Possession. A Romance

Chapter 5

The ploughman, turning sullen clods may see

(Air whistling in his brain that rose in sighs

From belly griped by famine) the soil work

And work, to extrude a demon, with knobbed brow

And golden eyes, that opens a brown mouth

To promise-not the dream of avarice-

But pots of gold to buy the pots of pulse

Of which, no more, he dreams. So she may feel

Whisk past her skirt and scamper, hairy feet

Of an old gentle godling, who leaves tracks

In the warm ashes, or whose grincing voice

Laughs even in the cradle, saying "Love me,

Rock me, and find your treasure, never fear.

The old gods keep their gifts to give their own."

From such small demons, what harm might they fear?

-R. H. ASH, from The Incarcerated Sorceress

The wolds of Lincolnshire are a small surprise. Tennyson grew up in one of their tight twisting valleys. From them he made the cornfields of immortal Camelot.

On either side the river lieLong fields of barley and of ryeThat clothe the wold and meet the sky.

Roland saw immediately that the word "meet" was precise and surprising, not vague. They drove over the plain, up the rolling road, out of the valley. The valleys are deep and narrow, some wooded, some grassy, some ploughed. The ridges run sharply across the sky, always bare. The rest of the large, sleepy county is marsh or fen or flat farmed plain. These slightly rolling hills appear to be folded out of the surface of the earth, but that is not the case; they are part of a dissected tableland. The villages are buried in the valleys, at the end of blind funnels. The green car went busily along the ridgeway, which was patterned with roads and paths like the branches of spines. Roland, who was urban, noted colours; dark ploughed earth, with white chalk in the furrows; a pewter sky, with chalk-white clouds. Maud noticed good rides and unmended gates, and badly crunched hedgerows, gnashed by machine-teeth.

"Down on the left," she said. " Seal Court. In the hollow." A carpet of treetops, not homogeneous, and a glimpse of battlements, a round turret, another turn, and a sort of keep, perhaps.

"The land's private, of course. We can go down into the village. Christabel's buried there. In St Etheldreda's churchyard. The village is called Croysant le Wold; it's a lost village, more or less-there are a lot of lost villages scattered round the feet of these hills, no more than a grange and a church still standing. I don't think the Croysant church is in use nowadays. Christabel thought Croysant was derived from Croyance, meaning belief, and Saint-but it was one of those inaccurate guessing nineteenth-century etymologies. They say it really came from Croissant, meaning crescent, because there's a bend in the valley and the river there. She liked St Etheldreda, who was a Virgin Queen, although she was twice married- she became Abbess of Ely and founded a great House, and was buried in the odour of sanctity-"

Roland was not very interested in St Etheldreda. This morning Maud seemed again remote and patronising. They descended the switchback road and turned off in the valley towards the church, which stood in its walled graveyard, solid, square-towered. Outside its gate a battered estate-car was parked; Maud drew up at a distance, and together they walked in. The earth was wet. Blackening beech leaves, from a tree near the gate, clogged the path through the little graveyard, which was overgrown with damp, dun hay. Flanking the heavy stone porch were two large yews, heavy-shadowed. Maud, sensible in trench-coat and Wellingtons, her head still scarfed, strode up to the wrought-iron gate across the porch, which was bolted and padlocked. Water, containing a brilliant green sediment, dripped from a gutter onto the stone, leaving a sinuous stain.

"The Baileys are in the church," said Maud. "But Christabel's out on the edge, in the wind and the rain, where she wanted to be. Over here."

They clambered over tussocks and humps. They put their feet in the rabbit-runs between the dead. There was a shoulder-high stone wall, rooted with ivy-leaved toadflax. Christabel's tombstone leaned over at a slight angle. It was made of local limestone, not marble, and roughened by weather. Someone had cleaned the lettering, not very recently.

Here lie the mortal remains of

Christabel Madeleine LaMotte

Younger daughter of Isidore LaMotte

Historian

And of his beloved wife

ArabeI LaMotte

Only sister of Sophie, Lady Bailey

Wife of Sir George Bailey of Seal Court

Croysant le Wold

Born January 3rd 182$

Laid to rest May 8th i8go

After mortal trouble

Let me lie still

Where the wind drives and the clouds stream

Over the hill

Where grass's thousand thirsty mouths

Sup up their fill

Of the slow dew and the sharp rain

Of the mantling snow dissolv'd again

At Heaven's sweet will.

Someone, again not recently, had sheared the hay from the grave, which was surrounded by a low and crumbling stone rim, thrust apart by couch grass and thorny trails of bramble. On the grassy mound lay the ghost of a large, indeed opulent bouquet, held together by bridal wires, now rusted amongst the mop heads of dead chrysanthemums and carnations, the skeletal leaves of long-faded roses. A green satin ribbon, water-stained and earth-stained, held these fragments together; there was a card tied to this, on which was palely visible in typewriting

For Christabel

From the women of Tallahassee

Who truly honour you

Who keep your memory green

And continue your work

"The stones I shaped endure."

Melusina, XII, 325

"Leonora was here," said Maud. "In the summer. When Sir George threatened her with a shotgun.”

“She had a go at the weeds perhaps," said Roland, who felt threatened by damp and melancholy.

"Leonora would be very shocked at the state of this graveyard," said Maud. "She would not find it romantic. I think it's all right. A slow return to nature and oblivion."

"Did Christabel write that poem?"

"It's one of her quieter efforts. You see it's not ascribed. The tombstone mentions her father's profession, and doesn't say a word about her own."

Roland felt briefly guilty of the oppressions of mankind. He said mildly, "It's the poem that sticks in the memory. Rather sinister.”

“As though the grass were supping up Christabel.”

“Well, it was, I suppose." They looked at the grass. It lay damply, in decaying tufts. "Let's walk up the hill," said Maud. "We can look down on Seal Court from a distance. She must have come this way often enough, she was a diligent churchgoer."

From behind the church a ploughed field slanted up to the uncompromising skyline. Silhouetted against the grey sky, on the top, was a figure Roland at first took for a seated monarch by Henry Moore, enthroned and crowned. Then it inclined its head and struggled fiercely with arms pointing earthwards, and Roland caught glints of silver and reconstituted it as a person in a wheelchair, possibly in difficulty.

"Look!" he said to Maud.

Maud stared upwards.

"Perhaps they're in trouble."

"Someone must be with them or they wouldn't have got up there," said Maud reasonably.

"Perhaps," said Roland, setting off nevertheless, his town shoes thickening with mud as he climbed, his hair ruffling. He was in good health, owing to the cycling perhaps, despite carbon monoxide and lead in London streets.

In the wheelchair was a woman, wearing a deep-crowned, wide-brimmed green felt hat, obscuring her face, and a paisley silk scarf at the throat of a caped loden coat. The chair had spun out of the central track along the ridge and was now skewed at the precipitous edge of what would be a steep and stony career. Leather-gloved hands strove with the huge hoops. Leather boots, beautifully soft and polished, rested placidly on the shifting step. There was, Roland saw, a huge flint embedded in the mud under the back of the wheel, preventing all attempts at manoeuvre or reversal.

"Can I help?"

"Oh," on a long stressed sigh. "Oh, thank you. I do s-seem to be b-bogged down." The voice was hesitant, old and patrician. "S-such a b-bother. So so h-h-h-h-helpless. If you please-"

"There's a stone. Under the wheel. Wait. Hold on."

He had to kneel down in the muddy track, damaging his trousers, reminding him of playground agonies; he gripped, tugged, balanced.

"Is the chair stable?" he said. "I seem to be tipping you."

"It's d-designed for s-stability. I have the brakes on."

The full real anxiety of the position slowly came over Roland. Any wrong move, and she would have been over. He inserted his hands into the mud, and scrabbled. He found a not very effective twig and scraped. He used another flint as a primitive lever and finally fell back, clasping the offending object in both hands, damaging the haunches of his trousers too.

"There," he said. "Like dentistry. It's out."

"I am very grateful."

"You were in a bit of a fix. You must have skidded over it one way and then it tipped back and put up this sort of tooth, like a ratchet, look." He became aware that she was trembling. "No, wait a minute, let's get the chair back on the track. I'm afraid my hands are muddy."

He was out of breath by the time he had canted her back, ground her round, settled the chair on the rough track again. Its wheels dripped mud. She turned her face up to him then. It was large and moony, stained with the brown coins of age, thick with ropes and soft pockets of flesh under the chin. The eyes, huge and pale brown, were swimming. From under the smooth, pulled-back grey hair at the sides of the hat trickled large drops of sweat.

"Thank you," she said. 'I had got myself in a very foolish position. I might well have gone over. F-foolhardy, my husband would say. I sh-should s-stay on the level ground. My dependence annoys me."

"Of course," said Roland. "Of course it must. You were all right really. Someone must have come."

"Just as well you did. Are you out walking?"

"I'm visiting. Out with a friend." Where was Maud? "Marvellous air. You can see so far."

"That's why I come up here. The dog is meant to stay with me, but he never does. My husband likes to poke about in the woods. Where are you walking?"

"I don't know. My friend knows. Shall I walk with you, a little?"

"I don't feel very well. My h-hands are shaky. If you would be good enough to come to-the foot of the track, down the wold, my husband-"

"Of course, of course." Maud came up. She looked neat and clean in her Burberry and Wellingtons.

"We got the chair out," Roland told her. "It was jammed on a stone. I'm just going to walk down the hill with this lady-her husband's there-she's had rather a shock-"

"Of course," said Maud.

They progressed, all three, Roland behind the chair, down the track. The land over the hill was thickly wooded. Through trees Roland saw again, more leisurely, a turret, a battlement, white in the gloom.

" Seal Court," he said to Maud.

Yes. "Romantic," he offered.

"Dark and damp," said the lady in the wheelchair.

"It must have cost a fortune to build," said Maud.

"And to maintain," said the lady in the wheelchair. Her leather hands danced a little in her lap, but her voice was steadying.

"I suppose so," said Roland.

"You are interested in old houses?"

"Not exactly," said Roland. "We wanted to see that one."

"Why?"

Maud's boot sliced into his ankle. He suppressed an exclamation of pain. A very dirty Labrador appeared, out of the woodland. "Ah, Much," said the lady. "There you are. Useless great lump. Useless. Where's your master? Tracking badgers?" The dog measured its blond belly in the mud, agitating its stern. "Tell me your names," said the lady in the wheelchair.

Maud said quickly, "This is Dr Michell. From London University. I teach at Lincoln University. My name's Bailey. Maud Bailey."

"My name is Bailey too. Joan Bailey. I live at Seal Court. Are you a relation?”

“I am a Norfolk Bailey. A relation far back. Not very close. The families haven't kept up-" Maud sounded repressive and cold.

"How interesting. Ah, here is George. George dear, I have had an adventure and been rescued by a knight. I was entrenched on the top of Eagle's Piece, with a huge stone under my wheel and the only way out seemed to be over the edge, most humiliating. And then Mr Michell here came along, and this young woman, whose name is Bailey."

"I told you to keep to the centre of the track."

Sir George was small and wet and bristling. He had laced leather boots with polished rounded calves, like greaves. He had a many-pocketed shooting jacket, brown, with a flat brown tweed cap. He barked. Roland took him for a caricature and bristled vestigially with class irritation. Such people, in his and Val's world, were not quite real but still walked the earth. Maud too saw him as a type; in her case he represented the restriction and boredom of countless childhood country weekends of shooting and tramping and sporting conversation. Rejected and evaded. He was not carrying a gun. Water stained his shoulders, shone on his footwear, stood in drops on the furry ribs of the socks between his breeches and his boots. He considered his wife.

"You're never content, are you?" he said. "I push you up the hill and then you're not content to take it steady on the track, oh no. Any harm done?"

"I do feel a bit shaken. Mr Michell came in time."

"Well, you weren't to expect that." He advanced on Roland, his hand held out. "I'm very grateful. My name's Bailey. The idiot dog is meant to stay with Joan, but he will not, he will go off on his own little expeditions in the gorse. I expect you think I should have stayed up there, ha?"

Roland demurred, touching his forthright hand, stepping back.

"So I should. So I should. I'm a selfish old blighter. There are badgers, though, Joanie. Not that I should say so, encourage trespassers, wildlifers, terrifying the poor brutes out of their wits. The old Japanese juniper's in good fettle, too, you'll be glad to know. Quite recovered."

He advanced on Maud.

"Afternoon. My name's Bailey."

"She knows," said his wife. "So's her name, I told you, she's one of the Norfolk Baileys."

"Is that so? They aren't seen about here very often. Less than badgers, I'd say. What brings you here?"

"I work in Lincoln."

"You do, do you?" He did not ask at what. He considered his wife with some intensity of observation. "You look clammy, Joan. You aren't a good colour. We should get you home."

"I should like to ask Mr Michell and Miss Bailey to c-come to t-tea if they would. Mr Michell needs a wash. They are interested in Seal Court."

" Seal Court isn't interesting," said Sir George. "It isn't open to the public, you know. It's in a bad way. My fault, indirectly. Lack of funds. Coming down round our ears."

"They won't mind that. They're young." Lady Bailey's large face took on a set expression. "I should like to ask them. For courtesy."

Maud's face flamed. Roland saw what was going on. She wanted proudly to disclaim any interest in penetrating Seal Court: she wanted to go there, because of Christabel, because, he guessed, Leonora Stern had been turned away: she felt, he assumed, dishonest in not saying straight out why she had an interest in going.

"I should be very glad of a brief chance to wash," he said. "If it's not too much trouble."

They drove in convoy round behind the great house, on a sopping weed-infested gravel drive, and pulled up in the stable-yard, where Roland helped Sir George to disembark the wheelchair and Lady Bailey. The short day was darkening; the back door swung in heavily under a Gothic porch over which a rose, now leafless, was trained. Above, rows of dark windows, with carved Gothic frames, were dark and blank. The door had been elongated to remove steps, so that the wheelchair could go in. They progressed along dark stone corridors, past various pantries and flights of steps, arriving eventually in what later turned out to have been the servants' hall and was now superficially, and partially, converted for modern living.

At one end of this dim room was an open fireplace, in which a few huge logs still smouldered in a bed of white ash; on either side of this were two heavy, curved and padded armchairs, covered in velvet, a dark charcoal colour, patterned with dark purple flowers, a kind of ^zmoriseà jin-de-siècle bindweed. The floor was covered with large red and white vinyl tiles, rubbed in ridges that betrayed the presence of flagstones underneath. Under the window was a heavy table, thick-legged and partly covered with an oilcloth patterned in faintly tartan checks. At the other end of the room, which later proved to lead out to the kitchen and other domestic offices, was a small two-barred electric fire. There were other, slightly threadbare chairs, and a collection of extremely glossy, lively pot plants, in glazed bowls. Maud was worried by the lighting, which Sir George turned on-a dim standard lamp by the fire, a slightly happier lamp, made from a Chinese vase, on the table. The walls were whitewashed, and bore various pictures of horses, dogs and badgers, oils, watercolours, tinted photos, framed glossy prints. By the fire was a huge basket, obviously Much's bed, lined with a stiff and hair-strewn navy blanket. Large areas of the room were simply empty. Sir George drew the curtains, and motioned Roland and Maud to sit down by the fire, in the velvet chairs. Then he wheeled his wife out. Roland did not feel able to ask if he could help. He had expected a butler or some obsequious manservant, at the least a maid or companion, to welcome them into a room shining with silver and silk carpets. Maud, inured to poor heating and the threadbare, was still a little disturbed by the degree of discomfort represented by the sad lighting. She put her hand down and called Much, who came and pressed his body, trembling and filthy, against her legs, between her and the sinking fire.

Sir George came back and built up his fire with new logs, hissing and singing.

"Joan is making tea. I'm afraid we don't have too many comforts or luxuries here. We live only on the ground floor, of course. I had the kitchen made over for Joan. Every possible aid. Doors and ramps. All that could be done. I know it's not much. This house was built to be run by a pack of servants. Two old folk-we echo in it. But I keep up the woods. And Joan's garden. There's a Victorian water garden too, you know. She likes that."

"I've read about that," said Maud cautiously.

"Have you now? Keep up with family things, do you?"

"In a way. I have particular family interests."

"What relation are you to Tommy Bailey then? That was a great horse of his, Hans Andersen, that was a horse with character and guts."

"He was my great-uncle. I used to ride one of Hans Andersen's less successful descendants. A pig-headed brute who could jump himself out of anything, like a cat, but didn't always choose to, and didn't always take me with him. Called Copenhagen."

They talked about horses and a little about the Norfolk Baileys. Roland watched Maud making noises that he sensed came naturally, and sensed too that she would never make in the Women's Studies building. From the kitchen a bell struck.

"That's the tea. I'll go and fetch it. And Joan."

It came in an exquisite Spode tea service, with a silver sugarbowl and a plateful of hot buttered toast with Gentleman's Relish or honey, on a large melamine tray designed, Roland saw, to slot into the arms of the wheelchair. Lady Bailey poured. Sir George quizzed Maud about dead cousins, long-dead horses, and the state of the trees on the Norfolk estate. Joan Bailey said to Roland, "George's great-great-grandfather planted all this woodland, you know. Partly for timber, partly because he loved trees. He tried to get everything to grow that he could. The rarer the tree, the more of a challenge. George keeps it up. He keeps them alive. They're not fast conifers, they're mixed woodland, some of those rare trees are very old. Woods are diminishing in this part of the world. And hedges too. We've lost acres and acres of woodland to fast grain farming. George goes up and down protecting his trees. Like some old goblin. Somebody has to have a sense of the history of things."

"Do you know," said Sir George, "that up to the eighteenth century the major industry in this part of the world was rabbitwarrening? The land wasn't fit for much else, sandy, full of gorse. Lovely silver skins they had; they went off to be hats in London and up North. Fed 'em in the winter, let 'em forage in the summer, neighbours complained but they flourished. Alternated with sheep in places. Vanished, along with much else. They found ways to make sheep cheaper, and corn too, and the rabbits died out. Trees going the same way now."

Roland could think of no intelligent comments about rabbits, but Maud replied with statistics about Fenland warrens and a description of an old warrener's tower on the Norfolk Baileys' estate. Sir George poured more tea. Lady Bailey said, "And what do you do in London, Mr Michell?"

"I'm a university research student. I do some teaching. I'm working for an edition of Randolph Henry Ash."

"He wrote a good poem we learned at school," said Sir George. "Never had any use for poetry myself, but I used to like that one. 'The Hunter.' Do you know that poem? About a stone-age chappie setting snares and sharpening flints and talking to his dog and snuffing the weather in the air. You got a real sense of danger from that poem. Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying. We had a sort of poet in this house once. I expect you'd think nothing to her. Terrible sentimental stuff about God and Death and the dew and fairies. Nauseating."

"Christabel LaMotte," said Maud.

"Just so. Funny old bird. Lately we get people round asking if we've got any of her stuff. I send them packing. We keep ourselves to ourselves, Joan and I. There was a frightful nosy American in the summer who just turned up out of the blue and told us how honoured we must be, having the old bat's relics up here. Covered with paint and jangling jewellery, a real mess, she was. Wouldn't go when I asked her politely. Had to wave the gun at her. Wanted to sit in Joan's winter garden. To remember Christabel. Such rot. Now a real poet, like your Randolph Henry Ash, that'd be something different, you'd be reasonably pleased to have someone like that in the family. Lord Tennyson was a bit of a soppy old thing too, on the whole, though he wrote some not bad things about Lincolnshire dialect. Not a patch on Mabel Peacock though. She really could hear Lincolnshire speech. Marvellous story about a hedgehog. Th'otchin 'at wasn't niver suited wi' nowt. Listen to this then. "Fra fo'st off he was werrittin' an witterin' an sissin an spittin perpetiwel." That's real history that is, words that are vanishing daily, fewer and fewer people learning them, all full of Dallas and Dynasty and the Beatles' jingle jangle."

"Mr Michell and Miss Bailey will think you are a frightful old stick, George. They like good poetry."

"They don't like Christabel LaMotte."

"Ah, but I do," said Maud. "It was Christabel who wrote the description I read of the Seal Court winter garden. In a letter. She made me see it, and the different evergreens, and the red berries and the dogwood and the sheltered bench and the silvery fish in the little pool… Even under the ice she could see them suspended-"

"We had an old torn cat who used to take the fish-"

"We restocked-"

"I'd love to see the winter garden. I'm writing about Christabel LaMotte."

"Ah," said Lady Bailey. "A biography. How interesting."

"I don't see," said Sir George, "that there'd be much to put in a biography. She didn't do anything. Just lived up there in the east wing and poured out all this stuff about fairies. It wasn't a life. “

“As a matter of fact, it isn't a biography. It's a critical study. But of course she interests me. We went to look at her grave."

This was the wrong thing to say. Sir George's face darkened. His brows, which were sandy, drew down over his plummy nose. "That unspeakable female who came here-she had the impudence to hector me-to read me a lecture-on the state of that grave. Said its condition was shocking. A national monument. Not her national monument I told her, and she shouldn't come poking her nose in where, it wasn't wanted. She asked to borrow some shears. That was when I got the gun out. So she went and bought some in Lincoln and came back the next day and got down on her knees and cleaned it all up. The Vicar saw her. He comes over once a month, you know, and says Evensong in the church. She sat and listened in the back pew. Brought a huge bouquet. Affectation."

We saw-

"You don't have to shout at Miss Bailey, George," said his wife. "She's not responsible for all that. There's no reason why she shouldn't be interested in Christabel. I think you should show these young people Christabel's room. If they want to see. It's all locked away, you know, Mr Mitchell, and has been for generations. I don't know what sort of a state it's in, but I believe some of her things are still there. The family has occupied less and less of this house since the World Wars, every generation a little less-Christabel's room was in the east wing that's been closed since 1918, except for use as some kind of a glory-hole. And we, of course, live in a very small part of the building, and only downstairs, because of my disability. We do try to have general repairs done. The roofs sound, and there's a carpenter who sees to the floors. But no one's touched that room to my knowledge, since I came here as a bride in 1929. Then we lived in all this central portion. But the east wing was- not out of bounds exactly-but not used."

"You wouldn't see much," said Sir George. "You'd need a torch. No electricity, in that part of the house. Only on the ground-floor corridors."

Roland felt a strange pricking at the base of his neck. Through the carved window he saw the wet branches of the evergreens, darker on the dark. And the dim light in the gravel drive.

"It would be marvellous just to have a look-"

"We should be very grateful."

"Well," said Sir George, "why not? Since it's all in the family. Follow me."

He gathered up a powerful modern storm-lantern and turned to his wife. "We'll bring you back any treasure we find, dear. If you wait."

They walked and walked, at first along tiled and bleakly lit corridors under electric lighting, and then along dusty carpets in dark shuttered places, and up a stone staircase and then further up a winding wooden stair, cloudy with dark dust. Maud and Roland neither looked nor spoke to each other. The little door was heavily panelled and had a heavy latch. They went in behind Sir George, who waved his huge cone of light around the dark, cramped, circular space, illuminating a semi-circular bay window, a roof carved with veined arches and mock-mediaeval ivy-leaves, felt-textured with dust, a box-bed with curtains still hanging, showing a dull red under their pall of particles, a fantastically carved black wooden desk, covered with beading and scrolls, and bunches of grapes and pomegranates and lilies, something that might have been either a low chair or a prie-dieu, heaps of cloth, an old trunk, two band boxes, a sudden row of staring tiny white faces, one, two, three, propped against a pillow. Roland drew his breath in minor shock; Maud said, "Oh, the dolls"-and Sir George brought his light back from a blank mirror entwined with gilded roses and focussed it on the three rigid figures, semi-recumbent under a dusty counterpane, in a substantial if miniature fourposter bed.

They had china faces, and little kid-leather arms. One had fine gold silken hair, faded and grey with the dust. One had a kind of bunched white nightcap, in white dimity edged with lace. One had black hair, pulled back in a circular bun. They all stared with blue glassy eyes, filled with dust, but still glittering.

"She wrote a series of poems about the dolls," said Maud, in a kind of dreadful whisper. "They were ostensibly for children, like the Tales for Innocents. But not really."

Roland turned his eyes back to the shadowy desk. He did not feel the presence of the dead poet in the room, but he did have a vague excited sense that any of these containers-the desk, the trunks, the hat-boxes-might contain some treasure like the faded letters in his own breast-pocket. Some clue, some scribbled note, some words of response. Only that was nonsense, they would not be here, they would be wherever Randolph Henry Ash had put them, if they had ever been written.

"Do you know," Roland said, turning to Sir George, "whether there were papers? Is there anything left in that desk? Anything of hers?"

"That was cleared, I suppose, at her death," said Sir George.

"May we at least look?" said Roland, imagining perhaps a hidden drawer, and at the same time uncomfortably aware of the laundry lists in NorthangerAbbey. Sir George obligingly moved the light across to the desk, restoring the little faces to the dark in which they had lain. Roland lifted the lid on a bare casket. There were empty arched pigeonholes at the back, fretted and carved, and two empty little drawers. He felt unable to tap and tug at the framework. He felt unable to urge the unbuckling of the trunk. He felt as though he was prying, and as though he was being uselessly urged on by some violent emotion of curiosity-not greed, curiosity, more fundamental even than sex, the desire for knowledge. He felt suddenly angry with Maud, who was standing stock still, in the dark, not moving a finger to help him, not urging, as she with her emotional advantage might well have done, further exploration of hidden treasures or pathetic dead caskets. Sir George said, "And what in particular might you expect to find?" Roland did not know the answer. Then, behind him, chill and clear, Maud spoke a kind of incantation.

"Dolly keeps a Secret

Safer than a Friend

Dolly's Silent Sympathy

Lasts without end.

"Friends may betray us

Love may Decay

Dolly's Discretion

Outlasts our Day.

"Could Dolly tell of us?

Her wax lips are sealed.

Much has she meditated

Much-ah-concealed.

"Dolly ever sleepless

Watches above

The shreds and relics

Of our lost Love

Which her small fingers

Never may move.

"Dolly is harmless.

We who did harm

Shall become chill as she

Who now are warm she mocks Eternity

With her sly charm."

Sir George swung the light back onto the dolls' cot.

"Very good," he said. "Fantastic memory you've got. Never could learn anything by heart myself. Barring Kipling and the Lincolnshire bits that amuse me, that is. What is it all about, though?"

"It sounds, in here, like a treasure-hunt clue," said Maud, still with a strained clarity. "As though Dolly is hiding something."

"What might she be hiding?" said Sir George.

"Almost anything," said Roland, suddenly wanting to put him off the trail. "Keepsakes." He could feel Maud calculating. "Somebody's children must have had those dolls out," said their owner plausibly, "since 1890."

Maud knelt down in the dust. "May I?" He turned the light down on her; there she was, her face bending into shadow, as though Latour had painted its waxiness. She reached into the cot and plucked out the blonde doll by the waist; her gown was pink silk, with little rosebuds round its neckline and tiny pearl buttons. She handed this creature to Roland, who took it as he might have done a kitten, cradling it in the crook of his elbow, and adding to it, in turn, the nightcapped one, in tiny white pleats and broderie anglaise, and the dark-headed one, severe in dark peacock. They lay along his arm, their tiny heads heavy, their tiny limbs trailing, rather horrid, a little deathly. Maud took out the pillow, untucked the counterpane, folded away three fine woollen blankets and a crocheted shawl, and then lifted out one feather mattress and another, and a straw palliasse. She reached in under this, into the wooden box beneath it, prised up a hinged board and brought out a package, wrapped in fine white linen, tied with tape, about and about and about, like a mummy.

There was a silence. Maud stood there, holding on. Roland took a step forward. He knew, he knew, what was wrapped away there.

"Probably dolls' clothes," said Maud.

"Have a look," said Sir George. "You seemed to know where to find it. I bet you've got a shrewd guess what's in it. Open up." Maud plucked with pale neat lamplit fingers at the old knots, which were, she discovered, faintly covered with sealing wax.

"Do you want a penknife?" said Sir George.

"We shouldn't-cut-" said Maud. Roland itched to help. She worked. The tapes fell away and the linen, many-layered, was turned back. Inside were two parcels, wrapped in oiled silk, and tied with black ribbon. Maud pulled at the ribbon too. The old silk squeaked and slipped. There they were, open letters, two bundles, neat as folded handkerchiefs. Roland did step forward. Maud picked up the top letter on each pile. Miss Christabel LaMotte, Bethany, Mount Ararat Road, Richmond, Surrey. Brown, spidery decisive, known, the hand. And, much smaller, more violet, Randolph Henry Ash Esqre, 29, Russell Square, London. Roland said, "So he did send it."

Maud said, "It's both sides. It's everything. It was always there…" Sir George said, "And what exactly have you got there? And how did you know to go for the dolls' bed?"

Maud said, her voice high-edged and clear, "I didn't know. I just thought of the poem, standing there, and then it seemed clear. It was sheer luck."

Roland said, "We thought there might have been a correspondence. I found-a bit of a letter-in London. So I came to see Dr Bailey. That's all there is to it. This could be"-he was about to say "terribly" and held back-"quite important." It could change the face of scholarship, he nearly said, and held back again, driven by some instinct of cunning reserve. "It makes a great difference to our research work, to both our projects. It wasn't known they knew each other."

"Hm," said Sir George, "give those parcels to me. Thanks. I think we should go back down now and show these to Joan. And see if they're anything or nothing. Unless you want to stay and open everything else?" He circled the round walls with his spotlight, revealing a skewed print of Lord Leighton's Proserpina, and a cross-stitched sampler, impossible to read under the dust.

"Not now," said Maud.

"Not immediately," said Roland.

"You may never come back," said Sir George, more threatening than joking apparently, from behind his lance of light, turning through the door. So they progressed back again, Sir George clutching the letters, Maud the opened cocoon of linen and silk, and Roland the three dolls, out of some vague fancy that it was cruel to leave them in the dark.

Lady Bailey was quite excited. They all sat round the fireplace. Sir George put the letters into his wife's lap, and she turned them over and over, under the greedy eyes of the two scholars. Roland told his half-truth about his bit of a letter, not saying when or where he had come across it. "Was it a love letter, then?" Lady Bailey asked, innocent and direct, and Roland said, "Oh no" and then added, "but excited, you know, as though it was important. It was a draft of a first letter. It was important enough to make me come up here to ask Dr Bailey about Christabel LaMotte." He wanted to ask and ask. The date, for God's sake, on the top letter from Ash, was it the same, why were they all together, how long does it go on-how did she answer, what about Blanche and the Prowler…

"Now, what would be the right way to proceed?" said Sir George slowly, and deliberately pompously. 'In your view, young man? In yours, Miss Bailey?"

"Someone should read them-" said Maud. "Oh-"

"And you naturally think you should read them," said Sir George.

"I-we-should like to, very much. Of course."

"So would that American, no doubt."

"Of course she would. If she knew they were there."

"Shall you tell her?"

He watched Maud hesitate, his fierce blue eyes shrewd in the firelight.

"Probably not. Not yet, anyway."

"You'd like the first crack?"

Maud's face flamed, "Of course. Anyone would. In my-in our position…"

"Why shouldn't they read them, George?" Joan Bailey enquired, drawing the first letter out of its envelope, looking casually down at it, not avid, barely curious.

"For one thing, I believe in letting dead bones lie still. Why stir up scandals about our silly fairy poetess? Poor old thing, let her sleep decently."

"We aren't looking for scandals," said Roland. "I don't suppose there is any scandal. I just hope-he told her what he was thinking about poetry-and history-and things like that. It was one of his most fertile periods-he wasn't a great letter-writer-too polite- he said she understood him in the letter I-I-saw-he said-"

"For another thing, Joanie, what do we really know about these two? How do we know they're the proper people to have sight of these-documents? There's two days' reading in that heap, easy. I'm not letting them out of my hands, am I?"

"They could come here," said Lady Bailey.

"It's a bit more than two days," said Maud.

"You see," said Sir George.

"Lady Bailey," said Roland. "What I saw was the first draft of the first letter. Is that it? What does it say?" She put on reading glasses, round in her pleasant large face. She read out:

"Dear Miss LaMotte,

It wasagreat pleasure totalk to you atdearCrabb's breakfast party. Your perception and wisdom stood out through the babble of undergraduate wit, and even surpassedour host's accountofthefinding of Wieland's bust. May I hope thatyou too enjoyed our talk - andmayI have thepleasure ofcalling on you? I know you Hue very quietly, but I would be very quiet -I only want to discuss Dante and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Goethe and Schiller and Webster and Ford and Sir Thomas Browne et hoc genus omne, notforgetting, of course, Christabel LaMotte and the ambitious Fairy Project. Do answer this. You know, I think, how much a positive answer would give pleasure to

Yours very sincerely

Randolph Henry Ash"

"And the answer?" said Roland. "The answer? I'm sorry-I'm so curious-I've been wondering if she answered, and if so, what she said."

Lady Bailey drew out the top letter of the other sheaf, almost teasingly, like an actress announcing on television the award for the Best Actress of the Year.

"Dear Mr Ash,

No truly -I do not Tease - how should I demean you or myself so - or you demean Yourself to think it. I live circumscribed and self-communing - 'tis bestso - not like a Princess in a thicket, by no means, but more like a very fat and self-satisfied Spider in the centre of her shining Web, if you willforgive me the slightly disagreeable Analogy. Arachne is alady I am greatly sympathetic to, an honest craftswoman, who makes perfect patterns, but is a little inclined to take unorthodox snaps at visiting or trespassingstrangers, not perceiving the distinction between the two, it may be, often until too late. Truly I make but a stammering companion, I have no graces, and as for the wit you may have perceived in me when we met, you saw, you must have seen, only the glimmerings and glister of your own brilliancerefractedfrom the lumpen surface of a dead Moon. I am a creature of my Pen, Mr Ash, my Pen is the best of me, and I enclose a Poem, in earnest of my great goodwill towards you. Now would you not rather have a Poem, however imperfect, than a plate of cucumbersandwiches, however even, howeverdelicately salted, however exquisitely fine-cut? You know you would, and so would I. The Spider in the poem, however, is not my Silken Self but an altogether more Savage and businesslike sister. You cannot but admire their facile diligence? Would Poems came as naturally as Silk Thread. I write Nonsense, but if you care to write again, you shall have a sober essay on theEverlasting Nay, or Schleiermacher's Veil ofIllusion, or the Milk of Paradise, or What you Will.

Yours to command in some things

Christabel LaMotte"

Lady Bailey's reading was slow and halting; words were miscast; she stumbled over hoc genus omne and Arachne. It was like frosted glass between them, Roland and Maud, and the true lineaments of the prose and the feelings of Ash and LaMotte. Sir George appeared to find the reading more than satisfactory. He looked at his watch.

"We've just time to do what I always do with Dick Francis: spoil the suspense by peeking at the end. Then I think we'll put these away until I've had time to consider my position. Take advice. Yes. Ask around a little. You'd have to be getting back, anyway, wouldn't you?"

He was not asking. He looked indulgently at his wife.

"Go on, Joanie. Give us the end of it."

She peered at the texts. She said, "She appears to have asked for her letters back. His is an answer to that.

"Dear Randolph,

All is indeed at an end. And I am glad, yes,glad with all my heart.And you too, you are very sure, are you not? One last thing -I should like my letters to bereturned -all my letters withoutfail - not becauseI do not trust your honour, but because they are mine, now, because they are no longer yours. You understand me, in this at least, I know.

Christabel"

"My dear,

Here are your letters, as you requested. They are all accounted for. Two I have burned and there may be - indeed there are - others which should immediately meet the same fate. But, aslong as they are in my hands, Icannot bring myself to destroy any more, or anything written by you. These letters are the letters of a wonderful poet and that truth shines steady throughthe very shifting and alternating feelings with which I look at them in so far as they concern me, that is in so far as they are mine. Which within half an hour they will not be, for I have them packaged and ready to bedelivered into your handstodo with as you shall seejit. You should burn them, I think, and yet, if Abelard had destroyed Eloisa's marvellous constant words, if the Portuguese Nun had kept silent, how much the poorer should we not be, how much less wise? I think you will destroy them; you are a ruthless woman; how ruthlessI am yet to know and am just beginning to discern. Nevertheless if there is anything I can dofor you in the wayof friendship, now or in the future, I hope you will nothesitate to call upon me.

I shallforget nothing of what has passed. I have nota forgetting nature. (Forgiving is no longer the question, between us, is it?) You may rest assured I shall retain every least word, written or spoken, and all other things too, in the hard wax of my stubborn memory. Every little thing, do you mark, everything. Ifyou burn these, they shall have anafterlife in my memory, as long as I shall live, like the after-traceofa spent rocket on the gazing retina. I cannot believe that you will burn them. I cannot believe that you will not. I know you will not tell me what you have decided, and I must cease scribbling on, anticipating, despite myself, your never-to-be anticipatedanswer, always in the past, a shock, a change, most frequently a delight.

I had hoped we could befriends. My good sense knows you areright in your stark decision, and yet I regret my good friend. If you areever in trouble - but I have said that once already, and you know it. Go inpeace. Write well.

Yours to command in some things

R.H.A."

"You were wrong about the scandal," said Sir George to Roland, with a complicated mixture of satisfaction and accusation. Roland felt a huge irritability mounting inside himself, mild though he knew himself to be, compounded of distress at hearing Lady Bailey's faded voice stammer across Randolph Henry Ash's prose, which sang in his head, reconstituted, and also of frustration because he could not seize and explore these folded paper time-bombs.

"We don't know until we've read it all, do we?" he retorted, creaky with self-restraint.

"But it might put a cat among the pigeons."

"Not exactly. The importance is literary-" Analogies raced through Maud's mind and were rejected as too inflammatory. It's as though you'd found-Jane Austen's love letters?

"You know, if you read the collected letters of any writer-if you read her biography-you will always get a sense that there's something missing, something biographers don't have access to, the real thing, the crucial thing, the thing that really mattered to the poet herself. There are always letters that were destroyed. The letters, usually. These may be those letters, in Christabel's life. He-Ash-obviously thought they were. He says so."

"How exciting," said Joan Bailey. "How very exciting."

"I must take advice," said Sir George, stubborn and suspicious.

"So you shall, my dear," said his wife. "But you must remember that Miss Bailey was clever enough to find your treasure. And Mr Michell."

"If, at any time, sir-you would consider giving me-us-access to the correspondence-we could tell you what was there-what its significance to scholarship was-whether an edition might be possible. I have seen enough already to know that my work on Christabel must be seriously altered in the light of what you have in these letters-I wouldn't be happy going on without taking them into account-and that must be true of Dr Michell's work on Ash too, just as true."

"Oh yes," said Roland. "It might change the whole line of my thought."

Sir George looked from one to the other. "That may be so. That may well be so. But are you the best people-to trust with the reading?"

"Once it is generally known," said Roland, "that these letters exist, everyone will be at your door. Everyone."

Maud, who was afraid of exactly this possibility, glowered whitely at him. But Sir George, as Roland had calculated, was more alarmed at the thought of pilgrimages of Leonora Sterns than aware of the possibilities of Cropper and Blackadder.

"That won't do at all-"

"We could catalogue them for you. With a description. Tran scribe-with your permission-some-"

"Not so fast. I shall take advice. That's all I can say. That's fair."

"Please," said Maud, "let us know, at least, what conclusion you come to."

"Of course we will," said Joan Bailey. "Of course we will." Her capable hands stacked those dry leaves in her lap, ordering, squaring.

Driving back in the dark, Roland and Maud communicated in brief businesslike bursts, their imaginations hugely busy elsewhere.

"We both had the same instinct. To play it down." Maud.

"They must be worth a fortune." Roland. "If Mortimer Cropper knew they were there-"

"They'd be in Harmony City tomorrow.”

“Sir George would be a lot richer. He could mend that house."

"I've no idea how much richer. I don't know anything about money. Perhaps we should tell Blackadder. Perhaps they ought to be in the British Library. They must be some sort of national heritage."

"They're love letters."It seems so, certainly."Perhaps Sir George will get advised to see Blackadder. Or Cropper."

"We must pray not Cropper. Not yet."

"If he gets advised to come to the University, he may simply get sent to me."

"If he gets advised to go to Sotheby's, the letters'll vanish, into America or somewhere else, or Blackadder'll get them if we're lucky. I don't know why I think that'd be so bad. I don't know why I feel so possessive about the damned things. They're not mine."

"It's because we found them. And because-because they're private."

"But we don't want him just to put them into a cupboard?"

"How can we, now we know they're there?"

"Do you think we might agree-a kind of pact? That if one of us finds out any more, he or she tells the other and no one else? Because they concern both poets equally-and there are so many other possible interests involved…" Leonora- "If you tell her, it's halfway to Cropper and Blackadder-and they have much more punch than she has, I suppose."

"It makes sense. Let's hope he consults Lincoln University and they send him to me."

"I feel faint with curiosity."

"Let's hope he makes his mind up soon."

But it was to be some considerable time before any more was heard of the letters or of Sir George.