Ashenden (35 page)

“Oh, darling, what an idiot I am. You’ve hardly said a word. Something’s on your mind, I can tell.”

She nodded.

“Out with it.”

The waiter came with large menus clad in maroon leatherette and Bunny waved him away.

Bunny was an old friend of them both, and she had never understood the English inclination to speak in code to those closest to them, or to grow privet hedges in front of their lives, so she explained that she’d been seeing a doctor in London, undergoing tests to find out why she couldn’t get pregnant, and this morning she had found out that there was nothing wrong with her at all.

“Of course there isn’t, darling Reggie,” he said. “You are absolutely splendid in every way. Surely this is good news.”

“Oh yes. Yes, it is,” she said. “I have been so worried.”

Bunny looked at her over the rim of his glass.

She plucked at her napkin. “And yet it doesn’t change things, I suppose. All this waiting is torture.”

Human difficulties often presented Bunny with the opportunity to draw analogies with something or other that his pugs, Noël and
Gertrude, had done or were doing, and he had even been known to bring their thought processes into it. On this occasion, he simply rested his chin in his hand. “Considering how you and Hugo feel about each other and how long you’ve been married, it can’t be for want of trying, can it?”

“No.” She laughed.

“Well, it strikes me that you need a diversion and another drink, not necessarily in that order.” He beckoned to the waiter, who came flourishing the menus. “I
don’t
recommend the veal Marengo, by the way. It isn’t veal and it certainly isn’t Marengo.”

*  *  *

Every time Reggie got into Bunny’s car, dog leads and blankets in the back, she remembered, too late, what a terrible driver he was, both slow and dangerous, with an alarming habit of turning to talk face-to-face to his passenger while the road was left to its own devices. After lunch, seeing that the rain had stopped, it was his idea to take a spin in the country and her idea to point him in the direction of Ashenden Park, which she guessed was nearby and confirmed by looking at a map she found in the glove box, along with a crumpled paper bag of dog biscuits that shed crumbs all over her tweed coat.

“We visited the house one day before the war,” she said, shrinking as hedgerow screeched its green fingers along the side of the car, “and I’ve often wondered about it. Since we’re so close, it seems a pity not to see it after all these years.”

What she also had in mind was to stop, get out of the car, and prolong her life a little.

“You are a one for punishment,” said Bunny. “And here I am trying to cheer you up. We’re losing four, five of these places a week, so I was reading just the other day in
Country Life
. So depressing. The big houses will survive, of course, one way or another. I can’t see Blenheim or Chatsworth going to the wall. It’s all the charming middling ones that will be lost. Expect to be disappointed. It’s bound to be a ruin.”

A horse-drawn cart laden with milk churns was up ahead, and
Bunny, oblivious to the discrepancy between its speed and theirs, began to inveigh against the country’s infatuation with modernity, which led him back to Kenneth and the Festival.

“I’ve nothing against contemporary design,” she said, shielding her eyes. “Some of it is very refreshing.”

“You wouldn’t say the same about contemporary designers,” said Bunny, swerving just in time to avoid the milk cart. “The ones I have met are exceptionally tedious, I can tell you. Of course, Kenneth would not agree. Have I mentioned he’s got his eye on a Picasso, of all things? Why not a little Vuillard or even a Derain, seeing as I’m going to have to look at it too?”

“Funnily enough, this morning at the doctor’s I read that same
Country Life
article you did,” she said, in an attempt to change the subject and letting out a breath she had not been aware she was holding as they left the milk cart behind.

“Darling Reggie. One can always rely on you for a non sequitur.”

“Over there.” She directed his attention back to the road. “According to the map, that should be the turning.”

They drove through an open gateway. “Ministry of Works” said a board nailed to a stake. No one was about.

“I think Hugo and I must have driven in the back way that day. I don’t remember these lodges or”—she craned her neck—“those stables.”

She did remember the war looming over them and their fear of separation. That had never happened. Hugo had served in army intelligence during the war and they had traveled round the country together, setting up home in temporary billets wherever he was posted, barely spending a night apart. Things never turn out as you expect.

The car, confused about which gear it was in, bumped over a pothole, stalled, and came to a stop.

“What did I tell you?” said Bunny, yanking up the hand brake.

The house was both smaller and larger than she remembered, the grounds completely overgrown, choked with nettles and brambles, littered with old boots, and rutted with tank treads filled with
water, almost up to the weed-infested drive. She looked up and saw that not a single window was whole.

“Is this enough for you?” said Bunny. “Or shall we make ourselves really miserable and go inside?”

During the war, when they had time together in the evenings, she and Hugo had started to read books and articles about the Georgian period, at first in a “Look thy last on all things lovely” sort of a way, when the bombing was destroying so much that was lovely, and then with a growing interest and appreciation of eighteenth-century architecture and design, and its descent via Vitruvius and Palladio from the classical orders of ancient times. The Vitruvian notion of “commodity, firmness, and delight,” applied to buildings as much as to silver teaspoons, had been something sustaining to cling on to in dark and uncertain days. It was then that they had discovered that the architect of Ashenden was a Yorkshireman called James Woods, who had otherwise built little in the south, and that the house was considered one of the finest late-Palladian buildings in the country.

She had anticipated the dereliction she now saw around her. What was unexpected was how resilient and solid the house appeared despite the signs of decay and creeping undergrowth, its symmetries and architectural intent still intact nearly two centuries after it had been built.

“Yes, I would like to if they’ll let us. We weren’t able to before. You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Bunny.

They tried the door at the lower level, found it unlocked, and wandered inside. Two workmen in overalls down at the far end of a dim vestibule ignored them, which they took as permission of sorts, and as they ventured farther into the house, they could feel the penetrating cold and damp that seeped from the walls; it was, if anything, colder and damper than outdoors, and it was a raw day.

“What’s that funny smell?” she said.

“Dry rot,” said Bunny.

For the next hour or so, they toured the house, pointing out
damage to each other as if they were a pair of government inspectors. The cloying smell of dry rot, which she thought she might never get out of her nose, was stronger on the principal floor, and the scuffed walls, painted those familiar utility wartime colors of cream and hospital green, were crudely scrawled with names and cartoons of the “Kilroy woz ’ere” variety. In a room she would later identify as the original library, there was a large puddle of water on the floor, which corresponded to a missing portion of ceiling above, where the plasterwork had fallen down to reveal fire-blackened joists. They came across a few paraffin stoves, one in working order, but only two chimneypieces remained, and whole sections of moldings were missing, along with most of the doors and doorcases in what would have been the main reception rooms. Everywhere was the litter of military occupation: abandoned filing cabinets with dented drawers, heaps of old sacking, crates and boxes full of rusty nails, screws, and unidentifiable lengths of webbing.

“What might have been,” said Bunny.

They were standing in the center of the house, gazing up at a stone staircase cantilevered from the wall, gaps in its wrought-iron balustrade, light pouring down from clerestory windows too high to be mended in any fashion. It was the one part of the house where damage was less evident, and the walls were decorated with delicate plasterwork wreaths, whose mere existence, in such a ravaged setting, seemed to fly in the face of everything they had seen so far.

Her eyes traced the fine leaf shapes and lingered on a pair of griffins. “How on earth did these survive?”

A voice behind them said, “This room was boarded up until a year ago. That’s how.”

They turned and saw a man in his late forties or early fifties with a pouchy face, wearing a light trench coat over a dark suit. “How do you do? Charles Marling.” He put out his hand and they shook it in turn, introducing themselves.

“Are you from the Ministry of Works, Mr. Marling?” said Reggie. “I do hope you don’t mind, we’ve been looking around. When
we arrived earlier, there didn’t seem to be anyone to ask whether or not that would be allowed.”

“No, I’m not from the ministry,” he said, with a wry smile. “Rather the opposite. I’m here on behalf of my client, who owns this place. And so far as I’m concerned, you can look round all you like. But do take care, won’t you, particularly if you go upstairs. Some of the floors are not sound.”

Marling went on to explain that the house was due to be derequisitioned shortly and he was there to ensure that certain repairs had been carried out satisfactorily.

Bunny gave a snort.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Marling. “Grim, isn’t it? I last came six months ago and I thought at the time it couldn’t get worse. But it has.”

“I imagine your client will be dismayed at the lack of progress,” said Reggie, watching a spider scurry into a crevice.

“No, he’ll be glad to hear that at last they’ve done what they said they were going to do. You can tell from where we’re standing.” He raised his eyes upwards and they followed his gaze. “One of their so-called workmen flogged off the lead from the roof over this staircase. Naturally the whole thing soon rotted and fell down. Mind you, I see they’ve put it back the cheap way. That ceiling used to be vaulted.”

Marling brought out a pen and a small notebook from his coat pocket and wrote a few lines.

“We noticed the fire damage in the room off the entrance hall,” said Reggie. “Someone must have caught it just in time.”

“That happened in forty-six, when the military were still in residence,” said Marling, putting the notebook away. “I don’t know where the puddle keeps coming from. I dread to think. No compensation for that sort of thing, of course.”

“So much is missing,” said Bunny.

“I must confess that’s not entirely due to the war.” Marling gave another wry smile and did not elaborate.

To explain their intrusion, which she felt she had not adequately
accounted for, Reggie said that she had been curious about the house ever since she had first seen it, and had wanted to know how it had survived.

“When was that?”

“The year before the war.”

“In which case, you might have come across my client. Mr. Ferrars lived here in one of the side wings until thirty-nine.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember him. He sold us a pair of urns.”

“A pair of urns?” said Bunny.

“The ones in our garden.”

“Oh,
those,
” said Bunny.

“We never saw inside the house,” said Reggie. “It appeared to be shut up, although it was not in such a bad state as this.”

“Yes, it’s taken a lot of punishment since those days.”

Bunny asked what the house had been requisitioned for.

“All sorts,” said Marling. “Tank practice in the park, as I expect you must have noticed. Yanks, too, training for D-Day. By the end of the war there was quite a big POW camp in the grounds—over towards the woods, there are still a few Nissen huts remaining—and the house was used as a mess for the officers in charge of them. Then the military clerks moved in and now the Ministry of Works, bless its soul, is billeting some of its staff here, while they work on the construction of Harwell. But not for much longer, I’m glad to say.”

“Harwell?” said Bunny.

“Some sort of nuclear establishment, I gather,” said Marling, checking his watch. “Though possibly I shouldn’t be telling you that.”

“I’m afraid we’re holding you up with all our questions,” said Reggie.

“Not at all. But unfortunately I do have another appointment.” He reached inside his trench coat and fished around in the pocket of his suit jacket. “Here’s my card. Do drop me a line if you want to know anything more, and I’ll try to answer to the best of my knowledge.”

“Thank you,” said Reggie, putting the card into her handbag.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what plans does your client have for the house?”

“Plans?” Marling laughed. “He’s been trying to sell it for twenty years. If no one wanted it then, they’re hardly going to want it now.” He pointed to an open doorway at the side of the staircase. “Have you been through there?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“Pity I’ve got a train to catch.” He belted his trench coat. “I’d have been interested to know what you thought of it. It’s an unusual space, what’s left of it.”

“We were saving it up for last,” said Bunny. “The end of the enfilade, you know.”

“The end of an era, if you ask me,” said Marling. He shook his head. “It’s a shame really. So many of these places going to rack and ruin. You’d never think we’d won the war.”

*  *  *

“You wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, would you?” said Bunny, as they watched Marling leave. “Or in the shoes of Mr. Ferrars, come to that. Managing decline, it’s a frightful business, but I suppose we must all get used to it.”

“Must we?” said Reggie.

They went through the doorway into the room Marling had indicated.

“Oh, look,” said Bunny, twirling about, ballroom dancing to unheard music. “It’s octagonal, darling.”