In life, Ernest Helesby acquired ample measures of both notoriety and admiration within the architectural profession, for competently building off-plan. Any design that he harboured was made to field the broad leap of faith, from personal visualisation, to stone and wood, foregoing paper charts, and the critical eye of a draughtsman. His son, Douglas, possessed neither his father's imagination, nor any of his natural talent, nor his casual gift for accurate measurement made by line of sight alone. He had nonetheless dutifully foundered in the old man's footsteps, leaving a trail of lopsided constructions in his wake.
The low-ceilinged room, located on the second floor, at the distant end of what was once the staff quarters of Sandgrove Hall, had been an afterthought of Helesby Jr, crammed into surplus space that had manifested unexpectedly over the course of several days. It had the bowed, crumpled dimensions of a cardboard box that has been made to support a weight heavier than it can comfortably bear. For many years it had accommodated pairs of young servant girls. The bed had since been dismantled and carried out, a few planks at a time, underneath the crooked lintel. It had been replaced by a small rug, and a writing desk, that was pushed against one of the plain whitewashed walls, giving the room a monastic air.
In a corner, by the door, Margaret Luscombe, the lady of the house, sat quietly in a rocking chair. He feet were planted firmly on the floor, where they acted as a brake to the back and forth motion of the wooden runners. She was bent forward in a manner that would have stirred hastily-murmured prayers in the mouth of her horrified governess – an Austrian woman named Dagmar, now long in the grave. The focus of the lady's attention lay splayed across her lap. The book was written in German. Her lips silently formed the words.
A shard of morning sunlight entered the room from beneath the overhang of the thatch. It began to advance across the floor. When it reached the woman's ankles, it bent upright, climbing the loose blue pleating of her satin dress. It bent again at her knees, and then again at her waist. Shortly after, it reached her lowered face. She blinked into the glare and attempted to liberate her head from its path. One hand raised itself from the edge of the book and feebly swatted at the irritation, before falling away in defeat.
Rising, she closed the book. She set it down on the wooden seat of the rocker, where it immediately slid backwards, coming to a halt with the bottom corner of the spine protruding from between the turned wooden spokes of the backrest.
Stooping under the lopsided downslope of the ceiling, she unlatched the window and spread both panes as wide they would go. A panorama of rural sounds flooded the room.
Across the meadows, behind a screen of bare trees, the undulating howl of the May Wolf was being drawn back and forth across the veiled horizon. She pictured the winding track in her head – a thing that Douglas Helesby himself might have inadvertently conceived, had he ever been commissioned to lay a railway. The wood that formed the framework of what its inventor insisted on calling 'The Gravitus', had once been a part of the Esgate to Greenlee line. By day it had ferried itinerant workers to the estates that bordered the track. At night, a different train had periodically conveyed guests between the grand halls to attend formal functions; dinner parties and seasonal dances. The uprooted timbers were grey with age, scaled with yellow lichen and padded with spongy islands of green moss. Here and there the eccentric reconstruction of the railway was interrupted by an obvious interloper – a long banister rail taken from the ruin of Pemberton. The hall had been twice struck by lightning, at either end, on the same night. It had burned inwards as two separate fires, leaving behind a small midsection of the building that stood for a day as a column, exposing the gnawed cross-sections of former rooms and surviving items of furniture that no-one dared to recover. It had toppled over the following afternoon. Her husband, Lord Henry Rowan Luscombe, had been there as witness. He described the occasion fancifully in his journal, as the final piece in a long-run game of chess finally laying down in acknowledgement of defeat. He was of the opinion that the hall would not be rebuilt:
“The Cawthornes have not the wealth to embark upon such a project. They are not ruined by a long shot. However, they are greatly reduced and will never again be as they once were. They can no longer be a part of the social calendar. Though we remain on terms, it is likely that we will not be acquainted with them again.”
Lady Margaret imagined the gentlemen seated side-by-side in the open-roofed carriage of the May Wolf; the excited young boys from the village hauling it along the straightened track to the brim of the dell, before turning it loose on the steep plummet. Those boys who failed to let go of the rope in time were pulled over the edge and pitched down the slope among the ferns, whose swaying heads nodded at their passing. The carriage, now spirited by its own momentum, began to issue a prolonged howl that changed in pitch, as it meandered between the silver trunks of the birchwood. The track was like a warped ladder, listing over, first to one side, and then the other, while the men, harnessed by leather straps, were stiffly pitched about by the motion. The clacking of gearage latched onto the underside of the car drawing it skyward along the flank of a scaffolded hill whose brow stood level with the tree tops. There was perhaps a second to take in the view, before the latch disengaged and the car plunged almost vertically to ground level, gathering enough speed in its descent to be carried upside down around an upstanding circle of track and onwards...
Her reverie was disturbed by a distant smudge of male voices banding together in a ragged cry of “Huzzah!” A moment later, what appeared, from a distance, to be a disorderly flight of crows, erupted from the bare branches, then immediately tumbled gracelessly back down into the trees.
Henry, returned to her, ruddy faced.
“The most bracing exercise I have ever had the good fortune to take,” he declared. “That Grindy is a find for sure. I venture it will not be long before he is called to some higher purpose in London.”
He pulled off his shearling gloves. His eyes searched the room for somewhere to put them. At a loss, he laid one atop the other. The thumb of his right hand pressed them firmly against the base of his index finger.
“Mileman lost his top hat during the high toss. I venture it is struck in the branches. Rockhill joked that an owl may have already claimed it.”
He casually embraced her, laying one hand on the back of her neck. Despite having been covered up, his palm was cold against her skin. The gloves that were pinched against his other hand, lightly echoed his touch, casting their own incomplete shadows below her waist. In a show of marital etiquette, his lips brushed dismissively against hers.
“Gilmartin's off his onion. A bookmarked novel by the elusive Miss May Wolf turned up in his study, replacing the volume he was in the middle of reading; Ptolemy, if he is to be believed. He is at a loss as to how it came to be there. His natural inclination is to blame the housekeeper. I have counselled him not to rush to such an immediate conclusion: Why would Miss Swinfield, who is on in her years, and who has no family to speak of, risk her livelihood by seasoning her employer's doleful library with the tale of a woman who rises to become Governor General of the East India Company, while conducting torrid affairs with men and women of all races?”
“Why indeed?” remarked Lady Margaret.
“I have advised him to write down a list of all the women who have visited Marchment in the passing months. Then we may get to the bottom of this.”
Standing in the doorway, he drew himself back at the shoulders and exhaled.
“I assume that a copy of the aforementioned novel will presently find its way into this household,” he said. “That being the case, I also assume that it will be kept apart from the main collection and held a safe distance from any respectable guests who might avail themselves of our hospitality.”
“I would have thought that to be the most prudent course,” replied Lady Margaret. “I will advise the housemaids, and furthermore extend that expectation to the groundskeeper, the gamekeeper, and your personal valet.”
“I don't suppose you know who...”
He paused in mid-thought. The unforgiving sunlight that was pouring into the ridiculous room, had conspired to make his wife appear much older and more frail than she was.
'The day does not favour us,' he mused. 'It is only in the semi-dark that we approach our idealised forms.”
“No, no of course you don't,” he said.