THE OLD HERM stands at the crossroads, looking west, guarding the secrets of a thousand years. He was known as Mercury or Hermes, the small god of travellers who kept company with those other gods of woods and streams. These Old Ones are forgotten now; those who worshipped at their shrines, poured a libation, left offerings of food, are long gone. But the old Herm remains, though his plinth is smashed and his body is crumbling away. The blank eyes, the faintly smiling lips and the rim of beard are still visible to anyone who stoops to look, pushing aside the wild flowers and fading grasses that hang like dreadlocks around his stony brow. He watches over this ancient way and those who travel it.
The dogs appear first around the bend in the lane, tails waving, still eager and energetic despite their walk. Their liver and white coats are sleek and shining, wet from their splashings in the stream, and the larger spaniel carries a ball in his mouth. Mungo follows more slowly with his elderly mutt, Mopsa, pottering along behind him. The August sunshine is hot and Mungo has slung his jersey around his waist, tying the sleeves in a loose knot. He stands for a moment, stretching in the warm dry air, snuffing up the scents of new-cut grass and honeysuckle. The dogs come racing back to him. Boz drops the ball at his feet and Sammy makes a grab for it but Mungo is quicker. He seizes the ball and throws it as far as he can. They skitter after it, jostling and barging each other, and he laughs out loud as he watches them. As usual, he is aware of the past all around him: the ghosts of Roman soldiers marching to the long-vanished fort; a line of laden packhorses plodding down to the Horse Brook, where the original granite clapper bridge still crosses the narrow stream.
Way back, when his name was beginning to be on everyone’s lips, he’d acted in and directed a film that rocked the British box offices and became an international hit. This was its location: this valley, these crossways, the ford at the horse bridge. The vanished wooden fort had risen again and the air was once more riven with the clash of swords and the shouts of soldiers. The camera crew spent many rainy hours drinking coffee in Mungo’s kitchen in the long-since converted smithy whilst the older members of the cast retired to their trailers in the paddock at Home Farm.
Isobel Trent was cast in the role of the wayward local beauty opposite his tough Roman general. They’d become cult figures; his films always successful, their partnership so magical. The media treated them like royalty; photographed them, gossiped about them, conjectured at the depth of their relationship.
‘Let them talk,’ Izzy said. ‘Much the best way, Mungo darling. Puts them right off the scent.’
Her secret, stormy affair with Ralph was over by then. He’d disappeared out of their lives for ever, after that final, terrible argument in Mungo’s kitchen. How young they’d been; how serious and intense their emotions: his own rage and helplessness, Izzy’s tears, and her despair, and Ralph’s cruel indifference.
Mungo pauses at the crossroads, makes his obeisance to the old Herm, and follows the dogs up the steps, through the gate and into the cobbled courtyard. In the lane silence gathers again, shadows creep beneath twisty boughs of ash and thorn. The old Herm remains, watching the pathways, guarding his secrets.
Mungo towels down the dogs, pours them fresh water and leaves them to lie panting in the courtyard. He pushes the kettle on to the hotplate, pulls it off again as the telephone rings.
‘Mungo. It’s Kit.’
Kit Chadwick. Her voice is warm and eager and he sees her vividly in his mind’s eye: ashy brown hair, smoky blue eyes, slender, restless.
‘I hope this is to tell me you’re coming down,’ he says. ‘God, it’d be good to see you, sweetie.’
‘Well, it is, if you’ll have me. London’s sweltering, and something a bit weird has happened.’ Her voice is suddenly uncertain. ‘Honestly, Mungo. I really need to talk to you.’
‘Then get the next train out.’ He is alert, interested, but knows it’s best not to question her now. ‘Or will you drive?’
‘I’d rather. You know me. I’d like to stay for a few days, if that’s OK, and I might need to be a bit independent.’
‘Fine,’ he says easily. ‘So when?’
‘Later, when it’s cooler. I’ll be with you, say, nine-ish. Not too late?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And listen. I remembered earlier. It’s Izzy’s birthday.’
A tiny pause. ‘So it is. We’ll have a delicious little birthday supper. Gnocchi suit you? And I’ve got a bottle of Villa Masetti chilling in the fridge.’
‘Sounds like heaven.’
‘Go and pack then. And drive carefully.’
Suddenly he can’t be bothered to make tea. He goes to stand at the stable door, looking out across the recumbent forms of the dogs into the cobbled courtyard. The big kitchen, where a long line of smiths once plied their trade, has blackened beams supporting its ceiling, and a slate floor and it is still the heart of the house which – over the years – has been extended to include the adjoining barn and converted into a very comfortable home.
‘Camilla and I want you to have the smithy and the barn,’ Archie said to him, forty years before. ‘We think it’s unfair that Dad’s left it all to me just because he didn’t approve of you being an actor.’
Mungo was very touched but not surprised: the gesture was typical of his older brother’s sense of fair play. Archie, a partner in their late father’s law practice in Exeter, still had the house, Home Farm and two small cottages, but he was welcome to them. Mungo loved the smithy. It was a perfect place to keep as a bolt-hole from London; coming down on the train from Paddington with his friends, giving parties. Camilla aided and abetted him. She loved his theatre friends, filled his fridge, asked them all up to the house for dinner. Pretty Camilla: fair hair, fair skin inclining to freckles, generous, practical. She managed Archie, their children and the dogs with cheerful competence. His friends adored her, brought her presents, played with the boys, whilst Archie watched with contented tolerance. Archie and Camilla were his still centre. They’d get a babysitter so as to dash up to London to watch him perform on each first night, going backstage to congratulate him, and camping overnight in his tiny flat. And when he became famous they revelled in his success, shared in his good fortune and celebrated on a grander scale.
Leaning on the stable door in the sunshine, Mungo reflects on the glory days. It was good, back then, to return to his bolt-hole; sometimes alone, more often with a few special friends. He’d never much liked being alone. In those early days Izzy had been his most constant companion: Izzy – and a little later, Ralph.
Izzy’s birthday. He hadn’t needed the reminder.
Darling Izzy: sexy, complicated, highly strung. She’d started in musical theatre: Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Lois Lane in Kiss Me, Kate. He saw the potential actress, masked by low self-esteem and dramatic mood swings, and he persuaded her to audition for Puck in The Dream at the RSC, and later for Ariel in The Tempest. These roles brought her the attention of the critics, and acclaim – and, later, her partnership with him brought her great fame – but her heart remained faithful to those early days.
‘I’m just a song-and-dance man,’ she’d say. ‘I’m terrified that suddenly everyone will realize I’m a fraud.’
They were in rep in Birmingham just beginning rehearsals for Twelfth Night when she first met Ralph Stead. Izzy was cast as Maria, Ralph as Sebastian, Mungo as Feste. They shared gloomy digs and rehearsed in draughty church halls, but they were happy, the three of them. Izzy taught Mungo how to project his voice, singing with him to encourage his light tenor voice: ‘Come away, come away, death’ and ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy’. They practised alone in the hall when everyone else had gone home, Izzy picking out the tune on the ancient piano. One evening she stopped suddenly, looked up at him as he leaned beside her.
‘Oh, darling, isn’t it hell? I think I’m in love with Ralph.’
Mungo remembers the mix of anxiety and excitement in her brown eyes, the odd clutch of fear in his gut; a brief, sharp foreshadowing of disaster.
‘So what, sweetie?’ he said lightly. ‘So am I. Everyone is in love with Ralph.’
‘Are you jealous?’ she asked him much later, when she and Ralph became lovers. ‘Don’t be, Mungo. I need to know you’re on my side.’
‘I’m always on your side,’ he answered. And it was true.
As he leans on the stable door it seems that he can hear her voice, singing somewhere from the lane below him near the old Herm: ‘A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day.’
When he finished singing that, on the first night, alone on the stage at the end of the play, there was a moment’s hush in the theatre before the audience exploded into ecstatic applause. Even now his eyes fill with tears as he remembers it; remembers the warm congratulations of the young cast, Ralph’s slap on the back, and Izzy’s hug, her voice breathing in his ear: ‘Oh, well done, well done, darling. That was just perfect.’
Just perfect until terrible old love spoiled it all so disastrously.
‘Damn and blast!’ says Mungo violently, surprising himself. After all, why should the past disturb him so much today? Because it’s Izzy’s birthday?
The dogs stir. Silent and alert, they stare towards the gate and then jump up, tails wagging. The gate opens and Camilla comes into the courtyard. She’s wearing an old denim skirt with a faded cotton shirt and flip-flops; her fair hair is tucked behind her ears and she looks youthful: the Camilla of those old, happy days. For a moment the past is vivid with him again, then she moves out of the shadows and he sees her clearly.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’ve come to collect the dogs. Have they been good?’
Mungo is glad that she is here. It is difficult to imagine a ghost in Camilla’s calm, sensible presence.
‘Good boys, then. Good fellows.’ Praising the dogs, who leap about her, she bends to receive their welcome, stoops to stroke Mopsa, who beats her tail briefly on the cobbles, rolls an eye, but doesn’t stir. ‘Come on then. Time to go home.’ She looks at Mungo hopefully. ‘Coming up for a cup of tea? Archie’s not back yet. Come and keep me company.’
He hesitates, but he doesn’t want to be alone; not just at the moment, with Izzy’s shade hovering in the lane by the old Herm.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Only I’ve just had a phone call from Kit asking if she can come down tonight so I mustn’t be too long.’
‘Oh, that’s great!’ Her face is bright with the expectation of seeing Kit. ‘What time? Do you want to bring her up to supper?’
‘Not this evening.’ He doesn’t want to share Kit on her first night. ‘She’s not arriving till about nine. Tomorrow, perhaps? She’s staying for a few days.’
Camilla nods. ‘Fine. Archie’ll be thrilled. Any special reason for the visit? Seems a bit sudden.’
‘She says London’s sweltering,’ he answers evasively as they marshal the dogs. He can’t imagine what Kit’s problem might be but he has no intention of mentioning that she has one until he’s found out a bit more. ‘She said that she won’t be leaving until it’s cooler but I want to be quite ready for her.’
‘I hope it’s not another drama,’ Camilla says as they walk together up the lane. ‘I shall never forget the trouble with that man she met on the internet dating site last year. All the excitement, and then finding out he was married.’
‘He was such good company, though. From that point of view he was a huge improvement on the Awful Michael.’
‘Oh my God! The Awful Michael.’ Camilla bursts out laughing, clutching Mungo’s arm. ‘He could bore for England, that man. Whatever did she see in him?’
‘Well, to begin with, I think she saw him as a rather dear old dog. You know, a noble golden retriever or a kindly Labrador. Wonderful to look at but no brain. I could see the attraction. You wanted to stroke his head and give him a cuddle. Take him for a walk. The trouble was, she mistook his utter lack of character and imagination for stability. And, of course, the naval connection encouraged her to think that her family would approve. The Establishment and so on.’
‘You were rather brutal, though, in the end.’
‘What else could I do, Millie? He was ruining her. Wearing her down. She was becoming as boring as he was. Well, you saw that for yourself. An elderly widower with however many children and grandchildren. He wanted her to become staid and sensible and wear terrible shoes. I was kind to begin with, admit.’
Camilla can’t stop laughing. ‘I think we all hoped that if he came to stay often enough she’d see him in his true light, but my heart used to sink every time you phoned to say, “The Awful Michael’s coming down with us this weekend.” Archie would groan and complain that Kit was being turned into a stranger and that he’d have to invite Michael out sailing. And then he’d take him on the river and Michael would tell him how to sail the boat. Archie would be fuming by the time he got back home. Even Izzy couldn’t work her magic on the Awful Michael.’
‘We were all terribly patient, Millie, but I had to act once there was talk of selling up her flat and moving to his house in the country. He didn’t want her to work, of course, and he disapproved of me and Izzy. Kit would have simply died of boredom. Anyway, we needed her.’
‘But how did you actually do it, in the end? She told me you said brutal things to her.’
Mungo snorts contemptuously. ‘Rubbish. It’s simply that the truth hurts. I told her quite firmly that once they were living together she would see that the Awful Michael was not a handsome, darling old dog but a narrow-minded, intransigent old bore. I explained that her friends were already growing tired of the stories of his mind-numbing experiences in the Falklands War droning out over their dinner tables and that if she moved to Kent or Surrey, or wherever, that would be the end. She would wither and grow old trying to learn bridge and listening to The Archers with only the Awful Michael for company.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with The Archers,’ says Camilla indignantly. ‘I love The Archers.’
‘But there is if it’s your sole form of entertainment, Millie. There is more to life than The Archers. Kit loves the theatre, she loves going to exhibitions. Did you know that she’s got the most delightful collection of small original paintings by practically unknown modern artists? She adores little jolly supper parties where everyone gossips too much, drinks too much, and we diss our friends. The Awful Michael was slowly annihilating her. It was like watching a candle being put out very, very slowly. Agony. She knew it really, of course, and she was in two minds anyway, so I just told her very firmly what was best for her.’
‘Dear old Kit. She’s so trusting. There’s a naïvety as if she’s never quite grown up. That’s why she’s so much fun. But the internet man was a bit of a downer for her and then her mother dying last year really knocked her sideways, though it was hardly unexpected. She was over ninety, after all.’
Mungo remembers Kit telephoning: ‘Guess what? My old ma died this morning. I’m an orphan, Mungo. The funeral’s on Friday. May I come on to you afterwards on Saturday?’
She mourned, drank too much, had Mopsa on her bed at night. They sat together on his sofa, heaped about with dogs borrowed for the occasion – ‘I need the dogs,’ Kit explained to Camilla, who totally understood and brought Bozzy and Sam straight down to the smithy – and she talked and wept in turn.
‘There’s something timeless about her,’ Camilla is saying. ‘You never think about Kit in terms of age. You’re the same, Mungo. Perhaps it’s because neither of you has had the wear and tear of marriage and children.’
‘You just try working with actors, sweetie,’ he says. ‘Plenty of wear and tear, I promise you.’
She laughs. ‘But at the end of the day you say goodnight and walk out,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I’m glad. It means I have you to myself.’ She links her arm in his as they turn in through the gateway from the lane. ‘Do you ever regret anyone, Mungo?’
‘I regret Ralph,’ he says without thinking – and she looks up at him, surprised.
‘Ralph? Gosh, that was a long time ago. Was he …? Did you …? I thought he was mad about Izzy. She was certainly crazy about him.’
‘Ralph was … versatile,’ he answers. ‘Anyway, much too long ago to be regretting at this late date.’
‘He went to the States, didn’t he? I remember Izzy was devastated.’
Mungo nods. ‘So was I. We were in the middle of rehearsals for Journey’s End and he simply walked out. He was invited to audition for a small film part but I never heard if he got it. By the time the dust settled he’d moved on. “He had softly and silently vanished away – For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.” He was good at the young British gentleman roles but he wasn’t very talented beyond his youth and spectacularly good looks. Sorry. That sounds bitchy, doesn’t it?’
Camilla frowns, trying to remember. ‘I didn’t care for him much. Rather too pleased with himself.’
The meadow below the house is being cut and they pause to watch the tractor as it wheels around the edge of the field. Tall grasses fall in golden clouds of pollen and dust; a shimmer of midges hangs and sways in the hot blue air, breaking and reforming in its endless dance. The dogs hurry on towards the house; a pretty, white-painted stone house set amongst camellia bushes and azaleas. The wooden frames of the sash windows are painted dark green to match the front door. Coming upon it here, at the edge of the moor in this wild ancient setting, one might think it like a house in a fairy story.
Mungo is comforted by its familiarity, glad that Archie and Camilla have been able to keep it much as it was through his and Archie’s childhood. Camilla is watching him.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ he answers quickly. ‘Yes, of course,’ and then adds: ‘It was just Kit reminding me that it’s Izzy’s birthday.’
‘That’s why you were thinking about Ralph.’ She sounds almost relieved, as if some puzzle has been solved.
The dogs have disappeared in search of cold water to drink and cool slates to lie upon, and the house is full of sunshine.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s it. Izzy and Ralph,’ and he changes the subject as they go into the house together.
After Mungo has gone, Camilla goes out to fetch the washing from the line slung between the plum trees in the orchard. In the long grass wasps crawl stickily in the rotten fruit, drunk on the sweet fermenting juice, and down in the woods a pigeon is cooing its lazy summer song. The sheets are hot and crisp and she folds them carefully into the old wicker basket, thinking all the while about Mungo and Ralph and Izzy. If she’s honest she has to admit that she never really liked Izzy all that much: she was too mercurial, too needy. Of course, Archie adored her – and she played up to him.
‘Poor little Izzy,’ he’d say affectionately. ‘She’s had it tough, you know. Both parents killed in a car accident. Brought up by a strict old cousin. She’s done jolly well for herself.’
Camilla had to bite her tongue sometimes; close her lips on a cool rejoinder. Izzy was so thin, so quick, so witty, that she, Camilla, felt ponderous beside her. Pregnant, slung about with small children, she felt it was an unequal contest. Yet those years were such happy ones.
Camilla folds the last sheet into the basket. She remembers what Mungo said about Ralph and wonders in what way he regrets him. Perhaps he sees Ralph simply as a symbol of their youth. The three of them were inseparable during those early years in rep; and afterwards when Mungo started his own company. Camilla hoists the basket on to her hip and takes it into the utility room. She can’t be bothered to sort out the sheets; it’s too hot. Instead she wanders back outside where the dogs are stretched in the shade, fast asleep.
It was Kit who named the dogs, litter brothers, when she saw them first as puppies. Camilla remembers how she and Archie argued over names, neither able to hit on the right ones. Then Kit came to stay with Mungo and was told of the dilemma. She walked up with Mungo to see the puppies, curled together in the big dog basket.
‘Boswell and Johnson,’ Kit said at once, going to kneel beside them. ‘Bozzy and Sam. Sammy and Boz. The big one’s Bozzy and the little one’s Sam. They are so cute.’
The names were so right for them that Camilla and Archie couldn’t think why they hadn’t thought of them first.
‘It’s a gift,’ Kit said modestly, perching in the dog basket, lifting the warm, sleepy puppies on to her lap. ‘Oh, why wasn’t I born a dog! How simple life would be.’
Camilla is filled with affection as she remembers the scene; glad that Kit is coming to stay. She’s been such a good friend to Mungo, and the whole family love her.
‘She should have been married with children of her own,’ Camilla has said at regular intervals through the years to Mungo, to Archie. ‘I can’t imagine why she hasn’t. She’s so much fun and she’s very attractive.’
It’s funny, Camilla thinks, that she’s never minded Archie adoring Kit, flirting with her, making jokes. She’s never scented the whiff of danger that was present with Izzy. There was an instability, a vulnerable neediness, about Izzy that has never been there with Kit despite her moments of crisis and sudden crazy whims. She’s managed her interior design company with confidence and flair, and she has good friends. Izzy was always so grateful for attention, for love.
‘She’s an actor, Millie,’ Mungo would say. He is the only person to call her Millie; she doesn’t like the nickname from anyone else. ‘That’s what we actors are like. We crave approval. It’s what it’s all about.’
But Mungo was never like Izzy, thinks Camilla, though Ralph always needed to be the centre of attention, admired, fêted. Perhaps that’s what drew him and Izzy together – and perhaps that was the reason for the break-up of their affair.
Camilla glances at her watch. Archie should be home soon. She might try to catch him on his mobile and suggest that he picks up a few things for her in Ashburton. It would be nice to make something special if Kit is coming to supper tomorrow.
Down on his mooring at Stoke Gabriel on the river Dart, Archie watches life on the water. It’s been too hot to take the boat off her mooring, and there’s no breath of wind anyway, but he likes to potter, check things out; to sit here on The Wave, feeling the lift of the tide beneath her keel. Here he can escape the responsibilities that worry at him at home: the cost of repairs to the properties, paying his tax, keeping things running. It’s odd how being just those few yards away from dry land makes such a difference; gives that sense of escape and relaxation. He can hear the whistle of the old steam railway as it trundles through the valley on its way to Kingswear; such an evocative sound bringing memories of his childhood; trips on the paddle steamers coming down to Dartmouth from Totnes; sailing with friends from the naval college when he was older. On the river, out at sea, he feels free, detached from that other self who sees things with such a clear eye: who likes to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
‘Mungo’s been in for tea,’ Camilla says, phoning his mobile, interrupting this idyll, ‘and he was a bit odd. Apparently it’s Izzy’s birthday so I think he was just feeling a bit nostalgic. Oh, and Kit’s coming down later this evening. Isn’t that great? He’ll bring her up for supper tomorrow.’
Archie agrees that it is great, makes a note of the shopping list, says he’ll be home soon. He continues to feel contented, idle, delighted that Kit will be arriving. His relationship with Kit is uncomplicated and rewarding: she demands nothing from him except his complicity in her eccentricities. She loves to come sailing with him on the river as long as nothing too frightening is likely to happen and she is allowed to be a passenger. It’s no good asking Kit to take the helm or haul on a sheet. She’d be gazing at something on the bank – ‘Is that a heron?’ – or waving at some fellow traveller just at the crucial moment. She likes it best when they moor up in quiet backwaters like Old Mill Creek to make a cup of coffee or tea. Even then he doesn’t totally trust her with the gas – ‘Which tap do I turn, Archie?’ – so she sits in the sun, feeding the ducks with pieces of bread.
‘Isn’t it utter heaven?’ she’ll say, taking her mug, beaming up at him. ‘I don’t know why we don’t all live on boats, do you?’
Camilla never minds him taking Kit out. ‘It’ll do you good,’ she says. ‘You don’t need me along. Enjoy yourselves.’ She’s never been jealous of his closeness to Kit. Not like with Izzy – Archie makes a little rueful face – but then Izzy was very different. God, he’d lusted after her when they were all young together. She was so gorgeous in a waif-like Audrey Hepburn way and she made him feel tough and protective. He was sure that Camilla never knew how he really felt, and there had never been anything out of order, but he wondered if some feminine intuition made her suspicious. She was always just the tiniest bit on edge when Izzy was around and he had to be very careful to play it cool.
Izzy’s birthday. She shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old, he thinks rather sentimentally. It’s easy now to remember her as she was way back when they were all young: the trips to Birmingham, when she and Mungo were in rep, or to London, and weekends at the smithy. It was the wretched Ralph who flung the spanner in the works. Archie never much liked Ralph: too good-looking, too smooth. He got poor darling Izzy into a crazy state where she didn’t know whether she was coming or going and then he’d simply walked out on her – on them all – without a backward glance. Izzy was devastated. Of course she became very successful, Mungo made sure of that, but it was as if an era of their lives was suddenly over: their youth had come to an abrupt end.
Archie empties the dregs of his tea over the side, rather ashamed of his mawkishness. He wonders what happened to Ralph, stands for a moment to salute Izzy on her birthday, then goes below to close down. Maybe Kit will like a little jaunt on the river. The others won’t be interested. Camilla will probably say it’s too hot for her, and it’s no good asking poor old Mungo, who feels sick on the Dartmouth Ferry. Archie shakes his head, amused, thinking of how Mungo was named by their father for Mungo Park: nobody less like the great explorer than his younger brother. At the same time, Mungo was always a naughty child: making up stories, persuading Billy Judd at Home Farm – who was old enough to know better – to join in with his pranks. Their father despaired of Mungo and he, Archie, had been detailed off to look after this troublesome sibling, who broke every rule, frightened the local children with his stories of ghosts and vampires, and encouraged them in his games of make-believe and dressing-up. It was almost a relief to go away to boarding school so as to escape the responsibility. It changed when he was older, met Camilla at a point-to-point and fell in love with her. Camilla adored Mungo from the outset. She thought he was amusing, good value.
Archie wonders now why he never minded; was never jealous of their close relationship. Was it simply because he knew Mungo was gay and therefore no threat to him? Camilla softened his rather censorious attitude to his younger brother so that he was able to allow his natural affection for Mungo to surface. And then, when their father died and Archie inherited the whole shooting match, he was able to be generous, to give Mungo the old smithy and the support he needed in his early acting career.
Occasionally his own rather strict moral code is stretched by Mungo’s laid-back approach to life, his ability to turn a blind eye and break the rules, but not just lately. Today on the river, tomorrow Kit coming to supper: life is good. Archie locks the cabin door, climbs into the dinghy, starts up the outboard engine and heads for the shore.
Mungo waits for Kit. He checks his watch, looks at his preparations for their supper, dashes upstairs to check her bedroom and shower room. All is ready. When the smithy, with its little barn, was converted Mungo decided that the barn should be self-contained, connected to the smithy not just by a door from the kitchen but also with a covered way and its own front door. It would be perfect for his guests with its two double bedrooms, bathroom and a kitchen-sitting-room: to give them a measure of independence so that they could stay up late to watch television or get up early without feeling they were being a nuisance. Anyway, he rather dislikes seeing women in a state of déshabillé: hair all over the place, pale faces, tatty dressing gowns. He prefers a little maquillage, a touch of artifice. Only Izzy, and, later, Kit ever had the privilege of staying with him in the smithy rather than in the barn.
Izzy simply took it for granted.
‘Just in case I have bad dreams, darling,’ she said. ‘You know me!’
She’d appear unexpectedly at his bedside in the early hours, shivering, and he’d sleepily push the duvet aside and hold out his arms.
‘Come on then,’ he’d say. ‘Just for the cuddle,’ and he’d hold her and comfort her until the nightmares passed.
He guessed that it was losing her parents so suddenly and violently when she was barely nine that caused the nightmares. Her imagination was vivid and the terrible details of the car accident haunted her.
Very occasionally they’d make love.
‘Just to be friendly,’ she’d say, but it wasn’t important to him. It was the companionship, the jokes, the gossip; these were the things he craved. They’d sit with a bottle of wine between them, laughing, shredding reputations or building them, praising or slandering, depending on whom they loved or disliked most.
‘Why don’t you invite Ralph down?’ she asked him during those early days of rehearsal for Twelfth Night. ‘He’d love it. You like him, don’t you?’
‘So long as he sleeps in the barn.’
She made a face at him. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s me I don’t trust, sweetie.’
She’d sing to him while he prepared supper: ‘I Cain’t Say No’, ‘(When I Marry) Mister Snow’, ‘Why Can’t You Behave?’. He’d hear her lines, give her some tips, encourage her. She’d listen to him sing, show him how to breathe, to project his voice.
As he waits for Kit he seems to hear Izzy’s voice again: ‘Come away, come away, death; And in sad cypress let me be laid’.
Hot tears sting his eyes. Mopsa leaps up, begins to bark, and Mungo hears the car engine in the lane. Kit is here. Filled with relief, casting away his sadness, he hurries out to meet her.
In one of the small farm cottages, further down the lane, James Hatton assembles his supper. Beans on toast, an apple and a mug of coffee. Sally wouldn’t approve but Sally isn’t here. She’s comfortably tucked up in Oxford, in their little house in Jericho, with a glass of wine. Or she might be with friends. Anyway, she’s not here, in this quiet valley surrounded by this wonderfully bucolic silence, and looking in horror at the pile of washing up to be done or at the unmade bed. They came on holiday to this cottage, quite a few years ago now, just after they were married, and loved it so much they returned several times. Perhaps it was those holidays that gave him the ideas for the location for the book that he is now researching. Back then the cottage was charmingly rustic; these days it wouldn’t meet the health and safety regulations. Camilla warned him about it when he telephoned; explained that the cottage had been empty for a year and was about to be renovated but that he was welcome to it for a low rent for a month. He dashed down to see it and couldn’t find much wrong with it. The kitchen and bathroom needed modernizing; so what? It was fine for his simple needs; perfect to get away from the daily round and let his mind roam out into the new novel.
‘So long as you’re quite sure,’ Camilla said. ‘No complaints, mind, once you’re in. Loved the book, by the way. I think it was so clever how you mixed up the suspense with the romance and made it all so real. Now, don’t worry, nobody will disturb you. We’ve got a new tenant coming into the other cottage next door – a young military wife with two small children – but we’ll warn her that you like to be left alone. How exciting to think that you’re setting the book around here. We’ll have to be careful, won’t we?’
He laughed with her. Impossible to imagine anything of great excitement happening to Camilla and Archie, or the two old boys at the farm. Of course, Sir Mungo was a rather different story but even he was well past his glory days. Still laughing, James went back to the house to have a drink with Archie and Camilla, paid a week’s rent in advance, and the deal was done.
Now, James eats his supper with the door open. Just back from his weekend dash to Oxford, he is readjusting to the silence of the valley: no wail of police sirens, no traffic, no low-level quacking of neighbours’ television or radio. He is beginning his second week at the cottage and he is pleased with his progress. This is his second book – the first one was self-published – and the big hope is that this new one will catch the attention of a London agent or a big publishing house and he’ll become an overnight sensation. He’d like to be able to give up his teaching job at the local comprehensive and write full time; maybe even free up Sally from her nursing work so that they can start a family. He needs a lucky break of some sort, but he’ll get it, he’s sure of it, and at least he can take these few weeks during the summer holidays to check the location and rough out the first draft. He set his first book in Gloucester and it had received quite a lot of local hype. He’d seen, then, the value of using actual places – cafés, pubs, shops – and he was given support by the local bookshop and the local press, so now he’s decided that the West Country tourist trail might bring even better results.
It was Sally who reminded him of the cottage, of how kind Camilla and Archie had been, and managed to dig out the telephone number. Sal’s a great support; she wants him to succeed and she’s prepared to put up with the separation to make it happen. Sal works hard at the Radcliffe – he glances at his watch, suddenly remembering that she’s on nights this week – in fact she’ll be on her way there now. He’ll send an email instead of phoning her to tell her how the day has gone and she can pick it up later.
He finishes his beans on toast, cuts the apple into quarters and throws the core out into the hedge. Pushing the plate aside, opening his laptop, he starts to type his email.
Another good day. Very hot again and lots of tourists but I’m really finding my way around now. Not the new boy any more. I know where to park when the car parks are full, cafés off the tourist beat, etc. The cottage continues to work very well while I’m writing. I really like this big living space and being able to be untidy!! Not like our little box, is it? Nobody bothers me, which is wonderful, but everyone is friendly, they wave when I see them in the lane, etc. I thought we might give a little party at the end and invite them all. Archie and Camilla are very kind. I am tactfully issued invitations for coffee or a drink, and Archie has offered another day on the river. Very useful. So different seeing the land from the water and I think he likes an excuse to get out there. Sir Mungo is at his cottage, back from a week in Scotland with friends, apparently. He shouted a greeting when I drove past, very matey, and I’m tempted to see if he could give me a bit of a leg up. The thing is, I see my stuff definitely as television and he was always a theatre man, apart from those big epic dramas he did back in the sixties and seventies. I imagine he still has contacts, though Camilla says he’s more or less retired now. Next door continues to be quiet, given there are two small children living there. They go to bed quite early and their mother – Emma, did I say her name was? – keeps herself to herself. I suspect that Camilla has warned them that I’m trying to work.
I did another recce around the little local towns this morning. Ashburton and Buckfastleigh. Little grey-stone moorland towns that, at first sight, are so attractive that I can’t quite see my unsavoury characters inhabiting them. The other problem is their smallness. You can use big department stores to set scenes in and get away with it, like I did in Gloucester, but it’s much more difficult in these very small shops where you’d know everyone by name after the first few weeks and I’d probably be done for slander or libel or whatever!! I shall have to be a bit more subtle. Of course there’s Exeter just a few miles away, and Plymouth to the west, but I’m very much drawn to these smaller places. As I was telling you at the weekend I’ve rather fallen in love with Totnes and the surprising mix of characters you see in the town. There’s a good, relaxed vibe but something edgy, too, which makes it possible to allow my story to take place there. I just know that this is going to be my breakthrough book, Sal. I shall put Totnes on the map!! But not this valley! Nothing could ever happen here except the peaceful predictability of ages past stretching through another millennium. Great for working, though. What I really love is not having any timetables to work to, no homework to mark or lessons to plan. I feel a bit selfish being able to do this while you’re working hard, Sal, but it’ll be worth it when I’m at number one in the bestseller lists. I know you were worried that I’d stay in bed till midday but actually I get up quite early. I’m really enjoying just being out and about, soaking up the atmosphere and watching people, and then drafting out the novel in the evening. Which is what I’m about to do now. I’ve got a few new ideas, Sal, so I shall get down to some work. Hope it’s quiet on the ward!
Lots of love J xx
An hour later he switches off his laptop and wanders out through the open door. The small front gardens, separated by a stone wall, are a tangle of fuchsia bushes and he leans on the wooden gate relishing the darkness and the silence. Out in the lane the shadows are black and dense beneath the ash trees, though there is still the faint gleam of gold where buttercups grow in the ditch. A bat flittering close to his head startles him and he lets out a smothered cry, ducking and beating it away, just as a brighter light shines out suddenly from an upstairs room next door. A shadow detaches itself from the darkness under the trees and James peers at it, the gate creaking under his weight, wondering if it is Sir Mungo taking a last walk with his little dog. There is no sound, the shadows merge again, and presently he hears the sound of a car engine starting up, growing fainter and dwindling away.