A Gathering Storm(2)

She flung open her door and hurried over to the gates. They were locked and the padlock smudged with rust. She shook them in frustration then gazed through the bars, trying to see a glimpse of the house, but a mass of trees swallowed the view.

Will said, ‘Too bad. Get in. Let’s go,’ and revved the engine, but Lucy had noticed where some stones from the long wall had spilled onto the lane, some way further down.

She reached for her camera bag in the passenger well, swung it on her shoulder and set off at a run, saying, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

‘Lucy!’ Will called.

She waved without looking back.

A hundred yards down from the gates she came to the section of the wall that was crumbling. She scrambled up, leapt down into the undergrowth on the other side and pushed her way through a thick belt of trees. There she stopped and stared. Set out before her was Carlyon Manor.

In the photographs she’d found in Granny’s box, Carlyon was a long, graceful Elizabethan stone house set amongst elegant trees, its rolled lawns stippled by sunlight. This building was derelict and blackened by fire, its ragged skeleton outlined against the sky, the one remaining chimney reaching up, pitifully, like the wing of a crushed bird. Instinctively, she took out her camera and started to take some shots, wondering all the while when this could have happened. Nobody had ever mentioned a fire.

She scurried across the shaggy grass and the weed-infested gravel. Several steps led up to the front entrance, but some flakes of wood on rusted hinges were all that remained of the double doors. She hovered on the threshold, considering the possible danger, then curiosity got the better of her and she stepped inside.

She was in a ruined hallway that was open, in part, to the sky. She wandered carefully from room to room, stepping over rubble, past twisted shapes of what had once been metal, trying to imagine what it might have been like once, before. It was, she saw, possible to glean the layout of the ground-floor rooms and something of their former purpose. There might once have been a central staircase, she thought, and a gallery, but perhaps that was her imagination.

She stared round at it all in dismay, wondering when the fire had happened and how. From a large room at the back of the house, the rusted vestiges of french windows looked out onto a flagstoned terrace and beyond, a wild garden. They were right on the clifftop here, and between the fluttering leaves of poplar trees glittered the sea.

She turned back to the room. It was the drawing room once, she supposed. The corroded metal innards of an armchair crouched by the fireplace. On the wall above hung the charred shape of what was once a great mirror. She crossed the rotted floor, rubbish crunching beneath her feet, and examined the ruined mantelpiece. It still featured a carved design. She moved her fingers over the lumps and bumps of the burned wood, wondering about the pattern of fruit and flowers. It would have been a stunning piece of craftsmanship. The ghostly remnants of the mirror and the armchair fascinated her, and she reached again for her camera.

Round the rooms she moved in a reverie, taking pictures of anything that caught her eye, trying to imagine the people who had lived here. Sometimes she thought she heard children’s voices. God forbid there had been children in the house when this happened. They were gentle voices, though, not sounds of terror, and she came to realize it was just the wind calling through the ruins.

Half an hour later, she became aware that there really was someone calling. Will. She’d forgotten about Will. She picked her way back to the front entrance and looked out across the park. He was standing over by the belt of trees, legs apart, hands on hips. She waved and he began to jog towards her.

‘Lucy, what the hell . . .? I didn’t know where you were going. You just vanished.’

‘I’m so sorry. I forgot the time. Isn’t this wonderful?’

He looked past her at the ruin. ‘It looks like a dump to me. What did you call it?’

‘Carlyon Manor. Where Granny lived when she was young.’

‘Very nice,’ he said, ‘but it must be dangerous. Come on now. We must go.’

She didn’t like his hectoring tone, but came reluctantly down the steps. ‘I still need to see Saint Florian,’ she said and bit her lip, seeing his outraged face.

‘I’m sorry, Lucy, but it’s just not on. We need to get home.’

He really was furious, and though she resented it she supposed it was understandable. She started to follow him back to the car, but her footsteps dragged; she couldn’t dispel the silly notion that the house was calling her back.

Will, she saw, had already turned the car round so that it pointed resolutely in the direction of home. They got in, and when he started the engine she suddenly imagined herself sitting beside him all the way to London, listening to the clangy music, discussing the wretched documentary he was editing, with the town of St Florian, still unvisited, receding further and further away.