Peculiar Ground

Needed or not, Nicholas wanted to be there. Packing took no time. He ran Underhill to ground in the dining room, where he was upbraiding a maid for using lilies in the flower arrangements (it was his rule that flowers for the dining room must be scentless), and asked him for train times, a man to bring his suitcase down, and a car to the station, all before he’d announced his departure to his hosts.

Christopher went white. Lil, apparently incurious as to what kind of crisis it was that was calling him back, acquiesced in his change of plan with an ease which would have been hurtful if she hadn’t hung onto his arm and followed him out to the front steps. (No chance of a private word with Helen.) There, beneath the portico, which was that patchwork of a house’s only chill and pompous part, she looked him seriously in the eye and said, ‘Dear Nicholas, you know, you’re a very good friend.’ And then there was a jump in time, like a gramophone needle leaping a groove, as they both thought that what was happening was, beneath all the enjoyable bustle, perhaps deathly.

The next train wasn’t for three-quarters of an hour. Time for Nicholas to walk to the station, and get a bit of mind-settling peace. Armstrong’s son Jack had brought the Bentley round. Ridiculous for such a routine errand, but the boy loved the enormous green car. Nicholas gave him his bag, and said, ‘Thanks, but I’m walking. I’ll see you on the platform.’

*

Avenues radiated out from the house. Horse-chestnut trees, heavy graduated layers of dense green, darkened the drive which led downhill. Beyond the twin lodges – stocky little Doric temples with incongruous back gardens full of hollyhocks and beanpoles – the drive crossed the river on a stone-parapeted bridge, and, leaving the beautiful artifice of the park, re-entered the world of cowpats and thistles and telegraph poles, rising again towards the village between the fields of the home farm. The car went that way with his luggage, but Nicholas veered off to the left, following a path trodden by deer.

Approaching him aslant came Hugo Lane. Still invisible to each other, the two men were following lines that would intersect near the end of Tower Light. Wully’s progress – pale hay-coloured against pale hay, snuffling, chasing what, chasing nothing, chasing anything – was the embroidery looping across the steady weft of the men’s progress and the warp of the marching trees. Each was startled by their meeting.

‘Going back to the Great Wen?’ Already Nicholas had a whiff of the city about him.

‘Have to, alas.’

Hugo had gone home for picnic tea under the copper beech with Chloe and the children. Milk and jam doughnuts. Who can eat half a doughnut without once licking the sugar off their lips? Dickie had laughed so hard at Nell’s sugar moustache he had snorted into his milk, splattering it all over the tartan rug and getting some of it the wrong way down inside himself as well, leading to gurgling and back-slapping and eventually tears. When Heather appeared to begin bathtime rituals, Hugo whistled up Wully, took a twelve-bore from the gun cupboard, filled his pockets with cartridges and walked back into the park.