Advent Page 8

  He’d read about this kind of house. They built them at the entrance to fancy estates, like a guardhouse. Aunt Gwen was the estate’s gatekeeper.

  Or had been.

  While Gav made himself toast and tea, he wondered what to do. He’d spent most of the last four years desperately wanting to be left alone. Now he’d got his wish. It wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for. He’d always imagined himself making Pot Noodles every couple of hours and otherwise alternating between computer games, reading and naps. Not once had it occurred to him that isolation would be so unsettling. He tried to picture himself staying and waiting for Auntie Gwen to show up. The hours chiming away, staring out of the windows, the unease gathering quietly at his back, growing. No. It would be awful.

  So if he wasn’t staying in, he’d have to go out.

  The bathroom upstairs was too cold for anything beyond the most cursory splash, but he changed out of the clothes he’d slept in. He removed the chair wedged against the front door. It felt now like a stupid thing to have done, but still he had to go twice around all the windows to make sure there was no one or nothing anywhere near the house before he could slide the bolts back, and his heart was pounding as he opened the door.

  He stepped out into a wide, quiet, chilly nowhere, crossed only by the neglected driveway. Somewhere in the middle distance there was the sound of a tractor chugging. It felt as if the farm machine must be on a different continent. Around to his left Auntie Gwen’s car was pulled up on a patch of ground off the track. Out here it looked more like an incongruous piece of garden sculpture than a vehicle. Gav couldn’t picture an engine shrinking the big green-grey world around him, collapsing its miles to scant minutes, carrying him back to towns and timetables. He was on his feet, and there were only two ways to go: right, out the gate into the lane, or left, down the driveway under the trees. Right would mean starting back the way he came, in the direction of the little station, and then the big one, and then home. Jamming his hands down in his trouser pockets, he turned left.

  As soon as he stepped onto the driveway he heard a skitter of feet. Down in the shadows under the trees, someone had run round the curve of the drive out of sight. Someone small, smaller than Gav. He’d seen no more than a vanishing blur of dark clothes when he’d looked up. He was going to shout, but the stillness made him shy; he couldn’t break it. The footsteps faded quickly.

  He waited a short while, watching, then shrugged and followed on down the road. Experience had long since taught him to do his uncomfortable best to ignore things that came and went around him.

  He walked into a wood. It smelled secret and autumnal, the musk of a thick layer of leaf mould sodden by the night’s rain. There were still brown and withered leaves on the branches above, obscuring the day. In among the trees some tangly evergreen shrub had spread and grown over head height. The driveway curved and descended, shutting out the light behind. For the first stretch it was pitted and mossy; then the paving gave out and it became a pair of gravel tracks overgrown with grass. There was no sign of whoever had run down here a minute earlier, if anyone had. Oh come on Gav. The track he followed felt increasingly like it led nowhere at all, as though he was the first person to set foot on it for years and years.

  The long curve soon brought him in sight of the lower end of the wood. When he saw the corner of a building, he stopped.

  Ahead, the overgrown track ran out from the trees into a wide clearing, on the far side of which Gav could now see a garden border, and immediately behind that the wall of a very old house: sea-grey stone, punctured seemingly at random by narrow arched windows that looked as if they were barred against daylight, and a slate roof streaked by rain.

  Pendurra.

  It didn’t look like it wanted him anywhere near it. He felt ridiculously out of place. The thought of explaining himself to whoever lived here was more alarming to Gavin than facing disembodied voices and dead girls and whatever else Auntie Gwen’s home might throw his way. The point where adults got involved was, he’d finally confirmed (thanks to Mr Bushy), always the point where everything fell apart.

  Still, he had to ask someone about Auntie Gwen.

  As more of the house came into view, though, he wondered whether there’d even be anyone to ask. He came out from under the trees into a scene of profound desertion. The buildings ahead seemed as dormant as the garden in front of them, winter-stiff. The driveway ran through a wet lawn of ankle-high grass to the front of an ancient, sullen building; heavy gables, small mismatched casemented windows on upper floors, chimneystacks jutting up like solitary reefs. It was nothing like a ruin, but even in a partial glimpse it gave the impression that whoever might once have lived there had long since covered all the furniture in dustsheets, locked the doors behind them and left the place to see out the decades on its own.

  Woodland spread away on either side like arms opening wide to embrace the house; left, down the slope, which began to descend more steeply, and right, along the flank of the hill. In the broad space bordered on each side by the sweep of the trees was a garden of dry stems, bare branches, brown seed heads left as relics of the last summer, and patches of evergreen. It looked as big as a small park to Gav, while the house was a manor, almost a castle. Except that – like the garden – it felt out of season, its romance faded.

  The front doors were dead ahead. They were dark wood banded with iron, and if they’d been taller they wouldn’t have looked out of place barring the entrance to a prison. The prospect of approaching them suddenly seemed unthinkable: scrunching over the gravel beneath the blank windows, climbing the single step, knocking. He felt like a boy in a fairy tale. He’d taken a wrong turn in the forest and ended up at the gates of an enchanted palace no one was supposed to find.

  Stuck for a moment, unable to turn back or go on, he was rescued by the sight of the door opening. A man was coming out, half backwards, waving goodbye to someone inside. Gav stifled the urge to bolt out of sight. Better to look like he knew where he was than to be spotted disappearing behind a bush. The man looked up at him in surprise, squinting slightly through little round glasses. Gav felt his face settling into its habitual rigidly indifferent mask, his reflex when being squinted at by strangers. He made an effort to look less hostile.

  The man’s appearance helped. Everything about him exuded unthreatening friendliness, from his unaffected smile as he approached to his stripy sweater and his scuffed corduroy trousers. He was shortish, a bit stocky, neither young nor old and had the kind of unremarkably pleasant face that you find hard to remember afterwards. His presence completely changed the character of the house and grounds. All at once it just looked like a big old place in the country. For the first time that day Gav thought that maybe Auntie Gwen would turn up in a minute, falling over herself with apologies at having forgotten to pick him up, and they’d have a week’s holiday together just as he’d been expecting when he got on the train.

  He was just beginning to wonder why this thought made him achingly, unbearably sad when the man hailed him.

  ‘You must be Gavin, Gwen’s nephew. Hello, welcome!’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Hi.’

  It was an unspeakable relief not to have to explain who he was. In fact, he apparently didn’t have to explain anything. The man shook his hand and smiled as if meeting him here was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘It’s good to meet you. Quite a place, isn’t it? I wish I could say I live here, but I’m just on my way home. I only stopped in to see Mr Uren. I’m Owen. Friend of the family. I live just up in the village. I’m the priest, for my sins.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘They’ve been looking forward to your arrival.’ He nodded back in the direction of the front doors. ‘Were you on your way to the house? I can introduce you, if you like. Since you’re here. A bit less intimidating that way. Not that there’s actually anything to be intimidated by. What do you think?’

  Gav couldn’t see an obvious way to mention Auntie Gwen and f
ound that he was utterly unprepared to say anything else.

  ‘Tristram wouldn’t mind you knocking on the door yourself – they’re expecting you – but since we met . . . Gwen’ll be along in a bit, anyway, won’t she.’ Gav couldn’t tell whether this was a guess or whether Owen knew it for a fact, and the confusion threw him off still further. ‘But why don’t I show you in now? That way you won’t have to feel like a trespasser if you want to go on exploring on your own. It’s that kind of place, isn’t it,’ he finished, motioning around encouragingly.

  ‘Um, yeah.’ Gav felt himself being shepherded towards the grim doors, but had no idea how to stop.

  Owen seemed determined to put him at his ease no matter how long he had to go on. ‘Mr Uren can seem a bit distant when you first meet him. Like his house, I suppose. They’re both very different from what you or I are used to. At least I assume you don’t live anywhere like this? London, wasn’t it? But you’ll feel right at home with him very soon, I promise you. Anyway, I needn’t tell you – your aunt’s known the place almost as long as I have. And she tells a good story, doesn’t she?’ Gav opened his mouth and tried to take the chance to say something, but Owen misinterpreted his stall as shyness and kept moving, encouraging Gav to follow. They’d reached the front door; Owen pushed it open. ‘In we go. Tristram?’

  The first impression was a brown dimness, like the inside of a chest. As in Gwen’s house, the smell of woodsmoke came at once, but here it seemed part of the walls, the floor; the air was saturated with it. It was mixed with something else Gav couldn’t put a name to, except that it smelled old. Not musty or fetid, but old as if from another age: odours of stone and straw and cloth, materials and fabrics that time had outgrown. Or perhaps it was just the effect of what he could see, which was nothing like any house he had ever been inside before, except maybe some old historic place near his other aunt’s, which they’d all gone to visit one Sunday after lunch, years ago, because his mother had wanted to. There was no everyday household stuff in sight. He faced a hallway that stretched back through the house, wood on all sides including the ceiling. There was no light except the illumination from a triple-arched window at the far end.

  ‘Tristram? Your guest is here.’

  The hall darkened even more as a tall, bent figure stepped in front of the window.

  In silhouette, Tristram Uren looked like an emaciated wizard. He leaned on a walking stick, a strong jaw jutting from a shaggy head that braced itself against the stoop of his back and shoulders. His clothes didn’t seem to fit very well. A jacket hung around him like a half-finished cloak. Gavin felt as if he’d been admitted into the presence of Merlin, just escaped from the tomb where the stories said he’d been trapped since Arthur’s time.

  ‘Ahh.’ The voice was full of effort. ‘Come in, come in.’

  ‘We met outside,’ Owen explained, raising his voice a bit. ‘Gavin here must be an early riser. He was walking down on his own.’

  ‘Up with the sun, like me. But not, I imagine, down with it.’ He came slowly forward, switched his stick to his left hand and extended his right. ‘Hello, Gavin.’

  Even stooping, he was much the taller. Gav looked up into a face of outcrops and shadows: the bones broad and strong, hollows between them. He had the oldest eyes Gav had ever seen apart from Miss Grey’s. Their light had gone out. His hair was bone-white, though there was plenty of it, reaching almost to his shoulders. Gav saw what Owen had meant, now. It was hard to imagine this man making conversation. The Merlin thought stayed in his head. Mr Uren did look as if he’d spent a very long time shut away by himself.

  ‘Hi. Sorry – I hope you didn’t mind me wandering around?’

  ‘Not at all. You shall have the freedom of Pendurra, while you’re here.’ He turned and waved towards the window with his stick. ‘Do come in. Come and see your domain.’

  ‘Actually, I was just coming to tell you something.’ He blurted it out to stop anyone taking him further inside and now found himself groping for words. ‘I mean, I thought I ought to tell someone. Aunt Gwen, she’s . . .’ Missing? Vanished? Gone? ‘She’s not around. I haven’t seen her yet.’

  They both looked at him. Mr Uren’s brow creased into a slow frown.

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t expect you up this early. She often walks down to the river in the mornings.’ At first Gav didn’t understand and only stared at his toes, wishing as usual that he hadn’t spoken.

  Owen chipped in to relieve an embarrassing silence: ‘You might run into her if you go on down that way. It’s a lovely walk. Through the oldest woods.’

  ‘Or make yourself comfortable here,’ Mr Uren added. ‘There’s bacon. Guinivere will follow soon.’

  ‘Probably wondering where you got to,’ Owen said.

  The dimness hid Gav’s embarrassed flush. Two people had now told him that Auntie Gwen was about to turn up. He felt stupid, as if he’d made some obvious mistake about what she was doing. ‘No, I mean I haven’t seen her at all yet. Not just today.’ Had he gone to the wrong place? He’d had no control at all over his journey. He’d got caught up in it somehow, like a stowaway. The thought reminded him of the one fact he was sure of. ‘She was going to meet me at the station but she never turned up.’

  Now both men were looking puzzled: Mr Uren blank, Owen slightly concerned.

  ‘But then how did you get here?’ Owen asked.

  Gav’s mouth dried. There was no way he was going to tell them that he’d got a lift from a woman he’d met on the train, especially one nationally known as ‘the Nutty Professor’.

  ‘Taxi,’ he mumbled. ‘I waited ages, then got a taxi.’

  Fortunately they didn’t seem interested. ‘And there was no one at the lodge?’

  Just in time to prevent another idiotic silence, he remembered that those gatehouse places on the fancy estates were called lodges. ‘No, the lights were on and everything, and the door was open. Unlocked, I mean. So I just went in.’ He didn’t know whether he sounded more like a criminal or a halfwit. There were things that had happened yesterday that he couldn’t possibly tell anyone. I don’t want to hear it, Gavin, do you understand?

  ‘And no one was there?’ Owen was asking all the questions. Tristram Uren might as well have turned to stone.

  ‘Well, there was a fire lit and . . . So I thought, you know, with the taxi gone’ – he felt a little tingle of relief at this plausible-sounding detail – ‘I’d just go in and wait. But no. No one.’

  ‘The car was there,’ Owen said to Mr Uren. ‘I saw it when I came past earlier. Did you happen to notice it when you arrived, Gavin? When was this?’

  In his memory the clock chimed. ‘About six. Yeah, it was – the car, I mean. I saw it. And everything looked, you know, like she was there. The lights and the fires, and everything was just lying around, like normal. I mean it looked normal. So I just thought . . . I’d wait.’ Don’t try and explain, he told himself furiously. Never try and explain. It only makes everything worse.

  ‘And you haven’t seen her since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s odd. I wish someone had known.’ He and Mr Uren were looking at each other now, something unreadable passing between them. ‘It must have been a lonely night for you. Not a proper welcome at all! How strange. Tristram?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Guinivere since yesterday afternoon.’ He spoke slowly. ‘Though I wasn’t expecting to. She did tell Marina she was going to the station, I believe.’

  ‘She sent that message for me yesterday,’ Owen said. He rubbed his chin. ‘Wanted to see me today. I’d wait for her if I could, but I need to be going. I got the message from Caleb. I gather she sent him up to the village to look for me.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. I was at the parish meeting. Poor chap had to go round the houses a bit. I’m not sure what Gwen thought she was doing sending him off like that. Maybe I should go and ask him about it.’

  ‘If you would,’ Tristram said. ‘Gavin, I’m sorry. You
must be hungry at the least, and worried too. Here we were assuming you’d already had your introduction to Pendurra. Please come in, sit down.’ His manner had become very deliberately courteous, almost too deliberately, as if the courtesy was meant to conceal the fact that his attention was on something else.

  Owen had put on his appealing smile again. ‘Your aunt does have a bit of a reputation,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind me saying so. Easily distracted, let’s put it that way. Though she was so looking forward to your arrival, I must say I’m surprised she managed to get distracted from that. It’s all she’s been talking about these last few days. Especially the last day or two. I thought she was going to explode with excitement. I must go. I’ll find Caleb on my way out, shall I?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mr Uren answered, over his shoulder. He was leading Gavin slowly down the hall, past pictures whose faces and figures were lost in the gloom, around unnecessary chairs jutting out from the walls like rocks in a shipping lane. ‘I will take care of my guest.’

  Owen nodded at Gav encouragingly. ‘Then I’ll see what else I can do. Gavin, good to meet you. I’m sure I’ll see you again. I’m the local bad penny, I keep turning up. Don’t worry about Gwen – she won’t have gone far.’ He headed back towards daylight. ‘Tell Marina I’m sorry I missed her,’ he called.

  Mr Uren answered only with a wave of his stick. The door thunked shut.

  ‘You were lucky to meet Reverend Jeffrey first,’ Tristram said. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. ‘He’s a . . . reassuring presence.’