The Living and the Dead in Winsford

18

The eighth of November. Clear but windy and cold. Only plus three degrees at eight in the morning.

We had spent the whole of the previous day indoors, due to appalling weather. Rain and gale-force winds non-stop — or perhaps it wasn’t in fact rain, but the upper layer of the sea that was being blown in over the land. It seemed suspiciously as if that really was the case, and was coming from that direction. Castor was restricted to three short runs around the garden. It was a difficult day in every respect — the worst one since I came here. I understand that I need to get out briefly every day, irrespective of the weather and the wind: spending thirty-six hours at a stretch in a house like Darne Lodge is not something to look forward to, most certainly not.

Perhaps I had convinced myself that Martin’s notes would keep me occupied, but after only a few pages I found myself overwhelmed by a degree of resistance that I neither want nor am able to explain. I put the whole lot of material away, and spent the day reading Dickens and playing patience instead. I hadn’t played patience since I was a teenager, but I found two almost unused packs of cards in a drawer, and after a while had remembered four different variations. Idiot Patience, of course, and Spider Harp — I can’t remember the names of the other two. I’m sure I learned all four from my father, probably even before I started school: and once I had realized this I simply couldn’t get him out of my mind. He was a person who wanted the best for everybody, and did whatever he could to make that happen; but in the last years of his life, after Gunsan had died and my mother had entered a twilight world, well. . How was he able to sum up his journey through life? As he lay there in hospital and died of a broken heart. What was left for him?

I thought about Gudrun Ewerts, and how she went on about the importance of weeping. If she was gazing down on me yesterday from the heavens above, she would have had every reason to nod approvingly. I cried my eyes out.

But that was yesterday. Today is another day, and having learned our lesson we set off on foot immediately after breakfast and Dickens. We headed southwards to start with, towards Dulverton, and after a while we came to that simple signpost pointing the way into the village. After eyeing one another up and down and thinking it over for a few moments, we set off along that path. It was muddy and difficult to follow at first, but after a few hundred metres we came to a narrow road along which one could stroll without too much difficulty. It wasn’t wide enough for a four-wheeled vehicle — I didn’t really understand how it had come to exist, or what purpose it could possibly have: but there is a lot about the moor that I don’t understand. It was downhill all the way, and the vegetation was abundant: deciduous trees in full leaf even though we were well into November; moss and ivy, holly and brambles. The road followed a fast-flowing stream, pheasants and all kinds of other birds twittered and hopped around in the bushes, and here and there, on the other side of the thick undergrowth, we could hear the bleating of sheep. It seemed to me that the ground must be enormously fertile — if you lay down and slept for twelve hours, you were bound to be covered in creepers when you woke up: it seemed a bit like a cautionary fairy-tale. A little girl and her dog go for a walk in the woods, and never return to their village. I tried to shake such thoughts off me.

We eventually came to a house. We had been under way for about half an hour, and its sudden appearance was about as likely as the chances of meeting a lawyer in heaven. That was another of my father’s expressions, incidentally, and I assume it was a hangover from the previous day’s games of patience. Anyway, it was a dark-coloured stone-built house so embedded in the vegetation that it was almost invisible — it was on the other side of the stream we had been following all the way, which at this point changed from being fast-flowing into a stretch of more or less still-standing water. A moss-covered stone bridge ran over the water to the house. We paused and contemplated the building: it was two storeys high, and the walls were covered in ivy and other climbing plants — some of the windows were almost completely overgrown.

It was when I raised my gaze to observe the upper storey that I realized there were in fact three floors: there was a narrow window immediately below the gable gutter, and in that window I could just make out a face.

It was pale, almost white, and it belonged to a young man who was evidently standing up there, watching us. He must have been pressing his face against the glass — no lights were lit in the house but even so his features were quite clear through the windowpane. It was a thin, colourless face, dark hair with a parting, prominent eyebrows and a long, pointed nose. A grim-looking mouth, little more than a narrow slit.

And completely motionless — my immediate reaction was that it was a doll.

But it wasn’t a doll. After we had been observing each other for about ten seconds, he slowly raised his right hand and made a very obvious gesture in front of his neck: a sideways movement across his throat. There was no mistaking its significance.

Then he backed away into the darkness of the room.

I had difficulty in moving away from the spot. Castor was halfway over the bridge to the house, and I called him back. A hen pheasant burst out from a clump of trees, a screeching male just behind her. In the distance I could hear the sound of a vehicle accelerating away, and concluded that we must be quite close to the village. I could also see that below the house the road became slightly wider: it must presumably be possible to drive up to here.

As we stood there, getting on for a minute, the sound of water bubbling away on all sides became louder, sharper, and then a deafening shriek from a bird pierced the air — not a pheasant this time. I glanced up once more at the dark attic window, then began moving away at last. It felt as if something significant had happened, something irrevocable, I don’t know what.

It took less than ten minutes to get down to the village — the final section was a muddy but easily passable road suitable for vehicles. There were traces of ponies’ hooves, but also wide wheel-tracks looking as if they had been made by a tractor. At regular intervals narrow channels of bubbling water crossed over the road. Where did all the water come from? I asked myself automatically — but then I recalled the previous day’s weather. . Castor was forging ahead all the time now, as if he had already registered a whiff of civilization and the prospect of something tasty to eat.

The Royal Oak had just opened for lunch, and since the plan was to walk all the way back to Darne Lodge, we went in. It had taken us more or less exactly an hour to get here, so it would probably take us about twice as long to get back up the hill.

It wasn’t Rosie behind the bar today, but a man past the full bloom of youth. Perhaps he was Rosie’s husband. He greeted us heartily, and asked if I wanted some food. I said that I was indeed intending to have lunch, and sat down at the same table as the time before. He came over with a menu, but explained that today’s special — chicken breast and broccoli with fried potatoes — was not on it. He had a tattoo on his lower arm: Leeds United 4ever. I said I rather fancied the chicken breast. He nodded and asked if I minded if he gave the dog a few treats as well. I had the impression that Castor also nodded, and a couple of minutes later he was fully occupied guzzling down a plate of mixed meat trimmings and drinking half a litre of water before dozing off in front of the fire.

No further conversation took place and no other guests turned up during the forty-five minutes we stayed at The Royal Oak. I tried not to think about the face in the window — and that gesture with the hand over the young man’s throat — with only limited success.

Before starting back towards Winsford Hill — this time on the other side of Halse Lane, and over rather more open ground if I had read the map correctly — we went for a short walk round the village. There can’t have been more than about fifty houses, but on the other side of the church I discovered a sign pointing to something called ‘Community Computer Centre’. It turned out to be a low, modern-looking building with white plaster and featureless office-type windows, and as we passed it I noticed that it was open. We went inside and found ourselves in a room looking like a school classroom with about twenty rather old-fashioned computers. Sitting at a slightly larger table was a dark-haired woman of about thirty, chewing at a pencil and staring at a screen. She looked up and smiled when she saw me.

And smiled even more broadly when she saw Castor.

Good, I thought. A human being.

‘Welcome! How can I help you? What a handsome dog! A ridgeback, methinks.’

‘He’s a very good friend,’ I said, without adding that he was the only one I had. ‘I gather you have links to the internet here, is that right?’

‘It certainly is. It would be a bit much if we called ourselves a Computer Centre and didn’t have a link to the web, don’t you think? Are you travelling through?’

I hesitated for a second before explaining that in fact I was living just outside the village. At Darne Lodge, if she knew where that was. Everything suddenly seemed very straightforward: I didn’t understand why I had been so reticent at The Royal Oak last week. If Mr Tawking wanted to let his house to a foreign woman writer for the whole winter, it was surely not impossible that he might have mentioned it to others, even if he was a miserable old curmudgeon. There was every reason to suppose that my presence up there was well known in the village.

‘Oh, so you’re the one, are you?’ said the woman with a smile. ‘I heard that somebody was going to be living there for quite some time. I’m Margaret, by the way. . Margaret Allen. Welcome to Winsford, the end of the world.’

‘Maria. Maria Anderson.’

We shook hands. Castor flopped down onto the floor with a sigh. I took the opportunity to introduce him as well. Margaret knelt down and stroked him over his neck and back. I felt the need to burst into tears, but managed to control it. There were occasions when weeping should be kept under control, even Gudrun Ewerts would agree with that.

‘I take it you don’t have an internet connection up there,’ said Margaret when she stood up again. ‘But you can come down here whenever you like. We’re usually open between eleven in the morning and six in the evening, but if there’s anything urgent you can always knock on the door of that little stone cottage next to the church — it says Biggs on the door. Alfred Biggs and I take it in turns to sit here, and he never says no to anybody, I can promise you that.’

I thanked her and said that I had no urgent need to contact anybody just now, but I would be back in a few days’ time.

‘Isn’t it a bit lonely up there? Forgive me for asking, but. .’

She burst out laughing, evidently embarrassed by her presumptuousness. ‘I speak out of turn. I’m sorry, but we haven’t had a single client so far today — most people have a link in their own homes nowadays. It was a bit different when we started this place fifteen years ago. There’s been lots of talk about closing it down, but we do get quite a few young people calling in after school. And there are in fact a few families who are still not connected. I don’t know if it’s because they can’t afford it, or for some other reason. .’

It was obvious that she wanted to talk, and mainly out of politeness I asked if she knew anything about Darne Lodge. When it was built, and why, for instance.

‘Oh yes,’ said Margaret enthusiastically. ‘There’s an awful lot to say about Darne Lodge. Didn’t old Tawking tell you anything?’

I shook my head.

‘No, I don’t suppose he would, that old miseryboots. Would you like a cup of tea?’

*

And while we drank tea and ate some biscuits with some black but rather tasty goo evidently called Branston Pickle, I was provided with a fair amount of information about the house I was living in — and would be living in for the best part of six months. I had the impression that despite her comparative youth, Margaret Allen knew more than most about what was what in the village. She also said that both she and her husband were active in the local folklore society, and in addition to her unpaid work at the computer centre she worked as a librarian in Dulverton.

But anyway, Darne Lodge. Well, Margaret recalled that it was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century as the residence of a certain Selwyn Byrnescotte. He was a soldier who returned home as some kind of hero after the Napoleonic wars — the Battle of Trafalgar and two other sea battles that Margaret named, but I didn’t recognize. The problem with this Selwyn was that even before he had gone to war he had been disowned by his family — or at least by his father, Lord Neville — on the Byrnescotte estate roughly midway between Winsford and Exford. The background was top secret, but probably had to do with homosexuality. In any case, the Lord had Darne Lodge built so that his decorated but wayward next-oldest son would have somewhere to live (had it been his eldest son, things would have been much more complicated) at a fairly safe distance away from the family seat. However, Selwyn didn’t like being isolated on the moor and soon moved to London, where he led a dissolute and debauched life for several years. The war was still raging, but he was unable to return to the battlefield because of some injury or other. He came back to Darne Lodge to die — it was the same year as the Battle of Waterloo — and he hanged himself from one of the roof beams. As a result of his London excesses he also had another serious injury: half his face had been shot away in a duel. Apparently he was not a pretty sight when he was eventually discovered and cut down after several months. Nobody knew that he had returned to Darne Lodge.

I suspected that Castor and I would be spending several hours with Margaret Allen — she didn’t leave out many details: but as luck would have it there was a hundred-year gap in the story. After Selwyn Byrnescotte’s tragic end, the house stood empty until about 1920 when it was bought by a Londoner who needed somewhere for himself and his household to spend the night while he was out hunting red deer on Exmoor. It was eventually taken over by his son for the same purpose, but after this unfortunate young man — his name was Ralph deBries and he seemed to be of Belgian extraction as far as one could make out — had also committed suicide there, this time with the aid of tablets, the house was sold at auction in 1958 and bought by the father of the current owner, Jeremy Tawking.

Anyway, nobody had died in the house since 1958 — Margaret Allen was careful to stress that fact — and no doubt over two hundred people had been living there as Mr Tawking had been renting it out for at least twenty years. Usually by the week during the summer months, of course, but Margaret recalled that somebody had been living there last winter as well. In any case, it seemed to be well built and insulated, and was able to withstand the winter storms.

I was able to confirm that this was the case. Even if the really hard winter storms hadn’t actually occurred yet — an assertion that Margaret agreed with. The worst usually came in January and February.

I thanked her for the tea and the information, and reaffirmed that Castor and I would be turning up again very shortly. Margaret said she suspected she had been too negative about Darne Lodge in some respects, and apologized for going on so long.

We said our goodbyes and left. The walk back up to Winsford Hill turned out to be quite difficult, with various gates, herds of bleating sheep and glaring cattle, and when we eventually came up onto the moor itself we had the wind directly against us all the way to the edge of the Punchbowl, which I could now see, looking at it from this direction, really did look like a crater. Or like the after-effects of a gigantic meteor that had crashed down several thousands of years ago and left behind a hole a hundred metres deep and roughly twice that wide.

Nevertheless, we eventually got home — both Castor and I were equally muddy and exhausted — and even as I opened the garden gate I could see that there was a dead pheasant lying outside the front door.

A magnificent male bird, lying peacefully on its side with its wings and its tail feathers in excellent shape and apparently uninjured.

Apart from the fact that it was dead.

Then Castor did something totally unexpected. He walked slowly up to the bird, sniffed at it from various angles, then carefully grasped it by the head with his teeth. Dragged it gently to one side, just a metre or so, then left it lying there next to the wall.

Then he looked at me, as if to say that it was okay to go in now.