The Stranger House (17 page)

Had Simeon been here? he wondered. Alice was too wise to give even a hint in her journals.

The house had been searched at least once more after 1587. The second search in February 1589, conducted by the Yorkshire pursuivant Francis Tyrwhitt, seemed to have been a much more thorough job. Alice saw no reason to let discretion get in the way of setting down her typically forthright reaction to Tyrwhitt, describing him as having
the fawning maner of a Welsh dealer trying to sel a spavind nag at a horse-fayre.

It was during this search that the concealed room in the Long Gallery had been discovered.

Typically Alice made no written admission that it was a priest-hole, saying only that
They made grate commotion when they chanced on that privy closet which my late husband had caused to be created for the more secure storage of our precious goods in the event, which Godde forbid, that Civill Strife or foreign invasion disturb the peace of our beloved countrie.

Clever old Alice to have a good cover story ready in case the authorities ever found the hiding place, though, of course, like a trout in the milk, a priest in the hole would be more difficult to explain away.

You have e-mail.

It was the voice of his laptop, dragging him forward four centuries.

It was from Max Coldstream.

Mig smiled. Coldstream was very much an urban animal, a small cuddly hamster of a man who loved the cosy nest he’d created for himself in Southampton but had
somehow contrived to have connections and influence all over the world. In Max all that the view out of the study window would have provoked was a shudder.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps other laws than those of God or man applied in this place.

He dismissed the speculation and turned to another, almost as troublesome. Had Father Simeon visited the Hall during those turbulent years of his work on the English Mission? Madero felt sure he must have done. Yet it was strange, that lack of vibration he had experienced as he stood in the hiding place in the Long Gallery. He had been a touch disingenuous when he told Frek he had a certain sensitivity to that sort of thing. It went a little further than that. If he closed his eyes now and emptied his mind of all distractive thought, he could get a sense of …

A strong human presence!

“I’m sorry you find our family records so soporific, Mr Madero.”

He opened his eyes and sat upright. Frek was standing behind him.

He reached forward and removed Max’s message from the laptop screen. Had she had time to read it? Did it matter?

“Sorry, I was just …”

“… communing with the spirits?” she completed, “Of course. Well, I’m sorry to drag your mind from the spirit to the flesh, but it’s time for lunch.”

If only you knew how easily you can drag my mind from the spirit to the flesh, he thought.

He stood up.

“Lead on,” he said, “I have built up quite an appetite.”

Sam Flood and Thor Winander sat facing each other. He had picked up a wooden chair, tipped its contents on to the floor and set it down a couple of feet in front of her so that their knees almost touched.

He leaned forward. At this distance the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and she could see a network of tiny veins on his strong nose.

He said, “Let’s get one thing out of the way so you don’t build up too many expectations. You say it was the spring of 1960 your grandmother sailed?”

“That’s right.”

He said, “Our Sam Flood didn’t come to live here till the summer of 1960. A year later he was dead. So that seems to cut out any possible connection with your gran.”

His tone was brusque, his expression blank, as if he were merely stating facts too abstract to be involving. But the stillness of his body gave this the lie. It was the stillness not of relaxation but of control.

Sam said, “You said you’d tell me about him anyway.”

“Did I? So I did. But I’m not always to be relied on, Miss Flood. I said I’d take care of Sam too, and look what happened to him.”

He was trying to maintain a calm tone but she
detected an undercurrent of savage self-reproach. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe people might be reluctant to talk about her mysterious namesake, not because there was something to hide but because there was something to hide from.

But she’d come too far to back off now.

“Look, I’m sorry if this is painful …”

“Are you?” he said savagely, “Know about pain, do you?”

“A bit.”

“Yeah, yeah. The young know a bit about everything. OK. Let’s get this done.”

He sat back and his gaze focused away from her.

“Sam Flood,” he said softly, “Like I say, I don’t see any way you can be connected to Sam, but if you had been, then you’d have been very lucky. He was the best person I ever met. Absolutely. In every respect. The very best.”

Suddenly he smiled directly at her. Or was it the other Sam Flood he was smiling at in his memory?

“So how did a notorious reprobate like me meet up with such a paragon? By blind chance, as I would put it. Or by the grace of God, as Sam would have put it. For he wasn’t only naturally good, he was good by profession and vocation.”

He paused while Sam worked this out.

“You mean he was some kind of priest?” she said.

“Indeed. You don’t look impressed by the information. Not your favourite people, perhaps? Mine neither, but that’s what Sam was, curate of this parish, no less, back in the days when the C of E could afford curates. Nowadays it’s only the fact that Pete Swinebank is virtually self-supporting that means Illthwaite still has a vicar of its own. Of course, in Pete’s case, the hereditary
principle applies too, but he looks set to be last of his line, unless he’s been ploughing fields and scattering the good seed in places we don’t know about.”

“Tell me about Sam Flood,” insisted Sam, sensing evasion.

“That’s what I’m doing,” he said, “I met Sam when I was doing my art course in Leeds. That surprises you? Me with qualifications, not just a natural genius. My father saw there wasn’t much future in shoeing horses so he started to diversify. Even travelled abroad, which no self-respecting Illthwaitean did, met a Norwegian girl and married her. That’s how I got to be Thor. Fitted somehow, as Winander is a Viking name anyway. Windermere means the lake belonging to Vinandr. I sometimes think I’ll put in a claim.”

For some reason this information put Sam in mind of her visit to the churchyard, but she brushed the irrelevancy aside.

“So you met this guy when you were a student,” she prompted.

“That’s right. He was at some vicars’ training college close by. There was this chap making some interesting furniture in the same neck of the woods. I rode out there on my motorbike one day to take a look round his workshop. The bike spluttered a bit when I set off back to town and I was just passing the college gate when it gave up the ghost. Also it started to rain. In a few minutes it was a deluge. A bus stopped close by and some young guys, students from the college, got out. Most of them sprinted through the gates, but one of them came over. He said, ‘Having trouble?’ I answered something like, ‘Who the fuck are you? The Good Samaritan?’ You know, really gracious.”

“Nothing’s changed then,” said Sam.

Winander grinned. He had a nice grin when it was spontaneous.

He said, “Wrong. Nowadays I’d recognize this guy was my best chance of getting out of the wet and come over all pathetic. Fortunately, as you’ve guessed, this was Sam Flood, and ill-mannered crap like mine just bounced off him.”

He paused, then repeated, “Bounced off him. When I said that to Frek Woollass, she said he sounded like Balder. You ever heard of Balder?”

Sam shook her head.

“Me neither, till then. Seems he was one of the Norse gods, the loveliest of them all both in appearance and in personality. He was goodness personified and everybody loved him so much that his mother Frigg had no problem getting everything that existed, animal, vegetable and mineral, to swear an oath that they would never cause Balder any harm. Eventually it became a favourite after-dinner game of the gods to hurl plates and spears and furniture and boiling oil at him, just for the fun of seeing it bounce off while he sat there laughing at them.”

“Sounds more like the Pom upper classes than gods. I guess they didn’t have any videos to watch in those days. We’re drifting away from the story again.”

“Not really. The only thing Frigg didn’t get a promise from was the mistletoe, which she reckoned was too young and slight to pose any danger. Another god called Loki, who got his kicks out of making mischief, took a sprig of mistletoe, sharpened it into a dart and gave it to Balder’s brother, Hod, who happened to be blind. Joining in the fun, Hod, guided by Loki, hurled the mistletoe and it pierced Balder right through the heart.”

He fell silent. Sam had a feeling there was stuff here it might be dangerous to stir up. But all she wanted at this time were the straight facts.

“So Sam the Samaritan helped you,” she prompted.

“That’s right. Invited me to come and shelter inside. I did. We drank coffee and talked till the rain stopped. Then we went back out to the bike and got it to start. I said thanks to Sam. He was a genuine Christian with a real faith in human goodness. Not many around. Also he was a trainee parson, a Bible puncher, an idiot who felt called by God to waste his life standing around a draughty church, preaching to six old ladies on a good Sunday. Too many of them around. But Sam was different. I really liked the guy. He said he enjoyed football, so I gave him my address in Leeds and invited him to drop in next time he came to see United play. In fact I said if he came before the match, we could go together, and if there’s anything I hate more than religion, it’s football!’

“He sounds a real winning character,” said Sam.

“Indeed. And before your brutish antipodean mind starts getting the wrong end of the stick, let me emphasize the attraction was queer only in the sense of odd. I had no desire to fondle his bum. I’ll admit to enjoying the sight of him when we swam together in the buff, but it was an artist’s enjoyment in beauty, the same that I might possibly get if you were to strip off, my dear, but without any of the concomitant carnal stirrings.”

He leered at her unconvincingly.

She said with some irritation, “OK, you weren’t after his body. What was it he was after? Your soul?”

“Certainly not my arse’ole,” said Winander, “He was so straight you could have drawn lines with him. No, we
just got on somehow, despite all the obvious oppositions. An elective affinity, I think the scientists call it.”

“Or an amicable pair,” said Sam.

“Sorry?”

“In maths, that’s what we call two numbers each of which is equal to the sum of the divisors of the other. The smallest ones, 220 and 284, were regarded by the Pythagoreans as symbols of true friendship.”

“Well now, for a plain-speaking wysiwyg Aussie, you’re full of surprises. Anyway, whatever the cause, we became good friends. I invited him to stay with me in the hols. He loved Illthwaite and of course Illthwaite loved him. Naturally he went to St Ylf’s during his visits. Surprisingly he and old Paul—that’s Rev. Pete’s father—seemed to get on well. Paul was old school, hellfire and damnation. Perhaps what he saw in Sam was all those parts of Christianity like compassion and forgiveness which his own leathery heart couldn’t reach. Also that same leathery heart had been diagnosed as dodgy and he probably wanted someone he could rely on to keep the place ticking over till his own boy, our Rev. Pete, was old enough to follow the family tradition and rule at St Ylf’s. When he twisted his superiors’ arms into providing him with a curate, and made sure Sam got appointed, even the ranks of infamy could scarce forbear to cheer.”

“And Sam jumped at the chance to come here, did he?”

Winander shook his head.

“In fact, no. He agonized over it.”

“But why, if he liked the place so much?”

“That was the trouble. He really felt it was too easy coming somewhere like this, to work in an area he adored among people he knew and liked. He thought he
would be more needed elsewhere. He even asked what I thought. Big mistake.”

“Why’s that?”

“It was a bit like Eve asking the serpent whether he thought apples or pears were better for her teeth. I was at my subtle best. I didn’t take the piss out of his desire for poverty and adversity. Instead I told him he could find that here if he cared to look. And I said maybe this yearning to fight the good fight in some godforsaken hole where everyone would know he was a hero was in itself a form of indulgence. Oh, I was persuasive because I was sincere. I wanted him to come here. And in the end I prevailed.”

He fell silent for a moment then said flatly, “I sometimes think it was the worst day’s work I’ve done in my life.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Sam.

“Because if he hadn’t come here, he might still be alive today.”

Then he laughed without much humour and said, “On the other hand, if he were, he’d probably be a broken-down old nag like me.”