The House on the Strand

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE EFFECTS OF conviviality in the White Hart subsided after a couple of hours, leaving me in a truculent mood and determined to be master in my own house. The inquest was over, and despite my gaffe about the snow, or perhaps because of it, Magnus's good name remained untarnished. The police were satisfied, local interest would die down, and there was nothing more I had to fear except interference from my own wife. This must be dealt with, and speedily. The boys had gone off riding and were not yet home. I went to look for Vita and found her eventually, tape-measure in hand, standing on the landing outside the boys room. "You know," she said, "that lawyer was perfectly right. You could get half a dozen small apartments into this place — more if you used the basement too. We could borrow the money from Joe." She flicked the tape-measure back into its case and smiled. "Have you any better ideas? The Professor didn't leave you the money to keep up his house, and you haven't a job, unless you cross the ocean and Joe gives you one. So… How about being realistic for a change?" I turned and walked downstairs to the music-room. I expected her to follow me, and she did. I planted myself before the fireplace, the traditional spot sacrosanct from time immemorial to the master of the house, and said, "Get this straight. This is my house, and what I do with it is my affair. I don't want suggestions from you, lawyers, friends, or anyone else. I intend to live here, and if you don't care to live here with me you must make your own arrangements."

She lighted a cigarette and blew a great puff of smoke into the air. She had gone very white. "This is the showdown, is it?" she asked. "The ultimatum?"

"Call it what you like," I told her. "It's a statement of fact. Magnus has left me this house, and I propose to make a life for myself here, and for you and the boys if you want to share it. I can't speak plainer than that."

"You mean you have given up all idea of taking the directorship Joe offered you in New York?"

"I never had the idea. You had it for me."

"And how do you think we are going to live?

I haven't the slightest idea," I said, "and at the moment I don't care. Having worked in a publishing firm for over twenty years I know something about the game, and might even turn author myself. I could start by writing a history of this house."

"Good heavens!" She laughed, and extinguished her barely-lighted cigarette in the nearest ash-tray. "Well, it might keep you occupied if nothing else. And what would I do with myself in the meantime? Join the local sewing society or something?"

"You could do what other wives do, adapt."

"Darling, when I agreed to marry you and live in England you had a perfectly worth-while job in London. You've thrown it up for no reason at all, and now want to settle down here at the back of beyond, where neither of us knows a soul, hundreds of miles from all our friends. It's just not good enough."

We had reached an impasse; and I disliked being called darling when we were locked in argument instead of an embrace. Anyway, the situation bored me; I had said my say, and argument led nowhere. Besides, I had an intense desire to go up to the dressing-room and examine bottle C. If I remembered rightly, it looked slightly different from bottles A and B. Perhaps I ought to have given it to Willis to try out on his laboratory monkeys; but if I had taken him into my confidence he might never have sent it back.

"Why don't you take your tape-measure", I suggested, "and think up some bright ideas for curtains and carpets, and send them to Bill and Diana for their opinion in Ireland?"

I did not mean to be sarcastic. She could do what she liked, within reason, with Magnus's furnishings and bachelor taste. Rearranging rooms was one of her favourite things: it kept her happy for hours.

My effort to appease rebounded. Her eyes filled, and she said, "You know I'd live anywhere if only I thought you loved me still."

I can take anger any day and feel justified in returning blow for blow.

Not unhappiness, not tears. I held out my arms and she came at once, clinging to me for comfort like a wounded child.

"You've changed so these last weeks," she told me. "I hardly recognise you."

"I haven't changed," I said. "I do love you. Of course I love you." Truth is the hardest thing to put across, to other people, to oneself as well. I did love Vita, for moments shared during months and years, for all those ups and downs of married life that can be precious, exasperating, monotonous, and dear. I had learnt to accept her faults, and she mine. Too often, wrangling, the insults hurled were never meant. Too frequently, used to each other's company, we had left the sweeter things unsaid. The trouble was, some inner core within had been untouched, lain dormant, waiting to be stirred. I could not share with her or anyone the secrets of my dangerous new world. Magnus, yes, but Magnus was a man, and dead. Vita was no Medea with whom I could gather the enchanted herbs.

"Darling," I said, "try and bear with me. It's a moment of transition for me, not a parting of the ways. I just can't see ahead. It's like standing on a spit of shore with an incoming tide, waiting to take the plunge. I can't explain."

"I'll take any plunge you want, if you'll take me with you," she answered.

"I know," I said, "I know…"

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, the temporarily blotched features oddly touching, making me feel the more inadequate.

"What's the time? I shall have to pick up the boys," she said.

"No, we'll go together," I told her, glad of an excuse to prolong the entente, to justify myself not only in her eyes but in my own as well. Cheerfulness broke in; the atmosphere, that had been so heavy with resentment and unspoken bitterness, cleared and we were almost normal again. That night I returned from self-banishment in the dressing-room, not without regret, but I felt it politic; besides, the divan bed was hard.

The weather was fine, and the weekend passed with sailing, swimming, picnics with the boys, and as I resumed my role of husband, stepfather, master of the house, I planned in secret for the week ahead. I must have one day to myself alone. Vita herself, in all innocence, supplied the opportunity.

"Did you know Mrs. Collins has a daughter in Bude?" she said on Monday morning. "I told her we'd take her over there one day this week, drop her off with the daughter, and pick her up again later in the afternoon. So how about it? The boys are keen to go, and so am I." I pretended to damp the idea. "Awful lot of traffic," I said. "The roads will be jammed. And Bude packed with tourists."

"We don't mind that," said Vita. "We can make an early start, and it's only about 50 miles."

I assumed the look of a hard-pressed family man with a back-log of work on hand he was given no time to clear. "If you don't mind, I'd rather you left me out of it. Bude on a mid-August afternoon is not my idea of a perfect way of life."

"O.K… O.K… We'll have more fun without you."

We settled for Wednesday. No tradesmen called that day, so it suited me. If they left at half-past ten and picked up Mrs. Collins again around five o'clock, they'd be home by seven at the latest.

Wednesday dawned fine, luckily, and I saw the party off in the Buick soon after half-past ten, knowing that I had at least eight hours ahead of me, hours for experiment and recovery too. I went up to the dressing-room and took bottle C out of my suitcase. It was the same stuff all right, or appeared to be, but there was a brownish sediment at the bottom, like cough-mixture put away after the winter and forgotten until the cold weather comes again. I took out the stopper and smelt the contents: they had no more colour and smell than stale water — less, in fact. I poured four measures into the top of the walking-stick, and then decided to screw it up for future use, and pour a fresh dose into the medicine-glass, which was still lying on a shelf with the jars in the old laundry.

It was an odd sensation, standing there once more, knowing that the basement all around me and the house above were empty of their present occupants, Vita, the boys, while waiting in the shadows were possibly the people of my secret world.

When I had swallowed the dose I went and sat in the old kitchen, expectant and alert as a theatre-goer who has just slipped into his stall before the curtain rises on the eagerly awaited third act of a play. In this case either the players were on strike or the management at fault, for the curtain of my private theatre never rose, the scene remained unchanged. I sat down there in the basement for an hour, and nothing happened. I went out on to the patio, thinking the fresh air might do the trick, but time stayed obstinately at Wednesday morning in mid-August; I might have swallowed a draught from the kitchen tap for all the effect bottle C had upon mind or stomach. At twelve o'clock I returned to the lab and poured a few more drops into the medicine-glass. This had done the trick once before, and without any ill-effect.

I returned to the patio and stayed until after one o'clock, but still nothing happened, so I went upstairs and had some lunch. It must mean that the contents of bottle C had lost their strength, or Magnus had somehow missed out on the special ingredients and bottle C was worthless. If this was so, I had made my last trip. The curtain had risen on my journey across the Treesmill stream in the snow, only to fall by the railway tunnel at the close of the third act. I had come to journey's end.

The realisation was so devastating that I felt stunned. I had lost not only Magnus but the other world. It lay here, all around me, but out of reach. The people of that world would travel on in time without me, and I must keep to my own course, fulfilling God only knew what monotonous day-by-day. The link between the centuries had gone. I went down to the basement once more and out into the patio, thinking that by walking on the stone flags and touching the walls some force would come through to me, that Roger's face would look out at me from the hatch-door to the boiler-room, or Robbie would emerge from the stables under the loft leading his pony. I knew they must be there, and I could not see them. Isolda too, waiting for the snows to melt. The house was inhabited not by the dead but by the living, and I was the restless wanderer, I was the ghost.

This urge to see, to listen, to move amongst them was so intense that it became intolerable; it was as though my brain had been set alight by some tremendous fire. I could not rest. I could not set myself to any humdrum task in the house or garden; the whole day had gone to waste, and what had promised to be hours of magic were slipping by unused. I got out the car and drove to Tywardreath, the sight of the solid parish church a mockery to my mood. It had no right to be there in its present form. I wanted to sweep it away, leaving only the south aisle and the Priory chapel, see the Priory walls enclosing the churchyard. I drove aimiessly to the lay-by at the top of the hill beyond the Treesmill turning and parked, thinking that, if I waiked down the road and crossed the fields to the Gratten, memory of what I had once seen would fill the vacuum.

I stood by the car, reaching for a cigarette, but it had not touched my lips before a jolt shook me from head to foot, as though I had stepped on a live cable. There was no serene transition from present to past but a sensation of pain, with flashes before my eyes and thunder in my ears. This is it, I thought. I'm going to die. Then the flashes cleared, the thunder died away, and there was a mass of people lining the summit of the hill where I stood, crowding and pressing towards a building across the road. More people came from the direction of Tywardreath, men, women, children, some walking, some running. The building was the magnet, irregular in shape, with leaded windows, and what appeared to be a small chapel beside it. I had seen the village once before, at Martinmas, but that was from the green beyond the Priory walls. Now there were no booths, no travelling musicians, no slaughtered beasts. The air was crisp and cold, the ditches banked with frozen snow that had turned grey and hard from lying during weeks. Small puddles in the road had turned to craters of sheeted ice, and the ploughlands across the ditches were black with frost. Men, women and children alike were wrapped and hooded against the cold, their features sharp like the beaks of birds, and the mood I sensed was neither jocular nor gay but somehow predatory, the mob mood of people bent upon a spectacle that might turn sour. I drew nearer to the building, and saw that a covered chariot was drawn up by the chapel entrance, with servants standing by the horses' heads. I recognised the Champernoune coat-of-arms, and the servants too, while Roger himself stood within the chapel porch, his arms folded. The door of the main building was shut, but as I stood there watching it opened, and a man, better dressed than those lining the route, emerged with a companion. I knew them both, for I had seen them last on the night when Otto Bodrugan had urged them to join in his rebellion against the King: they were Julian Polpey and Henry Trefrengy. They came down the pathway, and threading their way through the crowd paused near to where I stood.

"God preserve me from a woman's spite," said Polpey. "Roger has held the office for ten years, and now to be dismissed without reason being given, and the stewardship handed to Phil Hornwynk—"

"Young William will reinstate him when he comes of age, no doubt of that," replied Trefrengy. "He has his father's sense of justice and fair play. But I could smell the change coming these past twelve months or more. The plain truth is that she lacks not only a husband but a man as well, and Roger has had his belly-full and will oblige no more."

"He finds his oats elsewhere." The last speaker, Geoffrey Lampetho from the valley, had shouldered his way through the crowd to join them. "Rumour has it there's a woman under his roof. You should know, Trefrengy, being his neighbour."

"I know nothing," answered Trefrengy shortly. "Roger keeps his counsel, I keep mine. In hard weather such as this wouldn't any Christian give shelter to a stranger on the road?"

Lampetho laughed, digging him with his elbow. "Neatly said, but you can't deny it," he said. "Why else does my Lady Champernoune come here from Trelawn, disregarding the state of the roads, unless to snuff her out? I was in the geld-house here before you to pay my rents, and she sat in the inner room while Hornwynk collected. All the paint in the world couldn't hide the black look on her face: dismissing Roger from his stewardship won't see the end of it. Meantime, sport for the populace of another kind. Will you stay to watch the fun?"

Julian Polpey shook his head in disgust. "Not I, he answered. Why should we in Tywardreath have some custom foisted upon us from elsewhere, making us barbarians? Lady Champernoune must be sick in mind to think of it. I'm for home."

He turned and disappeared into the crowd, which was now thick not only upon the summit of the hill where the house and chapel stood, but half-way down the track to Treesmill. One and all wore this curious air of expectancy upon their faces, half-resentful, half-eager, and Geoffrey Lampetho, pointing this out to his companion, laughed again.

"Sick in mind, maybe, but it salves her conscience to have another widow act as scapegoat, and sweetens Quadragessima for us. There's nothing a mob likes more than witnessing public penance." He turned his head, like the rest, towards the valley, and Henry Trefrengy edged forward past the Champernoune servants to the chapel entrance where Roger stood, while I followed close behind.

"I'm sorry for what has happened," he said. "No gratitude, no recompense. Ten years of your life wasted, gone for nothing."

"Not wasted, answered Roger briefly. William will come of age in June and marry. His mother will lose her influence, and the monk as well. You know the Bishop of Exeter has expelled him finally, and he must return to the Abbey at Angers, where he should have gone a year ago?"

"God be praised!" exclaimed Trefrengy. "The Priory stinks because of him, the parish too. Look at the people yonder…" Roger stared over Trefrengy's head at the gaping crowd. "I may have acted hard as steward, but to make sport of Rob Rosgof's widow was more than I could stomach," he said. "I stood against it, and this was another reason for my dismissal. The monk is responsible for all of this, to satisfy my lady's vanity and lust."

The entrance to the chapel darkened, and the small, slight figure of Jean de Meral appeared in the open doorway. He put his hand on Roger's shoulder.

"You used not to be so squeamish once," he said. "Have you forgotten those evenings in the Priory cellars, and in your own as well? I taught you more than philosophy, my friend, on those occasions."

"Take your hand off me," replied Roger curtly. "I parted company with you and your brethren when you let young Henry Bodrugan die under the Priory roof; and could have saved him."

The monk smiled. "And now, to show sympathy with the dead, you harbour an adulterous wife under your own?" he asked. "We are all hypocrites, my friend. I warn you, my lady knows your wayfarer's identity, and it is partly on her account that she is here in Tywardreath. She has certain proposals to put before the Lady Isolda when this business with Rosgof's widow has been settled."

"Which business, please God, will be struck from the manor records in years to come, and rebound upon your head instead, to your everlasting shame," said Trefrengy.

"You forget", murmured the monk, "I am a bird of passage, and in a few days time shall have spread my wings for France."

There was a sudden stir amongst the crowd, and a man appeared at the door of the adjoining building, which Lampetho had named the geld-house. Stout, florid-faced, he held a document in his hand. Beside him, wrapped in a cloak from head to foot, was Joanna Champernoune. The man, whom I took to be the new steward Hornwynk, advanced to address the crowd, unrolling the document in his hand.

"Good people of Tywardreath," he proclaimed, "whether freeman, customary tenant or serf, those of you who pay rent to the manor court have done so here today at the geldhouse. And since this manor of Tywardreath was once held by the Lady Isolda Cardinham of Cardinham, who sold it to our late lord's grandfather, it has been decided to introduce here a practice established in the manor of Cardinham since the Conquest." He paused a moment, the better to impress his words upon his listeners. "The practice being", he continued, "that any widow of a customary tenant, holding lands through her late husband, who has deviated from the path of chastity, shall either forfeit her lands or make due penance for their recovery before the lord of the manor and the steward of the manor court. Today before the Lady Joanna Champernoune, representing the lord of the manor William, a minor, and myself, Philip Hornwynk, steward, Mary, widow of Robert Rosgof, must make such penance if she desires the restoration of her lands."

A murmur rose from the crowd, a strange blend of excitement and curiosity, and a sudden sound of shouting came from the road leading down to Treesmill.

"She'll never face them," said Trefrengy. "Mary Rosgof has a son at home who would rather surrender his farmland ten times over than have his mother shamed."

"You are mistaken," answered the monk. "He knows her shame will prove his gain in six months time, when she is brought to bed of a bastard child, and he can turn both out of doors and keep the lands himself."

"Then you've persuaded him," said Roger, "and lined his purse in so doing."

The shouting and the cries increased, and as the people pressed forward I saw a procession ascend the hill from Treesmill, lumbering towards us at a jog-trot. Two lads raced ahead, brandishing whips, and behind them came five men escorting what at first sight I took to be a small moorland pony with a woman mounted on its back. They drew closer, and the laughter amongst the spectators turned to jeers, as the woman sagged upon her steed and would have fallen, had not one of the men escorting her held her fast, flourishing a hay-fork in his other hand. She was not mounted upon a pony at all but on a great black sheep, his horns beribboned with crepe, and the two fellows on either side had thrust a halter over his head to lead him, so that, startled and terrified of the crowd about him, he ducked and stumbled in a vain endeavour to throw his passenger from his back. The woman was draped in black to match her steed, with a black veil covering her face, her hands bound in front of her with leather thongs; I could see her fingers clutching at the thick dark wool on the sheep's neck. The procession came stumbling and lurching to the geld-house, and as it drew to a standstill before Hornwynk and Joanna, the escort jerking the halter, the man with the hay-fork dragged off the woman's veil to disclose her features. She could not have been more than thirty-five, her eyes as terror-striken as the sheep that bore her, while her dark hair, roughly scissored, stood out from her head like a cropped thatch. The jeering turned to silence as the woman, trembling, bowed her head before Joanna.

"Mary Rosgof, do you admit your fault?" called Hornwynk.

"I do in all humility," she answered, her voice low.

"Speak louder for all to hear, and state its nature," he cried. The wretched woman, her pale face flushing, raised her head and looked towards Joanna.

"I lay with another man, my husband not six months dead, thus forfeiting the lands I held in trust for my son. I crave indulgence of my lady and the manor court, and beg for the restoration of my lands, confessing my incontinence. Should I give birth to a base-born child, my son will take possession of the lands and do with me as he pleases." Joanna beckoned the new steward to her side, and he bent low as she whispered something in his ear. Then he turned once more and addressed the penitent.

My gracious lady cannot condone your fault, which is of a nature abhorrent to all people, but since you have admitted it in person, and before the manor court and others of this parish, she will, in great clemency, restore the forfeited lands you rent from her.

The woman bowed her head and murmured gratitude, then asked with swimming eyes if there was further penance she must do.

"Aye," returned the steward. "Descend from the sheep that carried you in your shame, proceed to the chapel here, crawling on your knees, and confess your sin before the altar. Brother John will hear your confession."

The two men who held the sheep pulled the woman from its back, forcing her to her knees, and as she dragged herself along the path towards the chapel, hampered by her skirts, a groan arose from the watching crowd, as if this total degradation could in some way appease their own sense of shame.

The monk waited until she had crawled to his feet, then turned into the chapel, where she followed him. Her escort, at a sign from Hornwynk, set the sheep free, whereupon it ran in terror amongst the crowd, scattering them to either side, and a great shout of hysterical laughter burst forth, as they drove it back along the road to Treesmill, pelting it with pieces of packed snow, sticks, anything they could find. With the sudden release from tension everyone was in a moment laughing, joking, running, seized by a holiday mood, what was happening making a break between winter and the Lenten season just begun. Soon they had all dispersed, and no one was left before the geld-house but Joanna herself, Hornwynk the steward, and Roger and Trefrengy standing to one side.

"So be it," said Joanna. "Tell my servants I am ready to leave. There is nothing further to keep me here in Tywardreath save a certain business which I can attend to on the road home."

The steward went down the path to prepare for her departure, the servants opening the carriage door in readiness, and Joanna, pausing, looked across the path at Roger.

"The people were well satisfied if you are not," she said, "and will pay their rents the sooner for it in the future. The custom has its merits if it inspires fear, and may well spread to other manors."

"God forbid," answered Roger.

Geoffrey Lampetho had been right about the paint on her face, or perhaps the atmosphere inside the geld-house had been close. It ran in streaks now on either cheek, which, with increasing weight, were a puffy puce. She seemed to have aged, since I saw her last, a good ten years. The splendour had gone from her brown eyes, turning them hard like agate. She put out her hand now and touched Roger's arm. "Come," she said, "we have known one another too long for lies and subterfuge. I have a message for the Lady Isolda from her brother Sir William Ferrers, which I have promised to deliver to her in person. If you bar your door to me now I can summon fifty men from the manor to break it down."

"And I another fifty between here and Fowey to withstand them," answered Roger. "But you may follow me to Kylmerth if you wish, and beg an interview. Whether it will be granted or not I cannot say."

Joanna smiled. "It will," she said, "it will," and taking her skirts in her hands she swept down the path towards the carriage, followed by the monk. Once it would have been Roger who helped her mount the steps into the waiting vehicle; today it was the new steward Hornwynk, flushed with self-esteem and bowing low, while Roger, crossing to a gate behind the chapel, where his pony was tethered, leapt upon its back, and kicking his heels into its side rode out into the road. The lumbering chariot rumbled after him, Joanna and the monk inside it, and the few stragglers at the top of the hill stared to watch it pass down the icy road to the village green and the Priory walls beyond. A bell sounded from the Priory chapel and the vehicle began to draw away from me, and Roger too, and I started running, fearing to lose both. Then a pounding in my heart began, and a singing in my ears, and I saw the carriage lurch to a standstill; the window was lowered, and Joanna herself looked out of it, waving her hand and beckoning to me. I stumbled to the window, breathless, the singing increasing to a roar. Then it ceased, absolutely, and I was swaying on my feet, with the clock in Saint Andrew's church striking seven, and the Buick had drawn up on the road ahead of me, with Vita waving from the window, and the surprised faces of the boys and Mrs. Collins looking out.