Friday 3rd April 2009 – 6.25 p.m.
The motorway’s commuter cars and delivery vans were soon replaced by muddy 4X4s and horse boxes, reminding Jason of rural Essex until he saw hills that almost appeared to be moving as rain clouds shifted overhead to reveal promising scraps of blue. He wound down his window to let cool air bathe his face. “Why Heron House?” he asked his less than talkative driver. “Do they breed herons there, or what?”
“They did,” she replied, taking the road signed for Ammanford and Llandeilo off a big roundabout. “Some time in the seventies. Long after the lead mines had closed.”
“Lead mines?” Monty Flynn hadn’t mentioned anything about these when describing the surrounding landscape as being a second Garden of Eden. A wild, unspoilt refuge. Balm for the soul. However, it was easier to ask questions about their destination than having to explain to someone he didn’t yet know why he was arriving a week early. As it was none of her business, he assumed Monty Flynn had kept his confidentiality.
Every time she hit a drain cover or pothole, his knees butted the glove box, his seatbelt tightened across his chest, and it was while stop-starting through Llandeilo’s busy main street, that a rush of panic quickened his pulse. He shut his eyes and opened them in shock. For a split second, yet as if in slow motion, all the colours of shop fronts, traffic and passers-by seemed to morph into a uniformly dull brown colour; the pavements empty save for a few people moving around, dressed in clothes from what he guessed was the World War II era. This busy street had been replaced by a weird stillness, with just a few ancient Austin and Morris cars and a solitary pony and trap labouring up the hill in the opposite direction.
The Ignis was travelling on dirt, not tarmac, where scattered piles of droppings lay uncollected. The smell of wood smoke and manure met his nose.
“You OK?” asked Helen Jenkins, throwing him a glance.
“I’m not sure. Can you see something odd going on?”
“Where?”
“Outside. It’s like… really strange. As if we’re part of some old photograph.”
“No, I can’t.”
He produced his mobile and turned its screen to face the now open window. “What are you doing?” Helen asked.
“Taking a video. You never know. For posterity.”
Passers-by, wearing long black coats, noticed it and immediately shielded their faces.
Damn.
The screen remained blank. “It’s not working. Look.” He angled the phone towards her.
“I need to concentrate, OK?’
Just then, as he fiddled with Options and Film menus, the whole street scene reverted to its former bustle. “Bloody gizmos,” he muttered. “They never work when you want them to.”
“Just take a photo, then.”
“Can’t. It’s too late. Everything’s changed back.”
He replaced his crap phone with Evil Eyes, still feeling unnerved. Could he really have imagined all that, or was it the pills? At least a book was reliable. Tangible. He found the page he’d been reading before sneaking another look at the grim last page.
“That looks like fun,” she observed drily, before overtaking an open truck full of white goats.
“It is.”
“Afraid we can’t compete with that here. The worst we get is sheep rustling or some old codger in the backwoods doing it with his dogs.”
Normally, he’d have laughed, but not now, despite the town’s sudden return to its normal bustle. “Tell me more about these lead mines near Heron House,” he said, to take his mind off it.
She sighed. “There were two. Nantybai near the church and the river Towy, and Nantymwyn higher up. They’d been around since Roman times. Apparently, both were closed in the late-1930s, putting hundreds of folk out of work. Why when war came many of the local men, including farmers, signed up.”
“My best mate Archie did that. Jobless for a year, so he went for it. Kabul, if you please.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s OK.”
She shrugged. Put her foot down as the A40 opened out, and they continued in silence past large farms whose cattle slurry trailed across the road, splattering her windscreen. To the right, he saw beyond the grazed hills lay darker, sharper escarpments of what he guessed were part of the Brecon Beacons. He sat transfixed, comparing this naturally unfolding panorama with Hounslow. Yes, the Thames wasn’t so far from its clogged-up streets, but here, between fields, the Towy flowed by without a single rowing fanatic or noisy cruise boat to break its reflection of passing clouds. Smooth, grassy banks lay on either side instead of overused pathways full of litter, dog shit and used syringes. Yet this was the very world that must feed the book he was about to start writing. A polluted, corrupt world, forever on the move.
“So why come to Heron House?” she quizzed, while they passed over an elaborate iron bridge into a town called Llandovery. That same River Towy now beneath them. He turned to her, but how to explain that his heart, which only yesterday had filled to bursting with ideas, was deflating like some kid’s balloon. His main characters, Carl Spooner, a vicious pusher from Kennington and his sidekick, whose speciality was dousing his victims with petrol and watching them fry, were fading with every mile that passed.
He closed Evil Eyes and placed it on the floor between his feet. “To start a gangland thriller. Mr Flynn thought it was a cool idea and was keen to see a first chapter this weekend. Even checked I took a good pic for inside the back cover.”
Suddenly, the Ignis lurched towards the nearside hedge. She quickly righted it, but not before he’d seen her expression.
“What’s wrong with that?” he challenged. “What’s wrong with him rooting for me? Best seller, he said, if you can see it through. And I bloody am.”
Silence.
***
The road that apparently led towards Heron House, took her full attention, not only because of its narrowness, but also what else happened to be sharing it. A fox hunt in full swing, complete with huge, pale hounds veering from verge to verge, noses down. Small made-up girls on half-clipped ponies; horseboxes parked up nose to tail, plus a posse of quad bikes taking up what little space was left. Welcome to the countryside, he thought.
Half an hour later, with the commotion vanished up wet, stony tracks leading from the road, and a sign for Rhandirmwyn with its enticing-looking pub just a memory, gentle bends became the hairpin variety. Soft fields were now giant fir-clad peaks where small settlements nestled between their folds. More Alpine than anything thought Jason, aware of being sucked into a world as different as could be from the Essex marshes on which he’d grown up. Here a trickle of white smoke rising, there a black swarm of birds cruising low over the land.
Rooks?
He glanced at Helen Jenkins’ freckled face fixed on the way ahead. Her long pale eyelashes and her small nose weathered red on its bridge.
“So tell me about your rook pies,” he said. “Mr Flynn was raving about them.”
“Ha. He’s a liar. I should have snatched the phone off him when you first called Heron House. He’s also a lush. Big time. And as for the cordon bleu crap, forget it.” She slowed down; her left indicator light flashing on and off while a bright blush burned on each cheek. “Look, I can easily turn round and take you back to Swansea. Trains to Paddington run till late. He’d understand. Whatever else, he’s no fool.”
Jason flicked off the switch, his stomach spinning like it had when he’d woken up in his brother’s flat on his last morning there. “Just keep going.”
“But you’ll be paying good money. For what?” Indignation had lit up her blue-green eyes. Her chin stuck out. “You must be desperate. That’s all I can say.”
“Too right I am.”
***
They didn’t speak again until the unnamed turning became a cinder track pitted by water-filled holes and the uphill gradient levelled for half a mile to reveal a large, moss-covered roof and two tall, but unmatched chimneys.
“Here we are,” she said, dropping into first gear despite the grumbling clutch. “Not exactly in the hub of things.”
You could say that again.
Heron House, ten times the size of his mother’s cottage, and clearly from a much earlier era, lay in its own leafy grounds beneath a dark swathe of a forestry plantation. Beyond this, the land rearing up against the sky, seemed shorn of grass, dotted with the odd windblown tree. Survivors, like he must be. He took in the house’s three gabled upper windows jutting out like mean little eyes, then the heron-shaped weather vane, spinning on its perch. Next, his eye travelled down over the dense, dark ivy smothering most of the front wall, to the recessed front door whose steps lay strewn with dead leaves and other debris.
He’d missed the unusual gateposts.
“Who made those?” he finally pointed at the two stone pillars each supporting identical wrought-iron sculptures. Herons again. Beaks open, wings outspread as if for battle. Quite different from the weather vane. Their message seemed to be ‘Keep out.’
“From melted-down canons, so I heard.”
Tentative connections began to form in his mind. Canons and lead, rocks and caves. And when he glanced again at that same front door, almost hidden beyond its gloomy archway, he suddenly glimpsed three figures, again in sepia tones, who’d materialised from nowhere, standing below the steps. A family perhaps, made up of a woman who seemed to be pregnant, a stout man of indeterminate age, and in between them, a young, black-haired girl carrying a basket of cut roses. The two females wore what Jason recognised as traditional Welsh costume, while the man balanced a long fishing rod on his shoulder whose dangling hook bore what appeared to be a dead mouse.
Then, as quickly as the strange picture had appeared, it vanished.
What is it about this place? He asked himself as Helen Jenkins followed the curved driveway around an under-planted central island, where just one rose bush swayed back and forth in the wind. Perhaps he’d give his next dose of Citalopram a miss.
She pulled up next to a grey Volvo saloon in front of the first of three lock-up garages, which, like most of the house, were smothered in ivy. Broken branches and other detritus lay drifted against their tatty-looking doors. He watched her bale out. Neat butt, nice legs, he thought. Then reprimanded himself. He was here to write, not catch up on a non-existent love life, since Gina Colburn, who’d worked in the videos section of the Hounslow store, had dumped him last summer. “So this is Heron House,” he said, dragging his venerable suitcase from the boot. “I’ve been on tenterhooks since I saw that advert.”
“Where?”
He hesitated. Mrs Davies’ reaction had been bad enough. “The Lady. What’s wrong with that?”
Her laugh caught him unawares. Deeper than he’d expected. “You’re kidding?”
“In the doctor’s surgery it was. Perhaps your Mr Flynn was hoping to attract females rather than some geezer who’s just lost his job and got nowhere to live.”
Surprise wasn’t the word for it.
“You?”
Just then, she turned towards the house as the front door opened, as if, it seemed, by itself.