The Living and the Dead in Winsford (16 page)

‘She’s mad,’ said Martin. ‘I reckon she’s ripe for the loony bin. She claims that somebody is going to be killed.’

‘Killed?’

‘Yes, and that she can’t do anything about it. I really do think she’s gone off the rails this time.’

Four days later Olof Palme was murdered in Sveavägen in Stockholm. That same day I asked Martin if we ought to contact the police.

‘Not on your life,’ said Martin. ‘Don’t you think there’ll be enough loonies ringing the police with tips? Surely you don’t seriously think that my sister would have anything to do with the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister?’

I didn’t think so, of course, and as we said nothing from the start, we didn’t say anything later either. And it was over a year before we heard anything from Vivianne again. She was now living in Austria with a professional skiing instructor, and I think I’m right in saying that we only met her twice more before she died.

The fact that she died on the anniversary of Palme’s death was something we discussed briefly, Martin and I. We agreed that it was a coincidence. If it had been ten years later, we might have regarded that as being of some significance: but in fact twelve years had passed.

Nevertheless, I do occasionally think about that mysterious man walking up our drive with the hood concealing his face, I have to admit that.

18

The eighth of November. Clear but windy and cold. Only plus three degrees at eight in the morning.

We had spent the whole of the previous day indoors, due to appalling weather. Rain and gale-force winds non-stop – or perhaps it wasn’t in fact rain, but the upper layer of the sea that was being blown in over the land. It seemed suspiciously as if that really was the case, and was coming from that direction. Castor was restricted to three short runs around the garden. It was a difficult day in every respect – the worst one since I came here. I understand that I need to get out briefly every day, irrespective of the weather and the wind: spending thirty-six hours at a stretch in a house like Darne Lodge is not something to look forward to, most certainly not.

Perhaps I had convinced myself that Martin’s notes would keep me occupied, but after only a few pages I found myself overwhelmed by a degree of resistance that I neither want nor am able to explain. I put the whole lot of material away, and spent the day reading Dickens and playing patience instead. I hadn’t played patience since I was a teenager, but I found two almost unused packs of cards in a drawer, and after a while had remembered four different variations. Idiot Patience, of course, and Spider Harp – I can’t remember the names of the other two. I’m sure I learned all four from my father, probably even before I started school: and once I had realized this I simply couldn’t get him out of my mind. He was a person who wanted the best for everybody, and did whatever he could to make that happen; but in the last years of his life, after Gunsan had died and my mother had entered a twilight world, well . . . How was he able to sum up his journey through life? As he lay there in hospital and died of a broken heart. What was left for him?

I thought about Gudrun Ewerts, and how she went on about the importance of weeping. If she was gazing down on me yesterday from the heavens above, she would have had every reason to nod approvingly. I cried my eyes out.

But that was yesterday. Today is another day, and having learned our lesson we set off on foot immediately after breakfast and Dickens. We headed southwards to start with, towards Dulverton, and after a while we came to that simple signpost pointing the way into the village. After eyeing one another up and down and thinking it over for a few moments, we set off along that path. It was muddy and difficult to follow at first, but after a few hundred metres we came to a narrow road along which one could stroll without too much difficulty. It wasn’t wide enough for a four-wheeled vehicle – I didn’t really understand how it had come to exist, or what purpose it could possibly have: but there is a lot about the moor that I don’t understand. It was downhill all the way, and the vegetation was abundant: deciduous trees in full leaf even though we were well into November; moss and ivy, holly and brambles. The road followed a fast-flowing stream, pheasants and all kinds of other birds twittered and hopped around in the bushes, and here and there, on the other side of the thick undergrowth, we could hear the bleating of sheep. It seemed to me that the ground must be enormously fertile – if you lay down and slept for twelve hours, you were bound to be covered in creepers when you woke up: it seemed a bit like a cautionary fairy-tale. A little girl and her dog go for a walk in the woods, and never return to their village. I tried to shake such thoughts off me.

We eventually came to a house. We had been under way for about half an hour, and its sudden appearance was about as likely as the chances of meeting a lawyer in heaven. That was another of my father’s expressions, incidentally, and I assume it was a hangover from the previous day’s games of patience. Anyway, it was a dark-coloured stone-built house so embedded in the vegetation that it was almost invisible – it was on the other side of the stream we had been following all the way, which at this point changed from being fast-flowing into a stretch of more or less still-standing water. A moss-covered stone bridge ran over the water to the house. We paused and contemplated the building: it was two storeys high, and the walls were covered in ivy and other climbing plants – some of the windows were almost completely overgrown.

It was when I raised my gaze to observe the upper storey that I realized there were in fact three floors: there was a narrow window immediately below the gable gutter, and in that window I could just make out a face.

It was pale, almost white, and it belonged to a young man who was evidently standing up there, watching us. He must have been pressing his face against the glass – no lights were lit in the house but even so his features were quite clear through the windowpane. It was a thin, colourless face, dark hair with a parting, prominent eyebrows and a long, pointed nose. A grim-looking mouth, little more than a narrow slit.

And completely motionless – my immediate reaction was that it was a doll.

But it wasn’t a doll. After we had been observing each other for about ten seconds, he slowly raised his right hand and made a very obvious gesture in front of his neck: a sideways movement across his throat. There was no mistaking its significance.

Then he backed away into the darkness of the room.

I had difficulty in moving away from the spot. Castor was halfway over the bridge to the house, and I called him back. A hen pheasant burst out from a clump of trees, a screeching male just behind her. In the distance I could hear the sound of a vehicle accelerating away, and concluded that we must be quite close to the village. I could also see that below the house the road became slightly wider: it must presumably be possible to drive up to here.

As we stood there, getting on for a minute, the sound of water bubbling away on all sides became louder, sharper, and then a deafening shriek from a bird pierced the air – not a pheasant this time. I glanced up once more at the dark attic window, then began moving away at last. It felt as if something significant had happened, something irrevocable, I don’t know what.

It took less than ten minutes to get down to the village – the final section was a muddy but easily passable road suitable for vehicles. There were traces of ponies’ hooves, but also wide wheel-tracks looking as if they had been made by a tractor. At regular intervals narrow channels of bubbling water crossed over the road. Where did all the water come from? I asked myself automatically – but then I recalled the previous day’s weather . . . Castor was forging ahead all the time now, as if he had already registered a whiff of civilization and the prospect of something tasty to eat.

The Royal Oak had just opened for lunch, and since the plan was to walk all the way back to Darne Lodge, we went in. It had taken us more or less exactly an hour to get here, so it would probably take us about twice as long to get back up the hill.

It wasn’t Rosie behind the bar today, but a man past the full bloom of youth. Perhaps he was Rosie’s husband. He greeted us heartily, and asked if I wanted some food. I said that I was indeed intending to have lunch, and sat down at the same table as the time before. He came over with a menu, but explained that today’s special – chicken breast and broccoli with fried potatoes – was not on it. He had a tattoo on his lower arm:
Leeds United 4ever
. I said I rather fancied the chicken breast. He nodded and asked if I minded if he gave the dog a few treats as well. I had the impression that Castor also nodded, and a couple of minutes later he was fully occupied guzzling down a plate of mixed meat trimmings and drinking half a litre of water before dozing off in front of the fire.

No further conversation took place and no other guests turned up during the forty-five minutes we stayed at The Royal Oak. I tried not to think about the face in the window – and that gesture with the hand over the young man’s throat – with only limited success.

Before starting back towards Winsford Hill – this time on the other side of Halse Lane, and over rather more open ground if I had read the map correctly – we went for a short walk round the village. There can’t have been more than about fifty houses, but on the other side of the church I discovered a sign pointing to something called ‘Community Computer Centre’. It turned out to be a low, modern-looking building with white plaster and featureless office-type windows, and as we passed it I noticed that it was open. We went inside and found ourselves in a room looking like a school classroom with about twenty rather old-fashioned computers. Sitting at a slightly larger table was a dark-haired woman of about thirty, chewing at a pencil and staring at a screen. She looked up and smiled when she saw me.

And smiled even more broadly when she saw Castor.

Good, I thought. A human being.

‘Welcome! How can I help you? What a handsome dog! A ridgeback, methinks.’

‘He’s a very good friend,’ I said, without adding that he was the only one I had. ‘I gather you have links to the internet here, is that right?’

‘It certainly is. It would be a bit much if we called ourselves a Computer Centre and didn’t have a link to the web, don’t you think? Are you travelling through?’

I hesitated for a second before explaining that in fact I was living just outside the village. At Darne Lodge, if she knew where that was. Everything suddenly seemed very straightforward: I didn’t understand why I had been so reticent at The Royal Oak last week. If Mr Tawking wanted to let his house to a foreign woman writer for the whole winter, it was surely not impossible that he might have mentioned it to others, even if he was a miserable old curmudgeon. There was every reason to suppose that my presence up there was well known in the village.

‘Oh, so you’re the one, are you?’ said the woman with a smile. ‘I heard that somebody was going to be living there for quite some time. I’m Margaret, by the way . . . Margaret Allen. Welcome to Winsford, the end of the world.’

‘Maria. Maria Anderson.’

We shook hands. Castor flopped down onto the floor with a sigh. I took the opportunity to introduce him as well. Margaret knelt down and stroked him over his neck and back. I felt the need to burst into tears, but managed to control it. There were occasions when weeping should be kept under control, even Gudrun Ewerts would agree with that.

‘I take it you don’t have an internet connection up there,’ said Margaret when she stood up again. ‘But you can come down here whenever you like. We’re usually open between eleven in the morning and six in the evening, but if there’s anything urgent you can always knock on the door of that little stone cottage next to the church – it says Biggs on the door. Alfred Biggs and I take it in turns to sit here, and he never says no to anybody, I can promise you that.’

I thanked her and said that I had no urgent need to contact anybody just now, but I would be back in a few days’ time.

‘Isn’t it a bit lonely up there? Forgive me for asking, but . . .’

She burst out laughing, evidently embarrassed by her presumptuousness. ‘I speak out of turn. I’m sorry, but we haven’t had a single client so far today – most people have a link in their own homes nowadays. It was a bit different when we started this place fifteen years ago. There’s been lots of talk about closing it down, but we do get quite a few young people calling in after school. And there are in fact a few families who are still not connected. I don’t know if it’s because they can’t afford it, or for some other reason . . .’

It was obvious that she wanted to talk, and mainly out of politeness I asked if she knew anything about Darne Lodge. When it was built, and why, for instance.

‘Oh yes,’ said Margaret enthusiastically. ‘There’s an awful lot to say about Darne Lodge. Didn’t old Tawking tell you anything?’

I shook my head.

‘No, I don’t suppose he would, that old miseryboots. Would you like a cup of tea?’

*

And while we drank tea and ate some biscuits with some black but rather tasty goo evidently called Branston Pickle, I was provided with a fair amount of information about the house I was living in – and would be living in for the best part of six months. I had the impression that despite her comparative youth, Margaret Allen knew more than most about what was what in the village. She also said that both she and her husband were active in the local folklore society, and in addition to her unpaid work at the computer centre she worked as a librarian in Dulverton.

But anyway, Darne Lodge. Well, Margaret recalled that it was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century as the residence of a certain Selwyn Byrnescotte. He was a soldier who returned home as some kind of hero after the Napoleonic wars – the Battle of Trafalgar and two other sea battles that Margaret named, but I didn’t recognize. The problem with this Selwyn was that even before he had gone to war he had been disowned by his family – or at least by his father, Lord Neville – on the Byrnescotte estate roughly midway between Winsford and Exford. The background was top secret, but probably had to do with homosexuality. In any case, the Lord had Darne Lodge built so that his decorated but wayward next-oldest son would have somewhere to live (had it been his eldest son, things would have been much more complicated) at a fairly safe distance away from the family seat. However, Selwyn didn’t like being isolated on the moor and soon moved to London, where he led a dissolute and debauched life for several years. The war was still raging, but he was unable to return to the battlefield because of some injury or other. He came back to Darne Lodge to die – it was the same year as the Battle of Waterloo – and he hanged himself from one of the roof beams. As a result of his London excesses he also had another serious injury: half his face had been shot away in a duel. Apparently he was not a pretty sight when he was eventually discovered and cut down after several months. Nobody knew that he had returned to Darne Lodge.