Chapter Eleven #3
‘I don’t mean to give the wrong impression: there’s plenty of good here as well. Just … watch you don’t make Harfold your whole life like Tom has. Like Bruce did. It won’t give you anything in return.’
Later in the evening, I find myself still thinking about George.
‘Did you know Tom’s brother, then?’ I ask Arabella.
We’re in her bed, sweat cooling on bare skin.
Her head resting on my chest so I can run my fingers through her hair.
I love these moments of calm together, away from the world, away even from the light.
Here, we could be anyone. Everything feels possible.
Arabella doesn’t reply for so long that I think at first she’s fallen asleep, her face hidden from me.
Then she finally says, ‘George Allen? Not well, no.’
‘Mrs Allen was telling me it’s the anniversary today, of when he died.’ I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, letting my touch linger on her jaw.
Arabella hums in thought. I feel the vibration through her skin. ‘What’s today – the seventeenth?’ So like her, not to know the date. Always in her own world.
‘Eighteenth.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Well, he would have died on the night of the seventeenth. The eighteenth was just the day they found him.’ We lapse into silence for a few minutes, then Arabella wriggles away from me and props herself up on an elbow. All I can see of her is an outline. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘No reason,’ I say, truthfully. ‘It was just on my mind.’
‘Hmm,’ says Arabella, flopping back. ‘It all seems so long ago.’
But the loss is still here, haunting Harfold as much as any other.
I won’t go so far as believing that the manor is a cursed place, but I have to admit there’s a dark weight over it.
A tragic accident. Lord knows, we’ve had enough of them at Harfold over the years.
I wonder why Arabella has convinced herself the tragedy only falls on her immediate family – what about George?
Or Reacher’s mam, further back again. Why does her imagined curse start only with her parents’ deaths?
I think of the genealogy, the stitched lines of ownership.
The reversal of years of good fortune; the hare’s curse leaping from name to name.
A creeping sensation moves up my spine. On the other side of the mattress, Arabella’s breathing is slow and heavy, as if she’s already deep in sleep.
The next morning, I take my daily walk-around to check over the gardens.
Bump into Tom, who chatters away as if yesterday had never happened.
It’s good to see him with the spring back in his step.
I start at the front over by the house, inspecting the yew dogs.
All traces of their former shapes long forgotten.
Now that I think of it, for all the fuss that people round here make about hares, I’ve never seen any of the buggers nearby.
Badgers, foxes, deer, rabbits, plenty of Reacher’s beloved birds – but not a single hare.
Makes me wonder if they even live in this part of the country at all.
I cross the east lawn to the paddock, passing the old cottage on my way.
I’m not sure when I stopped thinking of it as my cottage.
But I feel no lingering emotion for it – it’s just a sad, empty husk.
I can’t imagine I’ll ever return to it. The main manor is my home now.
I turn to face it, looking over its familiar red-brick front, the clinging ivy.
For just a moment – only for the fun of it – I let myself imagine what it would be like to be owner of a house like this.
No landlord to pay, no camp bed on a pal’s kitchen floor, no servants’ quarters with the knowledge that my employer can send me packing on a whim. Trundling up my drive in my motorcar.
Over by the woods, a cherry plum has started to unfurl its white, star-like blossoms. Soon the green buds will be returning in force.
I head through the statue garden, patting Albert on his stony arse as I go past. Check in the conservatory: rows of sleeping pots, just waiting to jump to life.
In the orchard, a branch has come down in the wind – only a small one.
I’ll ask Tom to move it later. Cross the west lawn, and …
Come to a halt. The snowdrops at the lakeside.
I drop to my knees to examine them closer.
A silvery froth fuzzes at their bases. Grey mould.
How long has it been there? I don’t remember seeing it yesterday, but there’s so much of it, it seems impossible that it’s all grown up overnight. A creeping sickness.
Working slowly and carefully, I inspect the area to find the reach of the damage.
It’s got to all the snowdrops on this section of the lake bank, but doesn’t seem to have spread any further yet, though I’ll be careful to keep checking over the coming days.
In the meantime, I need to remove the existing threat.
First off, I fetch Tom’s barrow and a spade, then start digging up the infected plants, heaping their corpses all together.
Need to make sure not to drop any scraps, not to leave behind any sick material.
Then, once everything is gathered, I take it to the bonfire heap for burning.
I won’t be able to plant more snowdrops on that spot for years to come – not until I can be sure the earth is free of contamination.