Page 14 of Happily Ever After
Hugo looked cheerful again. ‘Perfectly true,’ he said jauntily. ‘Now, let’s get a trot on.’
He led me out of the front door of the house, and around to a narrow path that wound through the grounds. If we hadn’t been hurrying, I hadn’t been desperately trying to iron my dress smooth by pulling bits of it taut, and my sandals hadn’t instantly started to rub, it would have been pleasant. Hugo had taken my arm in a gentlemanly fashion and was pointing out sites of interest as we went.
‘That’s the old icehouse there, under that mound. Over there is the biggest specimen of Douglas Fir outside the Highlands; that’s a ceanothus, we’re quite proud of that one, very regular flowerer. That looks like a flowerbed there, but in the middle of the planting is where the controls for the fountain are. My maternal great grandfather liked to keep the workings out of sight – being able to see switches and so forth was a little too plebeian for him.’
I wondered if it was too soon to stumble and pretend to sprain my ankle. Suspecting that Hugo would not have carried me back to the house and tended to me, but would have sat me carefully on the side of the path for collection on his way back from the memorial service, I made sure I looked carefully at where I was putting my feet.
‘And through this gate is the chapel, and the estate village.’ Hugo opened a small metal gate in a huge yew hedge, which, he had informed me, dated back over three hundred years. The bushes had half-collapsed onto one another, so the entire hedge line sagged and dipped like elderly buttocks. We passed through the gate and on the other side lay a graveyard, a tiny church and, beyond, a tumble of old thatched cottages. The village was incredibly pretty, if slightly overshadowed by the encircling hedge, and made me think of Hobbits. ‘We came the private way, from the house. Oh good, we’re not late.’ Hugo stood back to allow me through first.
Lady Tanith, wearing a black hat and veil so large that she looked like a helicopter landing pad in mourning, was leading the way into the church. Behind her followed a straggle of people; Mrs Compton was among them so I supposed they were estate workers. Hugo and I tagged along at the back, but, once inside the church, he led us down the aisle to sit next to Lady Tanith in the front pew.
The chapel smelled like the library, I thought, as the service, conducted by a man so wizened that he looked as though he was being eaten by his vestments, got underway. A bit damp, a bit bookish. Furniture polish. Flowers, from the huge floral arrangements that stood either side of the chancel. Insufficient light filtered through the hedge which loomed in at the window, watching proceedings from its encirclement of the churchyard. My parents had no notable interest in religion, so churches hadn’t been a regular feature of my childhood, although I’d taken to visiting historic-looking ones when I was old enough, envisaging Jane Eyre, and then myself, standing small and plain at the altar. I wondered whether Lady Tanith had married Richard in this church, and tried to imagine a Dawe family wedding, but could only come up with Count Dracula marrying the mistletoe bride amid a corpse-filled congregation. Probably a little unfair, but it was impossible to imagine Lady Tanith as a blushing young bride.
Lady Tanith kept her eyes focused on the vicar during the entire service. She didn’t acknowledge Hugo or me, or any of the twenty or so people who sat scattered through the pews behind us, all obviously wearing their best clothes in the dark dampness, like beads from a dropped necklace. She dabbed at her eyes occasionally through the veil, particularly when the vicar mentioned Oswald’s name, and sang her way in a faint fashion, through a hymn I didn’t know the words to. There were no hymnbooks or orders of service to help me, I just had to make a sort of throaty burbling attempt to follow the tune.
Side glances at anyone else I could catch sight of made me think that this was such a regular occurrence for them that they were making their way through the service by rote. Mrs Compton sat, stood and prayed in a determined and rigid way in the pew opposite, and just behind her I could see the figure of the gardener, going through the motions. I wondered who all the others were. I’d seen occasional distant figures about the place; the mystery joiner and bullock-shouting-man. I knew there was a man who sorted the plumbing too because I’d seen him unblocking a drain once, and Hugo had spoken about carpenters and farmers who worked on the estate, but I’d never met any of them. Here they, and their wives and husbands, evidently felt it necessary to put in an appearance. Perhaps it was a condition of working at Templewood. The gardener was certainly giving every sign of being here under duress, barely kneeling during prayers and apparently not even attempting to sing.
I gritted my teeth and ironed the dress between my fingers again. It had beenhisfault that I’d got sprayed with filthy green water this morning. He could have told me he was turning on the fountain, rather than just shouting.
I half turned my head to give him a haughty look and caught him looking at me with a smile that I didn’t really like. When our eyes met, he winked, which only served to remind me again that he’d seen me soaked to the skin in my pyjamas, with pondweed hanging from my head. I hadn’t been at all sure that he hadn’t been laughing as I’d fled my way back into the house, trying to cover up the transparent nature of my cotton night things with my hands.
I did not smile back. Instead I huddled a little closer to Hugo and knelt ostentatiously for the final prayer, on a kneeler that gave off an ‘oof’ when I made contact with it. After that we clattered our way back down the aisle behind Lady Tanith, into the welcome fresh air and green, filtered sunlight, which called to mind the pond water again.
The little crowd of estate workers dispersed instantly, leaving the three of us in the graveyard. Even the vicar dissipated – the touch of daylight probably turned him to dust – and Hugo pointed to an enormous granite obelisk which protruded from the centre of the churchyard in such a way that the two surrounding tombs with their semi-circular headstones gave it the look of a giant penis, accompanied by a pair of sandstone bollocks.
‘That’s Oswald’s memorial,’ Hugo half whispered.
A posy of flowers lay at its base, in a pubic frill. Laid, I supposed, by Lady Tanith before we’d arrived. There was something touching about the smallness of the bunch, almost as though Lady Tanith hadn’t wanted the flowers to be noticed by anyone other than Oswald, a little nod to the ages that had passed since his death.
‘I thought he died in Switzerland or somewhere?’ I whispered back.
‘He did. He’s not buried here. Mother had the stone put up to… ah. Lovely service as ever, Mother!’ Hugo’s tone changed as Lady Tanith stalked up to us.
‘Hm. The vicar’s cutting it. We were two verses short, and that sermon sounded rushed to me. Did it sound rushed to you?’ Lady Tanith adjusted her hat. Behind the veil her features were smudged into beady inquisition.
‘It sounded perfectly fine. Oswald will have loved it,’ Hugo said placatingly. He took his mother’s arm now, and I was left standing in the churchyard on my own, with my abrasive sandals and crumpled dress, as they made their way together through the iron gate and back towards the house.
I felt the old, familiar sensation of being unwanted descend over me. It was so familiar as to be almost welcome, a known quantity among the strangeness of my surroundings. My parents had always been busy, doing, planning, filming. When I was a baby, before the YouTube years, they’d written articles for resolutely left-wing magazines on the ‘freedom of the road’, carefully not mentioning that said freedom had been sponsored by a previous capitalist career and inherited wealth. My sister had been away or had a trail of admirers or friends from school who’d come to stay and exclaimed excitedly about the novelty of living in a bus and travelling. And there I had been, in the corner withMadame Bovary,Great Expectationsor, during one particularly bleak period,Anna Karenina.
Here I was again, on my own, overlooked in favour of someone who shouted their wants more loudly. I nodded to myself in acceptance. Yep. Of course. And naturally Hugo should help his mother, she was upset…
‘Upset over a death that had happened fifty years ago.’ My gritted teeth juddered over the words as I heard the gate clang shut. Hugo hadn’t checked to see if I was following.
‘You dried out, then.’ A voice beside me made me jump and I twisted around, sustaining a minor ankle injury from a sandal strap, to see the gardener leaning nonchalantly on a nearby headstone. In common with the other men attending the service, he was wearing a suit, although his jacket was unbuttoned, his tie was under one ear and he was wearing wellington boots on his feet, with the trouser legs pulled down over them so that only rubber-coated toes gave him away.
‘Obviously.’ I pulled at my skirt again.
‘I did try to warn you.’ His hair was messy too, long and untidy, and looked like it needed a good brush.
‘Well, just a word of advice, shouting “hey” is not really a sufficient warning. Next time, try “I’m going to turn the fountain on.” It might be of more use to your victims.’ I snapped the words, turned so sharply that the straps of my sandals did my ankles another injury, and stalked off towards the gate in the hedge. ‘And saying “good morning” when someone greets you might be a nice touch too!’ I called back over my shoulder but didn’t give him the satisfaction of actually checking on his reaction. I was trying to concentrate on stalking, which was harder than I’d thought over the loose gravel of the path and in sandals that were slowly cutting off the circulation to both feet.
The gardener did not reply. When I had my first chance to look back – stopping to open the gate and peering back under my arm – he’d gone.
I sat down on the grass edging to the path and took the sandals off. Restraining myself from the urge to hurl them one at a time towards the place where his head had been, I set off back towards the house.
8
BLANDINGS CASTLE – JEEVES AND WOOSTER, PG WODEHOUSE
