Encounters. Barbara Erskine
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was high, beating on the gravel with the white reflective heat more commonly associated with a Mediterranean afternoon than with an English countryside, even in August.
They walked slowly round the south side of the house and wandered across rough uncut lawns, through untrimmed hedges, an overgrown vegetable garden and between rampant woody herbs. The garden was very silent. It was too hot for birds. The only sound came from the bees.
Beneath the cedar tree on the western side of the house they stopped. Victoria looked round expectantly. Then she frowned. ‘I don’t understand. I thought it was here I saw Stephen. It was near this tree. There were rose beds full of flowers and the house was painted on that side, and the windows were open. There must be another tree like this …’
‘No.’ William shook his head firmly. ‘There is only one cedar.’
‘But we were standing there, by the door …’
They all stared at the door into the west wing. It was boarded up.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve got confused. It must have been another door. There were rose beds, and a bank of hollyhocks and a garden seat, and the grass was short. There were daisies everywhere. And music. Music coming from the open windows. He picked a rose for me.’ She hadn’t realized that her voice was rising.
William swallowed. He shivered again.
She had the rose in her hand. It was a deep damask red. Several small thorns still adhered to the stem and as she held it out to Robert one pricked her. A fleck of blood appeared on her thumb. ‘It didn’t mean anything. He just gave it to me. It was a silly gesture.’ She could feel her eyes filling with tears. ‘I … I’ll go and look. There must be another part of the garden we didn’t see. The other side perhaps. Somewhere …’
Before either of the men could say anything she began to run, ducking through the thick laurel bushes which edged the grass onto the gravel of the drive.
William looked at Robert, embarrassed. ‘We have been all the way round the house, Mr Holland. There are no other gardens. There are no rose beds. Not now.’
Robert laughed uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps she fell asleep and dreamed it all. In this heat anything is possible.’
Slowly they walked after her. Both men were thinking of the rose.
‘There isn’t anyone else staying here, Mr Holland,’ William said after a moment. ‘Lady Penelope rang us this morning to say she’ll be away another week. She wanted to check we were locking up properly. She said the house was empty.’
‘Victoria, this is crazy. You can’t go back there. I’ve told the agents we’re not interested. And that’s that.’ Robert threw down the paper. Pushing his hands into his pockets he went to stand in front of the open window, trying to hide his despair.
Since the previous weekend she had not let him touch her. She had been tense, edgy and tearful and obsessed by the house.
‘I can and I’m going to. I’ve already rung Lady Penelope. And I’m going on my own, Robert.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re mad.’
‘It will only take me a couple of hours to drive over there and back. She’s asked me to have a cup of tea with her.’
‘But why? Why go? I’ve told you. We can’t afford it. That house is going to go for more than we could pay. Be reasonable, Victoria.’ He turned to face her desperately. ‘I don’t understand you, darling. What’s happened to you?’ She was a stranger.
She shrugged unhappily. ‘I don’t know. It was meeting Stephen. I have to find out who he is; where I knew him before. I can’t get him out of my mind …’
You and I were lovers once, in a land, long ago.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the echo of his voice, the image of his clear, grey eyes.
‘OK. Go then.’ Robert threw himself down onto a chair. ‘Who was he? A boyfriend? You fancied him, did you? He was younger than me, I suppose; not crippled? Are you in love with him?’
‘How could I be? I only saw him for a few minutes.’ She realized suddenly what he had said and for the first time she saw what she was doing to him. ‘Robert!’ She ran to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘It’s not like that. Perhaps he didn’t even exist! Perhaps he was a dream! I don’t know. That’s why I‘ve got to find out, don’t you see? And he was crippled, as you call it, too. I told you. Look,’ she hesitated. ‘Come back with me. Come and meet him yourself. Please.’
He shook his head and tried to smile. ‘No. You go. Whatever it is you have to prove, Victoria, you have to do it alone.’
Lady Penelope opened the door herself. She was a slim, elegant woman in her early eighties, with bright intelligent eyes. Once she had poured the tea she sat quite still behind the tea tray listening with complete attention as Victoria told her story.
When Victoria finished there was a long silence. ‘Stephen Cheney,’ she repeated at last.
‘He and I knew each other once,’ Victoria said softly. She looked down at her hands, covertly twisting her wedding ring around her finger.
You and I were lovers once, in a land, long ago.
‘You do know him?’
‘Oh yes, I know him.’ Lady Penelope frowned. ‘After tea, I’ll take you to him.’
‘He looked so ill.’
‘Yes, poor boy, I expect he did.’ Lady Penelope glanced up at Victoria. ‘What made you and your husband come to look around this house?’
‘The agents sent it. My husband has just been invalided out of the army and it seemed the sort of place we would like to live. We inherited Robert’s father’s house in London and neither of us wanted to live in town, so we sold it. But I’m afraid this is going to be too expensive.’ She smiled anxiously. ‘Mr Turner from the agents said you’d already had offers above the asking price.’
‘Even if I hadn’t I wouldn’t sell it to you, Mrs Holland.’ Lady Penelope’s smile belied the harshness of the words. ‘This is not the house for you, my dear. You’ll see why presently.’ She stood up. ‘Now. If you’ve finished your tea, I’ll take you to see Stephen.’
The heat wave had broken at last and the air was cool and damp after a night of rain as they walked slowly round the side of the house, through the laurels and across the lawn beneath the cedar tree. The west wing was still tightly closed up. No music rang across the grass. Victoria stopped and stared at it. The whole place gave off a sense of deep sadness. Lady Penelope watched her, but she said nothing and after a moment she moved on. Victoria stayed where she was. He had been here. On the grass. Near the flowers. She closed her eyes. She knew already where they were going.
Her hostess moved with deceptive rapidity in spite of her eighty years and Victoria found herself almost running to keep up with her as they cut through the shrubbery and found themselves on another unkempt lawn. Beyond it a high yew hedge separated them from the church.
Opening a gate in the hedge Lady Penelope glanced at Victoria. ‘I hope you’re strong, I think you are.’
She set off up a path between huddled gravestones, overgrown with nettles, some of them lost beneath moss and lichen. One of them had been recently cleared. They stopped in front of it.
Stephen John Cheney
Born 20 June 1894. Died 24 August 1918
in God I trust
‘I remembered the name when you mentioned it on the phone.’ Lady Penelope poked at the grave with her walking stick. ‘I came up yesterday to see if I was right, and cleared the stone. Then I went back to the records. We still have the nursing home ledgers in the house. My son