‘I’m thinking of the one that was in occupation at the Master House in the 1970s, when the Newtons were repeatedly leasing it out.’
‘Don’t know anything about it.’ Merrily finally brought out her cigarettes. ‘Some kind of good-life smallholding – did you tell me that?’
‘Good life? Not me, darling. Bastards couldn’t even grow their own dope. The house was leased by the Newtons to an honourable – son of some minor member of the Midlands aristocracy. Newtons were well pleased, at first. Not realizing he’d turn out to be the kind of dissolute, overprivileged hooray hippie that could turn … I don’t know, Sandringham into a shell in a matter of weeks.’
‘Anybody I’ve heard of?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. Lord Stourport?’
Merrily shook her head.
‘Endless rumours about the things that went on there,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Orgies and the rest. Nude bathing in the Monnow. Place would probably’ve been burned to the ground, result of some discarded spliff, if there hadn’t been a rather timely police raid. Result of which Lord Cokehead was sent down for three months or so. Lease effectively terminated.’
‘So why would Felix Barlow have been there?’
‘Most of the hoorays couldn’t replace a washer on a bloody tap, so anybody who was halfway practical was welcome to move into one of the sheds, drugs on the house, long as he brought his tools. That’s what I was told, anyway – wouldn’t know anything for sure, all this happened while I was … away.’
‘Well … Felix was indeed a very practical man, but I’m not getting why you think he would’ve been at the Master House. In fact …’ Merrily sat up, the cigarette halfway to her mouth. ‘What is your angle on this, Mrs Morningwood? Where are you actually coming from? Like, what did you mean when you said on the phone that someone didn’t do a terribly good job?’
Merrily slumped on to the edge of the chaise longue. Her body felt weak but the low vibration was still there and went cruising up into her head, bringing on a dizziness.
‘Steady, girl. You got the works, you know.’
Mrs Morningwood turned and threw the remains of her cigarette, with practised accuracy, into the heart of the fire.
Merrily lay back against the pillows. The windows had dimmed, crimson caverns opening up in the iron range. Roscoe, the wolfhound rose up and stretched, his front legs extended, revealing the black smudges of old burn marks on the rug where he’d been lying.
Mrs Morningwood stood up and moved across to the ebony desk. Sound of a drawer sliding open. She bent and drew the piano stool towards the well of the desk, switching on a green-shaded oil lamp converted to electricity.
Placing a fold of paper on the floodlit blotter and beckoning Merrily over.
‘Sit there. Won’t take you long to read it. I have to go and shut the chickens in for the night. Toilet’s back into the hall, second left. You’ll probably need it now you’ve been on your feet.’
Merrily sat looking down at the paper, pooled in lamplight, apple green. She opened it out.
‘What is it?’
‘A suicide note,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Kind of. With hindsight.’
29
Like a Ghost
SITTING ON THE lavatory, bent over, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, Merrily was holding the first sentences in her head.
People say death is like sleep.
I just hope they’re wrong. Sometimes I think I must be very close to death and I hate sleep more than anything.
It wasn’t the original, that was clear. There was no address, and – she’d looked at the bottom – no signature. Mrs Morningwood, or somebody, must have copied it into a computer.
When she came out of the downstairs bathroom, a bit fresher, Mrs Morningwood had returned and was stripping off her old Barbour, hanging it in the whitewashed hall, fluffing up her hair – the first conspicuously feminine thing Merrily had seen her do.
‘You’ve read it?’
‘I had to stop. Had to … go.’
Mrs Morningwood nodded, and Merrily went back to the desk in the living room.
You wouldnt know me Muriel. Theres nothing of me no more I am so thin and my head feels like a rotten egg sometimes and what can you do with a rotten egg except get as far away from it as possible. But you can’t, can you, if it’s inside your head day and night and all your dreams are addled. (See, I remember all about eggs. They were the good times.)
Merrily looked up.
‘This is a girl?’
‘Poor little darkie.’
Mrs Morningwood came over to the desk. Brought out a small leather photo album and began thumbing through it.
‘It was what people called her. Almost a novelty in the 1970s, a black girl in these parts. Mixed race, actually. Used to come here on holiday with her parents, in a caravan on a farm at Bagwyllydiart. There.’
The photo, its colours faded, showed two girls sitting together on a five-bar gate.
‘That’s … you?’
‘Frightening, isn’t it?’
The young Muriel, willowy and lovely, linking arms with the other girl, who was laughing so hard that her face was fuzzed and her white hoop earrings had ghosts.
‘They were from Coventry. Black father, white mother. They didn’t appear one year and then we heard the parents had broken up. Learning later – from the poor kid herself – that she was being interfered with by the mother’s new man. She’d’ve been fifteen or sixteen. Ran away a couple of times, finally hitch-hiking to just about the only place that had good memories for her.’
‘Here?’
‘Twenty quid in her pocket. Got picked up by the chip man – there was a chap in Monmouth ran two or three fish-and-chip vans, came out to the villages one or two days a week. He recognized her, picked her up, gave her a job in his shop in Monmouth, let her sleep in the room over the top. Until his wife found out.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was probably quite innocent. She’d never have told, anyway. He was there when she needed help. Upshot of it, she turned up at our door, ended up moving in. Would’ve been on the streets otherwise.’
I’m sorry to keep on at you but you were always strong and I dont know anybody else I can tell who wouldn’t just hate me more.
‘You didn’t try to contact her parents?’
‘So she could go back and get fiddled with again? Not a chance, darling. She asked us not to, anyway, and she was sixteen or seventeen, we knew that. Besides, I was going to London, had a job lined up with a distant relative, theatrical agent. She filled the space.’
Mrs Morningwood took the photo back, put it in the album, left the album on the desk and went back to the hob.
‘House was only half as big then. I suppose she was here nearly a year. My mother found her a post as housekeeper – not live-in. Farmer called Eric Davies whose wife’d walked out because she couldn’t stand the isolation and Eric’s refusal to take a day off. Go on – read the rest.’
I’m writing this now because theres times when I still think I can get rid of it if I want to. Like Oh its not that bad it’s only your body and look at the money your getting.
‘I take it this is not about Eric Davies.’
‘Hardly. That came later. We exchanged letters for about a year. Most of them more coherent, I have to say, than this one. She was actually an intelligent girl, resourceful. Adaptable.’
‘So this is referring to the Master House, is it?’
Mrs Morningwood chose a wooden block from the log basket, wedged it into the fire and talked about the Master House commune. Two or three couples there originally, but there was always room for more bodies in the five bedrooms and outbuildings. Then two of the women left and one of the men. Eric Davies, meanwhile, had been made aware of gossip – he was in line for chairman, or president or something, of the local branch of the NFU and someone had discreetly pointed out that perhaps Mary Roberts was not good for his image, middle-aged farmer with a little darkie on the premises several hours a day.