The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (3 page)

Noise from the hall interrupted his thoughts. A rumbling and a child’s laughter preceded William Bolitho’s entrance into the room with Nicholas at his side and a man who must almost certainly be Julian pushing the handles of William’s wheelchair. An excited Jack Russell ran in circles around them. William broke into a broad smile.

‘Very good to see you, old chap. You’ve obviously met Lydia and Frances and this is Julian.’

Julian Easton stretched out his hand over William’s shoulder to take Laurence’s. He had the look more of the countryman than of the gentry, though his gaze was intelligent and his grasp firm. Light-brown curls were just beginning to recede on his hairline and he had an odd puckered scar running along and under his jaw, but it didn’t detract from his pleasant face.

‘Welcome to Easton. You seem to have brought fine weather with you.’

Laurence had felt gnarled flesh as he shook Julian’s hand and now he caught sight of both of the man’s hands resting on the wheelchair. Julian wore a signet ring on his little finger, but he appeared to have been injured here too: there were stubs of flesh and old scar tissue showing pale against his tanned fingers. A war wound, Laurence imagined. The injury didn’t seem to bother him.

‘We’ve been all over the place,’ Julian said, his eyes on Lydia. ‘Now William’s got the bit between his teeth, there’s no stopping him. We’ve been up to the village, making sure the mortaring started while the weather’s good.’

He turned back to Laurence. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable. Do you have everything you want? I have to see David about the generator before dark, but feel free to wander about. Use my bicycle at any time—it’s in the stables. Take a peek at St Barbara’s.’

‘The church was only reconsecrated fifty or so years ago,’ Lydia said. ‘The first service was the marriage of the boys’ parents.’

She picked up a small silver frame from the mantelpiece; Frances took it from her and handed it to Eleanor. Laurence could swear Eleanor’s mouth twitched in some private amusement as she passed it to him. A plain young woman in swathes of lace and pearls and with an alarmed expression was almost hidden behind her massive bouquet. Towering over her, her groom looked like the handsomest possible version of Julian.

‘It will come as no surprise that Mama brought a sizeable dowry with her,’ Julian said, cheerfully. ‘My mother was actually a Catholic, but Papa certainly wasn’t having any of it, and being so biddable, she was married in a Protestant ceremony. At twenty-six she was worried that no one would marry her at all but her charms appealed to Papa, given the family had nearly bankrupted themselves over the previous century rebuilding this pile after a fire. My father led her a merry dance. The handsomest man in Wiltshire, they used to say.’

‘Actually you look very like him,’ Frances said, and to Laurence’s surprise Julian blushed slightly.

He seemed about to protest but Lydia said, ‘Of course he does’ and smiled at him, holding out a hand that Julian crossed the room to take. Then, after a pause as she set the picture back in place, she added, ‘Kitty does too, especially around the eyes. Especially when she smiles.’

Chapter Two

Julian went off with his dog at his heels to find David. Lydia, saying she had a headache, to lie down.

William, who back in London had seemed genial, relaxed, even bored in face of his disability, was now a man defined by his work and keen to get back to it.

‘I have only until late summer this year, because Nicky goes back to school in the autumn and we have to return to London. Then I’m not back until the following spring.’

He made the comment lightly, but it reminded Laurence that wherever Eleanor needed to be, William had to be too.

‘They’ve set aside a room—it used to be the gun room—for me to spread out in. Anyone else can come and go: workmen, family. It works perfectly. Why don’t you come along after you’ve seen the church? Before dinner, say? The church has an electric light so you should be able to see a bit if it’s dark in there. Meanwhile I’ll make sure Nicholas isn’t being too much of a nuisance in the kitchen. Eleanor will show you where to find me.’

Holding the rim of the wheels, William hauled his chair over the wooden floor on to the smooth stone of the passage. Looking at him from behind, Laurence could see how strong his shoulder muscles were, even under his jacket, as they strained to propel the chair over the uneven wooden surface. Eleanor stayed behind.

‘He prefers to move himself about when he can,’ she said quietly to an unasked question. ‘But at home, since you last saw us, he has this marvellous electric chair from Garroulds, though it turns out he’s not as keen as we thought to go very far.’

She watched William until he disappeared. Then her face lightened.

‘See, I told you you’d be out looking at the church before you’d even settled in.’

Frances glanced up from the tea trolley, where she was helping herself to fruit cake. ‘Are you sure you really want to?’

‘Actually, I’m intrigued by what William has told me. And how long have they had electricity? It’s not William’s doing?’

‘Oh, we’re thoroughly modern here,’ Frances said, pointing upwards in the pose of a medieval saint revealing the abode of God.

He noticed that what he’d assumed was a central candlelit chandelier was an electrolier.

‘Easton’s had electricity since the end of the last century,’ she said. ‘Julian’s father was very keen on novelty and his mama was a nervous woman, so she was all too willing to indulge the Colonel, once he’d persuaded her that many families perished horribly in fires caused by gas lighting or were suffocated by invisible fumes. Apparently Easton was one of the first houses anywhere to have it installed. The whole house runs on the power of water diverted from a tributary of the Kennet. It channels through the generator house—you can walk over and look tomorrow if you want, but it’s only really a sort of cowshed with a cistern underneath—and that sends power down cables in iron pipes to the battery room in the house. And then it goes to the rooms. Don’t ask me where it goes when the lights are off. I don’t quite grasp it all. Julian and David understand the generator. They love it, care for it like a rare creature. And apparently the house isn’t going to go up in some apocalyptic conflagration.’

Then she smiled.

‘One incinerated Easton Hall might be unfortunate but twice in two centuries would look like divine criticism.’

‘And the water from the cistern feeds to the lake?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Exactly. Everything is controlled by sluices. Utility is our byword here.’ Frances laughed. ‘But if Julian or David should ever leave us, we should slip back into the darkness and have to light our way with flaming faggots.’

‘So even the church,’ Eleanor said, ‘is lit by mysterious power.’ As he knew she would, she then added, ‘I don’t understand it either but as a former atheist my faith now lies in electricity.’

Frances shook her head slowly. ‘One day you’ll get into trouble,’ she said, then grinned. ‘In this world or the next. Anyway, you pop off to the church and I’ll check on Lydia. She seems very tired today. I might come over in a while if I can find some shoes.’

She gave a mock wave.

‘Enjoy yourselves. Don’t freeze.’

With Eleanor at his side, Laurence went out along the terrace. It was a fine evening but getting chilly. Eleanor had picked up a knitted jacket, which she now belted around her.

‘Let’s sit down for a minute,’ she said, ‘before it gets really cold.’

She indicated an ornate bench. Two stone ammonites supported the stone seat and what looked like newts had been skilfully carved into the arms. Eleanor sat close to him and she stretched her legs out in front of her.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘So much space. So much peace. Even I can enjoy pretending nothing’s changed or needs to change.’ She looked down towards the distant lake. And with all that’s going on, everyone’s focused on something outside themselves. I was thinking over tea that everyone here has lost things, important things—even poor little Maggie is as good as an orphan, with her father dead in the war, her mother gone off with a fairground gypsy—and yet we don’t feel like a gloomy crowd when we’re together. Perhaps we’re all going to be all right?’

‘Lydia seemed—’

‘Not at all right, you’re going to say. No; although she has been awfully keen on the maze and the window, she’s just not well. Not in spirit, inevitably, and not in body now. It’s as if she’s ageing all at once.’

‘Like the woman in
King Solomon’s Mines?’

‘It’s
She,
the book you mean, actually,’ Eleanor said, airily, but then gave him a mischievous smile.

‘Does she often talk about her daughter like that? In the present tense?’

She nodded, more serious again. ‘Yes. Lydia believes—she
knows
absolutely that Kitty is alive. Perhaps that’s how she stayed sane all these years, why she’s never left. But it’s hard when you first hear her do it. And very hard to know what to say in return.’ Her expression was rueful. ‘You watch how everybody’s eyes move away from her. Even Julian’s.’

‘Is she religious?’

Eleanor looked surprised. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, she’s wanting to add this window in the church, and her parents-in-law obviously were, as they went to all the trouble of restoring the place and applying for reconsecration.’

She laughed. ‘None of the Eastons is, I think. Or possibly just Julian? But I gather Marianne Easton—Lydia’s mother-in-law—was pretty devout. Even if forced by her husband out of the arms of the Pope and into those of the Church of England.’ Her face took on an expression he had come to know well. ‘I expect marriage to Colonel the Honourable George Easton gave her the opportunity to offer up her suffering. Anyway, I gather that the price of using her fortune—it was in soap—to put the estate back on its feet was to start with the place of worship. It was in the marriage settlement.’

‘Lydia must have money too?’

‘Not masses but quite a bit, I think, since her parents and aunt died. But it’s only now she’s really doing what she wants with it.’

‘Her parents-in-law died a while back?’

‘They’ve been dead for years,’ she said casually. ‘Poor Marianne Easton died when the boys were young. She was never well after having Patrick, apparently. All nerves. Some problem delivering the baby and he wasn’t healthy. Fine brain, though, so they say. So at least that was saved from fertilising some French field. Marianne died when Patrick was a child.’

After a pause she said brightly, ‘Old Colonel Easton’s buried over there,’ and nodded towards the churchyard.

‘Was he very difficult?’

‘Anything I know is through Frances and my guess is he was simply typical of his class.’

Laurence waited for Eleanor’s prejudices to get to work on the late George Easton but she was surprisingly mild.

‘I expect he was a not very clever, not very sensitive, rather spoiled English gentleman...’

She broke off as footsteps crunched on gravel. Frances was coming towards them, still in her Norfolk jacket, a bright-coloured scarf wound turban-like round her head. Laurence jumped to his feet.

‘Lydia’s fine,’ Frances said. Anyway, I thought I’d join you after all.’

‘We were talking about Lydia’s parents-in-law,’ said Eleanor. ‘Was the old man still alive when Lydia came here?’

Frances nodded. ‘Hunting was the old man’s real love apparently. He kept trying to make Lydia ride and she hates horses. They make her wheeze. But when Kitty was born—I’m sure Eleanor’s told you about poor Kitty—he became quite the doting grandfather. Got her a little pony, took her out on a leading rein. He died when she was only three or so.’ She looked contemplative rather than sad. ‘Kitty loved horses then, so perhaps she would have grown up to become a true Easton. It’s hard to imagine; life at Easton was always so manly.’

‘You say, “would have grown up”?’

Eleanor turned an anxious face towards Laurence but he returned a reassuring glance. Frances had brought up the topic of her niece as if she wanted it out in the open.

Frances looked at him but without surprise. ‘You’re asking me if I think she’s alive?’ She shook her head, very firmly. ‘I’m not Lydia. After all these years, the prospects for poor little Kitty alive would terrify me more than accepting she’s dead.’ She pulled up her collar with an ungloved hand. ‘It’s getting cold.’

Getting up, she walked ahead of them through the lych-gate, past a few worn gravestones. The church was set back slightly from the line of the house; it looked very small against the elaborate solidity of the Hall.

It was substantially Saxon, he could see that straight away; squat with a short, square tower and runs of herringbone brickwork. The near wall showed the shape of a blocked-up arch. Two large old yew trees near the door reached as high as the gutters. Behind them the stone was rough cut and the few windows little more than slits.

He took two or three paces and then stopped in amazement by the entrance to the porch. He could feel himself smiling at the sight in front of him and he intercepted a look between the two women. They had all been careful not to tell him what he would find.

The curved archway almost seemed to move, covered as it was with creatures, both real and fantastic, as well as fruit, leaves and vines. He could make out a boar, a horse, a bear, a dragon and a griffon, a strange, spotted sort of cat and a pelican with its chicks gouging its own chest to feed them. There were two capering round-faced imps and, on either side, as capitals to slender columns, two fierce male faces gazed outwards, their hair curling into vegetation, leaves sprouting from their mouths. Not an inch of stonework was undecorated.

‘Extraordinary,’ he said. Absolutely wonderful.’ He moved back a couple of paces and pointed. ‘Green men. There’s a whole medieval bestiary here. And yet I’ve never heard of this church.’ Even in his delight he was puzzled. ‘There’s something like it, I think, on the Welsh borders but...’ He looked at Frances. ‘It’s a real treasure. Unique.’

Gazing at the forest of pagan creatures, he understood why William was so keen for him to see the church.