Chapter 2 #2
“We wouldn’t dream of turning her away,” the older man said, and the word now somehow communicated itself from him direct to Elena without reaching anyone else’s ears.
She actually expected him to add something like, I hope she had a restful night, or indicate in some other way that she was in, now.
In because she’d seen the body, and even under a sheet it was too much knowledge to let just saunter out of the door and into the wide world beyond.
But Gil Enderbough didn’t need to say a word. They understood each other perfectly.
“Well, then…” Ross wavered, as his father returned to the other table. “Pool, then? Pool, after all?”
Do your family…?
Is there anything you want to tell me, about your family?
Was there anyone missing, at breakfast?
Human sacrifice much, your family?
Ross… About your family…
At the pool, lounging more than swimming.
It was in a big greenhouse with a cast-iron frame, red paint flaking slightly.
The actual pool itself, heated water tangy with chlorine, presumably hadn’t been installed by sixteenth-century monks.
A fringe of greenhouse occupation still remained, about the edges, giving the whole business a rainforest air.
I’m an American, get me out of here. Green tendrils twining and crawling their way up the glass, attacking the metal, spreading hand-sized leaves against the wan early-year sun.
“So you’re a doctor,” William drawled. He’d done a dozen lengths of the half-size pool and was on a lounger now, glistening. His body was spare: not athletic, not scrawny. The romantic hair was even more so, after a ducking. “At least Ross got that right.”
Melissa, on the other side, snorted. Elena had been braced for her to be catwalk-thin but what was on display looked mostly lean muscle. She fenced for Oxford, apparently, and wanted to go into military intelligence, except that wasn’t the done thing amongst the Enderboughs.
“Fucking doctors and lawyers and politicians,” she declared, loud enough that a couple of the older generation on the far side of the pool glowered over their papers at her. “Not even the army or the clergy are good enough for the sainted Enderboughs.”
Elena was quietly delighted that Melissa lacked all of Ross’s ingrained reluctance to swear.
“And what are you, then?” she asked William.
“Well,” he said, looking romantically sheepish. “Lawyer. Studying anyway. Oxford, and a pupillage lined up. I mean…” He shrugged.
Ross hauled himself out of the pool then, shaking like a dog.
“M’learnéd,” he said to Will, and received a “M’learnéd friend,” in return, and then they had to explain how Will’s dad had made them argue court cases against each other back when they were something stupidly young, all miniature gowns and wigs and the antiquated language, and the one in-joke had stuck.
So, your family…
So last night I saw…
Is there anyone who—?
“Are we all here?” she asked, desperately brightly. And, seeing the blankness, “The family. Everyone. Here? I mean, I got from Ross that this is a big deal, but I’m not sure… why…”
“I’m not sure why,” Ross put in. William shrugged.
“I mean, God, this isn’t the whole family,” Melissa added. “There are fucking dozens of us. We’re like ants. Lift any stone in the world and you’ll find someone related to the Enderboughs. So long as it’s a stone full of money.”
“‘A stone full of money,’” William echoed. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“Shut up. Beast.”
“Well, what happened last time?” Elena pushed.
They exchanged that look she’d been waiting for, the one that included them but not her.
“I mean, we don’t know. We were… I don’t think I was even born.”
“Your family gets together once a quarter-century?”
“Oh, God, we see each other all the time. The ones who haven’t been vulgar enough to travel, you know,” Melissa drawled. “But this is some special thing. Once in a generation thing. And it’s invite only.”
“It’s meet the ancestors,” William said. “All the old guard are here, you see? I reckon we’ll all get hauled in front of them and be given the Spanish Inquisition about what we’re going to do for the clan.”
Elena examined the phrase ‘Spanish Inquisition’ but reckoned it was more Monty Python than a jab in her direction.
“Sounds dreadful,” Melissa decided.
“The dreadfulest,” Will agreed. “Anyone peckish? I was thinking we could get them to pack us a hamper and we could actually see this place while it isn’t raining.”
“You’ve never even been here before?” Elena prompted. “I thought this was the old family pile?”
“Oh, it is, but it’s a pain in the fundament to get to, and some of us quite like our wireless connectivity,” he said airily.
“I’ve been here twice,” Melissa said. “Our place—the de la Pole house—it’s just a county over. There’s not much here unless you’re really fond of badly-tended woodland.”
“I love badly-tended woodland. It’s my favourite ever thing. It really gets me going,” Ross announced. “Elena?”
She shrugged, and all the things she couldn’t say slithered about in her head like trapped snakes. “Sure. Let’s.”
Trees there were, in abundance. The track they’d driven up the previous night was one of the few piercing the dense, gnarled woodland: oak and ash and elm, old enough to be contemporaries of the house itself.
Lovingly hand-planted by green-fingered monks.
Except she’d been thinking about that and hadn’t King Henry the whateverth kicked all the monks out by then?
“There was some deal,” Ross said vaguely. “The monks held on, but the lands went to the family.”
“Your family.”
“Well, naturally.”
“So you’ve actually owned this since…”
“It’s been in the family since… yes.” And one of those looks he gave her when she quizzed him about the mad English-money-ness of it all, half amused, half embarrassed.
“I mean it’s not like we’re secret King Arthurs or something.
It’s just… how it is.” As though she was accusing him of it being his fault, somehow.
As though there was some fault to be apportioned.
“That,” Will decided, “is my new band name. The Secret King Arthurs. Synth-folk music. Very experimental.”
“Actually,” said Melissa. Just the word.
She stopped, frowning. They were on what could just about charitably be called a trail through the trees.
The hamper was empty except for the cups and napkins and wrappings that Ross had painstakingly collected.
The sky, what little could be seen of it through the interlacing branches, was grey shading charcoal.
“Use your words, Melissa,” Will said, in what Elena guessed was supposed to be a New York Psychiatrist voice.
“Shut up,” she said. “Beast. I was just thinking. Lena asked was everyone here, and I don’t recall seeing Barty at breakfast, that’s all.
” At Elena’s look she clarified, “Great Uncle Bartholomew. Crusty old fucker, must be a hundred and three. But still stomping about and complaining about losing the Ashes when he came to visit last month.”
And probably Uncle Barty was ill or had a prior engagement, or alternatively that was Elena’s moment to open her mouth and let all the words out, but instead she could find no way into the conversation from outside.
No polite way of saying, So, Great Uncle Barty, would you describe him as…
horrifically twisted or malformed? What sort of shape would he make, if he was being carried out under a sheet?
And partly it was just that these were not questions she could ever have asked anybody, but also it was that she really wanted Will and Melissa to like her and continue just being…
normal and human and pleasant rather than icing her out like she’d very much expected them to.
Those thoughts dragged her far enough into her head that a moment later her ankle turned painfully under her and she was abruptly skidding off the notional trail, down a sudden dip in the terrain, ribbed with roots and snarled with brambles.
Ross made a lunge for her, snagged her sleeve and only succeeded in adding one more rip to the collection she’d suddenly acquired.
She ended up at the bottom of a depression, staring at what her mind processed as a great grasping fist of crooked tentacles.
She froze. They froze. Or, in fact, hadn’t been moving at all.
Were roots, in fact, dirt-caked, dead, the uprooted, rotting underside of a tree that had finally been undone by time.
If this was a film, she knew, I’d look round and come face to face with the body. Instead, Ross slithered down beside her, heedless of the thorns, asking her if she was all right.
She wasn’t sure, honestly. The shock was still with her, that had somehow been welded to what she’d seen or thought she’d seen the previous night.
And then Will and Melissa were reaching down from above, and she decided that yes, she was fine.
Just a bit of ungainliness that made her feel rather self-conscious, but nobody was making fun of her for it.
Then she was back on the trail and actually her ankle was painful enough that maybe she wasn’t fine.
And yes, yes, ‘walk it off,’ but maybe she should walk it off back in the direction of the house and put some ice on it?