Possession (13 page)

“The Baileys are
in
the church,” said Maud. “But Christabel’s out on the edge, in the wind and the rain, where she wanted to be. Over here.”

They clambered over tussocks and humps. They put their feet in the rabbit-runs between the dead. There was a shoulder-high stone wall, rooted with ivy-leaved toadflax. Christabel’s tombstone leaned over at a slight angle. It was made of local limestone, not marble, and roughened by weather. Someone had cleaned the lettering, not very recently.

Someone, again not recently, had sheared the hay from the grave, which was surrounded by a low and crumbling stone rim, thrust apart by couch grass and thorny trails of bramble. On the grassy mound lay the ghost of a large, indeed opulent bouquet, held together by bridal wires, now rusted amongst the mop heads of dead chrysanthemums and carnations, the skeletal leaves of long-faded roses. A green satin ribbon, water-stained and earth-stained, held these fragments together; there was a card tied to this, on which was palely visible in typewriting

“Leonora was here,” said Maud. “In the summer. When Sir George threatened her with a shotgun.”

“She had a go at the weeds perhaps,” said Roland, who felt threatened by damp and melancholy.

“Leonora would be very shocked at the state of this graveyard,” said Maud. “She would not find it romantic. I think it’s all right. A slow return to nature and oblivion.”

“Did Christabel write that poem?”

“It’s one of her quieter efforts. You see it’s not ascribed. The tombstone mentions her father’s profession, and doesn’t say a word about her own.”

Roland felt briefly guilty of the oppressions of mankind. He said mildly, “It’s the poem that sticks in the memory. Rather sinister.”

“As though the grass were supping up Christabel.”

“Well, it was, I suppose.”

They looked at the grass. It lay damply, in decaying tufts.

“Let’s walk up the hill,” said Maud. “We can look down on Seal
Court from a distance. She must have come this way often enough, she was a diligent churchgoer.”

From behind the church a ploughed field slanted up to the uncompromising skyline. Silhouetted against the grey sky, on the top, was a figure Roland at first took for a seated monarch by Henry Moore, enthroned and crowned. Then it inclined its head and struggled fiercely with arms pointing earthwards, and Roland caught glints of silver and reconstituted it as a person in a wheelchair, possibly in difficulty.

“Look!” he said to Maud.

Maud stared upwards.

“Perhaps they’re in trouble.”

“Someone must be with them or they wouldn’t have got up there,” said Maud reasonably.

“Perhaps,” said Roland, setting off nevertheless, his town shoes thickening with mud as he climbed, his hair ruffling. He was in good health, owing to the cycling perhaps, despite carbon monoxide and lead in London streets.

In the wheelchair was a woman, wearing a deep-crowned, wide-brimmed green felt hat, obscuring her face, and a paisley silk scarf at the throat of a caped loden coat. The chair had spun out of the central track along the ridge and was now skewed at the precipitous edge of what would be a steep and stony career. Leather-gloved hands strove with the huge hoops. Leather boots, beautifully soft and polished, rested placidly on the shifting step. There was, Roland saw, a huge flint embedded in the mud under the back of the wheel, preventing all attempts at manoeuvre or reversal.

“Can I help?”

“Oh,” on a long stressed sigh. “Oh, thank you. I do s-seem to be b-bogged down.” The voice was hesitant, old and patrician. “S-such a b-bother. So so h-h-h-h-
helpless
. If you please—”

“There’s a stone. Under the wheel. Wait. Hold on.”

He had to kneel down in the muddy track, damaging his trousers, reminding him of playground agonies; he gripped, tugged, balanced.

“Is the chair stable?” he said. “I seem to be tipping you.”

“It’s d-designed for s-stability. I have the brakes on.”

The full real anxiety of the position slowly came over Roland. Any wrong move, and she would have been over. He inserted his hands into the mud, and scrabbled. He found a not very effective twig and scraped. He used another flint as a primitive lever and finally fell back, clasping the offending object in both hands, damaging the haunches of his trousers too.

“There,” he said. “Like dentistry. It’s out.”

“I am very grateful.”

“You were in a bit of a fix. You must have skidded over it one way and then it tipped back and put up this sort of tooth, like a ratchet, look.” He became aware that she was trembling. “No, wait a minute, let’s get the chair back on the track. I’m afraid my hands are muddy.”

He was out of breath by the time he had canted her back, ground her round, settled the chair on the rough track again. Its wheels dripped mud. She turned her face up to him then. It was large and moony, stained with the brown coins of age, thick with ropes and soft pockets of flesh under the chin. The eyes, huge and pale brown, were swimming. From under the smooth, pulled-back grey hair at the sides of the hat trickled large drops of sweat.

“Thank you,” she said. “I had got myself in a very foolish position. I might well have gone over. F-foolhardy, my husband would say. I sh-should s-stay on the level ground. My dependence annoys me.”

“Of course,” said Roland. “Of course it must. You were all right really. Someone must have come.”

“Just as well you did. Are you out walking?”

“I’m visiting. Out with a friend.” Where was Maud? “Marvellous air. You can see so far.”

“That’s why I come up here. The dog is meant to stay with me, but he never does. My husband likes to poke about in the woods. Where are you walking?”

“I don’t know. My friend knows. Shall I walk with you, a little?”

“I don’t feel very well. My h-hands are shaky. If you would be
good enough to come to—the foot of the track, down the wold, my husband—”

“Of course, of course.”

Maud came up. She looked neat and clean in her Burberry and Wellingtons.

“We got the chair out,” Roland told her. “It was jammed on a stone. I’m just going to walk down the hill with this lady—her husband’s there—she’s had rather a shock—”

“Of course,” said Maud.

They progressed, all three, Roland behind the chair, down the track. The land over the hill was thickly wooded. Through trees Roland saw again, more leisurely, a turret, a battlement, white in the gloom.

“Seal Court,” he said to Maud.

“Yes.”

“Romantic,” he offered.

“Dark and damp,” said the lady in the wheelchair.

“It must have cost a fortune to build,” said Maud.

“And to maintain,” said the lady in the wheelchair. Her leather hands danced a little in her lap, but her voice was steadying.

“I suppose so,” said Roland.

“You are interested in old houses?”

“Not exactly,” said Roland. “We wanted to see that one.”

“Why?”

Maud’s boot sliced into his ankle. He suppressed an exclamation of pain. A very dirty Labrador appeared, out of the woodland.

“Ah, Much,” said the lady. “There you are. Useless great lump. Useless. Where’s your master? Tracking badgers?”

The dog measured its blond belly in the mud, agitating its stern.

“Tell me your names,” said the lady in the wheelchair. Maud said quickly, “This is Dr Michell. From London University. I teach at Lincoln University. My name’s Bailey. Maud Bailey.”

“My name is Bailey too. Joan Bailey. I live at Seal Court. Are you a relation?”

“I am a Norfolk Bailey. A relation far back. Not very close. The families haven’t kept up—” Maud sounded repressive and cold.

“How interesting. Ah, here is George. George dear, I have had an adventure and been rescued by a knight. I was entrenched on the top of Eagle’s Piece, with a huge stone under my wheel and the only way out seemed to be over the edge,
most
humiliating. And then Mr Michell here came along, and this young woman, whose name is Bailey.”

“I told you to keep to the centre of the track.”

Sir George was small and wet and bristling. He had laced leather boots with polished rounded calves, like greaves. He had a many-pocketed shooting jacket, brown, with a flat brown tweed cap. He barked. Roland took him for a caricature and bristled vestigially with class irritation. Such people, in his and Val’s world, were not quite real but still walked the earth. Maud too saw him as a type; in her case he represented the restriction and boredom of countless childhood country weekends of shooting and tramping and sporting conversation. Rejected and evaded. He was not carrying a gun. Water stained his shoulders, shone on his footwear, stood in drops on the furry ribs of the socks between his breeches and his boots. He considered his wife.

“You’re never content, are you?” he said. “I push you up the hill and then you’re not content to take it steady on the track, oh no. Any harm done?”

“I do feel a bit shaken. Mr Michell came in time.”

“Well, you weren’t to expect that.” He advanced on Roland, his hand held out. “I’m very grateful. My name’s Bailey. The idiot dog is meant to stay with Joan, but he will not, he will go off on his own little expeditions in the gorse. I expect you think I should have stayed up there, ha?”

Roland demurred, touching his forthright hand, stepping back.

“So I should. So I should. I’m a selfish old blighter. There are badgers, though, Joanie. Not that I should say so, encourage trespassers, wildlifers, terrifying the poor brutes out of their wits. The old Japanese juniper’s in good fettle, too, you’ll be glad to know. Quite recovered.”

He advanced on Maud.

“Afternoon. My name’s Bailey.”

“She knows,” said his wife. “So’s her name, I told you, she’s one of the Norfolk Baileys.”

“Is that so? They aren’t seen about here very often. Less than badgers, I’d say. What brings you here?”

“I work in Lincoln.”

“You do, do you?” He did not ask at what. He considered his wife with some intensity of observation.

“You look clammy, Joan. You aren’t a good colour. We should get you home.”

“I should like to ask Mr Michell and Miss Bailey to c-come to t-tea if they would. Mr Michell needs a wash. They are interested in Seal Court.”

“Seal Court isn’t interesting,” said Sir George. “It isn’t open to the public, you know. It’s in a bad way. My fault, indirectly. Lack of funds. Coming down round our ears.”

“They won’t mind that. They’re young.” Lady Bailey’s large face took on a set expression. “I should like to ask them. For courtesy.”

Maud’s face flamed. Roland saw what was going on. She wanted proudly to disclaim any interest in penetrating Seal Court: she wanted to go there, because of Christabel, because, he guessed, Leonora Stern had been turned away: she felt, he assumed, dishonest in not saying straight out why she had an interest in going.

“I should be very glad of a brief chance to wash,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

They drove in convoy round behind the great house, on a sopping weed-infested gravel drive, and pulled up in the stable-yard, where Roland helped Sir George to disembark the wheelchair and Lady Bailey. The short day was darkening; the back door swung in heavily under a Gothic porch over which a rose, now leafless, was trained. Above, rows of dark windows, with carved Gothic frames, were dark and blank. The door had been elongated to remove steps, so that the wheelchair could go in. They progressed along dark stone
corridors, past various pantries and flights of steps, arriving eventually in what later turned out to have been the servants’ hall and was now superficially, and partially, converted for modern living.

At one end of this dim room was an open fireplace, in which a few huge logs still smouldered in a bed of white ash; on either side of this were two heavy, curved and padded armchairs, covered in velvet, a dark charcoal colour, patterned with dark purple flowers, a kind of glamorised
fin-de-siècle
bindweed. The floor was covered with large red and white vinyl tiles, rubbed in ridges that betrayed the presence of flagstones underneath. Under the window was a heavy table, thick-legged and partly covered with an oilcloth patterned in faintly tartan checks. At the other end of the room, which later proved to lead out to the kitchen and other domestic offices, was a small two-barred electric fire. There were other, slightly threadbare chairs, and a collection of extremely glossy, lively pot plants, in glazed bowls. Maud was worried by the lighting, which Sir George turned on—a dim standard lamp by the fire, a slightly happier lamp, made from a Chinese vase, on the table. The walls were whitewashed, and bore various pictures of horses, dogs and badgers, oils, watercolours, tinted photos, framed glossy prints. By the fire was a huge basket, obviously Much’s bed, lined with a stiff and hair-strewn navy blanket. Large areas of the room were simply empty. Sir George drew the curtains, and motioned Roland and Maud to sit down by the fire, in the velvet chairs. Then he wheeled his wife out. Roland did not feel able to ask if he could help. He had expected a butler or some obsequious manservant, at the least a maid or companion, to welcome them into a room shining with silver and silk carpets. Maud, inured to poor heating and the threadbare, was still a little disturbed by the degree of discomfort represented by the sad lighting. She put her hand down and called Much, who came and pressed his body, trembling and filthy, against her legs, between her and the sinking fire.