Chapter 8 The Books and the Birds #2
I parked the car beneath a giant ash whose looming arms caught the edge of the cottage in its shadow, then wandered through the sun-warmed tangle: heady jasmine, delphiniums, and campanulas, spilling over the brick path.
A pair of white geese waddled fatly by, without so much as pausing to acknowledge my intrusion, as I went through the door, passing from brilliant sunshine into a faintly lit room.
The immediate walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs of the castle and its grounds, all taken, according to the subtitles, on a Country Life shoot in 1910.
Against the far wall, behind a counter with a gold RECEPTION sign, a short, plump woman in a royal blue linen suit was waiting for me.
“Well now, you must be my young visitor from London.” She blinked through a pair of round tortoiseshell frames, and smiled at my confusion.
“Alice from the bookshop called ahead, letting me know I might expect you. You certainly didn’t waste any time in coming; Bird thought you’d be another hour at least.”
I glanced at the yellow canary in a palatial cage suspended behind her.
“He was ready for his lunch, but I said you’d be sure to arrive just as soon as I closed the door and put out the sign.
” She laughed then, a smoky chuckle that rolled up from the base of her throat.
I’d guessed her age as pushing sixty, but that laugh belonged to a much younger, far more wicked woman than first impressions suggested.
“Alice tells me you’re interested in the castle. ”
“That’s right. I was hoping to do a tour and she sent me here. Do I need to sign up somewhere?”
“Dear me, no, nothing as official as all that. I run the tours myself.” Her linen bosom puffed self-importantly before deflating again. “That is, I did.”
“Did?”
“Oh yes, and a lovely task it was too. The Misses Blythe used to operate them personally, of course; they started in the 1950s as a way to fund the castle’s upkeep and save themselves from the National Trust—Miss Percy wouldn’t have that, I can assure you—but it all got a bit much some years ago.
We’ve all of us got our limits and when Miss Percy reached hers, I was delighted to step in.
There was a time I used to run five a week, but there’s not much call these days.
It seems people have forgotten the old place.
” She gave me a quizzical look, as though I might be able to explain the vagaries of the human race.
“Well, I’d love to see inside,” I said brightly, hopefully, maybe even a little desperately.
Mrs. Bird blinked at me. “Of course you would, my dear, and I’d love to show you, but I’m afraid the tours don’t run anymore.”
The disappointment was crushing and for a moment I didn’t think I’d be able to speak. “Oh,” I managed to say. “Oh dear.”
“It’s a shame, but Miss Percy said her mind was made up. She said she was tired of opening her home so ignorant tourists had somewhere to drop their rubbish. I’m sorry Alice misled you.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly and a knotty silence fell between us.
I attempted polite resignation, but as the possibility of seeing inside Milderhurst Castle receded, there was suddenly very little in life that I wanted more fiercely.
“Only—I’m such a great admirer of Raymond Blythe,” I heard myself say.
“I don’t think I’d have ended up working in publishing if I hadn’t read the Mud Man when I was a child.
I don’t suppose … That is, perhaps if you were to put in a good word, reassure the owners that I’m not the sort of person to go dropping rubbish in their home? ”
“Well …” She frowned, considering. “The castle is a joy to behold, and there’s no one as proud of her perch as Miss Percy … Publishing, you say?”
It had been an inadvertent stroke of brilliance: Mrs. Bird belonged to a generation for whom those words held a sort of Fleet Street glamour; never mind my poky, paper-strewn cubicle and rather sobering balance sheets.
I seized upon this opportunity as a drowning person might a raft: “Billing quite simply, that book and I belonged to one another.
MRS. BIRD’S phone receiver met the cradle with a plastic clunk and I jumped a little. By the tug of her features I gathered instantly that the news was bad. I stood and limped to the counter, my left foot numb with pins and needles.
“I’m afraid one of the Blythe sisters isn’t well today,” said Mrs. Bird.
“Oh?”
“The youngest has had a turn and the doctor’s on his way out to see her.”
I worked to conceal my disappointment. There was something very unseemly about a show of personal frustration when an old lady had been taken ill. “That’s terrible. I hope she’s all right.”
Mrs. Bird waved my concern away like a harmless but pesky fly. “I’m sure she will be. It’s not the first time. She’s suffered episodes since she was a girl.”
“Episodes?”
“Lost time, is what they used to call it. Time she couldn’t account for, usually after she became overexcited.
Something to do with an unusual heart rate—too fast or too slow, I can’t remember which, but she used to black out and wake up with no memory of what she’d done.
” Her mouth tightened around some further sentiment she’d thought better of expressing.
“The older sisters will be too busy looking after her today to be bothered by disturbances, but they were loath to turn you away. The castle needs its visitors, they said. Funny old things—I’m quite surprised, to be honest; they’re ordinarily not keen on guests.
I suppose it gets lonely though, just the three of them rattling around inside.
They suggested tomorrow instead, midmorning? ”
A flutter of anxiety in my chest. I hadn’t planned to stay, and yet the thought that I might leave without seeing inside the castle brought with it a profound and sudden surge of desolation. Disappointment darkened inside me.
“We’ve had a cancellation, so there’s a room free if you’d like it,” said Mrs. Bird. “Dinner’s included.”
I had work to catch up on over the weekend, Herbert needed his car to get to Windsor the following afternoon, and I’m not the sort of person who decides on a whim to stay for a night in a strange place.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it.”