Caught in the Light (7 page)

February faded into March with nothing gained except a desperate kind of equilibrium in my life. As long as I was looking for Marian I didn't have to acknowledge the futility of what I was doing. My pursuit of her was also a flight from myself: from what my wife and daughter thought of me, from the sick joke I'd doubtless become among friends and colleagues and anyone who'd known me as a competent level-headed professional.

I wonder now if I'd ever have stopped, if eventually I'd simply have widened the circle as often as I needed to in order to sustain the search. To have given up would always have seemed worse than carrying on. There's no way to tell how and when it might have ended. Defeat, once admitted, would have been terminal, I'm sure of that. That's why it was bound to be so long coming. I was slowly zigzagging my way across England towards a dead end, but I never once let myself believe it. Wherever I went, I asked questions and studied faces: the same question with the same answer; the same face sought with the same result. I put identically worded advertisements in the personal columns of the national press every Saturday: "MARIAN, PLEASE REMEMBER VIENNA AND RESPOND, LAN." But nobody ever wrote to the box number. I hired private detectives to cover London, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff. But they turned up nothing. I became a ghost hunting a ghost, haunted by a past I couldn't forget and a future I couldn't give up.

The first stirrings of spring frightened me. I couldn't stop time passing, but as it did so Marian retreated deeper, day by day, into my memory. Even the season of our love was passing. Tim, the only friend I saw anything of, urged me whenever we met to break the spell she'd cast on me and face up to the realities of life. Faith had set the wheels of divorce in motion, as I knew from the letters her solicitor formerly our solicitor had sent to me. So far, I hadn't replied. But I'd have to sooner or later. And it wouldn't be long before Amy was home for Easter. Ignoring Faith was one thing, neglecting my daughter quite another. Tim pointed all this out to me as patiently as he could, throwing in occasional laments for the photographic career I was steadily demolishing. But none of it made any impression. I didn't expect anyone to understand what I was doing. I didn't really want them to. It was a private crusade, in which any compromise, however slight, was likely to prove fatal. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, I'd find Marian. And when I did ... The flat in Netting Hill, entered in clean spring sunshine. It was a Friday and I was back from a week-long foray in the West Country, weary and empty-handed and sick at heart from all the loneliness and pointlessness I could deny to Tim but not to myself. There was a letter lying in the narrow hallway, the address handwritten. One of the other tenants must have slipped it under the door. They often did when mail for me lay around the communal entrance for days on end. I picked it up and looked at the writing. I don't know why, but something told me it was Marian's. I'd never seen her write a single word, but the style was what I'd unconsciously expected hers to be. The postmark was London Wll, as local as could be. I ripped the envelope open.

There was a postcard inside, but no message was written on it. The picture on the front was a fuzzy print of a country church. The caption read, "St. Andrew's, Tollard Rising, Dorset." I sank slowly to my haunches and fell back against the wall behind me. Then I began to cry, tears of sheer overwhelming relief. It wasn't much. It was hardly anything at all. But it was a consequence, however cryptic, of the weeks of searching I'd sustained. It was some kind of message, albeit unwritten. It was almost an answer.

Tollard Rising was about thirty miles from Lacock. The irony was that I'd already been there and drawn a blank. It was among a string of villages I'd visited during a day's drive along the Fordingbridge-Shaftesbury road. Tollard Rising itself lay near the western end, where the Dorset-Wiltshire border meandered along the hilltops of Cranborne Chase. It occupied one of the more exposed locations, a huddle of old stone cottages round a small squat-towered church, boasting neither pub nor post office. Commercial life, such as it was, took place down the hill at Tollard Royal. I'd given the place short shrift at the time. Now the postcard had arrived, as if to rebuke me.

It had been a weekday before, and the village, as a consequence, eerily empty. There was more life to be detected on a sunny Saturday morning, but it was of no immediate help to me. A fellow washing his Range Rover echoed the comment I was used to hearing. "Esguard? Don't know anyone of that name round here." But someone had to know. Otherwise .. .

The church was damp and cold, despite the sunshine. The interior smelled of age and must and past times layered one upon another. Services were fortnightly, according to the porch notices. This was an obscure satellite parish, its affairs administered at arm's length by the vicar of Witchbourne Hinton ten miles away. The graveyard was the usual yew-fringed plot of old and new stones, more old than new, with lichen and decay well established: one weeping cherub, a few Celtic crosses and two or three large ledger-slab bed graves in the southern lee of the tower. Beyond lay farm fields and a sunlit descent into Blackmoor Vale. The only oddity that struck me was an ornate stone-arched gateway leading from the churchyard into what was now a sheep-cropped pasture. There was another, more modest rear entrance, still apparently in use, but this gate looked as if it had once served some significant purpose. The only building visible in that direction was a farm. The gate itself was sealed with a rusty chain and padlock.

I looked at the church. No obvious clues stared back at me. The postcard was surely one in its own right, though. It had brought me to this place. Why? What could a virtually redundant old church have to do with Marian? The man down the road hadn't recognized the name Esguard. It hadn't featured on the cleaning rota or the list of church wardens. But it was a rural location, as I'd suspected. And ... Then it came to me. There were names all around me, on the gravestones. "They were just as real as you and me," Marian had said of Vienna's fore gathered dead at the Zentralfriedhof. "Maybe more so."

I started a systematic search from grave to grave, scraping out the lettering on the older stones with a penknife, though even then some remained illegible. After half an hour with nothing to show for my efforts, I reached the grander ledger-stoned graves closest to the church.

They were also some of the oldest and most heavily weathered. It was as much as I could do to trace the inscriptions. But I persevered, progressing painstakingly from the first Colonel something something Wheeler, Royal something, plus wife and son, all dead within a few years of each other in the 1820s to the second, where I probed meticulously with the penknife at the faint lichen-blotched outline of a name until... ESGUARD. It was there in front of me. JOSLYN MARCH MONT ESGUARD. Marian had referred to her husband as Jose, surely short for Joslyn. And now I was looking at Joslyn Esguard's grave. There was no mention of a wife or children, only some kind of address Gaunt's Chase, Tollard Rising and a record of his death 23 June 1838, aged 62.

I sat staring at that slab for a long long time. Was this the only

Joslyn Esguard I could hope to find? Or was he an ancestor of the one I was actually looking for? I couldn't tell, but now at last I sensed I was on the track of an answer. I'd had to have the way pointed out to me, of course. I'd never have got this far on my own. Was Marian really my informant? If so, the postcard had to be a plea for help the only kind of plea she could risk or contrive. The Esguards were an old family. She'd said so herself. Yes, that had to be it. She was married to this dead Dorset squire's great-great-great-great-grandson. And now I had an address. Gaunt's Chase. "Esguards have lived there for generations."

But where was it? I asked at the post office down in Tollard Royal, but learned nothing. I tried the pub with the same result. Then I made for Witchbourne Hinton. Parish records didn't fade as fast as human memory. I found the vicar in his gardening clothes, tackling an overgrown hedge. He was a placid, comfortably built, rural cleric in late middle age, happy enough, it seemed, to take a break from his labours to satisfy my curiosity. And it was immediately obvious that he knew the name Esguard. For a very particular reason.

"You're the second person to enquire about the family this year. Are you acquainted with the lady who came last month?"

"I don't think so. Who was she?"

"I can't recall her name. A pleasant woman. Tall. Dark-haired. In her forties, I imagine. There was something .. . professional .. . about her."

"And she was asking about the Esguards of Gaunt's Chase?" "Yes. But I couldn't help her any more than I can help you. I don't know the family or the house. As for the grave at Tollard Rising, well, as you've seen, it's more than a hundred and fifty years old. You'll understand that I devote most of my time to those of my parishioners who are still alive." He grinned. "Or, at any rate, rather more recently deceased."

"Aren't there .. . records?"

"Of course. Those for Tollard Rising are held at the County Record Office in Dorchester. As I explained to the lady. That would include any certificate of marriage contracted in the parish by the late Mr. Esguard, a possibility she seemed particularly interested in."

"Marriage? Did she say why?"

"Not really. She described it as a question of historical research.

Which is why I referred her to Mr. Appleyard, our eminent local historian. Since she didn't come back to me, I can only assume he was able to satisfy her curiosity on the point."

Derek Appleyard, retired schoolteacher and dedicated chronicler of the last thousand years of Cranborne Chase lived in a surprisingly modern bungalow at the corner of a wood halfway between Tollard Royal and Sixpenny Handley. His wife was preparing lunch when I arrived, but I only had to hint at an interest in his speciality for him to usher me into his study. His wife announced she'd eat without him and I had the impression she meant it.

The study was his research centre, crammed with books, papers, folders, box files and computer disks, plus a framed map of Dorset circa 1600 on one wall, and a huge aerial photograph of what I assumed was his corner of the county on another. He was a spry, stooping old chap, who combined scholarly eccentricity with a cigarette habit that meant every surface in the room was finely covered with ash. One day, I imagined, the whole lot would go up in smoke, very possibly him with it.

"I confess myself puzzled, Mr. Jarrett. First one Esguard researcher, then two. Odd, distinctly odd. What, pray, is it all about?"

"It's too complicated to explain."

"Do you know that's exactly what Miss Sanger said. Are you sure you're not acquainted with her?"

"I'm not absolutely sure about much, Mr. Appleyard, to be honest. But I don't think I am. Did she leave you with any way to contact her?"

"Yes. A telephone number. That's even odder, actually. She asked me to let her know if anyone else came by enquiring about the Esguards. But she led me to expect a woman, not a man."

"Sorry to disappoint you. But I can save you the effort of contacting Miss Sanger. If you give me the number, I'll do it myself."

"Good idea. She gave me a card. It'll be in here somewhere." He began rooting through a desk drawer. "Charming lady, I must say."

"What did you tell her?"

"The little I know. There was a large house up on the downs near Tollard Rising called Gaunt's Chase. It dated from the late seventeenth century. Rather a pleasing William and Mary construction, to judge by surviving prints, though the exposed location can't have made it very comfortable. I can point out the exact site on the OS map. The Esguard family owned it, along with a substantial surrounding estate, including most of Tollard Rising. There's a gate from the churchyard that once led onto a carriage drive from the house."

"I saw no drive."

"No. And you wouldn't see the house, either, if you followed the route of it. The estate was broken up in the eighteen thirties, presumably to pay off creditors. The house itself burned down in 1838. I believe Joslyn Esguard died in the fire. The site was then cleared. I've looked for traces of it and, though there must be some, I've failed to discover them. Mind you, I can't claim to have mounted an exhaustive '

"What about the Esguards today?"

"Same story. We have Joslyn Esguard's grave as you saw it. Plus memorial tablets inside the church to his father and grandfather, who I think are buried in the crypt. But with Joslyn's death the family seems to have come to an abrupt end. If there were any of them left, they must have moved out of the area. Understandable, perhaps, in view of the loss of the house and estate."

"The vicar said Miss Sanger was particularly interested in finding out whether Joslyn Esguard was married."

"Yes. Well, I suppose it would increase the chances of the line having continued if he was. But I couldn't help her. I know the name in connection with the house. The family's of no intrinsic significance. Not to me, anyway. But to you and Miss Sanger' he shrugged 'matters are obviously not so straightforward. But, then, what else should one expect of a lady in her line of work?" He held up her calling card. "Psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, it says here. With a practice in Harley Street, no less." Smiling, he handed me the card. "What do you think, Mr. Jarrett? Was she here as an amateur genealogist? Or in a professional capacity?"

I drove as close to the site Appleyard showed me on the map as I could, then clambered over a gate into a field and struck out across it, with the wind in my hair and a distant vision in my mind of a seventeenth-century mansion dominating the empty bench of land where it sloped gently south-west, away from the escarpment of the downs, before descending in enfolded valleys towards Blackmoor Vale. I could see the clustered roofs of Tollard Rising and its church tower to the south, farm buildings and woodland below me straight ahead, and a vacant horizon above and to the north. Gaunt's Chase had stood there once. I had Appleyard's word for it. Maybe the track snaking up from the farm to some barns beyond the next field followed part of the route of the carriage drive. Maybe the trees in the dip where the barn nestled were a survivor of some prettified Georgian landscaping. But nothing beyond maybes survived of the house. It hadn't merely been destroyed by fire. It had been erased.