The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ in Eden from the start. Must get a grip on myself, thought John. Deal first with Malise’s coach. Then deal with Harry…And then Malise.

      ‘Through that gateway,’ said John. ‘Someone in the stable yard will help you…Down, boy!’ he called to the yellow cur that danced among the fetlocks. The heavy wooden coach swayed and jolted through the gate to the stable yard, the cur trotting behind.

      Oh, Harry! thought John. Harry! Harry! Harry! This is worse than all the rest. He held onto one of the stone eagles with both hands and waited for the sensation of falling to pass.

      ‘There you are!’ said Harry reproachfully, emerging onto the porch. ‘Why didn’t you come in? Sir Richard and I more than had our hands full. Our aunt veers from gawping to squawking…Old Doctor Bowler’s no better than he ever was, is he? Still goes red as a cock’s comb when you so much as look at him…used to make me want to climb under the pew, the way he darted at his sermons like a panic-stricken mouse. What the Hazeltons and Malise make of him, I hate to think!’

      Harry mistook his cousin’s unnatural stillness beside the eagle for contemplation. ‘It hasn’t changed since I last visited,’ he said. He surveyed the forecourt from the top of the steps. ‘More’s the pity. Not like the two of us, eh? Lord, how long ago was it? Remember riding these eagles? Not changed one bit. Still, being so far from London …’ He put one arm around John’s shoulders, but quickly dropped it again. He might as well have embraced the eagle. ‘You must show me my new property before dinner. I want to learn the worst. There’s just time for a quick look. My guests mustn’t see that I’m as ignorant as they are.’

      John turned a cold assessing eye on this stranger from London whom he must call ‘Sir’, who rode a coach instead of a modest cob, sweated in silks instead of wool and glowed moistly with nervous ownership.

      ‘A good-natured fool,’ John had assured Aunt Margaret. But loyal. Or so Harry had seemed, many years before.

      ‘Titles and ambition have changed people before now,’ she had replied.

      ‘John?’ asked Harry uncertainly. He was puzzled and a little alarmed by John’s gaze. He looked suddenly shy.

      I see no guilt in those blue eyes, thought John, just the ghost of the younger cousin I so often pulled away from the consequences of his own silliness. Or has he learned guile along with the names of good tailors and hatmakers?

      ‘I’ll show you, if you like. Do you want to start with business or pleasure?’

      Harry lifted an eyebrow. ‘Pleasure first, of course, coz. I never have it any other way.’

      A touch over-hearty, John noted grimly. ‘Get back to work,’ he shouted at three grooms who were grinning through the stable-yard gate.

      John led the way down the steps onto the rolled gravel of the forecourt. ‘I had the chapel newly roofed last year; the bills are in the accounts I have waiting for you …’ He looked up at the square gap teeth of the chapel’s crenellations at the east end of the house.

      ‘Oh, coz,’ said Harry. ‘Is this what you call pleasure?’

      It is for me, thought John. But he said, ‘Only a taste of Purgatory on the way to Paradise. I’m afraid I just have a business habit of mind.’

      ‘That’s splendid, John,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a habit I must study now that I’m a man of means. But later!’

      Before Malise, John would have smiled. Now he stared bleakly at his younger cousin.

      They turned right through a small gate out of the forecourt into an allée of pleached hornbeams that faced each other along the west wing like a long set of country dancers. Harry assumed the abstracted enthusiasm of a man at an exhibition, hands clasped behind his back, chin leading. His blue eyes filled with memories and calculations. He nodded graciously at two awe-struck sheepmen beyond the wall.

      I’m certain that Malise didn’t recognize me, thought John as they walked. Is it possible?

      ‘My fields?’ Harry stepped carefully over some green-black goose turds and stopped to survey the green slope beyond the outer row of hornbeams and a low stone wall. ‘They haven’t been sold off?’

      He had time to prepare himself for our meeting, decided John. He pretended strangeness in front of Harry.

      ‘My fields?’ repeated Harry, a little more loudly.

      Sheep grazing in Roman Field below the beech avenue raised their heads at the sound of his voice. The afternoon sun glowed pink through their pricked ears.

      John finally heard. ‘Yes. The nearest, here across the wall is the Roman…Roman coins were dug up there years ago. Beyond that lies King’s, and then our water meadows, there behind the beech ridge and along the Shir. Two years ago, as you will see in the estate accounts, I bought more good grazing from the Winching estate when the widow died. Hawkridge now runs from Winching Hanger across the road, that way…’ He pointed back up the hill past the top of the drive. ‘All the way past Pig Acre to that second wood there, on that hill above Bedgebury Brook. The limit that way is the field you can just see below the east end of Hawk Ridge, called the Far.’

      He counted the sheep that munched down toward the water meadows. The ewe pregnant with late twins was not eating but lay awkwardly on the ground. As he watched, she rose then lay down again. He must send someone to see to her.

      But it’s not my job now to think like that. One way or another, this life was now over. But he would not go back to prison. He would never surrender to the rope or block.

      They reached the far end of the hornbeam allée and passed through a gap in a shoulder-high yew hedge into a flat empty green kept tightly shorn by grazing geese, a quiet green room enclosed by high, dark-green aromatic walls.

      ‘The bowling lawn.’

      ‘Bowling,’ said Harry dully. ‘Not much in favour now in London. I must do something with this.’

      A blue and white cat slipped onto the green from under the hedge, froze when it saw the two men, flattened its ears and streaked under the hedge towards the fields.

      Water glinted through a gap in the yew hedge. Harry crossed the bowling lawn in long-legged strides.

      ‘This is better!’ he cried.

      From the north-west comer of the house they now looked along the north front and over the basse-court. A little farther on, the river Shir slid like oil over a small weir into the highest of the three fish ponds, dug before any man or woman on the estate could remember.

      ‘Now here …’ Harry said, ‘I see possibility! We make these ponds into one long lake, the full width of the house. Try to imagine, coz, if you can…statues. And water jets. A bronze of Nereus, just there below the weir.’ He looked around for his cousin, faltered slightly at John’s set face but surged onward. ‘Conjoin the ponds and there’s room for all his fifty sea-nymph daughters around the edge!’

      John lifted his eyes beyond the ponds to the smooth swell of hillcrest that rose from the orchard blossom like the naked shoulder of a woman from her smock. He had swallowed a brand from the kitchen fire.

      This time, I must kill Edward Malise, he thought fiercely.

      ‘What’s СКАЧАТЬ