Touchstone (18 page)

He returned his attention to the walls. The wallpaper here was blue and brown, in stripes similar to those in his room. He left the room and went through the corridor into the middle room, which had been converted to storage and was stacked high with chests, trunks, and folded bedding. He measured its width with his eyes, then went back into Grey’s bedroom, walking directly over to the joining wall to explore the wallpaper stripes with his finger-tips. How many walls had he searched in this fashion, he wondered, in the seven years since the Volstead Act went through?

“The way most hidden doors get discovered is,” he said in the tone of a lecturer, “that the top cuts across the wall where there shouldn’t be a seam. But if the entire wall is made up of a series of doors, floor to picture-rail—ah.” Leaning against the wall freed the latch, revealing a built-in cupboard, two sheets of wallpaper wide. Behind this section of false wall was a chest of drawers; the next had the room’s clothes-rail. When Stuyvesant was finished, six doors, each some thirty inches wide and eight feet tall, stood ajar.

Grey picked up his valise and put it onto a shelf in the wall, and walked down the row of doors, pressing them shut.

“Did I find all the secrets?” Stuyvesant asked him.

“Not quite. But I’d like some fresh air before the others arrive. Shall we go?”

“What’s in the other rooms?”

“The barn has seven bedrooms, no two alike. The most interesting is the one directly underneath yours, which is made up to look like a crypt, complete with a
trompe l’oeil
wall of skulls. Oddly popular with certain kinds of Hurleigh guests, although I didn’t take you for someone whose taste runs in that direction. Also, the room across from yours is said to have one of the country’s more impressive collections of taxidermy. Somewhat macabre, but again, a surprising number of guests like to stay there. Here, this room’s rather fun.”

He opened the door directly across from his, and gestured the American inside.

Stuyvesant came to a halt in the doorway. “How the hell did they get that in here?”
That
was a full-sized, open-topped, gilt-encrusted ceremonial coach the size of a small barge. The wheels had been removed and permanent steps added on either side, and where the seats had been, surrounded by the carvings and the gilt, was now a feather bed laid with shiny gold satin bed-clothes.

“I believe they hoisted it into the barn and the work went on around it. You want to see the other rooms?”

Stuyvesant raised a hand in protest and said, “I think that’s enough for right now. That fresh air you were talking about sounds good.”

“Fine, but do not let me neglect to show you the chapel during the week-end. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

Stuyvesant had never seen anything like the entire Hurleigh getup: Roman architecture; servants dressed like family; guest rooms with trees and skulls and gilt coaches; a passion for foxhounds; regular grist for the gossip rags; and, it would appear, some kind of radical political doctrine.

It wasn’t just Hurleigh House: the Hurleighs themselves were not exactly what he’d expected of an ancient titled English family.

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
HEY LEFT THE BARN
through a narrow door set into the western wall. Grey launched himself fearlessly down the rather shaky external stairway, but Stuyvesant took the steps more cautiously, lingering a moment at the top to survey the view. While they’d been inside, the bright spring sun of their arrival had slipped into an afternoon that held a lingering taste of winter. The sun preserved some of the winter’s low angle, which meant that portions of the opposite slope of the valley were in shade, while Hurleigh House and the river below it were dazzled in light.

Considering the dampness that came with having running water two hundred yards from the front door, Hurleigh House’s site was surprisingly comfortable. The valley floor might be an absolute swamp after a heavy rain and that tidy little ford rendered impassible, but the ridge behind Stuyvesant rose well above the chimneypots, sheltering the house’s back from wind while its face collected all the winter sunlight in the world.

Whoever had chosen this place for his house had paid attention to detail.

(Although Stuyvesant wasn’t too sure what that long-dead Hurleigh would have made of his descendant’s whimsical conversion of the barn.)

He trotted down the stairs, catching up with Grey on the foot-path that ran through the open trees.

“Parts of the place look pretty old.”

“The barn is Medieval, as are the Hall and parts of the kitchen. Fair bits of the east wing are Tudor. We’ll have drinks in the solar, which hasn’t changed since it was built in 1577—the date’s on the fireplace. I say, will those shoes do for hillside scrambling, or are they only good for pavements?”

“One way to find out,” Stuyvesant answered. Fortunately, when they left the woods and entered the open grasslands, the vegetation was dry enough that he did not slither too much, and he did not drop too far behind Grey as they left the path and climbed towards the ridge top. It took concentration, though, and Stuyvesant had no opportunity to look around him until they reached what Grey had called the Peak, a knob of rock resembling a construction of wet sand dribbled from a giant child’s beach shovel.

The Peak overlooked the stream, and was high enough that the countryside beyond stretched out, with the spires of the distant Hurleigh village church rising beyond the trees and hedgerows.

Grey was looking, not at the valley, but at the grass hillside that dropped away on the other side; his face wore an odd, bittersweet expression. There was nothing particularly compelling about the hillside, just a long sweep of grass stretching almost to the stream below—although if Stuyvesant had been eight years old, he might have found the slope irresistible.

Grey finally turned away and continued across the uneven surface, arms outstretched for balance, to drop with an experienced twist of the hips onto a flattish lump. Stuyvesant followed, choosing a lower but somewhat smoother rock for the seat of his own trousers.

He sat, and he looked.

There really wasn’t a lot to say about what he saw. How can a man comment on perfection? The house, the valley, the width of the stream, the cows grazing on the opposite hillside: simple, ancient, and unmistakably English.

Grey heard his faint sigh, and nodded. “I used to spend hours up here. Life at home went through some difficult patches, but up here I could be free. I would sit up here, belittling my problems against three thousand years of history.”

“We Americans usually go for the night sky when we need to feel small. With us, a thing is old when our grandfather saw it.”

“Nearest anyone can figure, the name Hurleigh is a corruption of the Old English
hohley,
with
hoh
meaning heel or ridge, and
ley
a clearing in a wood.” He stretched his left hand in the direction of the house, then moved it to encompass the higher ground behind them. “The ridge behind us is a foot-path that’s been used since before Stonehenge.” The hand moved again, back in the direction of the house; Stuyvesant noticed that Grey’s fingers seemed to feel the contour of the countryside they moved over, reading the texture of its history like a blind man reading Braille. “When the stables were built, workmen uncovered a cache of Saxon coins. And between them—you see the uneven bit of ground to the right of those three flowering trees?”

“The boulder pushing up the grass?”

“I think if you dug down, you’d find that boulder was a bit of Roman Britain. Some rich man’s villa, a general’s escape from the battlefield, perhaps, or a merchant who decided not to go home again.”

“Is that what Grandpa Hurleigh dug up?”

“No. I’m not sure anyone knows it’s there—I’ve just noticed it myself, although I must have sat and stared at that hillside for a hundred hours, over the years.”

After a while, Stuyvesant took out his cigarette case, thumbing it meditatively before he opened it and offered one to his companion. Grey shook his head; Stuyvesant took one out and lit it. The line of the shadow crept into the middle of the stream now, the water all but hidden by the reeds.

Stuyvesant glanced sideways. “You going to be okay, here?”

By way of response, perhaps, Grey reached into his coat and drew out a decorative silver flask. He unscrewed the top and took a swallow, then held it out for Stuyvesant. The American hesitated; he could smell that booze with the explosive effect. But he accepted the flask and ventured a sip. The stuff still brought tears to his eyes. However, once the immediate vapors had dispersed, the odor of the drink did not linger. You’d hardly know Grey had been drinking.

“So what is that made of?”

“Mostly potatoes, I believe. The flavor comes either from a dash of petrol or a dose of rotting plums, perhaps both. As I said, I do not enquire too closely. And to answer your question, I do not know if I shall be all right. At the moment I am. With luck, I shall remain so.” He took another swig, then screwed on the top.

“You don’t have to stay,” Stuyvesant told him. “If you don’t feel up to it, all you have to do is introduce me to your sister and we’ll turn around and get back on the train. I can take it from there, in London.”

Grey turned the flask over and over in his hands. After a minute, he spoke in a meditative voice. “I have grown very tired of my limitations. Even before you showed up in my yard, the thought of being forever condemned to a few square miles of deserted countryside was becoming intolerable. There are times when I stand on the Beacon and the call of the sea below is nearly irresistible. If Cornwall is a home from which I can come and go, I can live there with ease; if it is a prison, I cannot.”

“So, this is a test, coming here?”

“An experiment, perhaps. To see precisely where my boundaries lie.”

And, Stuyvesant thought, to see precisely what it cost to nudge them out a little. “Just so you’re not letting Carstairs get you into a corner.”

Grey’s mouth twitched with bitter humor. “My only corner,” he said, “is the one I get into myself.”

Stuyvesant glanced sharply at his companion, then looked away and drawled, “Well, personally, I’d have thought conversation with your neighbor Robbie would offer about as much intellectual stimulation as a fellow could take. But then I’m not an Oxford man.”

The easy grin slid back into place. “Aow, the Robbie leaves me lampered, ee do.”

“Well, I’ll tell you right now, thank you for doing this to help me out. I do honestly think it’s important. And if there’s anything I can do to make things easier for you, just let—”

Grey jumped to his feet and Stuyvesant broke off, thinking for a wild moment that the man was about to enact his threatened dive off the nearest high rock. But once upright, Grey stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the other side of the valley: A car was coming down the road that led to the house.

Without a word, Grey scrambled off the rocks and limped swiftly down the path. Before Stuyvesant reached the foot-path, Grey had disappeared into the first stand of trees. The man’s urgency was baffling, but contagious, and Stuyvesant paused only to shut the snicket latch on the gate Grey had left open, lest wandering livestock invade the gardens. He found the second gate standing open as well, closed it, and walked along the north side of Hurleigh House to the drive.

Grey was standing forward on his toes, hands clenched in his pockets. The butler, Gallagher, came out of the house, followed by Deedee; the four of them waited.

The clatter of a laboring engine badly in need of adjusting echoed down the valley as the motorcar climbed the road from the ford. A minute later, it came into sight, a seven-year-old Morris trailing a black haze. It cleared the hill, entering a patch of sunlight: Grey settled back on his heels and his shoulders lost their tension; a moment later, Stuyvesant realized simultaneously that this unlikely rattletrap was the Hurleigh estate’s transportation, and that the passenger briefly illuminated by a flash of sunlight was not the passenger Grey had been expecting.

But not a stranger, either: Grey’s hands came out of his pockets, the fingers relaxed, and he glanced at Stuyvesant with a twinkle.

“My sister,” he said.

Whom had he been expecting?

Chapter Twenty-Five

T
HE CAR HAD NOT COME TO A FULL STOP
when its back door flew open and a diminutive blonde figure launched herself at Grey, nearly sending him head over heels into the hedge.

For an instant, England stood still for Harris Stuyvesant, as his mind shouted,
Helen!
But the message came up against a wall of self control, because of course this was not Helen, it was a stranger, with the wrong hair and green eyes where they should have been blue. He shoved the escaping remnants of memory into their box and nailed down the top.

He watched Grey swing the blonde creature around and felt as if he’d had a sharp kick in the gut. The girl laughed into her brother’s beaming face, and Stuyvesant found himself grinning at her exuberance. Even Gallagher and Deedee looked on with fondness until they remembered themselves and bent to the task of the luggage.

Grey set his sister down and, his arm draped across her shoulders, turned to Stuyvesant. “Stuy—” He broke off. “What is it?”

The American just raised a pair of innocent eyebrows. Grey frowned, but got the message, and went on. “Stuyvesant, this is my sister, Sarah. Sal, this is Harris Stuyvesant.”

“Ma’am,” he said, raising his hat.

She planted a hand on her own absurdly tiny headgear and tipped her head to look up at him: pale yellow hair, wind-blown from the motorcar’s open window; dancing green eyes, the exact color of her brother’s, with the first crinkles of laugh-lines at their corners; a delicious spray of freckles decorating her slightly upturned nose and the V of skin left exposed by her frock. Nothing like Helen, he was relieved to see.

“An American!” she declared.

Stuyvesant wasn’t sure what had given him away, his dress, manner, or the one syllable he had spoken, but he nodded, feeling remarkably large and clumsy. “That’s right.”

“I adore Americans. They always make me want to run out and buy a pair of cowboy boots.”

“You’d look charming in them, I’m sure, Miss Grey.” It was hard going to keep his eyes away from the freckles in the hollow of her throat, which had to be just about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

“Oh, Bennett, this is just too clever of you, to bring me an American to make me laugh. Where on earth did you find him?”

“He found me. I was minding my own business one day a couple of summers ago, digging my potatoes and thinking my thoughts, when this figure appeared up the lane with a rucksack, stick, and walking boots. Frankly, I think he’d taken a wrong turn on the way to Land’s End, but being an immensely competent sort of chap generally, he’d never admit to being lost. He works for the Ford company—although I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s sold out from his working-class beginnings and wears a white collar now. When I heard he was going to be over here, teaching the natives how to sell the American product, I thought I’d bring him to you.”

“Like a dog bringing a dug-up bone,” Stuyvesant added, reaching out to wrap his oversized mitt around the small hand Sarah Grey was offering.

She laughed—a surprisingly deep, rich laugh, not the giggle her appearance led one to expect—and let her cool fingers rest in his for a moment before turning to her brother. “I say, Bennett, I know it’s far too early to expect drinks
chez
Hurleigh, but really, your little sister is feeling a little moldy after that pig of a journey, and she could use just a tiny bit of a jolt. Can you possibly summon a G and T?”

Grey raised his eyes to consult the butler. “I shall bring ice straightaway, sir. Miss Grey, Lady Laura suggested that you be given the Blue Room, if that is acceptable?”

“No, I’ll have a room in the barn, and leave the house for the family.”

Gallagher’s face kept its control at this suggestion, but only just. “Miss, there is a sufficiency of rooms in the house for all, I should think—”

“My dear Mr. Gallagher, I’ve been coming here since I was in pigtails. At that time, I stayed in the house because it wouldn’t have been proper not to. But this is 1926 and I’m grown up enough to choose for myself. I’ll be perfectly all right in the barn. My brother will act as chaperone.” The authority in her voice was unexpected but nicely judged, and it silenced the butler. Before Gallagher could come up with a decisive counter-argument, she asked, “Has anyone claimed the wave room yet?”

The butler cast a pleading look at the rebel’s brother, who shook his head to say that Gallagher was on his own. The man sighed. “The wave room is free, Miss. The wave room,” he commanded the other two, and they split up, Deedee and the driver heading towards the barn with Sarah’s bags, Gallagher to the house, disapproval in every thread of his black coat.

“You mustn’t torment Gallagher, Sal,” Grey said.

“I refuse to be cosseted like a Victorian maiden,” she said. “Besides, the house smells of dog.”

The Greys wandered after the luggage, Sarah’s arm through that of her brother, Stuyvesant walking behind as the two blond siblings chattered about the health of their mother, a business venture of their Canadian brother, and the expected birth of his second child. They might have been twins, he thought: Her hair was a shade lighter than his, now that his barber had trimmed the sun-bleached ends, and despite heeled shoes she was an inch shorter, but their eyes were identical, and the profiles they turned to each other shared the same nose. Even the tilt of their heads were mirror images, tipped towards the other as they walked, her shoulder tucked into his biceps.

So this was the wedge Aldous Carstairs had used to detach Grey from his Cornish stronghold, Stuyvesant mused—or maybe the bait on the hook of Carstairs’ Project. In either case, very attractive bait she was, with the first cloche hat he’d seen that didn’t resemble an overturned bucket, a silk frock that failed to conceal the unfashionable curves of her body, and a set of calves that made him appreciate the recent rise in hems.

Inside the barn door, Grey’s sister turned left and made a bee-line for the last room on the right.

When he looked inside, Stuyvesant saw that the décor here was, indeed, a wave, with the bed its boat, riding a building swell of gray-blue water that rose unevenly up two of the walls. The furniture seemed about to pitch and toss on the blue-green rug. Sarah looked up at Stuyvesant’s face and let fly with that rich laugh again.

“A mite disorientating, isn’t it?”

“You don’t wake up sea-sick?”

“Never. Although I dreamt once that I was swimming with dolphins.”

He blinked at the picture conjured by his mind’s eye, this young woman rising and dodging through the waves among those sleek creatures that had played alongside the
Spirit of New Orleans
three weeks before. Fortunately, whatever he might have blurted out was interrupted by the clearing of a throat, and they turned to see Gallagher, carrying a tray with a sweating silver ice-bucket.

“Shall I place this in the general room, sir?” he asked Grey.

“Oh, bless you,” Sarah answered, and they moved across the hallway, leaving Deedee to the unpacking.

With only the room’s name to go by, Stuyvesant was braced for anything: a life-sized statue of Napoleon, perhaps, or frescoed groupings of high-ranking military personnel throughout the ages, but in fact it was just a comfortable room with a fireplace and a number of sofas and overstuffed chairs: general-purpose, rather than military general. The furniture was upholstered in maroon and dark blue leather, but the paintings on the walls were unexpectedly
avantgarde
—Stuyvesant recognized a Picasso and a Matisse, and there were several more by artists whose work he had never seen before. It was an enormously attractive and comfortable room, the afternoon sun through the west windows making the colors glow like stained glass. The fire was welcome, although it made it almost too warm. Gallagher placed the tray on the well-laden drinks cupboard in one corner and asked Grey, “Would you care for—”

“Thank you, Gallagher, we can take it from here. I’m sure you have a hundred things waiting for you.”

“Very well, sir.”

“I—sorry,” Grey said, as his word interrupted the butler’s progress out the door. “I just wondered if you’d heard when the Family are expected back.”

“Her Grace generally returns near dark; His Grace is in his study; Lady Pamela is expected back from Gloucester at any time; Lady Constance and Lady Evelyn are dressing for dinner; Lord Daniel and Lady Laura indicated that they would return in time for cocktails. Lord Patrick is in the library with a friend.”

“Heavens, the full complement of Hurleighs will assemble. Thank you, Gallagher. We’ll change and be over in half an hour or so.”

“Thank you, sir.” With a brief dip of the head, he left.

The moment the door shut, Grey wheeled on his sister. “What happened to you?”

“How on earth—?”

“You didn’t want Gallagher to know, but something happened. You’re hurt.”

“Oh just—it’s nothing. A little bang, just shook me up a little. I’ll tell you about it, but please, Bennett, you mustn’t mother-hen me.”

He kept his eyes on her with that listening attitude Stuyvesant had seen before, and then the tension left him and he straightened, knuckling his temple as if to soothe a residue of ache.

“Stuyvesant, would you pour my sister a drink? She puts on a wild front, but in fact she prefers it heavy on the tonic water.”

Stuyvesant splashed gin over ice and filled the glass with fizz for Sarah Grey. He scooped some ice in another glass, poured a generous measure of gin over it, and raised a questioning eyebrow at Grey, who made a keep-going gesture with a finger. Stuyvesant tipped the bottle again until Grey nodded; maybe five ounces of gin. He poured a dash of water on top, gave him the drink, and made a considerably weaker one for himself.

Grey held his up, and said, “To friends and family.”

“Friends and family,” they echoed. Sarah took a thirsty swallow, kicked off her shoes, and pulled her stockinged feet up into the large chair with a sigh of contentment. She had watched the amount of gin going into her brother’s glass without comment, but Stuyvesant thought that some of her cheerfulness had faded.

“So, Sal my gal,” Grey said as he dropped into the chair beside hers. “Give over.”

“Honestly, Bennett, it was nothing. A fight broke out on the train, just short of Oxford Station, and I got a bit jostled. It was more unpleasant than frightening.”

“A fight, actually on the train?”

“There were some boys who’d been down in London playing at constables—practicing for the Strike, you know? And they’d stopped in for a couple of drinks before they got on the train, plus they’d brought flasks with them, and as the spires came into view they picked an argument with an elderly man who’d been harrumphing his way through the newspaper. One of the boys said—well, it hardly matters what he said, it was deucedly rude, and the man got up and threatened to thrash him for his impertinence—I think that’s what he said, his accent was rather thick—and that brought the rest of the carriage into it—”

“—including you,” her brother interjected.

“Well, yes, I could hardly let them abuse the poor fellow, and they were such self-righteous prigs, you can’t imagine.”

“I can, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose. But it actually looked as though they might take out their play-constable truncheons and use them on the fellow, and I stood up and went over, so that he wouldn’t be all on his lonesome, don’t you know? And one of the boys fell over, actually tripped over his own great feet, and bumped into me. I banged my head against the wall and my hat fell off, but it served to sober them up so it was in a good cause.”

The two men stared at her. Stuyvesant wanted to get out the car and drive into Oxford to hunt down a pack of drunk students, but Grey kept himself well under control.

“Sarah, sister dear, you really mustn’t get into brawls with drunken undergraduates. Your impetuosity will get you into hot water one of these days.”

“It was just an accident, they were terribly apologetic, but if I hadn’t intervened they might have hit the old man.”

“What newspaper was the old gent reading?”

“Well…”

“The
Workers’ Weekly?
”

“Oh, it might have been, but so what? A man has the right to read his paper, hasn’t he?”

“What I’d like to know is what a group of undergraduates were doing in the third class compartment. Yes,” Grey said, although he hadn’t been looking in Stuyvesant’s direction to see the surprise on his face, “my sister considers it an obligation to travel with the horny-handed sons of toil rather than splurge on comfort.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if the ticket-seller in London had seen their state and refused to place them in first class.”

“Thus getting them off to an irritable start.”

“If I’d been a man, I’d have pushed one or two of them out of the window,” she declared.

“I have no doubt that you would make a top-rank bare-knuckle fighter, Sal.”

“But you, dear brother,” she said with an air of transferring the spotlight. “What on earth brought you out of Cornwall?”

“As I told you in my letter, I wanted to see you.”

“You could have come to London. Or home. I’m there quite a lot, and you could’ve said hello to Mother in the bargain.”

“I didn’t want to see Mother, I wanted to see you. And Stuyvesant happened to be in the country, so when you wrote to tell me you were going to be here, I thought it a once-in-a-lifetime chance to show the old man one of the more interesting institutions of the English social world. I did send the Duchess a wire asking if it would be too rude to invite myself and a friend. She wrote back one word:
Pleased.
”

“You came to Hurleigh House to show your friend the sights?” Sarah sounded frankly disbelieving.

Grey downed an inch of almost pure liquid courage, then said, “I’ve been feeling better. Stronger. I wanted to see if I could handle it.”

Sarah softened instantly, and stretched across to squeeze his hand. “I’m glad, Bennett. Really so glad.”

Which response made the gin go sour in Stuyvesant’s mouth. Still, in a manner of speaking, Grey’s explanation might be almost true.