Courting Shadows Read online

  ‘Davy’s not a bad lad, Mr Stannard. A little wild, that’s all. I keep an eye on his activities and occasionally attempt to steer him clear of mischief. He’s an intelligent youngster and might well make something of himself if he chose. Isn’t that so, Mr Banks?’

  Banks shrugged. ‘I suppose he has a certain native shrewdness; and of course every one of us has the capacity for self-improvement. There may be grounds for optimism in this particular case, though I have to say that none of your protégés has so far lived up to your high expectations.’

  Redbourne flushed faintly. ‘Hardly protégés,’ he said. ‘Just boys in whose welfare I’ve taken some slight interest. And now’ – he made a brusque half-turn away from Banks and took me by the arm – ‘if you’ll excuse me, I’d like a word with Mr Stannard.’

  Banks stepped forward suddenly, stretching out a hand to detain me.

  ‘I still need a few more moments of your time, Stannard. These pews—’

  ‘Just two minutes. That’s all I ask.’ Redbourne’s fingers tightened around my arm and he drew me gently towards him. ‘Just two minutes and then’ – he flashed Banks a mocking smile – ‘you can have your architect back. Does that sound reasonable?’

  Banks made no reply. Redbourne, either ignoring his tense silence or taking it for assent, swung me round and guided me between the headstones to the lower end of the churchyard.

  ‘No great secret,’ he murmured, ‘but there’s a certain delicacy …’ He looked back over his shoulder at Banks, now standing disconsolately in the doorway of the porch. ‘Quite simply, I came to invite you to dinner. Would you be free this evening?’

  I thought I detected a trace of irony in the question, a subtle acknowledgement, perhaps, of the unlikelihood of my having, in such a backwater, any more pressing or pleasing engagement.

  ‘I’m free every evening,’ I said. ‘My social diary has been a blank ever since my arrival here.’

  His laughter was subdued, even a little nervous, but not without warmth.

  ‘Shall we say seven o’clock? I’ll send the groom over with a horse.’

  ‘I’m no horseman, Mr Redbourne. I should prefer to walk.’

  ‘As you like. In that case your quickest route will be the path across the hillside there – do you see? It’s not very clear from here but it’s easy enough to follow. Once you’re on it, there’s a walk of just over half a mile. Keep the beechwood on your right all the way. After the second stile you’ll see the Hall a couple of hundred yards ahead. You’ll be approaching from the wrong side, but I’ll see to it that there’s a light in one of the back rooms to guide you. You’ll find a small gateway in the wall: go through it and follow the paved footpath round to the front of the house. I look forward to seeing you there.’

  He waved away my thanks, turned on his heel and strode towards the gate. He had barely reached it before Banks was upon me again, fretful, obsessive, repetitive; like a child, it occurred to me, obstinately seeking assurances the adult world knew better than to offer.

  7

  ‘I don’t say they’re mermaids,’ said Mrs Haskell, whipping the tea-tray from under my nose before I could pour myself a second cup, ‘but they’re certainly not human. They can stay under the waves for hours; and they gather together around the rocks like seals, gripping the kelp with their hands and calling to one another above the noise of the wind and water. Nowadays you hardly ever meet anyone who’s seen one, but they were common enough around these shores in our grandparents’ time. In those days people would sometimes find the young washed up by the spring tides. Dead, usually; but when Cassie Adams’ grandmother was a girl she once came across one in a rock pool, still very much alive, mewing like a kitten. She kept it for a week or more, in a milk-pail she topped up with brine every morning. It would lie there on its back, wheezing and sighing, holding out its arms as if it wanted to be picked up. But if you held it, even for a moment, it would writhe and scream like a colicky baby. And it wouldn’t eat. She tried milk; she spent hours tempting it with chopped crabmeat, herring-flesh, shellfish, holding the stuff to its mouth on a saltspoon. It would turn its head away like this’ – Mrs Haskell twisted her neck sideways and compressed her lips – ‘while its eyes filled up with tears. One evening she decided she couldn’t stand it any longer. She took the creature down to the shore and slipped it into the water, hoping it might swim away. It didn’t, of course; I suppose it hadn’t been taught how. It just rolled about in the breakers, helpless as a lump of driftwood. In the end she pulled it out and took it home again, but it seemed to have been shocked or injured, and it died during the night.’

  I was already growing used both to Mrs Haskell’s loquaciousness and her astonishing credulity, and knew her to be capable of spouting such nonsense for hours on end. I rose to my feet and reached down my coat; but she was clearly reluctant to let me go.

  ‘After that she became a little crazed. She wanted the thing buried in the churchyard. The rector at that time was a kindly man but of course he’d have none of it. It’s not a human child, he said, and it can’t lie among us. So on the second night she wrapped the body in a scrap of sailcloth, took it down to the bottom of the garden and buried it under a pear tree. And that should have been the end of the matter; but it wasn’t.’

  ‘Even so, Mrs Haskell, it’s all I have time to hear at the moment. Would you excuse me?’

  ‘They say she was like a girl bewitched. She grew pale and thin, spending her days at the graveside, staring at nothing. And she’d have spent her nights there too if her father hadn’t dragged her in each evening and locked her in her room. Yes, and he had to nail up the sash, otherwise she’d have been out through the window. But then she’d pound on the door till her knuckles bled, keeping the whole lane awake with her thumping and howling. After a week or so the family was in a terrible state – you can imagine – and the neighbours at their wits’ end. It was the rector who came up with the idea of reburying the thing somewhere outside the village. Tell her what you’re doing, he said, but don’t let her know where you’re putting it. I think he was afraid she’d try to get to the body if she knew where it was. They took it out at night, Cassie’s great-grandpa and the sexton. And neither of them were what you’d call imaginative men, so people were the more inclined to listen to their story.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t—’

  ‘There’s really not much more to tell. They took the body down to a field at the edge of the village, laid it in the grass and began to dig. But they’d barely turned the first turf when a cry went up from the marshland beyond, a wailing or keening, quite soft at first—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have a dinner engagement. Some other time, perhaps. Let me carry that downstairs for you.’

  She stiffened, her fingers tightening around the rim of the tray.

  ‘Thank you, I can carry it myself. Would I be right in thinking you won’t be wanting supper tonight?

  ‘Absolutely right, Mrs Haskell.’

  She made an irritable huffing sound.

  ‘You might have told me earlier,’ she said.

  Supper being more often than not a slice of cold ham and a slab of buttered bread, she could hardly claim to have been inconvenienced, but she clearly felt herself affronted. She hooked back the door with her foot and swept out of the room and down the stairs. I waited until I was sure she was safely out of the way in the kitchen before following her down and letting myself quietly out of the house.

  I found the path easily enough but the walk took me longer than I had anticipated and I arrived at the Hall, a little breathless, nearly ten minutes after the hour. I had actually envisaged something rather more elegant than the brick-built Jacobean structure which faced me, but I was left in no doubt that its owner was a man of substance as well as breeding.

  The door was opened by an elderly manservant who took my coat and gloves and ushered me directly into a large, ill-lit dining-room. I had wondered earlier whether I might expect to meet any of Red
bourne’s social circle, but there was no sign of other guests or, indeed, of my host.

  ‘Mr Redbourne was expecting me?’

  ‘Of course.’ He gestured towards the long table laid, I now realized, for two. ‘He will be down in a few moments.’

  He inclined his head briefly and withdrew. I heard the shuffle of his footsteps across the boards and then the click of a door-catch from the other side of the hall.

  I have always held that one finds out more about a man’s character from close examination of his house and its contents than from any amount of conversation with him, but what I could see of Redbourne’s dining-room seemed puzzlingly equivocal. Certainly the room was opulently, if rather eclectically, furnished. The table, clearly intended for far larger gatherings than the intimate tête-à-tête provided for on this particular evening, was a superb piece, finely crafted in richly coloured mahogany, while the dining-chairs, though of an earlier period and fashioned of a lighter wood, were similarly impressive. Ranged around the walls were a number of portraits and landscapes, several of apparent distinction; and from above the doorway descended a double swag of carved flowers and fruits, disproportionately large but of quite outstanding design and execution.

  Yet at the same time there was evidence of an unusual degree of neglect. Although the top end of the table had obviously been recently polished – and the smell of beeswax was strong in the air – the job had been abandoned less than half-way through, leaving the remainder of the surface coated with a thick film of dust; the upholstered chairs at either side of the fireplace proved, on examination, to be mildewed, the delicately embroidered fabric half rotten; and when I stood in front of the heavy gilt-framed mirror which so imposingly surmounted the mantel, I found myself staring not at my own reflection but at an incomprehensible patchwork of stains and blotches. And added to this was the effect of the room’s pitiful illumination – apart from the firelight, only a lamp perched precariously at the corner of the sideboard and a group of four candelabra haphazardly arranged around the table placements, so that the eye slipped continually from the half-lit surfaces of things to the wavering shadows beyond them.

  I had just grasped the lamp and was raising it to one of the portraits when the door opened again and Redbourne entered. There was a momentary awkwardness as he held out his hand in greeting, obliging me to set the lamp hurriedly back on the sideboard.

  ‘I was trying to see—’

  ‘Not a Van Dyck, I’m afraid, though I believe it was once attributed to him. I’m told it’s a good collection, but not of the highest order.’

  ‘You certainly have some interesting work here. I only wish I could see it a little more clearly.’

  It was not quite what I had intended to say. There was a long pause, punctuated by the slow ticking of a clock from the far end of the room. Redbourne seemed oddly ill at ease, fidgeting with his watch-chain, shifting unsteadily from one foot to the other.

  ‘I should perhaps have mentioned,’ he said at last, ‘that I have no other guests. I’m temperamentally averse to social gatherings, especially in my own house; and intelligent company is, in any case, hard to come by in these parts.’

  ‘I appreciate that. But what about Banks? Surely—’

  ‘You might have noticed,’ he said stiffly, ‘that I deliberately excluded Mr Banks from our brief conversation this morning. But I understand the point of your question. When Banks first arrived in the parish, I was delighted, and for two or three years he was a regular guest at my table. No doubting the man’s intelligence or, indeed, his articulacy. And in those days there was a boyish openness about him – he was quite unlike any clergyman I’d ever met – so it seemed the most natural thing in the world to share certain confidences with him …’

  He trailed off, staring into the shadows for a moment before reaching out and tugging sharply at the plaited bell-pull that hung above the sideboard.

  ‘I think we might sit down,’ he said, motioning me towards the table. ‘Dinner will be brought directly.’

  We took our places in silence. It was not until after the soup had been served that he returned to his theme, and then only at my prompting.

  ‘Banks? Oh, there was a change, a cooling. I don’t want to make too much of it. But I came to feel that I represented a test for him, a challenge to his humane convictions. No one, I’ve heard him say time and again, is beyond our love. Look compassionately at your fellow-man, with a heartfelt desire for understanding, and love will follow as surely as day follows night. That’s his text, his sermon, and by and large I’ve no doubt that his practice is consistent with his preaching. But the more he discovered about me and my weaknesses, the less – I’m sure of it, Stannard – the less he was able to love me. And on my side, I suppose, there was the natural embarrassment of a man who has revealed more of himself than would normally be considered wise. Yes, embarrassment; and perhaps a little resentment too. So – no Banks; but I have the pleasure of your good company and’ – he raised his glass – ‘I’ll gladly drink to that.’

  We drank to quite a number of things during the course of the meal, Redbourne considerably more deeply than I, so that by the time the coffee was brought in, he had already passed through the stages of relaxation and affability and was leaning heavily forward across the table, his face flushed and a little sullen.

  ‘What you haven’t told me,’ he said, reaching for the coffee-pot, ‘is what brings you here. Yes, I know you’ve been engaged to work on the church, but that’s not quite what I mean. Why this job rather than another? – particularly since it must put you to so much inconvenience.’

  ‘Every commission is attended by difficulties of one kind or another.’

  ‘Let me put it more specifically. You have a practice, and you have a home. You’ve left both to spend – what? – three months? – six? – in this benighted place when you might easily have put the job in the hands of a contractor and overseen it from a comfortable distance. Why? Forgive me, Stannard, but I can’t help feeling there must be more to this than meets the eye.’

  ‘Not much more. My home is a set of rooms rather larger and better furnished than my present accommodation, but scarcely more inspiring. I have to contend with Mrs Haskell’s inane chatter, of course, but otherwise I’m almost as comfortably placed here as there.’

  ‘And your practice?’

  ‘In good hands. It’s a small firm, just the two of us. Aaron will deal with all routine matters in my absence and keep me informed of any significant developments.’

  ‘I take it you’re the senior partner?’

  ‘Technically, yes, though in fact we’re more or less of an age. The capital was mine or, more precisely, my father’s. But Aaron has a way with him – an energy, an outwardness – which clients find attractive, and he’s always managed to give the impression – not of seniority exactly, but of his own relative importance.’

  ‘Relative to yours? That must create certain tensions in your professional life.’

  Redbourne seemed to me to be pushing very close indeed to the line separating legitimate curiosity from unwarrantable intrusion, but I judged it politic to reply.

  ‘There have been differences of opinion,’ I said. ‘We haven’t always seen eye to eye, particularly in discussions concerning the future of the firm. But there’s a sense in which we need one another, and we both know it.’

  ‘Maybe so; but isn’t there any connection at all between those tensions and your presence here?’

  ‘If you’re suggesting that I’m seeking refuge from professional difficulties—’

  ‘It’s a plausible reading.’

  ‘A misreading, Redbourne. Take my word for it.’ I rather disliked the turn the conversation had taken and I was anxious to move to more hospitable ground. ‘Your own life,’ I said quickly, ‘seems enviably well appointed.’

  He sat back in his chair, frowning as though I had offended him in some way. The logs shifted in the fireplace, sparked and flared. ‘You really
consider my life enviable?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Of course.’ I gestured around me. ‘All this …’

  ‘Oh, this.’ He shrugged. ‘I can take very little pleasure in what I persist in regarding as the property of others.’

  ‘That is, if I may say so, a sentiment more appropriate to a social revolutionary than to a man in your position.’

  ‘I meant nothing so interesting. Simply that what I have was amassed in the past by men I never knew, and that I recognize myself as little more than the inept custodian of their leavings. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not suggesting that I could give it away tomorrow without a second thought. On the contrary, I lean heavily on these privileges and should be utterly lost without them. But I should be a fool to imagine that, in any but the most superficial sense, they were mine. What you see when you look around you is the dubious façade of a life; you must be careful not to mistake it for the life itself.’

  He reached for the wine and refilled our glasses before continuing.

  ‘Let me tell you how I see myself. I’m a social maladroit, without any particular moral or intellectual gifts, presiding in solitude over the decline of an insignificant country estate. I have neither wife nor child and take no interest in the management of lands which, at my death, will pass to relatives too distant to mean anything to me. You’ve read your Darwin, Stannard. Do I look to you like one of nature’s survivors?’

  ‘We’re not beasts, Redbourne, and we don’t live our lives in blind submission to the pressure of natural forces. Take your life into your own hands. Five years hence you might well be walking your grounds in the company of a young wife and a brace of sons.’

  He gave a wry smile. ‘I rather think not. That troubles me now – the question of succession, I mean – though at one time I was able to delude myself that I had a different and higher vocation; that I was sacrificing my hopes of domestic fulfilment, such as they were, on the altar of science. I saw myself as another Darwin, pressing further and further into the uncharted regions of the earth, probing more and more deeply into the complex processes of life; perhaps even ultimately establishing the existence and nature of some force or pattern not entirely inconsistent with conventional notions of the divine. I travelled a little; I added substantially to my collection; I wrote a number of papers. But as I quickly realized, I’m no philosopher; not even a scientist. I’m just a collector, Stannard, an undisciplined hoarder of whatever bright fragments happen to fall into my hands. And I eventually came to see that the whole project was fundamentally flawed – not, in fact, a disinterested prospecting of new territories, but a desperate attempt to reconstitute something of my own past.’