The others didn’t answer him, so I said, ‘It’s a nice game.’
‘I’m so glad. And Jelks will look after you and get anything you want.’
‘Jelks can go to bed too,’ the wife said.
I could hear Major Haddock breathing through his nose beside me, and the soft drop of the cards one by one on to the table, and then the sound of Jelks’s feet shuffling over the carpet towards us.
‘You wouldn’t prefer me to stay, m’lady?’
‘No. Go to bed. You too, Basil.’
‘Yes, my dear. Good night. Good night all.’
Jelks opened the door for him, and he went slowly out followed by the butler.
As soon as the next rubber was over, I said that I too wanted to go to bed.
‘All right,’ Lady Turton said. ‘Good night.’
I went up to my room, locked the door, took a pill, and went to sleep.
The next morning, Sunday, I got up and dressed around ten o’clock and went down to the breakfast-room. Sir Basil was there before me, and Jelks was serving him with grilled kidneys and bacon and fried tomatoes. He was delighted to see me and suggested that as soon as we had finished eating we should take a long walk around the grounds. I told him nothing would give me more pleasure.
Half an hour later we started out, and you’ve no idea what a relief it was to get away from that house and into the open air. It was one of those warm shining days that come occasionally in mid-winter after a night of heavy rain, with a bright surprising sun and no breath of wind. Bare trees seemed beautiful in the sunlight, water still dripping from the branches, and wet places all around were sparkling with diamonds. The sky had small faint clouds.
‘What a lovely day!’
‘Yes – isn’t it a lovely day!’
We spoke hardly another word during the walk; it wasn’t necessary. But he took me everywhere and I saw it all – the huge chess-men and all the rest of the topiary. The elaborate garden houses, the pools, the fountains, the children’s maze whose hedges were hornbeam and lime so that it was only good in summer when the leaves were out, and the parterres, the rockeries, the greenhouses with their vines and nectarine trees. And of course, the sculpture. Most of the contemporary European sculptors were there, in bronze, granite, limestone, and wood; and although it was a pleasure to see them warming and glowing in the sun, to me they still looked a trifle out of place in these vast formal surroundings.
‘Shall we rest here now a little while?’ Sir Basil said after we had walked for more than an hour. So we sat down on a white bench beside a water-lily pond full of carp and goldfish, and lit cigarettes. We were some way from the house, on a piece of ground that was raised above its surroundings, and from where we sat the gardens were spread out below us like a drawing in one of those old books on garden architecture, with the hedges and lawns and terraces and fountains making a pretty pattern of squares and rings.
‘My father bought this place just before I was born,’ Sir Basil said. ‘I’ve lived here ever since, and I know every inch of it. Each day I grow to love it more.’
‘It must be wonderful in summer.’
‘Oh, but it is. You should come down and see it in May and June. Will you promise to do that?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come,’ and as I spoke I was watching the figure of a woman dressed in red moving among the flower-beds in the far distance. I saw her cross over a wide expanse of lawn, and there was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and when she was over the lawn, she turned left and went along one side of a high wall of clipped yew until she came to another smaller lawn that was circular and had in its centre a piece of sculpture.
‘This garden is younger than the house,’ Sir Basil said. ‘It was laid out early in the eighteenth century by a Frenchman called Beaumont, the same fellow who did Levens, in Westmorland. For at least a year he had two hundred and fifty men working on it.’
The woman in the red dress had been joined now by a man, and they were standing face to face, about a yard apart, in the very centre of the whole garden panorama, on this little circular patch of lawn, apparently conversing. The man had some small black object in his hand.
‘If you’re interested, I’ll show you the bills that Beaumont put in to the old Duke while he was making it.’
‘I’d like very much to see them. They must be fascinating.’
‘He paid his labourers a shilling a day and they worked ten hours.’
In the clear sunlight it was not difficult to follow the movements and gestures of the two figures on the lawn. They had turned now towards the piece of sculpture, and were pointing at it in a sort of mocking way, apparently laughing and making jokes about its shape. I recognized it as being one of the Henry Moores, done in wood, a thin smooth object of singular beauty that had two or three holes in it and a number of strange limbs protruding.