CHAPTER TWO
I’ve never been too sure about chance. It’s a slippery commodity at the best of times. That’s why I bet on horses, not the Lottery. I like the idea that I can think my way to a fortune. What you win by pure chance you can just as easily lose.
Take my stressless but far from prosperous existence in Glastonbury. After losing a good job, a lovely woman and an over-mortgaged house in London during the recession of the early Nineties, I went to stay with my parents in Street purely as a stopgap. Then I met Ria and, instead of heading back to London, found myself living with her in a flat in Glastonbury High Street, helping to run Secret Valley, her New Age joss-stick and Celtic charms shop. Then Ria chucked in the shop along with me and buggered off to Ireland with a Celtic charmer of the human kind called Dermot, Secret Valley became the Tiffin Café and I went . . . nowhere.
With so much evidence to draw on, it naturally didn’t escape my analytical mind that a brief sortie to London in search of a missing friend might extrapolate itself into all manner of complications. I didn’t think it likely. But I was aware of the possibility. And I can’t deny that it had a certain double-edged attraction. The question was: did I want a change as much as I probably needed one?
The answer was still proving elusive the following afternoon, when I caught the bus down to Street to report my lack of progress to Win. (Car ownership had slipped out of my life even less ceremoniously than Ria some time before.)
Glastonbury is ages deep in history and legend. We all know that, none better than me, thanks to having for a father a man so caught up in Arthurian myth that he insisted on saddling me with Lancelot and Gawain as names to carry to my grave. (My mother was allowed to name my sister, which is how she had the good luck to end up plain Diane Patricia.) The short bus ride took me past Wearyall Hill, where Joseph of Arimathea is supposed to have landed (most of Somerset being under water back then), and over Pomparles Bridge, site of the original Pons Perilis from which the dying Arthur is said to have ordered Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the lake. (I was always on Bedivere’s side myself. With the Dark Ages looming and smelting technology about to take a nose-dive, throwing away a superior specimen of swordcraft like Excalibur made no sense at all.)
Street, by contrast, is distinctly short on legend. As serious-minded Quakers, the Clarks were concerned with more practical issues. And shoes are about as practical as you can get. At least, Clarks shoes always have been. My father worked for Clarks for close on fifty years. So did most Street males of his generation, along with half the females. All that changed around the time I came back from London, with shoe production transferred to Portugal and the works turned into a shopping centre for ‘famous brands at factory prices’. There were jobs to be had there, of course, but not for the likes of Winifred and Mildred Alder or their simpleton brother, Howard. I’d assumed they’d been living on the state since then. But now it looked like Rupe had been keeping them afloat, which can’t always have been easy for him, however frugally they lived.
Exactly how they did live I was about to find out. But first I had to steer a path through various humdrum fragments of my own past. I turned off the High Street opposite the Living Homes furniture store, more familiar to me as Street Junior School, and headed south. Soon I was in Ivythorn Road, off which, at 8 Gaston Close, I entered this life one Friday afternoon in November 1963. At that time, much of the land away to the west was still orchards and fields. Penfrith was in the countryside then. Now the town had crept out to surround it. My parents had moved to a Seventies bungalow in that new stretch of housing. But the Alders hadn’t moved. They’d stayed exactly where they’d always been, while the world changed around them.
Hopper Lane still looked stubbornly like a country byway. There were modern houses at the Somerton Road end, but the middle course was all overgrown orchards, weed-choked smallholdings and run-down cottages. The afternoon seemed to grow damper and duller as I pressed on, the air a mix of rotting apples, leaf mush and drifting bonfire smoke. Penfrith itself didn’t look quite as bad as I’d thought it might. But that was mainly because the house was almost completely invisible behind a rampant forest of rhododendrons. Logically, they had to be the same plants I remembered as shrubs. But that logic was hard to hold on to.
If Penfrith had been put up for sale in its present state, I’d have suggested advertising it without a photograph. With one, it would have to have been ANY OFFER ACCEPTED. Enough slates were missing from the roof to turn it into a colander in wet weather and the apex had an ominous sag to it. There was more bare wood than paint on the window frames and several of the panes were cracked. Behind them some faded rags that might once have been curtains hung limp and forlorn.
Bending sideways to avoid a swag of rhododendron, I reached the front door and tried the bell. It didn’t work – no surprise there – so I gave the knocker several heavy raps instead and found myself with a palmful of rust to wipe away. Several silent seconds passed. I could hardly believe they weren’t at home and I was about to try again when I had a distinct, shivery feeling of being watched. I turned to my right – and jumped back in surprise at the sight of Howard Alder staring at me through the front bay window.
‘Bloody hell, Howard,’ I shouted, ‘did you have to give me a shock like that?’ He didn’t seem to hear and it was pretty obvious his powers of comprehension hadn’t improved since I’d last met him. Like Win, Howard wasn’t exactly wearing his years lightly (early fifties in his case). He was unshaven, with what hair he had hanging lank and grey to his shoulders. He was wearing some sort of lumpen grey cardigan over a grubby Durham University sweatshirt (a gift from Rupe, presumably), and below that, as far as I could see over the sill, faded pink-and-white-striped pyjama bottoms. This definitely wasn’t the new autumn look for men. ‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’
Howard made a circling motion with his hand that I eventually realized meant something. The door wasn’t latched. I turned the knob, paused to give him the thumbs-up and went in.
My first impression was that nothing had changed from how I remembered the place. A narrow hall led towards the stairs. A very large and very old barometer hung on one wall, opposite an ancient piece of furniture combining the roles of mirror, coat-hook and umbrella stand. The carpet and wallpaper were surely the same. Then the musty smell hit me. That was the point: nothing had changed. Except that decay is change. And that’s what was going on in Penfrith: slowly accelerating decay.
I went into the sitting room and met more of the same. The hearthrug; the three-piece suite; the bureau; the clock on the mantelpiece; the Constable print on the wall, wrinkling in its frame; the vintage television in the corner, tube a lot deeper than its screen was wide: they’d mouldered in their appointed places. And they’d gathered dust. Yes, one hell of a lot of dust. Mrs Alder had kept a clean house if not a modern one, but her children were clearly of a different mind. I couldn’t help wondering if Howard’s hair was greyer than it needed to be.
He really was wearing pyjama bottoms, over checked slippers through which the toes had worn. He was still standing in the bay window, trying to smile, it seemed, though with Howard you couldn’t be sure. Next to him, on the table that had once supported an aspidistra (that had gone), was a slew of magazines. Stepping closer, I saw they were his most faithful and just about only reading material: Railway World. Not recent issues, of course, but dog-eared copies from Howard’s trainspotting days in the Sixties, before Beeching pulled the plug on the Somerset and Dorset line. According to Rupe (who must have had it from his sisters), Howard had never recovered from the closure of the S and D – the ripping out of the tracks, the scrapping of the locomotives, the physical wrenching of the railway from his life. By the look of it, he was still trying to get back to that lost world of 2-6-2s and 0-6-0s chugging across the heathland from Glastonbury to the sea. Whether he understood a single word now of his childhood reading was a moot point, though. Because Howard hadn’t actually said anything as far as I knew – words, I mean, as distinct from vague noises – since August 1977.
That was the summer of his crowning madness. He was still holding down some kind of a job at Clarks then. Rupe and I were thirteen-year-olds, cycling out across the moors on fishing expeditions. But Howard was ranging further afield on his moped. And in his mind . . . Well, who knows where from (a letter in Railway World, maybe) Howard had got hold of the idea that there was a mysterious hole in the statistics of steam locomotives scrapped in the Sixties and that somewhere the Government was hiding a strategic reserve of them in case of an oil drought or some such emergency. (According to Rupe, there really was a hole in the statistics; but even as a thirteen-year-old he’d had conspiracy theorist tendencies.) Anyway, rumour in the railway world had it that these missing locos were concealed in a vast cavern under Box Hill, in Wiltshire, where the Bristol to London railway line passes deep below an RAF base. Howard took to staging nocturnal expeditions to the area in search of clues. One loco in search of a whole lot of locos, you could say. In fact, I may have said precisely that at the time. But the joke turned sour when Howard fetched up in hospital seriously injured after somehow managing to fall down a ventilation shaft. He was lucky not to be killed, if you can bracket luck with permanent brain damage. How he got into the shaft we’ll never know. Even if he could remember, which is unlikely, he couldn’t tell anyone. His lips were sealed. (He’d also been bitten by a dog that night, apparently – a nasty enough wound to be distinguishable from his other injuries, which naturally were numerous. A guard dog, Rupe reckoned. But he would reckon that, of course. Personally, I thought Howard was the sort any self-respecting dog would take a lump out of.)
‘It’s Lance, Howard,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Remember me?’
He nodded vigorously and made a sucking noise. I think he remembered.
‘Where are your sisters?’
He nodded some more and pointed towards the back of the house, then mimed digging and laughed through a good deal of spittle.
‘In the garden? Thanks. I’ll try there.’
I left him to Railway World, went out into the hall and headed for the kitchen. Not a happy choice of route for anyone with a sensitive nose. Quite a few things seemed to be rotting in unwashed pots and grimy cupboards. Taking care to avoid glancing into the sink, I cut through to the scullery and out by the back door.
The rear garden wasn’t as neglected as the front. Although the boundary hedges were running riot and the grass in the orchard away to the side was waist-high, the vegetable plot was well tilled and tended. And there was Mildred Alder, lifting carrots and potatoes with tight-jawed vigour. She was remarkably similar to her sister, though not as erect. And there was a panicky look in her eyes when she caught sight of me and stopped digging that Win would never have been prey to. Mil was wearing a mud-stained navy-blue boiler suit and gumboots. Her breath misted in the air as she leaned on the handle of the fork and stared at me. She said nothing, though I felt sure she recognized me. And my visit could hardly be a complete surprise.
‘Hello, Mil,’ I said, walking towards her.
‘Lance,’ she said with a frown, sparing me her sister’s preference for Lancelot. ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’
‘Well, here I am.’
‘What you got to tell us?’
‘Nothing, really. I can’t get hold of Rupe.’
‘Didn’t think you would.’
‘No faith in me, Mil?’
‘Didn’t mean that.’ She looked quite flustered. There might even have been a blush on her weathered face. ‘Look, here’s Win.’
Win had emerged from the orchard, carrying a bucket filled with apples. Like Mil, she was wearing gumboots, below the same skirt and sweater I’d seen her in the day before. (Wardrobes weren’t exactly crucial items of furniture at Penfrith.) ‘What happened?’ she called as she walked round the potato patch to join us.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve drawn a blank.’
‘Only what I expected.’
‘I know, I know. You told me.’
Win stopped at her sister’s shoulder and plonked down the bucket, then gave me one of her penetrating stares. ‘Good of you to come and tell us, Lancelot.’
‘Least I could do.’
‘And is it all you mean to do?’
‘No. I think I’d better go up to London and see what the trouble is – if there is any.’
‘There’s some.’
‘Well, let’s find out. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘That’s good of you. We’re grateful, aren’t we, Mil?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mil. ‘It is good of you, Lance.’
‘He hasn’t moved, has he? The address I’ve got for him is Hardrada Road.’ (I’d last visited Rupe in London at a flat in Swiss Cottage. Since then, he’d gone south of the river.)
‘Twelve Hardrada Road,’ said Win. ‘That’s right.’
‘And when exactly did you last hear from him?’
‘Depends what you mean by “hear from him”.’
‘Well, a letter, I suppose.’
‘We don’t get letters,’ said Mil.
‘Not from Rupert,’ put in Win. ‘He doesn’t write. There’s just the . . . money.’
‘And how does he send that?’
‘Straight to the bank. But there hasn’t been any . . . since the end of August.’
‘Well, when did you last speak to him?’
‘Speak to him?’
‘Yes, Win. Speak.’
‘When Mother died,’ said Mil. ‘Not since.’
A glance passed between the sisters at that moment. But their communications had been finely honed over many years. I hadn’t a hope of working out what it meant. Besides, there was plenty else for me to try to work out. Rupe had called in to see me two or three times since his mother’s death, on his way to or from a visit to Penfrith. At least, I’d assumed that was why he was in the area. He may even have said so, though I couldn’t swear to it. If not, why had he come down? Not just to sink a few drinks with me, that was for sure. The thought led to another. When did whatever was going on start going on?
‘Rupert’s been so busy with his work,’ said Win, apparently feeling (correctly) that some kind of explanation was due. But what she offered wasn’t much of one. ‘We don’t expect to see a lot of him.’ But they did expect the money he sent them. Was that all this was about? Money to prop up their meagre lifestyle? Some meat to serve with the carrots and potatoes? ‘We’re worried about him, Lancelot. Truly we are.’
‘Let’s hope there’s no need.’
‘Yesterday you seemed sure there wasn’t.’
‘And tomorrow I’ll do my best to find out.’ I looked from one to the other of them. ‘OK?’
It was only a fifteen-minute walk from Penfrith to my parents’ house. But it was more like a hundred years in other ways. The Alders inhabited an overlooked corner of the nineteenth century. They were out of time as well as touch. Mum and Dad, on the other hand, lived in the picture-windowed little-box land of the late twentieth, where lawns were trimmed, cars washed, woodwork painted and appearances maintained. My father liked to read about the past. But he had no wish to live in it.
‘Your mother’s out,’ were his first words when he opened the door to me, somehow implying that I’d only called to see her. ‘Scrabble.’
‘Still keeping that up, is she?’
‘Oh yes. Every Wednesday afternoon.’ He plodded off towards the kitchen and I followed. The stoop was getting worse, I noticed. All those years of bending over account books at Clarks had taken their toll. ‘I was going to make some tea. Do you want a cup?’
‘Why not?’
‘Perhaps because you just don’t want one.’
‘Good to know you still take everything I say literally.’
‘How else should I take it?’
‘I would like a cup of tea, Dad. Thanks.’
‘As long as you’re sure.’ He flicked the switch on the kettle and it came instantly to the boil, as if he’d already boiled it and only turned it off when the doorbell rang. ‘Put an extra bag in the pot, would you? The caddy’s behind you.’
‘Oh, bags, is it?’ (I’ve always had an aversion to the wretched things. More to do with Mum’s fondness for packing them around her flower borders as fertilizer than the actual taste of the tea, to be honest.)
‘See what I mean?’ Dad cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘I knew we’d have this carry-on.’
‘Forget it. I’ll have it as it comes.’ I plucked a bag from the caddy and tossed it into the pot. Dad poured in the water and squinted at me through the plume of steam.
‘Diane phoned last night.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Brian’s been promoted.’
‘That’s good news.’ (And horribly predictable into the bargain. Brian was the sort of model son-in-law who came flat-packed by mail order.)
‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Didn’t I just say so?’ (God, this sparring we were always reduced to was pitiful.)
‘Have you got any? Good news, I mean.’
‘Not exactly. I wanted to ask you a favour.’
‘What might that be?’
‘I need to catch an early train to London.’
‘And you’re looking for a lift.’
I smiled. ‘Yeh.’
‘This for a job interview by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘Thought not. I mean, there’d be no time to have your hair cut, would there?’
‘Good point, Dad. Well spotted.’
‘How early?’
‘Just early. I thought you could look up some times for me on the Net.’
‘I suppose I could.’ He smiled at some irony he detected in this. ‘I’ll do that while you pour the tea. I’ll have two digestives.’
So off he swanned to his study while I fiddled about with mugs and milk and opened six cupboards in search of the biscuit tin before I found it in the seventh.
I took the tea through to the lounge and found the Daily Telegraph lying on the coffee-table, folded to display the crossword. Dad had nearly finished it, but it looked like the last few clues were frustrating him. I’d just begun to give them my attention when he walked in. ‘There’s a train from Castle Cary at ten to eight. That’ll get you to Paddington at half-past nine. Early enough?’
‘Sounds fine.’
‘I’ll pick you up at seven-fifteen.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Well, the car needs a run. And I tend to wake up even before the crack of dawn these days. So . . .’ He sat down and drank some tea. ‘This isn’t about a job, you say?’
‘No.’
‘Pity.’
‘I’m doing someone a favour myself, as it happens. The Alders. You remember them?’
‘How could I forget them?’
‘They’re worried about Rupe. They can’t contact him. He seems to have, well, disappeared.’
‘And you’re going to find him?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Really?’ Dad looked distinctly sceptical about my qualifications for the task. ‘Have you considered the possibility that Rupert may simply have washed his hands of his family? You could hardly blame him if he had. They’re a sorry bunch. Sorrier still when you take their pedigree into account.’
‘What is their pedigree?’
‘Oh, nothing at all noble. But there were Alders farming at Penfrith as early as the seventeenth century.’
‘You’ve been researching the Alders?’
‘Of course not.’ Dad’s expression suggested a more idiotic question would be hard to imagine. ‘They merely cropped up in something I was reading recently. There was a skirmish at the start of the Civil War just the other side of Ivythorn Hill. The Affray at Marshall’s Elm, it’s known as. A Parliamentary force was routed by Royalist dragoons. Among the dead was one Josiah Alder of Penfrith. Historically, the event’s something of a curiosity, since the usual date given for the start of the Civil War is the twenty-second of August sixteen forty-two, when the King raised his standard at Nottingham. But the Marshall’s Elm Affray took place nearly three weeks earlier, on the—’ He broke off and looked sharply at me. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yeh, Dad, yeh. I’m all ears. There were Alders at Penfrith in sixteen forty-two. But I’m not sure there’ll be any there come twenty forty-two.’
‘That’ll be because they didn’t go on farming the land they were born on. If they had a destiny, that was it. And they abandoned it.’
‘Circumstances turned against them.’
‘George Alder dying without a son old or sensible enough to take over from him, you mean?’
‘Yes. You never knew him, did you?’
‘Not at all. We’d never have known any of them but for you befriending Rupert.’
‘George Alder drowned, didn’t he?’
‘So I believe. In the Sedgemoor Drain. It can’t have been long after Rupert was born.’
‘Before, Rupe’s always said.’
‘You’re right.’ Dad chomped thoughtfully on his digestive biscuit. ‘It was before. Summer or autumn of ’sixty-three. Strange. I’d forgotten all that.’
‘All what?’
‘Oh, there were some other farming deaths around the same time. Accidents. Suicide. That sort of thing. People started talking about a jinx on the land. The Gazette was full of it. For a while, anyway.’
The Central Somerset Gazette being full of something hardly made it earth-shattering news. But I was still more than a bit surprised that I’d never heard of the Street farmers’ jinx of ‘63 before. ‘How many deaths?’
‘I can’t remember. Two or three perhaps. Mmm. Maybe I’ll check up on that next time I’m in the library. It’s an interesting subject.’
‘Could you let me know what you find out?’
‘Certainly.’ Dad frowned at me. ‘I thought local history bored you rigid.’
‘It does. Usually.’
‘But not in this case?’
‘That depends what you find out.’ I was more curious than I was letting on. Why hadn’t Rupe mentioned any of this to me? He loved mysteries, great and small. And this one seemed to involve his own father. Perhaps he didn’t even know about it. But, if so, that was surely more mysterious still. I was going to have a lot of questions for Rupe when I tracked him down.
‘A jinx on the land,’ Dad mused, leaning back in his chair. ‘Or a curse.’ A faraway look I knew of old blurred his gaze. ‘It has Arthurian echoes, don’t you think?’
‘Since you ask, no.’ (Not for me, it didn’t. Not Arthurian, that is. But echoes? Yes. I’d have had to admit it had plenty of those.)
‘You won’t oversleep tomorrow, will you, son?’
‘No, Dad. I won’t.’
And I didn’t.