FOURTEEN

continued from

While Hugh was gone, Stephen was at liberty to look round the room. The walls were painted oddly orange and the light from a central bulb, under a parchment shade, made everything distant from the AGA seem flat and dull. The windows were high, right up against the ceiling. They hadn't been touched for months, possibly years, for the pole with the brass hook on the end which would be needed for opening and closing them, and which was propped handily in a corner, was coated with cob-webs and the skeletons of spiders.

The room was bigger than any kitchen he'd been in before. The table would have been better sited in the grand dining room of The Hall than in here but there was still plenty of space between it and two arm-chairs (islands in a tide of newspapers) for broken baskets and cardboard boxes.

He had just sat down in one of them and was ruffling through the papers, thinking it might be interesting to read about something which had happened a long time ago, when he heard Hugh shout.

Then again.

His voice was muffled but coming closer. When he'd left the room with the tea, he'd gone through the door which led to the gun room and the yard so Stephen leapt up and headed for that. But the handle was round and brass and slippery and loose. There must be a knack. No. A catch. A catch to lift. It stuck. He rattled and pushed. It shot up - a second nick to his finger! . . . and Hugh burst through a green baize door on the other side of the kitchen.

“Stephen! I’m so sorry. It’s Camellia.” He steadied himself against the back of a chair. Stephen ran to help. Took his elbow. Waited.

Hugh drew a breath but couldn't say more.

“Show me,” Stephen said gently, his own heart thumping. Hugh didn't look well. What if Hugh and Camellia expired on him? Both of them. "Where's Camellia, Hugh?" Hugh just carried on staring. “Show me,” Stephen said again, raising Hugh's elbow a little.

Hugh turned and went back through the baize door. There was hardly any light on the other side. Just the smell of mould and manure. Stephen took Hugh's arm again, not to offer support but to know where they were going. Then they came out from under a huge staircase into a burst of semi-sunshine. A great long, high, wide, entrance hall, with tall windows and oil paintings, and a standpipe, and donkeys pulling hay down from wire baskets on the wall.

"There." Hugh nodded towards the open drawing room door.

Stephen let him rest, leaning against the wall, and went in.

Late afternoon light was filtering through dust into the most extraordinary room he had ever seen and Camellia was there, as if stranded, slumped like a drowned mermaid on a slimy rock that had once been a chair. A standard lamp lay smashed on the floor beside it and a shovel, half filled with muck, lay abandoned at her feet. She was pale. Very pale. And cold, with her hands resting limp on the arms of her rock, her head sideways against its mouldering back. Now Stephen knew what ‘digging up the carpet’ meant. There was a heap of the stuff in the fireplace.

“It could be lovely,” she whispered - and fainted again.

Stephen was worried he too might faint for want of anything worth breathing so he went to one of the windows and tried to push up the sash. It wouldn't budge. Something snorted behind him. He paused. Listened. Wondered. Didn't like to turn and look. Then there was tapping. A series of little taps on the granite floor where the carpet had been scraped away. He drew his arm across a dirty pane. He could see the barn in the courtyard now. It helped to know where he was. Thus strengthened, he turned.

Several sheep were standing in the room and more were arriving, clattering out from behind what had once been a sofa - to look at him. Sam appeared at the doorway. A duck shuffled past Stephen's ankle and hopped onto a chair opposite Camellia and settled on what once had been a cushion.

Hugh said something.

That was it. They must get her head down.

It wasn't easy. Hugh was feeling weak and worried. Stephen was feeling sick and scared.

“She wanted to make it nice for our daughter,” mumbled Hugh. Suddenly, he was angry. “I told her she'd be too tired.”

His voice didn't come out loud. He was anguished and tired and worried and cross and wondering if it would be more comfortable to despair.

Camellia groaned.

“Doesn't he go on!” she said. Then she smiled. It was a weak smile - but a definite one.

Stephen found himself grinning back.

“We though you might like some tea,” he said.

__________

For the post before this - Fourteen

FOURTEEN

continued from

Stephen's hesitation lasted only for a moment but Hugh had noticed and cursed himself. Cat-smell meant 'home' to him. Camellia, he admitted, had been right. No-one else could bear it. And there was this horrible contradiction. The only people he wanted to invite back to Thorncombe were people he liked - and they were the very people he least wanted to offend.

But Stephen was stepping forward.

“Do you like cats?” Hugh asked.

“Love them,” said Stephen, triumphing over nausea. “Perhaps not this many at once . . . . . But I am, indeed, very fond of cats.”

(He wasn’t.)

Out of politeness, he wondered if he should stroke one but couldn't see any he was prepared to go near, let alone touch. Mostly, they were emaciated, their coats dull and their spines showing ridgey under their fur. Some had oozing eyes. Some were old and barely able to move and these watched and glared, warning that they'd fight if he came too close. Some were young though, with a bit of liveliness left. Of these a couple were taking it in turns to chase a pipe-cleaner across the floor and three more were playing catch-tail round saucepans.

Hugh swept an almost flat, doormat style cat off a chair.

“Sit down,” he said. He was apprehensive. “The tea’s ready. I made it before I showed Sam round. I thought you might be cold when you arrived.”

He fetched tea-cups and saucers and a tea-pot neatly wrapped in a stained, hand-knitted cosy from the back of the AGA, where they had been keeping warm, brought them over to the table and set them next to an enamelled milk jug.

It was, no doubt, very kind of Hugh to have tea waiting, very welcoming, thought Stephen, sipping the luke-warm, sludgy brown liquid. It was so bitter it worked backwards, taking moisture out of his mouth instead of adding to it. He tried not to wince and wished Hugh hadn’t been so well prepared.

Hugh poured milk for himself, took a gulp and slammed the cup onto its saucer.

"You can't drink this!" It was awful. "I thought this was what Camellia would do! She left me to it." He stopped and looked so deflated and dejected, Stephen decided to take over.

"Don't worry," he said, taking both their cups to the scullery and tipping the tea into the sink. "It was kind of you to be ready like this. I appreciate it."

Then he lifted one of the covers on the AGA, tested the weight of the kettle and set it to boil again. "Where do you keep the tea?"

Hugh smiled weakly; grateful. Whatever was Camellia thinking? To abandon him like this? Well, he knew. She wanted Rosemary for Christmas. But the sheep had slugs in their wool and there was no-where to put the cattle and there was far too much to do in the drawing room and Rosemary had never liked cats but in the spring there would be lots of lambs for the children to see and he might have bought another donkey by then. Perhaps a dog.

He pointed sadly to a cupboard in the dresser. Stephen reached for a caddy - then took his hand back quick. A finger was bleeding. He looked round at Hugh but Hugh was thinking; hadn't noticed. So he peered into the gloom, grabbed a spitting cat away from her nesting kittens and dropped her gently to the floor where she went and crouched under the table and swished her tail. Stephen left the door open so she could go back when she wanted and made the tea.

They'd just started drinking it, and Hugh had gathered himself enough to be offering a fur laden scone, when Stephen thought he heard a distant, sharp cry. Hugh didn't seem to notice. Stephen listened more, and tried to answer Hugh's questions about Clapham and America without looking too distracted while, at the same time, concentrating on the sound. For a few moments - nothing, then . . . there it was again . . . distantly but definitely, a cry - in the house.

"Do you think Camellia would like us to take her some tea?"

Hugh stared at him a moment.

Stephen heard something crash.

For a moment, Hugh said nothing, startled because he had been interrupted. Then he smiled, glad of the excuse to go and see if she could be persuaded to join them.

“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll take her mine.”

* * *

To continue - Fifteen

For the post before this - Thirteen