What Lies Beneath

Chapter 15

The Present

Gran had seemed pretty fed up since Amy played The Deserted Village CD last night, although Amy thought she was trying to hide it.

She wondered if she ought to ask Gramps if there was anything wrong. Dad would never forgive her if she did not keep him in the loop about Gran’s health; he did not get emotional or embarrassing about her, but once or twice he said she had given him a really good, really secure childhood, which was something children did not seem to get so much these days.

Gramps was rehearsing tonight. He had gone out after supper, and Amy had been intending to go down to the Red Lion who were having a quiz night. One or two people from the library would be there, and Clem Poulter had suggested Amy join them. But Gran was looking white and pinched, and it seemed mean to leave her on her own, so Amy suggested she came along to the quiz too. It would mean Amy could not chat up any likely men, of course, though she was not sure she was yet back in a chatting-up frame of mind, even if there had been anyone around worth chatting up, which there was not.

But Gran said she would stay at home. She was not much of a one for quizzes. ‘You go, though, dear. What time does it start?’

‘Eight.’

‘It’s half-past seven already. You’d better go up to change.’

Amy was wearing her favourite scarlet cheesecloth shirt and jeans, and it had not occurred to her that she needed to change just for a couple of hours in a pub. But she brushed her hair and added a bit of lipgloss.

When she got to the Red Lion there were quite a lot of people there. Clem Poulter waved to Amy and beckoned her over to join his table. He made vague introductions to the people he was with, most of whose names Amy did not hear.

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ said Clem. ‘I tried to get a couple of the local teachers to come along, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t. I tried to get Dr Malik as well, but a snowball in hell would have more chance. I don’t think he’s even heard of pub quizzes.’

‘Who?’

‘Didn’t you say you spoke to him at that music lecture?’ said Clem. ‘He’s staying here, so you’d have thought he could have been bothered to just walk downstairs and sit at a table, wouldn’t you? He’d have been brilliant, and we’d like to win this quiz, wouldn’t we, chaps?’

There was a rather half-hearted assent from the people round the table.

Amy said, ‘Oh, him. I thought he was just somebody who wandered in out of the rain.’

‘Eccentric academic,’ said somebody on the other side of the table. ‘He’s some sort of expert on early church music or something.’

‘You know my definition of an expert,’ said Clem. ‘Somebody who lives more than thirty miles away.’

‘No, really, he’s supposed to be very distinguished and knowledgeable.’

‘What’s he doing in Upper Bramley, then?’ asked someone else, cynically.

‘He’s here to study St Anselm’s musical history now that it’s accessible again,’ said Clem impatiently. ‘I told you. Amy, what are you drinking? Oh, and we’ve ordered food for later.’

The quiz was fairly predictable, and Clem’s table managed to scrape second place, although Amy never found out what the prizes were. She had gone up to the bar to ask where their food was, when she caught sight of Dr Malik coming out of the pub’s tiny dining room. He was carrying a book and a sheaf of papers, and Amy had a sudden image of him eating his dinner with the book propped up against the salt cellar, oblivious to his surroundings. She watched him walk across to the stairs and wondered if she should try to catch his eye. She would like to tell him she had listened to the music they had discussed. Perhaps he would not want to know, though.

As if suddenly aware of being watched, he looked round. Amy smiled and Dr Malik hesitated as if unsure who she was. Then he seemed to remember, and smiled back. He appeared to consider what to do next, then instead of going upstairs, presumably to his room, he came across to the edge of the bar.

‘Hello,’ said Amy. ‘We met at the lecture the other night.’

‘I know. Second year, Durham University, yes?’ His voice was as nice as she remembered.

‘Yes. You told me about a piece of music based on a Goldsmith poem.’

‘The Deserted Village. Yes, of course.’

‘Well, I was interested because I’ve been helping with an exhibition of Old Bramley and I managed to find the recording in the library. It’s a bit scratchy and bumpy, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a very old recording,’ he said, as if wanting to defend the music.

‘It sounded it. I liked it,’ said Amy, ‘although it isn’t the kind of thing I normally listen to.’

For some reason this made him smile, and his face stopped being serious and became much younger and slightly mischievous. ‘I can believe that,’ he said. ‘But I’d be interested in your reactions – specially if you’re delving into Priors Bramley’s past.’

‘I am, a bit.’ Was he going to ask her to have a drink? If so Amy might as well take him up on it.

He said, ‘I expect you’re here with somebody, but if you’ve got ten minutes to talk about the village and the music…’ He looked round the bar vaguely. ‘We could go into the other room where it’s quieter.’

It had not occurred to Amy that it was particularly noisy in the bar, but she said, ‘I was with the pub quiz – I mean, I was with somebody’s table.’ This sounded so garbly she was annoyed with herself, and she said firmly. ‘OK, thanks. I’ll just tell them to hurry up with the food, then I’ll be out.’

‘I’ll get you a drink. What do you have?’ He said this a bit warily as if he thought she might ask for vodka laced with E.

‘House red?’ said Amy, and saw the flicker of relief.

His name was Jan Malik, and the book, which he propped on the edge of their table, was a hefty volume about early church music.

‘Clem – that’s Clem Poulter from the library, I think you met him – told me you were here because of St Anselm’s,’ said Amy, seeing the book.

‘Yes, mostly. But I’m also interested in music and literature echoing its surroundings,’ he said.

‘Priors Bramley and The Deserted Village.’

‘Yes. Not necessarily serious or obscure music, though. Modern stuff sometimes has a remarkable way of conveying a sense of place. Heavy metal often does it.’

Amy was so fascinated to hear someone who looked like a Pre-Raphaelite poet talk about heavy metal, she forgot to drink her wine.

‘And St Anselm’s is interesting on its own account anyway,’ said Jan. ‘It’s an ancient church and it has quite an unusual history of music.’

‘How old is ancient?’

‘Well, there’re a couple of mentions in one or two early monkish chronicles dating its origins to the early seventh century,’ said Jan. ‘And the church apparently had Ambrosian plainchant as part of the services until the late 1800s, which is why I’m curious about it. It’s rare to find Ambrosian chant used so recently – it’s virtually forgotten, except in Milan and parts of Lombardy. Occasionally I’ve taken postgraduate students to Italy to study it.’

Hell’s boots, thought Amy, another university don. Only this one wouldn’t quote Shelley, he would play music. She sent him a sideways glance and thought that despite his appearance, he would not be likely to lose his wallet when it came to paying for drinks or leave her to find her own way home in a taxi. Not that there were going to be any drinks bills or late-night taxis, of course. In any case he probably had a nice wife who taught Renaissance history or something, at an adjoining college.

Jan drank some of his wine, and said, ‘Sorry, Amy, I’m getting carried away with my own subject. Tell me what you thought of The Deserted Village.’

‘I liked it,’ said Amy. ‘I don’t know any of the technical stuff, and I haven’t read the poem it’s based on, but it dredged up images really well. At the start I could see Priors Bramley, with people living ordinary lives, farms and shops and church, all like an Agatha Christie book, or Cranford. And then,’ she said, warming to the theme, ‘there’s the bit where the music changes and starts to be quite menacing. I thought that’d be the feudal overlord stomping in, all droit de seigneur, grabbing village maidens and crunching up cottages. And the happy-milkmaid, kindly-shepherd rustic merriment dissolves, and in its place you get Edgar Allan Poe. Bats flitting through ruins and whatnot, and everything mouldering and decaying. The Fall of the House of Cadence.’

‘Like Priors Bramley,’ said Jan.

‘Yes. My gran can just remember everyone being booted out of the cottages and shops, and Clem Poulter had a great-aunt who’d lived there all her life. I know there’d have been compensation and rehousing,’ said Amy, ‘but it’s still anger-making, isn’t it?’

‘I’d like to talk to your grandmother to see what she remembers,’ said Jan Malik. ‘But it sounds as if it all mirrors Goldsmith’s poem. That was written as a kind of a reaction to the Enclosure Act. In a lot of areas Enclosure forced a mass emigration of the poorer farming families into the cities. In the poem, only one person is left in the village of Auburn – an old widow, forced to gather watercress for food and brushwood to keep warm, but the one person left who knows its history and could pass on the tales.’

‘That’s seriously sad,’ said Amy, after a moment. ‘Good thing it’s only fiction.’

‘Is it, though?’ said Jan softly. ‘They found a body in Priors Bramley, didn’t they?’

Amy stared at him, and for a moment something cold and unpleasant seemed to brush the back of her neck. ‘But that was just someone who got stuck there – a tramp who passed out in a drunken stupor and wasn’t noticed because nobody knew about him.’

‘I wonder if that’s all he was,’ said Jan. ‘What if he was “the sad historian of the pensive plain”?’

‘Listen, if you’re going to quote at me – because I suppose that was a quote – I’d better get another drink,’ said Amy very firmly, because she was not sure she could cope with sad souls who scraped their sustenance from watercress (watercress, for pity’s sake!) or ancient historians dying in crumbling manor houses.

She got two more glasses of wine and carried them back to the table. Jan lifted his with a half-salute that might have been apology or merely thanks.

Amy said, ‘I found photos of Priors Bramley before they infected it with Geranos. There’s a really good one of St Anselm’s and some of Cadence Manor.’

He appeared to accept the change of mood. ‘Can I see the photos sometime?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And,’ he said, ‘after that masterly precis you gave me of the music and the village, I’ve got to ask what you’re reading at Durham.’

‘Well, um, archaeology and anthropology.’

‘Good subjects. Why are you so defensive about them?’

‘Was I? I suppose it’s because when you say archaeology and anthropology, people mostly say, “But what will you actually do with it?” Or they think you’re going to disinter Egyptian mummies and fall victim to a curse.’

‘But there are masses of interesting possibilities, surely? Even without field work and digs, there’s museum curatorships, research of all sorts, even TV – all those Time Team-type programmes. They’d need advisers and researchers on board for those. And the two subjects go hand in hand, don’t they? The history and the study of buildings and the human race.’

‘I love buildings,’ said Amy, gratefully. ‘Is St Anselm’s really seventh century?’

‘Supposed to be. Built around 650, if you can believe the chronicles.’

‘Wow. The Romans had gone by then, hadn’t they?’ said Amy, delving into her memory. ‘They’d long since conquered the blue and green misty island of all their legends.’ She glanced at him and saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. ‘Listen, it is poetic and it’s far enough back to be really romantic.’

‘I didn’t say it wasn’t romantic or poetic.’

‘If you were lucky, there might be traces of the original structure of St Anselm’s,’ said Amy, thoughtfully. ‘The timbers might be a bit crumbly, but the stonework ought to be still intact.’

Jan said, ‘I’m going out to Priors Bramley tomorrow to take a look. To see if I can find any traces of… well, of anything that links St Anselm’s to the Ambrosian tradition. Or that links Priors Bramley to Goldsmith’s Auburn.’ He paused, then said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’

Amy stared at him. ‘Is it safe to go in there now?’ she said. ‘Because if it is I’d absolutely love to. D’you mean it?’

‘Yes. I’ve talked to the local council and they’ve disinfected everywhere until it squeaks, so anyone can go in. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about me, I’m a relatively respectable senior member of Oriel College,’ said Jan. ‘And I don’t normally issue invitations to people I meet in pubs. But you’re studying archaeology and I’m chasing legends so it might be a useful exercise for both of us.’

‘What about the body? The sad historian or whoever he was? Aren’t the police still yomping around looking for clues?’

‘They’re still working there, but I’ve talked to them and explained I’m only here for a short while and I just want to look inside the church. They’re fine with that. The body was in the old lodge house, anyway, which is quite a way from the church. They’ve got the whole of Cadence Manor and the grounds roped off so it’s out of bounds to the public, but the rest of the village is open. I could pick you up somewhere, or meet you out there, if that’s easier.’

Amy did not have a car and although she had open permission to use Gran’s whenever she wanted, she didn’t really want to do so for this. She thought Jan was probably giving her a tactful escape route, but she said, ‘It’d be easier if you gave me a lift. I’m at the library until twelve tomorrow.’

‘I’ll pick you up there at twelve,’ he said. ‘Could I see the photos of the church at the same time? Thanks. And then you can prowl around the ancient stones of St Anselm’s and tell me if they’re Saxon. I dare say you can take photos or sketches as well, which will be useful for your thesis when you take your doctorate.’

‘I wasn’t going to take a doctorate—’

‘Weren’t you? Why not?’

Amy tried to think of an answer to this and could not. She tried not to think Gran would go up in smoke if she heard Amy was going out to Priors Bramley with a tramp she had picked up in a pub. Except that Jan was not a tramp, of course.

Gran did go up in smoke. She had to be told about the Priors Bramley excursion because she expected Amy home for lunch each day after her library session. She was shocked to her toes to hear Amy was going off with a man she had met in the Red Lion.

‘Who is he? What do you know about him? He sounds foreign. You can’t be too careful these days, Amy. There was a girl in the paper only last week—’

‘He’s a quarter Polish. He’s an Oxford don and he lectures at Oriel College. He’s researching St Anselm’s music for a paper,’ said Amy, correctly guessing the mention of Oxford would go a long way to calming Gran’s anxiety.

‘Oh. Oh, well, perhaps… But what’s he doing picking up a girl half his age?’

‘I’m not half his age,’ said Amy indignantly. ‘He’s only about, um, thirty-five.’

‘Then he’s quite possibly married,’ said Gran, pouncing on this with triumph.

‘It doesn’t matter if he is,’ said Amy. ‘It’s not a date, for pity’s sake. We’re only going out to Priors Bramley to look at the church.’

‘Is it safe? Are they letting people in?’

‘Jan says so.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much to see. It’ll probably be drenched in the disinfectant stuff they’ve been spraying everywhere.’

‘Yes, but it’ll be good field experience for me,’ said Amy. ‘I might even get an essay out of it for next term. I thought I’d ask Gramps if I could borrow his camera.’

‘I don’t suppose he’ll mind. You’d better borrow my rubber boots, though. I wouldn’t trust that stuff they’ve been using. And as well as that you’d better— Is that your grandfather coming in now? My goodness, Derek, you’re late tonight.’

‘Blame the Lord High Executioner,’ said Gramps, dropping his jacket on a chair, and heading for the drinks cabinet. ‘He can’t, for the life of him, remember the words of “I’ve Got a Little List”, at least not in the correct sequence. If we rehearsed it once we rehearsed it six times. Still, it’s a whopping long song, and— Oh, are you going to bed, Ella? I’ll just have a drink. And I might catch the end of Newsnight.’

It was a shame for Gramps, who always came in bright-eyed and happy from his rehearsals, to be greeted by Gran’s indifference. He wanted to talk about his evening, telling little stories about people having tantrums, or the row between the stage manager and the prompter and who had said what to whom, but Gran hardly ever listened. She picked up a magazine, or went out to the kitchen to get tomorrow’s meat out of the freezer or write a note for the milkman, and Gramps was left to watch Newsnight or read the evening paper.

Amy thought it was really sad when married people stopped being interested in each other’s lives. Tonight Gran did not even give an excuse; she simply went up to bed, so, to balance things out, Amy asked about the rehearsal. Gramps brightened up at once – dear old Gramps; it did not take much to cheer him up – and switched off Newsnight to hunt out an old vinyl recording of the D’Oyly Carte company performing The Mikado, with somebody called Leicester Tunks singing the title role. Amy would find it very interesting, he said eagerly. He looked quite young and nice when he got enthusiastic like this, and Amy was pleased for him and managed not to giggle at Mr Tunks’s name. She thought she might tell Gramps about The Deserted Village opera later. He would be interested in that.

They listened to the disc, and Gramps happily explained the plot of The Mikado to Amy, until Gran came down in a dressing gown to ask him to turn the music down because she had a headache and caterwauling opera singers did not help it.

As Jan went up to his room at the Red Lion, he thought no matter how well you knew yourself, you still received a few surprises.

Amy Haywood had been a surprise. Jan had intended the investigation into St Anselm’s and Priors Bramley to be a brief, more or less cursory inspection of the place, after which he would talk to the local choirmaster, if there was one, and maybe the local historian, if such a person existed and could be found. What he had not intended was that he should acquire an assistant in the shape of an enthusiastic archaeology student who had the most extraordinary looks he had ever encountered.

Amy would certainly not be everybody’s idea of conventional good looks, but she was someone you would look at a second time and then a third. Jan had the thought that if you regarded the current stage of human race as being the edited article, Amy Haywood might be considered the director’s cut. Or maybe the diamond hidden inside the rock, only visible to the really discerning eye. Hers was not a face men would be likely to sack cities for, or even want to take to bed – but it was a face men might want to take into their dreams.

Whatever she was, she was a one-off. Sui generis, thought Jan, smiling as he got into bed and turned out the light.