Chapter Three #2
I start piling the cleared foliage by a wide-trunked beech, the fat roots creating a convenient hollow to hold it.
I put a hand briefly to the tree’s smooth, silvery bark.
The leaves above are turning toward their autumn russet.
As I scan my eyes up, I catch on an irregularity – letters carved into the wood.
Not much more than crude scratches, really.
They’re above head-height, just where a low branch butts out – the person who put them there must have climbed up to do it.
If I stand on one of the more burly roots and go up on tiptoe, I can just about read them: RLHLSLCLAL.
It takes a moment for me to read beyond the nonsense sequence and realize these are initials: Rex Lascy, Harry Lascy, Stephen Lascy, Charlie Lascy.
And AL – that must be her. It only strikes me now that I don’t know her Christian name.
Reacher had called her something odd. Childish.
Bellsy, that was it. Short for Annabel, perhaps?
As if summoned by my thoughts, there’s a crackle further up the path, followed by the sudden materialization of Mutton.
He hares up to me, pushing his head into my stomach until I scratch his ears.
Seconds later, Reacher comes into view. Stops short when he sees me.
‘Ah, hello again.’ Despite wearing a hat, he’s caught the sun on his face, cheeks glowing red with it.
Again today, he has a pair of binoculars hanging round his neck.
‘Always at a pondside, aren’t you? Say, you’re not secretly a water nymph? ’
‘I could ask the same of you, sir,’ I say, jumping down from the beech root and batting away the dog.
Reacher puts a hand under his chin, as if posing for a portrait. ‘Narcissus, more like!’
Mutton, not offended by my rebuff, skips away to the pond’s edge. A startled vole leaps into the water to escape. Mutton whines after it, and Reacher just has time to say, ‘Don’t you dare!’ before the dog is in with an almighty splash.
‘Oh, blast,’ says Reacher, ‘Mrs Allen will have my bollocks.’ He raises his voice to call after the dog, ‘And she would have yours, too, if they weren’t already gone!’ He shares a grimace with me. ‘If you aren’t scared of her, you should be.’
I think this is a joke. ‘He does belong to the Allens, then?’ I ask, still unclear on this point. ‘Not Lady Lascy?’
Reacher pauses, cocks his head. ‘You know, I can’t remember. He just lives here. We all love you, don’t we, Mutts?’
Mutton rises out of the water at last, rivulets running down his flanks. The scene brings to mind folk stories of the Ceffyl Dw?r.
‘Even Arabella likes him,’ Reacher adds. ‘And she doesn’t really like anything.’
Not Annabel, then. Arabella. I turn it over silently in my mouth, the press of incisors to lower lip, the flick of tongue.
‘What were you doing up there?’ asks Reacher, nodding over at the tree.
‘Oh, just having a read. Those initials up there – the Lascy children, aren’t they?’
Reacher prowls closer to see. ‘Looks like it. I’ll bet that was Charlie who put them there.
He was a real rough-and-tumble boy, always in trouble.
He and Bellsy were thick as two nasty little thieves.
They were the youngest, you see. Rex, the eldest, liked to think he was in charge – he was a natural despot – but he had no authority over them.
Stephen was more of a stickler for rules, very boring.
Nose-in-a-book sort of lad. Harry was my favourite.
He had a quiet sensibility, but not in a dull way like Stephen – it was more that he was thoughtful.
Much kinder than Arabella and Charlie.’ He stops talking to take a tin from his pocket – silver, fronted with an enamel picture of a heavily built bird with feathery tufts around its beak.
Tilts it for me to see. ‘Great bustard,’ he says.
‘Excuse me?’
‘These fellows used to live all over the country, until farmland destroyed their habitats and any stragglers were hunted out of existence. Bewick’s History of British Birds has them down as ‘excellent eating’, so I don’t suppose they ever stood much chance.
Salisbury Plain was their last noble stronghold.
I have a stuffed one, back in the manor – I’ll have to show you sometime.
’ He opens the tin and taps out a cigarette.
Offers one to me, which I accept. Lights them for us.
We stand for a while, puffing away and looking out over the pond. Mutton digs in the pile of discarded plants. The vole comes creeping bravely back out of the water. A swallow swoops down to take a mid-flight drink.
‘Why birds?’ I ask.
Reacher blows out a dart of smoke, watching the swallow continue on its way. ‘I lost my mother when I was twelve, and came here to live at Harfold year-round.’
An unexpectedly morose turn in the conversation. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say.
He flicks a hand, batting off the sympathy.
‘Rex and Harry were already up at Oxford by then, and my other cousins weren’t exactly my friends.
I was too timid to speak to the village children either, and so I was left to myself a great deal with time to fill.
At first, the birding was just an excuse for wandering about the countryside alone, but I soon found a real love for it: they’re magnificent creatures, endlessly fascinating to watch.
It also allowed me to broaden my circle, connecting with all sorts of people around the world who share the same passion – I suppose it is as much about the community as it is about the birds, these days. ’
It’s hard to imagine Reacher as a shy, lonely little boy, given what a friendly face he’s put on so far.
‘Well,’ he says, throwing down his cigarette end and stamping on it, ‘I had better get on my way. Care to walk with me a little?’
I’ve finished at the pond edge; all that’s left for the day is to cart the cuttings over to the bonfire heap, and I can come back and do that later. ‘All right,’ I say, stubbing out my own cigarette. ‘Lead on.’
Reacher plunges further into the woods, pausing on occasion to swap his spectacles for the binoculars, or to point out a nest. We’re following a path that leads eventually back to the main drive, where we have to pick our way carefully down the steep banks to reach the road. The gatehouse is visible not far ahead.
As we draw level with a collection of boulders that rest at the side of the track, Reacher pauses, nodding his head at them. ‘This is where Charlie …’ A small noise in the back of his throat. ‘It was a riding accident. A terrible misfortune.’
Tom had mentioned that they haven’t kept horses in a couple of years. He hadn’t told me why.
‘It was such a shock,’ Reacher goes on. ‘He was always a strong rider, and the horse was normally as docile as anything. They’d been out for a trot and were on the way back home.
We think she must have seen something to spook her, knocked him off.
He hit his head and …’ Reacher’s eyes linger on one of the rocks, the surface blunt and unforgiving.
Then, with a shake of the head, his expression clears.
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to depress your spirits.
Dead birds, dead boys … It’s this place.
’ He sweeps his arms around to indicate the entire estate.
‘It is simply brimming with bad memories. Still, it’s the family seat: one has to love it, even so. ’
We continue up the drive, leaving the boulders behind us. Charlie’s final moments. He would have been so close to home. Could probably even see Harfold, from up there on the horse. The manor staring back at him, unfeeling, as he lost his saddle.
I can’t sleep tonight. The mice are louder than ever, skittering to and fro, to and fro.
I swear the ones in Lou and Gladys’s house were never this active.
Find myself missing that camp bed on the kitchen floor.
To think, I spent the whole time I was there wishing I could be back with Mam and Dad in Butetown – yet here I am now, looking at it with nostalgia. The memory plays tricks.
In the dark, I keep seeing flashes of those faces in Tom’s photograph.
The Lascy family. Rex, Harry, Stephen, Charlie.
Something macabre about it, the way they’ve been preserved right ahead of all that misfortune.
Like when you hear of a dreadful accident happening nearby, and realize you’d been there only hours before. You were just speaking to them.
I admit defeat, heading downstairs for a slice of bread and butter by candlelight. As I chew, I pick up the fabric scrap that Lady Lascy left for me. Arabella. I’ve kept it out on the side all this time. Keep returning to it under some compulsion.
I know I can be vain. There’s a certain message I want to convey to the world, and that’s what most strikes me about this picture – the artist has captured it, even in the simple needlepoint style. She’s seen me in the way that I want to be seen.
I shouldn’t let myself get too involved in all of Harfold’s little quirks, I tell myself.
Should put both myself and my curiosity to bed.
But there’s still a restlessness in my chest, tight and trembling.
A good walk to clear my thoughts, that’s what I need.
I shrug on a coat, lace up my work boots.
Recalling Tom’s warning about the roads, back when we first met, I wrap a white scarf round my neck as a signal to motorists.
I’ve got my electric torch with me, but soon find I don’t need it: the full moon is bright and close. Big, countryside stars. The garden’s wrapped in a silver shawl of light. Maybe I’ll see Reacher’s magic hare, I joke to myself.