"You're not the only early bird," he said as the sweep in front of the house came into sight. "Either Mrs. Collins has had a lift up from Polkerris or you have visitors."
I saw the large open boot of the Buick packed tight with luggage. The horn was blowing continuously, and the two children, with macs held over their heads to protect them from the rain, were running up the steps through the front garden to the house. The shock of disbelief turned to the dull certainty of impending doom.
"It's not Mrs. Collins," I said, "It's my wife and family. They must have driven down from London through the night."
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WAS NO question of driving past the garage to the back entrance. The postman, grinning, stopped his van and opened the door for me to get out, and anyway the children had already seen me, and were waving.
"Thanks for the lift," I said to him, but I could do without the reception, and I took the letter that he held out to me and advanced to meet my fate.
"Hi, Dick," called the boys, tearing back down the steps. "We rang and rang, but we couldn't make you hear. Mom's mad at you."
"I'm mad at her," I told them. "I didn't expect you."
"It's a surprise," said Teddy. "Mom thought it would be more fun. Micky slept at the back of the car, but I didn't. I read the map." The blowing of the horn had ceased. Vita emerged from the Buick, immaculate as always, wearing just the right sort of clothes for Piping Rock on Long Island. She had a new hair-do, more wave in it, or something; it looked all right but it made her face too full.
Attack is the best form of defence, I thought. Let's get it over. "Well, for God's sake," I said, "you might have warned me."
"The boys gave me no peace," she said. "Blame it on them." We kissed, then both stood back, eyeing each other warily like sparring partners before a shadow feint.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"About half-an-hour," she said. "We've been all round, but we couldn't get in. The boys even tried throwing earth at the windows, after they'd rung the bell. What's happened? You're soaked to the skin."
"I was up very early," I said. "I went for a walk."
"What, in all this rain? You must be crazy. Look, your trousers are torn, and there's a great rent in your jacket."
She seized hold of my arm and the boys crowded round me, gaping. Vita began to laugh. "Where on earth did you go to get in a state like this?" she asked.
I shook myself clear. "Look," I said, "we'd better unload. It's no good doing it here — the front door is locked. Hop in the car and we'll go round to the back."
I led the way with the boys, and she followed in the car. When we reached the back entrance I remembered that it was locked too from the inside — I had left the house by the patio.
"Wait here," I said, "I'll open the door for you," and with the boys in close attendance I went round to the patio. The boiler-house door was ajar — I must have passed through it when I followed Roger and the rest of the conspirators. I kept telling myself to keep calm, not to get confused; if confusion started in my mind it would be fatal.
"What a funny old place. What's it for?" asked Micky.
"To sit in", I said, "and sun-bathe. When there is any sun."
"If I were Professor Lane I'd turn it into a swimming pool," said Teddy. They trooped after me into the house, and through the old kitchen to the back door. I unlocked it, and found Vita waiting impatiently outside.
"Get in out of the rain", I said, "while the boys and I fetch in the suitcases."
"Show us round first," she said plaintively. "The luggage can wait. I want to see everything. Don't tell me that is the kitchen through there?"
"Of course it isn't," I said. "It's an old basement kitchen. We don't use any of this." The thing was, I had never intended to show them the house from this angle. It was the wrong way round. If they had arrived on Monday I should have been waiting for them on the steps by the porch, with the curtains drawn back, the windows open, everything ready. The boys, excited, were already scampering up the stairs.
"Which is our room?" they shouted. "Where are we to sleep." Oh God, I thought, give me patience. I turned to Vita, who was watching me with a smile.
"I'm sorry, darling," I said, "but honestly—"
"Honestly what?" she said. "I'm as excited as they are. What are you fussing about?"
What indeed! I thought, with total inconsequence, how much better organised this would have been if Roger Kylmerth, as steward, had been showing Isolda Carminowe the lay-out of some manor house.
"Nothing," I said, "come on…"
The first thing Vita noticed when we reached the modern kitchen on the first floor was the debris of my supper on the table. The remains of fried eggs and sausages, the frying-pan not cleaned, standing on one corner of the table, the electric light still on.
"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "Did you have a cooked breakfast before your walk? That's new for you!"
"I was hungry," I said. "Ignore the mess, Mrs. Collins will clear all that. Come through to the front."
I hurried past her to the music-room, drawing curtains, throwing back shutters, and then across the hall to the small dining-room and the library beyond. The piece de r+®sistance, the view from the end window, was blotted out by the mizzling rain.
"It looks different", I said, "on a fine day."
"It's lovely," said Vita. "I didn't think your Professor had such taste. It would be better with that divan against the wall and cushions on the window-seat, but that's easily done."
"Well, this completes the ground-floor," I said. "Come upstairs."
I felt like a house-agent trying to flog a difficult let, as the boys raced ahead up the stairs, calling to each other from the rooms, while Vita and I followed. Everything had already changed, the silence and the peace had gone, henceforth it would be only this, the take-over of something I had shared, as it were, in secret, not only with Magnus and his dead parents in the immediate past, but with Roger Kylmerth six hundred years ago.
The tour of the first floor finished, the sweat of unloading all the luggage began, and it was nearly half-past eight when the job was done, and Mrs. Collins arrived on her bicycle to take charge of the situation, greeting Vita and the boys with genuine delight. Everyone disappeared into the kitchen. I went upstairs and ran the bath, wishing I could lie in it and drown.
It must have been half an hour later that Vita wandered into the bedroom. "Well, thank God for her," she said. "I shan't have to do a thing, she's extremely efficient. And must be sixty at least. I can relax."
"What do you mean, relax?" I called from the bathroom. "I imagined something young and skittish, when you tried to put me off from coming down," she said. She came into the bathroom as I was rubbing myself with the towel. "I don't trust your Professor an inch, but at least I'm satisfied on that account. Now you're all cleaned up you can kiss me again, and then run me a bath. I've been driving for seven hours and I'm dead to the world."
So was I, but in another sense. I was dead to her world. I might move about in it, mechanically, listening with half an ear as she peeled off her clothes and flung them on the bed, put on a wrapper, spread her lotions and creams on the dressing-table, chatting all the while about the drive down, the day in London, happenings in New York, her brother's business affairs, a dozen things that formed the pattern of her life, our life; but none of them concerned me. It was like hearing background music on the radio. I wanted to recapture the lost night and the darkness, the wind blowing down the valley, the sound of the sea breaking on the shore below Polpey farm, and the expression in Isolda's eyes as she looked out of that painted wagon at Bodrugan.