Chapter 9 Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst
RAYMOND BLYTHE’S MILDERHURST
WHILE Mrs. Bird started on the paperwork, transferring details from my business card, I disengaged myself with a mumble of polite noises and drifted over to peek through the open back door.
A courtyard had been formed by the farmhouse walls and those of other farm buildings: a barn, a dovecote, and a third construction with a conical roof that I would later learn to call an oast house.
A round pool meditated at the center and the pair of fat geese had launched themselves across the sun-warmed surface, floating regally now as ripples chased one another towards the flagstone edges.
Beyond, a peacock inspected the edge of clipped lawn separating the tended courtyard from a meadow of wildflowers that tumbled towards distant parkland.
The whole sunlit garden, framed as it was by the shadowed doorway in which I stood, was like a snapshot of a long-ago spring day, come back somehow to life.
“Glorious, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Bird, behind me suddenly, though I hadn’t noticed her approach. “Have you ever heard of Oliver Sykes?”
“Copper sulfate,” came a disembodied male voice.
I glanced again at the canary, rummaging for seed in his cage, then the picture-hung walls.
“Yes, yes, of course it was,” Mrs. Bird continued, unfazed, “copper sulfate to keep it azure blue.” A sigh.
“That was a long time ago now though. Sadly, Sykes’s moat was filled in decades ago, and his grand circular pool belongs only to the geese.
Full of dirt and duck mess.” She handed me a heavy brass key and patted my fingers closed around it.
“We’ll walk up to the castle tomorrow. The forecast is clear and there’s a beautiful view from the second bridge. Shall we meet here at ten?”
“You’ve an appointment with the vicar tomorrow morning, dear.” That patient, wood-paneled voice drifted towards us again, however this time I pinpointed its source. A small door, barely visible, hidden in the wall behind the reception counter.
Mrs. Bird pursed her lips and seemed to consider this mysterious amendment before nodding slowly.
“Bird’s right. Oh now, what a shame.” She brightened.
“Never mind. I’ll leave you instructions, finish as quickly as I can in the village, and meet you up at the castle.
We’ll only stay an hour. I don’t like to impose any longer: the Misses Blythe are all very old. ”
“An hour sounds perfect.” I could be on my way home to London by lunchtime.
MY ROOM was tiny, a four-poster bed squatting greedily in the center, a narrow writing desk huddled beneath the leaded window and little besides, but the outlook was glorious.
The room was at the back of the farmhouse and the window opened out to look across the same meadow I’d glimpsed through the door downstairs.
The second story, however, offered a better view of the hill that climbed towards the castle, and above the woods I could just pick out the tower’s spire pointing at the sky.
On the desk someone had left a neatly folded plaid picnic blanket and a welcome basket filled with fruit.
The day was balmy and the grounds were beautiful, so I picked up a banana, pinned the blanket beneath my arm, and headed straight downstairs again with my new book, Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst.
In the courtyard, jasmine sugared the air, great white sprays tumbling from the top of a wooden arbor at the side of the lawn.
Huge goldfish swam slowly near the surface of the pool, listing their plump bodies backwards and forwards to court the afternoon sun.
It was heavenly, but I didn’t stick around; a distant band of trees was calling to me and I wove my way towards it, through the meadow dusted with buttercups, self-sown amid the long grass.
Although it wasn’t quite summer, the day was warm, the air dry, and by the time I’d reached the trees my hairline was laced with perspiration.
I spread the rug in a patch of dappled light and kicked off my shoes.
Somewhere nearby a shallow brook chattered over stones and butterflies sailed the breeze.
The blanket smelled reassuringly of laundry flakes and squashed leaves, and when I sat down the tall meadow grasses enclosed me so I felt utterly alone.
I leaned Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst against my bent knees and ran my hand over the cover.
It showed a series of black-and-white photos arranged at various angles, as if they’d dropped from someone’s hand and been photographed where they fell.
Beautiful children in old-fashioned dresses, long-ago picnics by a shimmering pool, a line of swimmers posing by the moat; the earnest gazes of people for whom capturing images on photographic paper was a type of magic.
I turned to the first page and began to read.