The House on the Strand

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN I HAD dressed I went to the garage and fetched the car, and skirting Tywardreath took the road to Treesmill. I purposely avoided the lay-by and drove down the hill into the valley, but not before the fellow at the bungalow Chapel Down, who was busy washing his caravan, waved a hand in greeting. The same thing happened when I stopped the car below the bridge near Treesmill Farm. The farmer of yesterday morning was driving his cows across the road, and paused to speak to me. I thanked my stars neither of them had been at the lay-by later in the day.

"Found your manor house yet?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I told him. "I thought I'd take another look round. That's a curious sort of place half-way up the field there, covered in gorse-bushes. Has it got a name?"

I could not see the site from the bridge, but pointed roughly in the direction of the quarry where yesterday, in another century, I had followed Roger into the house where Sir Henry Champernoune lay dying.

"You mean up Gratten?" he said. "I don't think you'll find anything up there except old slate and rubble. Fine place for slate, or was. Mostly rubbish now. They say when the houses were built in Tywardreath in the last century they took most of the stones and slates from that place. It may be true."

"Why Gratten?" I asked.

"I don't know exactly. The ploughed field at the back is the Gratten, part of Mount Bennett farm. The name has something to do with burning, I believe. There's a path opposite the turning to Stonybridge will lead you to it. But you'll find nothing to interest you."

"I don't suppose I shall," I answered, "except the view."

"Mostly trains," he laughed, "and not so many of them these days."

I parked the car half-way up the hill, opposite the lane, as he suggested, then struck across the field towards the Gratten. The railway and the valley were beneath me, to my right, the ground descending very steeply to a high embankment beside the railway, then sloping away more gradually to swamp and thicket. Yesterday, in that other world, there had been a quayside midway between the two, and in the centre of the wooded valley, where trees and bush were thickest, Otto Bodrugan had anchored his craft mid-channel, the bows of the boat swinging to meet the tide. I passed the spot below the hedge where I had sat and smoked my cigarette. Then I went through the broken gate, and stood once more amongst the hillocks and the mounds. Today, without vertigo or nausea, I could see more clearly that these knolls were not the natural formation of uneven ground, but must have been walls that had been covered for centuries by vegetation, and the hollows which I had thought, in my dizziness, to be pits were simply the enclosures that long ago had been rooms within a house.

The people who had come to gather slates and stones for their cottages had done so for good reason. Digging into the soil that must have covered the foundations of a building long vanished would have given them much of the material they needed for their own use, and the quarry at the back was part of this same excavation. Now, the quest ended, the quarry remained a tip for useless junk, the discarded tins rusted with age and winter rains.

Their quest had ended, while mine had just begun, but, as the farmer down at Treesmill had warned me, I should find nothing. I knew only that yesterday, in another time, I had stood in the vaulted hall that formed the central feature of this long-buried house, had mounted the outer stairway to the room above, had seen the owner of the dwelling die. No courtyard now, no walls, no hail, no stable- quarters in the rear; nothing but grassy banks and a little muddy path running between them.

There was a patch of even ground, smooth and green, fronting the site, that might have been part of the courtyard once, and I sat down there looking into the valley below as Bodrugan had done from the small window in the hall. Tiwardrai, the House on the Strand… I thought how, when the tide ebbed in early centuries, the twisting channel would stay blue, revealing sandy flats on either side of it, these flats a burnished gold under the sun. If the channel was deep enough, Bodrugan could have raised anchor and made for sea later that night; if not, he would have returned on board to sleep amongst his men, and at daybreak, perhaps, come out on deck to stretch himself and stare up at the house of mourning. I had put the documents that had come by post this morning into my pocket, and now I drew them out and read them through again. Bishop Grandisson's order to the Prior was dated August, 1329. Sir Henry Champernoune had died in late April or early May. The Ferrers pair were doubtless behind the attempt to remove him from his Priory tomb, with Matilda Ferrers the more pressing of the two. I wondered who had carried the rumour to the Bishop's ears, so playing on ecclesiastical pride, and ensuring that the body would escape investigation? Sir John Carminowe, in all probability, acting hand in glove with Joanna — whom he had, no doubt, long since successfully taken to bed.

I turned to the Lay Subsidy Roll, and glanced once again through the list of names, ticking off those that corresponded to the place-names on the road map I had brought from the car. Ric Trevynor, Ric Trewiryan, Ric Trenathelon, Julian Polpey, John Polorman, Geoffrey Lampetho… all, with slight variations in the spelling, were farms marked on the roadmap beside me. The men who dwelt in them then, dead for over six hundred years, had bequeathed their names to posterity; only henry Champernoune, lord of the manor, had left a heap of mounds as legacy, to be stumbled upon by myself; a trespasser in time. All dead for nearly seven centuries, Roger Kylmerth and Isolda Carminowe amongst them. What they had dreamt of; schemed for, accomplished, no longer mattered, it was all forgotten. I got up and tried to find, amongst the mounds, the hall where Isolda had sat yesterday, accusing Roger of complicity in crime. Nothing fitted. Nature had done her work too well, here on the hillside and below me in the valley, where the estuary once ran. The sea had withdrawn from the land, the grass had covered the walls, the men and women who had walked here once, looking down upon blue water, had long since crumbled into dust.

I turned away, retracing my steps across the field, low-spirited, reason telling me that this was the end of the adventure. Emotion was in conflict with reason, however, destroying peace of mind, and for better, for worse, I knew myself involved. I could not forget that I had only to turn the key of that laboratory door for it to happen once again. The choice, perhaps, put to Man from the beginning, whether or not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. I got into the car and drove back to Kilmarth. I spent the afternoon writing a full account of yesterday to Magnus, and told him also that Vita was in London. Then I drove to Fowey to post the letter, and arranged to hire a sailing-boat after the weekend, when Vita and the boys were down. She would not experience the flat calm of Long Island sound, or the luxury of her brother Joe's chartered yacht, but the gesture showed my will to please, and the boys would enjoy it. I rang nobody that evening, and nobody rang me, with the result that I slept badly, continually waking and listening to silence. I kept thinking of Roger Kylmerth in his sleeping quarters over the kitchen of the original farmstead, and wondering whether his brother had thoroughly scoured out the bowls six hundred and forty years ago. He must have done so, for Henry Champernoune to lie undisturbed in the Priory chapel until that chapel had crumbled into dust as well.

No breakfast in bed the following morning, for I was too restless. I was drinking my coffee on the steps outside the french window of the library when the telephone rang. It was Magnus.

"How are you feeling?" he asked at once.

"Jaded," I told him. "I slept badly."

"You can make up for it later. You can sleep all afternoon in the patio. There are several lilos in the boiler-room, and I envy you. London is sweltering in a heat-wave."

"Cornwall isn't," I replied, "and the patio gives me claustrophobia. Did you get my letter?"

"I did," he said. "That's why I rang. Congratulations on your third trip. Don't worry about the aftermath. It was your own fault, after all."

"It may have been," I said, "but the confusion was not."

"I know," he agreed. "The confusion fascinated me. Also the jump in time. Six months or more between the second and third trips. You know what? I've a good mind to get away in a week or so and join you so that we can go on a trip together."

My first reaction was one of excitement. The second, a zoom to earth. "It's out of the question. Vita will be here with the boys."

"We can get rid of them. Pack them off to the Scillies, or for a long day at the Land's End, scattering banana skins. That'll give us time."

"I don't think so," I said. "I don't think so at all." He did not know Vita well. I could imagine the complications.

"Well, it's not urgent," he said, "but it could be a lot of fun. Besides I'd like to take a look at Isolda Carminowe." His flippant voice restored my jagged nerves. I even smiled. "She's Bodrugan's girl, not ours," I told him.

"Yes, but for how long?" he queried. "They were always changing partners in those days. I still don't see where she fits in amongst the rest."

"She and William Ferrers seem to be cousins to the Champernounes," I explained.

"And Isolda's husband Oliver Carminowe, absent at yesterday's death-bed, is brother to Matilda and Sir John?"

"Apparently."

"I must write all this down and get my slave to check for further details. I say, I was right about Joanna being a bitch." Then, abruptly changing his tone, "So you're satisfied now that the drug works, and what you saw was not hallucination?"

"Almost," I replied, with caution.

"Almost? Don't the documents prove it, if nothing else?"

"The documents help to prove it," I countered, "but don't forget you read them before I did. So there is still the possibility that you were exercising some kind of telepathic influence. Anyway, how's the monkey?"

"The monkey." He paused a moment. "The monkey's dead."

"Thanks very much," I said.

"Oh, don't worry — it wasn't the drug. I killed him on purpose; I have work to do on his brain cells. It will take some time, so don't get impatient."

"I'm not in the least impatient," I replied, "merely appalled at the risk you appear to be taking with my brain."

"Your brain's different," he said. "You can take a lot more punishment yet. Besides, think of Isolda. Such a splendid antidote to Vita. You might even find that—"

I cut him short. I knew exactly what he had been going to say. "Leave my love life out of this," I said. "It doesn't concern you."

"I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant. It happens every day, without drugs, when a man keeps a mistress round the corner and a wife at home… That was a major find on your part, by the way, landing on the quarry above Treesmill valley. I'll put my archaeological friends on to digging the site when you and I have finished with it."

It struck me, as he spoke, how our attitude to the experiment differed.

His was scientific, unemotional, it did not really concern him who was broken in the process so long as what he was attempting to prove was proved successfully; whereas I was already caught up in the mesh of history: the people who to him were puppets of a bygone age were alive for me.

I had a sudden vision of that long-buried house reconstructed on concrete blocks, admission two shillings, car park at Chapel Down…

"Then Roger never led you there?" I asked.

"To Treesmill valley? No," he answered. "I strayed from Kilmarth once only, and that was to the Priory, as I told you. I preferred to remain on my own ground. I'll tell you all about it when I come down. I'm off to Cambridge for the weekend, but remember you have all Saturday and Sunday for self-indulgence. Increase the dose a little — it won thurt you."

He rang off before I could ask him for his telephone number, should I want it over the weekend. I had hardly put down the receiver before the telephone rang again. This time it was Vita.

"You were engaged a long while, she said. I suppose it was your Professor?"

"As a matter of fact it was," I told her.

"Loading you up with weekend chores? Don't exhaust yourself darling." Acidity, then, was the morning mood. She must blow it off on the boys, I could not cope.

"What are you planning for today?" I asked, ignoring her previous remark.

"Well, the boys are going swimming at Bill's club. That's a must. We've a heatwave here in London. How's it with you?"

"Overcast," I said without glancing at the window. "A trough of low pressure crossing the Atlantic will reach Cornwall by midnight."

"It sounds delightful. I hope your Mrs. Collins is getting on with airing the beds."

"Everything's under control, I told her, and I've hired a sailing-boat for next week, quite a big one, with a chap in charge. The boys will love it."

"What about Mom?"

"Mom will love it too, if she takes enough seasick pills. There's also a beach below the cliffs here, only a couple of fields to cross. No bulls."

"Darling," — the acidity had turned sweet, or at any rate mellow— "I believe you are looking forward to our coming after all."

"Of course I am," I said. "Why should you think otherwise?"

"I never know what to think when your Professor's been at you. There's some sort of hoodoo between us when he's around… Here are the boys, she went on, her voice changing. They want to say hullo." My stepsons voices, like their appearance, were identical, though Teddy was twelve and Micky ten. They were said to resemble their father, killed in an air crash a couple of years before I met Vita. Judging by the photograph they carried round with them, this was true. He had, they had, the typical Teuton head, hair cropped close, of many American young. Blue eyes, innocent, set in a broad face. They were nice kids. But I could have done without them.

"Hi, Dick," they said, one after the other.

"Hi," I repeated, the phrase as alien to my tongue as if I had been speaking Tongalese.

"How are you both?" I asked.

"We're fine," they said.

There was a long pause. They couldn't think of anything more to say. Neither could I. "Looking forward to seeing you next week," I told them.

I heard a lot of whispering, and then Vita was back on the line again. "They're raging to swim. I shall have to go. Take care of yourselg darling, and don't overdo it with your pail and broom."

I went and sat in the little summer-house that Magnus's mother had erected years ago, and looked down across the bay. It was a happy spot, peaceful, sheltered from all winds except a south-westerly blow. I could see myself spending a lot of time here during the holidays, if only to get out of bowling to the boys; they were sure to bring cricket stumps with them, and a bat, and a ball which they would continually hit over the wall into the field beyond.

Your turn to get it!

No, it's not, it's yours!

Then Vita's voice chiming in from behind the hydrangea bushes. Now, now, if you're going to quarrel there won't be any cricket at all, and I mean it, with a final appeal to me — Do something, darling, you're the only adult male.

But at least today, in the summer-house, looking up the bay as a ray of sun touched the horizon, there was peace at Kylmerth. Kylmerth… I had pronounced the word in thought as originally spelt, and quite unconsciously. Confusion of thought becoming habit? Too tired for introspection, I got up again and wandered aimlessly about the grounds, clipping at hedges with an old hook I found in the boiler-house. Magnus had been right about the lilos. There were three of them, the kind you inflate with a pump. I'd set to work on them in the afternoon, if I had the energy.

"Lost your appetite?" asked Mrs. Collins, when I had laboured through my lunch and asked for coffee.

"Sorry," I said, no reflection on your cooking. "I'm a bit out of sorts."

"I thought you looked tired. It's the weather. Turned very close."

It was not the weather. It was my own inability to settle, a sort of restlessness that drove me to physical action, however futile. I strolled down across the fields to the sea, but it looked exactly the same as it had from the summer-house, flat and grey, and then I had all the effort of walking up again. The day dragged on. I wrote a letter to my mother, describing the house in boring detail just to fill the pages, reminding me of the duty letters I used to write from school: I'm in another dormitory this term. It holds fifteen. Finally, physically and mentally exhausted, I went upstairs at half-past seven, threw myself fully clothed upon the bed, and was asleep within minutes.

The rain awoke me. Nothing much, just a pattering sound on the open window, with the curtain blowing about. It was quite dark. I switched on the light; it was four-thirty. I had slept a solid nine hours. My exhaustion had vanished and I felt ravenous, having had no supper. Here was the pay-off for living alone: I could eat and sleep entirely as and when I pleased. I went downstairs to the kitchen, cooked myself sausages, eggs and bacon, and brewed a pot of tea. I felt fighting fit to begin a new day, but what could I possibly do at five o'clock in this grey, cheerless dawn? One thing, and one thing only. Then take the weekend to recover, if recovery was needed… I went down the backstairs to the basement, switching on all the lights and whistling. It looked better lit up, much more cheerful. Even the laboratory had lost its alchemistic air, and measuring the drops into the medicine-glass was as simple as cleaning my teeth. Come on, Roger, I said, show yourself. Let's make it a good one.

I sat on the edge of the sink and waited. I waited a long time. The thing was, nothing happened. I just went on staring at the embryos in the bottles as it grew gradually lighter outside the barred window. I must have sat there for about half-an-hour. What a frightful swindle! Then I remembered that Magnus had suggested increasing the dose. I took the dropper, very cautiously let two or three more drops fall on to my tongue, and swallowed them. Was it imagination, or was there a taste to it this time — bitter, a little sour? I locked the door of the laboratory behind me, and went down the passage into the old kitchen. I switched off the light, for it was already grey, with the first dawn in the patio outside. Then I heard the back door creak — it had a habit of grating on the stone flag beneath — and it blew wide open in the sudden draught. There was the sound of footsteps and a man's voice.

God! I thought. Mrs. Collins has turned up early — she said something about her husband coming to mow the grass.

The man pushed past the door, dragging a boy behind him, and it was not Mrs. Collins' husband, it was Roger Kylmerth, and he was followed by five other men, carrying flares, and there was no longer any dawn light coming from the patio, only the dark night.