Chapter 16
16
THE BURROW – HARRY POTTER, J K ROWLING
‘I can’t help feeling’ – Lady Tanith looked across the desk at me – ‘that you haven’t really been trying to find’ – she lowered her voice although Hugo was in the kitchen, helping Mrs Compton load the dishwasher after lunch – ‘ Oswald’s diaries. Not putting in sufficient effort.’
Behind us the door squeaked open a few centimetres and The Master oozed in through the gap.
‘I’ve looked everywhere I can think of,’ I said. ‘Honestly, Lady Tanith. Are you sure that they were definitely in here?’
‘Why would I not be?’ Lady Tanith patted her lap in invitation, but the cat strolled up to me and yowled his Siamese yell.
‘Because, short of dismantling the walls, I can’t think of anywhere else to look, and I haven’t found them. I have managed to catalogue all those books, though.’ I waved at the one wall of shelving that I’d cleared, entered onto the spreadsheet, dusted and returned.
‘Hmm.’ Lady Tanith blew through her nose and eyed me strangely. The Master jumped onto my lap and sat facing her across the desk with his back to me and the tip of his tail twitching. His solid weight forming a barrier between me and his mistress, was reassuring. ‘I can’t help feeling you could be doing more.’
‘I’ll keep looking. Why must they be in here, though? Couldn’t Oswald have put them somewhere else in the house?’ Without thinking I began stroking the cat’s ears and the top of his chocolate head. He purred.
‘Oswald did all his writing in here, his novels, his poetry and his diaries. The other things…’ Tanith hesitated as the cat put his front paws onto the desk and eyeballed her, almost as though he were interviewing her. ‘The other things I know the whereabouts of,’ she went on. ‘But not the diaries. They must be in here.’
‘Have you thought about taking up the floor?’ I asked, sarcastically.
‘Well, yes. We removed the carpeting and checked for loose boards, hidden vaults, that sort of thing,’ Lady Tanith replied as though taking up the floor was as reasonable as dusting the furniture. ‘But there was nothing. Let me tell you, I am considering terminating your employment. Replacing you with someone who is a little more… diligent, shall we say.’
The cat yowled again. I carried on stroking, whilst I thought furiously. Being fired from what was, essentially, a data-entry job, wasn’t going to look great on my CV, such as it was. Leaving Templewood would mean leaving Hugo friendless, and me, either in the bus mouldering away the winter, or child-wrangling for Jude.
‘However.’ Lady Tanith switched her attention from the cat back to me. ‘Hugo seems to like you. We really must secure the next generation, so that Templewood remains in the Dawe family, if you understand me, and he has so few friends apart from the boys he was at school with, who rarely visit. You have no society connections, of course, and you are rather’ – a curled lip and a contemptuous pass of the beady stare – ‘less physically fortunate than I would have chosen for my son, but beggars really can’t be choosers here, and he’s not getting any younger.’ Now she leaned forward until she was practically on my lap. ‘So I would be most grateful ,’ she said, giving the words a spin that made them sound threatening, ‘if you and Hugo were to form – an alliance. It must be legally sanctioned, of course, none of this “out of wedlock” nonsense. And a watertight pre-nuptial agreement would be required.’
Lady Tanith stood up now. ‘And find those diaries,’ she said. ‘You’re only here because Hugo and The Master like you.’ She swept out of the library and closed the door with a genteel little click that rebounded from the panelled walls like a gunshot.
‘Oh heck,’ I said to the cat, who seemed, as far as a cat can, to agree.
About an hour or so later, I was alerted to Jay’s presence outside the window by The Master who bit me lightly on the wrist and then leaped off my lap to stand by the wall. When I looked up, there was Jay’s dark form outside, his face smeared against the glass like a cartoon villain.
‘Knock it off.’ I opened the window next to him, to avoid breaking his nose. ‘And come in.’
Jay put both hands on the lower sill, hopped, and swung his legs inside. The rest of him followed, wearing his gardening clothes, and boots. He had a rolled-up newspaper under his arm.
‘What’s that? Ancient court reports that prove that the Templewood estate should belong to some distant relative with whom we were previously unacquainted?’
Jay gave me a straight stare. ‘It’s to put down so I don’t get mud on the carpet.’ He spread the paper on the floor and stepped onto it. ‘Told you. Life’s not like the books.’
By carefully spreading the papers, he crossed the room and sat down on one of the leather sofas that I was using to pile books on. He looked at the dust-ridden volumes as he moved them onto the floor.
‘Wow. These look like riveting stuff.’
‘Almost not at all.’ I sat down on one of the more comfortable armchairs, and The Master plopped back up onto my lap again. ‘So, how are you?’
‘I’m…’ Jay pushed his hair back with both hands. ‘I’m fine. I’ve not seen you about lately?’
I waved at the window. ‘Weather. Plus Lady Tanith is now giving me ultimatums about finding these diaries and/or marrying Hugo to secure the succession, preferably both.’
‘Well, that’s this weekend taken care of.’ Jay leaned back on the sofa. ‘What are you doing next week?’
‘Stop it, she’s serious.’ I looked at him, casual and relaxed with one leg folded over the other, gobbets of wet mud dropping from his boot onto the paper. ‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘In all your tortured darkness.’
‘Ah, yes, that.’ Jay leaned forward and made a squeaking noise which made The Master prick up his ears. ‘I may have exaggerated a wee bit.’
‘You’re dark,’ I observed.
‘Not tortured though.’
I remembered his face, that night in the storm, sitting in the icehouse. He had looked tortured then, face drawn and he’d been hunched around himself as though in pain. Plus, being out in the middle of the night in a storm was a bit of a giveaway. ‘I think you might be,’ I said softly.
Jay pushed his hair back again. His hearing aids were in, and I wondered if he did the hair thing subconsciously, to show them off. To let everyone know that he wasn’t perfect. As he raised his arms, his sleeve fell back and the tattoo on his wrist became lines, telling a story I didn’t yet know.
‘OK, maybe a little bit. But nothing terrible,’ he said. ‘Being partially deaf is bad enough, but it’s not really torture-worthy, just a pain. Great when I don’t want to listen, though. I take my aids out and, bang, people can rant away to their heart’s content and I’m practically oblivious.’
The Master jumped down from my lap and up onto the sofa beside Jay, looking into his face with those huge blue eyes. Jay smiled and began stroking the creamy back.
‘It’s the tattoo, isn’t it?’ I asked, still gentle. ‘You want everyone to think that your hearing is the problem, but it’s that drawing on your wrist, that’s what it’s all about.’
Jay stopped watching The Master and looked at me, a sudden, direct look that held – something, a depth and an assessment, as though he was trying to work me out. ‘I take it back. Those books did teach you something worth knowing,’ he said. His voice was level, but quiet.
‘Not so much the books, more meeting different people every couple of weeks. I had to learn to sum people up fast, you see. Too many of them thought we were Travellers, so we got a lot of resentment and downright hatred, when people thought we were the vanguard of a load of others who were going to come and camp in the middle of their town or village. You needed to be able to spot those people and steer clear. Most people were fine, though. Friendly, up to a point.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I waved at the flask on the table.
‘Not if Mrs Compton made it, no. I think that woman wants to be the last man standing as the world crashes and burns, and she’s not above arsenic and petrol bombs to make sure it happens.’
‘I made the tea.’ I stood up and poured us two plastic cups of tea. ‘Returning the favour from the other week. You made me coffee.’
‘I did.’
The cup formed a barrier, as I had hoped it would. It had worked for me talking to Jay; somehow having something to do with your hands made opening up easier. I sat down on the chair opposite him.
‘The tattoo is in memory of my sister.’ Jay shook his cuff and held out his arm. Against the tanned skin the black lines blended, as though he’d been born with them like a birthmark. ‘Her name was Flora, hence the flowers. She loved rainbows too, and she told me whenever I saw one, she’d be there, which is why I have that symbol too.’
‘What happened?’ I was sipping as I spoke, and he frowned.
‘Sorry. I can half-hear you but I can’t see your mouth. I do a combination of working out words and lipreading. These things help but they have their limitations.’ He pointed at his ear. ‘Makes for some incredibly amusing misunderstandings.’
I knew he was trying to distract me. Something bad had happened. I put the cup down and looked levelly at him. ‘Tell me.’
A half smile, as though he knew what he was doing and he knew I knew. He began to stroke the cat again and his tattoo flickered in and out of sight, like a stop-frame cartoon.
‘I think you can deduce from my use of the words “in memory”, that she died.’ He kept his eyes on the cat. ‘A rare form of leukaemia. She was sixteen, three years younger than me. That’s pretty much it.’
‘And that night in the icehouse?’
‘You don’t let up, do you?’ But it was said with a smile. ‘As I said, I have dreadful insomnia. Sometimes, when it rains – I can’t believe I’m saying this, it sounds like it’s straight from some dreadful overwrought novel – when it rains, and I have my aids in, it’s like I can hear her voice. Whispering, you know? That night I’d had an acute dose of self-pity, and I was sitting outside just listening. Pretending Flora was talking to me, giving me advice. She was great at telling me what to do, the job of little sisters everywhere, knowing better than their older siblings.’
The Master climbed onto Jay’s lap, as though to console him, treadling his paws.
‘And that’s it. That’s my torture. Not really a torture, just – a memory. A sad memory that’s ten years gone.’
‘Oh, Jay,’ I said. I could hear his loss in his voice. ‘I’m so sorry.’
A shrug. ‘I was at uni when she died. I’d been studying biosciences, but I lost heart, quit and came home. Mum and Dad are gardeners, Mum has a landscaping business, so I went into that. Turns out I’m quite good at plants.’
‘And fountains.’ I needed to make him smile, to lift that terrible expression of lost lives, lost opportunities from his face.
I succeeded. ‘Ah yes. That pond is a horror show all on its own. Whoever thought of putting the controls in the middle of a flowerbed wants shooting. To be honest, they probably were shot. The Holmdale family weren’t noted for dying peacefully in their beds.’
He stopped talking and leaned his head back, looking around at the library. I saw him taking in the dark panelling, the racked shelving, ladders and random seating, then, finally, the enormous portrait. He pulled a face.
‘That’s Oswald,’ I said. ‘Hugo’s grandfather, previous owner, dreadful poet and long-lost love of Lady Tanith. Although not her husband, before you ask; she married his son.’
‘An American TV soap just called, they’re missing their plot line.’ Jay shivered. ‘Blimey, it’s freezing in here.’
‘Yes. I’ve asked Hugo if I can have a portable heater. I didn’t dare ask Lady Tanith; she’d probably just set me on fire, cut out the middle man.’
There was a moment of quiet. Jay really was easy to be quiet with, he sat lightly amid it, instead of forming a hole that needed filling. At last he said, ‘It really all comes down to siblings, doesn’t it?’
I’d been staring at a wall of books whose spines informed me that they were the collected minutes of the Yorkshire Fly Fishing Society. I was absolutely dreading getting around to those. ‘Sorry? What does?’
Jay raised his eyebrows. ‘If we’re thinking narratively. You, with a sister you resent for having the life you want…’
‘I do not! Not if it means having to be married to Ollie. He farts way too much and he’s thinking of taking up golf.’
‘You know what I mean. She got away. Went to school.’
I sighed. ‘Oh, that. Yes. You’re right, I do resent her a bit. She’s so much the person I wish I could be.’
Jay shifted on the sofa and another glob of mud fell from his boots onto the newspaper. ‘You’re not so bad,’ he said. ‘And then there’s Hugo, resenting his brother for having freedom and not being bound up with the estate.’
I had a fleeting memory of Hugo, tied to the Yellow Room by designer chains. ‘True.’
‘And there’s me. I mean, I don’t have sibling issues as such, but I miss Flora so much that it feels like issues. Issues with nobody to blame because she would far rather have been here than not. Nobody’s fault. Just life. And you can’t go on blaming life forever, can you?’
‘I’m going to have a bloody good go.’ I poured myself more tea.
It was Jay’s turn to look around the walls again now. ‘All these books. All these stories,’ he said.
‘To be fair, quite a lot of them are non-fiction.’ I carefully held the tea mug down so he could see my face. I was learning.
‘Maybe, but even the non-fiction has been ironed into a narrative, hasn’t it? Otherwise it’s just random events. Life is random events. Books have to have some kind of arc and if only life followed that pattern it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? If we all knew we had a purpose, or an end goal. A final chapter.’
I looked at him. There was a kind of amusement on his face, but it was a dark amusement of the sort you get from reading Poe under the bedclothes. ‘You think about things way too much,’ I said.
He sighed now. ‘Yeah. Flora always said that about me too. But there’s not much to do around here except think and read Gardeners’ World. I could talk about buddleia propagation if you’d prefer.’
‘Maybe talking about gardening would be more comfortable,’ I said. ‘I’ve got about forty thousand books still to get through, and your opinion of them is beginning to make me want to throw them all out of that window instead.’
So we drank our tea and talked about gardening for the next hour or so. I actually knew more about plants than I thought I did – thanks to my Wiccan period when I’d read everything on herbs I could find, and I’d remembered quite a lot from our previous tour of the gardens – and it was only when the windows started to darken that Jay stood up. ‘Look, I’d better go. Things to get on with. Those trees won’t prune themselves, you know.’ He took half a careful step towards me. ‘Come over to mine, next Sunday,’ he said. ‘We could have lunch.’
‘Do you promise not to wear the onesie?’
He was already halfway over the window sill on his way out, collecting up the muddy newspapers behind him as he went, like a children’s game. ‘The onesie, along with my willy, will not be in evidence.’
‘You aren’t going to let me forget that, are you?’ I stood with my arms on the ledge, watching him drop down onto the garden below.
‘Nope. Neither, I suspect, will Mrs Compton. I don’t think she wants you to marry Master Hugo, so watch out for botulism and poisonous frogs in your bed.’
‘In this house,’ I said, as he waved a hand in farewell, ‘that’s almost a permanent state of alert.’
In the twilight, I could almost believe even Oswald smiled at that.