite a lot. Let’s stop for a bit. I want to show you the most wonderful thing in the whole place.’ Her voice was changed—soft, friendly. He knew she thought she’d won the argument.

‘OK,’ he said, glad to change the subject. He put down his bag next to hers—three bags in a row on the grass—and picked up his camera. ‘What is it?’

She smiled over her shoulder. ‘Wait and see.’

He expected her to go down to the lake, towards the grotto, but instead she walked back across the orchard to the formal part of the gardens. An electric mower trundled noisily along the main grass path; another pair of workers were cutting down brambles from a plinth that must once have supported a statue.

‘There are photos of what this looked like in about nineteen hundred,’ Faith said. ‘It was fantastic—well, if you like that sort of garden, it was. All statues and fountains and curving steps, and clipped box hedges, and flower-beds perfectly weeded. You’ll see the photos if you come to the open day. Here. Here’s my favourite thing.’ They had reached one of the pair of stone summerhouses that faced each other across the lower part of the terrace. ‘You haven’t seen her before, have you? Isn’t she wonderful?’

They were looking at a female figure carved out of a supporting pillar. There were two of them, one on each side of the open front of the summerhouse, but Faith was looking at the left-hand one. The one on the right was damaged, most of its face crumbled away, but this one was perfect. Larger than life, she rose above them, holding a carved garland, one hand raised as if to pluck a too-tempting grape. Her face was very beautiful—straight Grecian nose, large eyes, an expression of calmness and strength. The green shading of moss or lichen made her appear more lifelike than if the stone had been scrubbed and pristine. The ivy twining around her head and shoulders gave the accidental finishing touch.

‘That twiggy stuff—it makes her look like something from a legend,’ Greg said. ‘You know the woman with snakes for hair—one look at her and you turn into stone. Medusa, was it?’

‘It’s all right,’ Faith said quite seriously. ‘She won’t turn you to stone. I’ve looked at her loads of times and it’s never happened to me. She’s not malicious, is she? You can see from her face. I wonder what she’d say if she could speak? I wonder what she’s seen.’

‘And there are two of them.’ Greg looked at the other, almost faceless statue, spoiled by time and erosion. ‘How come this one’s so perfect when the other’s all worn?’

‘Something to do with the prevailing winds, Dad says. This one’s sheltered by the angle of the building. They’re called caryatids.’

‘Caryatids?’

She nodded. ‘Supporting columns made into female statues. Male ones are called telamons. There are two of them over there.’ She nodded at the opposite summerhouse; they walked across to look. The building was identical, but this time the statues were of muscular, bearded men, again holding wreaths of vines and fruit.

‘They’re lovely too, but not like my caryatid,’ Faith said.

Greg opened his camera case. ‘I’m going to take photos.’

He took several, from various angles, of both summerhouses, but concentrated on the caryatid, moving in close to get the shadows that threw her features into relief. Faith watched at first, then sat down on the steps; when the man with the mower had moved on, she walked along the main path to the far end and stood looking out across the fields. When he’d used up his disc, he went to join her. The garden simply ended in a bank of rough grass and thistles; two metres lower was a newly-ploughed field, curving down towards the valley. The smell of mown grass filled the air with summer.

‘There used to be steps here and great wrought-iron gates,’ Faith said. ‘I’ve seen the pictures. But you can still see the ha-ha.’

‘The what?’

‘Ha-ha. This. Haven’t you seen one before? What it is—people who owned stately homes like this wanted to look out of their windows, or sit on their terrace, and see their land sweeping away into the distance. They didn’t want it all chopped up by fences, but they needed to keep cows and sheep out of the garden. So instead of a fence they had a big drop like this, a sort of dry ditch. It keeps animals out but doesn’t interrupt the view. I expect there’s a wall underneath all this grass, to stop it from collapsing.’

‘So why’s it called a ha-ha?’

Faith giggled. ‘Dad says it’s because you’re walking along and all of a sudden the ground drops away from your feet, and you go
A-ha!
I don’t suppose that’s the real reason, though.’

Greg turned his back on the ha-ha and looked towards the mansion. He imagined, on a day like this, ladies and gentlemen sitting in one of the twin summerhouses, and a butler crossing the terrace with a loaded tray. Polished silverware, there’d be, and linen napkins in stiff folds, and dainty things to eat.

He said to Faith, ‘All this, just for one family! It must have been palatial! Who were they, the people who lived here?’

‘The Pearsons were the last ones—till nineteen seventeen. Before that it was Sir Somebody Something and all his descendants. There’s a leaflet—I’ll get one for you later.’

A thought struck him. ‘Your mum and dad—putting in all this work and effort on a place like this. Why don’t they . . .’

Faith had stooped to pick a clover flower. She turned towards him, wary again. ‘Yes?’

‘I mean, they’re Christians. Aren’t there other things—more important things—they could be doing?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like making money for famine victims, or helping the homeless—this isn’t really helping
people
, is it?’

Faith twirled the clover stem between her finger and thumb, then tossed it aside. ‘Oh, there you go again—finding things to criticize! What about you? Why aren’t
you
helping famine victims or the homeless if it’s so important to you?’

‘I didn’t say it was! I was just saying, they’re Christians. Shouldn’t people be more important to them than statues and stuff?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I’m just
asking
—’

‘So when you’re playing computer games or kicking a ball about or all the mindless things boys do, do you stop and feel guilty because you could be shaking a tin in the High Street or working for Oxfam? ’Course you don’t. My parents aren’t trying to make themselves into saints just because they’re Christians—neither am I! It’s up to us what we do in our spare time. Why should you criticize?’

‘I didn’t mean—’ he began, but she was in no mood to hear his answer. She gave him a final glare and walked away quickly, taking long strides across the grass.

Bugger! He hadn’t meant to upset her but she was so easily offended, so touchy, on the subject of her faith especially. Why had she started on the subject at all if she didn’t want to discuss it? She needn’t have told him about the praying; at first she’d sounded proud of it, not in the least secretive.

Girls! He wasn’t doing too well, one way or another. That was two of them he’d quarrelled with in different ways in less than twenty-four hours. He sat down heavily on the grass, wondering what was the matter with him. Reluctantly he remembered what an idiot he’d made of himself last night. He’d have to come up with a convincingly edited version for Gizzard. Even now he didn’t know what had stopped him from following Tanya upstairs. All set up, on the point of having a fantasy fulfilled, he’d blown it.

And now Faith. She was obviously a very different species of girl from Tanya, but he’d managed to upset her as well. He couldn’t imagine Faith going to boozy parties, let alone trying to drag boys into bedrooms—ludicrous thought! It wasn’t easy to tell at first glance, though. He remembered Faith’s clothes last week: the skirt short enough for him to glimpse her knickers, the skimpy vest top that clung to her small breasts. She had seemed then like any other teenage girl who wanted to look sexy. There was only the cross to give any sort of clue, and lots of people wore those quite meaninglessly.

He didn’t want to argue with her, didn’t want to leave it like this. He stood up. Damn! He’d forgotten how damp the grass was, and now he had a wet bum. He wondered where she’d gone. If she’d run to Mummy or Daddy, well, that would be it. But if she were on her own, he could try to make up the argument.

He walked back towards the blackberry bushes, skirting the statue base where the two workers, a man and a woman, were piling cut brambles into a wheelbarrow. One of them smiled at him without speaking, and he wondered if they’d overheard his spat with Faith. Across the orchard, the three bags of blackberries lay on the grass; there was no sign of her. He stood for a moment, wondering what to do.

The grotto. That’s where she’d be. With some difficulty he found the log path where it crept down from the open orchard. He made his descent to the lake shore and stood on the path in the open bowl of sky enclosed by trees, feeling the silence and seclusion. He heard the trickle of the spring that emerged from the grotto’s interior, saw the crystal channel of its decanting into the lake, and a clear fan-shape where it funnelled into sandy water.

Faith was exactly where he’d found her last week, sitting on the bench inside. She looked up at him and away again quickly.

‘Oh. You,’ she sniffed.

He sat on the bench next to her. ‘Look, I—I’m sorry.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Would I have trekked down here otherwise? I didn’t mean to get at you.’

‘But you did.’ She turned her face away. ‘Don’t you like me or something?’

‘Yes! I do like you,’ he said uncertainly.

‘You don’t think I’m a snotty little St Ursula’s girl?’

‘No,’ Greg lied. ‘And you don’t think I’m a vile loudmouthed yob?’

She looked at him and smiled, wiping a finger along the lower lashes of one eye. ‘ ’Course not. Why would I?’

‘Been doing a good imitation.’

‘Not really.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry too.’

‘For what?’

‘For getting at you,’ Faith said. ‘I didn’t really mean to either. We’re all right now, aren’t we?’

‘ ’Course we are.’

And to Greg’s astonishment she turned and hugged him, leaning close. He smelled her hair, felt its silky length fall over his arm. Gingerly he put a hand to her back; at once she pulled away and stood up.

‘That’s all right then,’ she said briskly. ‘Shall we go and pick more blackberries?’

In an orchard in Picardy, Lieutenant Edmund Pearson was lying in uncut grass with his uniform jacket folded under his head as a pillow. Two peaked caps lay on the ground half-filled with damsons; a wasp hovered around the ripe fruit and Edmund raised a hand to swish it away. Beside him, cross-legged, sat Alex Culworth, reading from a small notebook. Edmund waited, watching his expression, and his eyes scanning the lines of handwriting—the lines Edmund had drafted and redrafted and copied out with such care.

Without comment, Alex turned a page and carried on reading intently. Whatever he did, he gave it the full blaze of his attention. Edmund liked that. Not for Alex the cursory reading, the polite response.

‘Well, Lord Byron,’ Alex said at last, ‘never let an idle minute go to waste, I see.’

‘If you think they’re dreadful, please say so.’

‘No need to raise your hackles. I haven’t said anything yet.’ Alex picked up the first page again. ‘This one—the idea, and the opening—
Last night I saw
the ghost of France / Rise from her grave to mourn
. . . Yes. And I like the last stanza. I’m not sure about
with wide-mouthed gashes torn
. It’s a bit clumsy—not easy to say. And perhaps too obvious a rhyme.’