‘God! It’s nice to see a blue sky, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed, standing up again and wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans. She turned to Mark and found him watching her with an odd, wide-eyed intensity. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied. He shook his head and the look was gone, the old troubled scowl back in its place. ‘I used to come here and play with my cousins as a kid. In summer we used to swim – not right here, a bit further along where there’s a big bend in the river and the water is slower. It was freezing.’ He shuddered at the thought. ‘Bone-achingly cold, every time. But I had to go in, of course. Couldn’t be the one left out.’ Leah put her hands in her back pockets and turned in a circle, surveying their surroundings. ‘What do you want to do now?’ Mark asked. He sounded genuinely interested, and slightly resigned; as if entirely at her disposal. She looked across at him, squinting in the sunshine, and realised that he didn’t have anything else to do. Small wonder, then, that he was such a prisoner to his moods and memories.
‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. After all, she admitted to herself, the fairy pictures might have nothing at all to do with what Hester Canning had been writing about. ‘Let’s walk on a bit – make the most of the fact that it’s not pouring down. Then I wouldn’t mind having a better look through the books in the study, if you don’t mind? There might be something in there about theosophy, or this Robin Durrant guy.’
‘Sure.’ Mark nodded. ‘The footpath carries on to the corner of the field there.’ He turned towards it, the hems of his jeans dark and sodden with water from the long grass. He stopped when he got to the muddy path, watched her clambering towards him, waiting for her to reach his side before leading her on, like a taciturn tour guide.
Later, Leah returned to the study at The Old Rectory and began to search the shelves. She found old books on theosophy, their spines chipped and faded, papery shreds hanging from the covers; another slim volume about fairy photography; and precious little else that related to the incident at all. Vast rows of Reader’s Digest condensed works; a huge set of encyclopaedias; novels by the ton, most of them dated historical romances, the heroines on the covers invariably clad in a low-cut bodice, bosoms heaving. Leah rummaged and leafed and felt as though she was achieving something, although she suspected that she probably wasn’t. She resisted the urge to go through the drawers of Mark’s father’s desk, a vast leather-topped affair that crouched like some sleeping beast in the shadow of the mezzanine gallery; but the papers left on top, when she nudged them lightly with her fingertips, were bank statements and utility bills; torn-off calendar pages from two years before; and lists of crossed-out items, scribbled so comprehensively that all the words were lost.
Mark brought her a mug of tea as the sun began to set. He flicked on the lights as he came in, making her flinch. She hadn’t noticed the gathering gloom, pooling like water in the corners of the room.
‘Thanks,’ she said, as he put the mug carefully on a stack of old newspapers beside the tub chair she was sitting in. The leather was worn through on the arms, and she had been running her fingers over the exposed stuffing as she read, picking absently at its gritty innards. A scattering of crumbs lay across her knees and on the floor at her feet. ‘God! Sorry! I didn’t even know I was doing it!’ she exclaimed, brushing hastily at the evidence. Mark smiled briefly.
‘Don’t worry about it, really.’ He looked around the study, from the dusty swags of the curtains to the cluttered shelves. ‘Sometimes it takes an outsider to make you see what’s staring you in the face,’ he said, half to himself. ‘The whole place is crumbling like that bloody chair. It all needs to go. The lot.’
‘But… this house has been in your family for generations…’ Leah said, gently. ‘Aren’t some things worth keeping?’
‘I don’t think I could ever be happy here. And I’m the only one left. Well – my nieces and nephew, my sister-in-law. But I don’t think she’d come here. I don’t think she’d bring them. At least, not while I’m alive,’ he said, darkly. Uncomfortably, Leah flicked the last of the stuffing from her jeans.
‘But your father’s still alive, isn’t he? And it’s his house. Could you do anything, even if you decided to?’
‘Yes. I have power of attorney.’
‘Oh,’ Leah said. She sipped at her tea, unfolded her legs from beneath her. She had been sitting too long that way, and pins and needles blazed down into her calves and feet like wildfire, like a million biting ants. Unable to stop herself, she drummed her feet on the floor like a child to get the blood moving.
Mark glanced up, gave her a bemused look. ‘Stand up and jump up and down,’ he instructed. ‘It’s the only way.’ With a grimace, Leah obeyed him. Hopping with her two feet together, up and down the stringy carpet of the study in her socks, with the floorboards wobbling underneath her feet and the dim light bulbs buzzing overhead. When she stopped she was grinning at her own idiocy, and Mark was smiling stiffly, as if his face was unused to the shape. ‘Better?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked, for the second time that day. Leah stopped smiling, and looked him carefully in the eye.
‘Can I meet your father?’
The care home was a crisp, modern, brown-brick building, clad in Virginia creeper and surrounded by neatly kept gardens; windows shining clean, cars parked in neat rows. It was two days since Leah had asked Mark’s permission to visit. He parked his car – a mud-spattered Renault – on the pristine tarmac drive, and a look of grim anxiety covered his face, making Leah nervous. He turned off the engine and they sat in silence for a moment, listening to the hot metal tick.
‘So, did you find out anything more? About theosophy and this Durrell person?’ Mark asked, at length, as if they had come out in the car for a chat, and no other reason.
‘Durrant. No. I think he was a bit of a flash in the pan – there’s no information about him in any of the books or pamphlets after 1911, the year he took those pictures at Cold Ash Holt. I couldn’t find anything online either. I suppose if he was discredited, he might just have slunk off back into obscurity. It’s like he just disappeared, after that summer,’ she said. ‘Perhaps off to the war, but that wasn’t for another three years; and it also seems an unlikely thing for a theosophist to do. From what I’ve read, he’d almost certainly have been a conscientious objector. All life was sacred to them. But perhaps he stopped being a theosophist after that year. However – you can ask me anything about theosophy. I’m a pocket expert now. Eastern philosophy meets Western spiritualism, the many levels of the spirit world, the many orders of spiritual being, and spiritual awareness. Reincarnation. Asceticism. Karma. Clairvoyance. Inner vision… Ask me anything.’ She smiled, counting them off on her fingers. Mark’s hands still gripped the steering wheel, and he looked sideways at her, his face pinched and heavy.
‘Are you ready to go in?’ he asked. Leah’s smile faded.
‘Are you?’ she said. Mark nodded, unclipped his seatbelt.
‘Just… don’t expect too much, OK?’ he warned her.