On the other side of the chamber, I saw then, was another identical tomb, with a stone base, but with a white stucco surround on top, elaborately carved along the edges allowing for an inscription beneath in heavy Gothic lettering: ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness …’ I couldn’t see the rest of it. The biblical admonishment ran right round the corner of the stone.
I didn’t shiver, even when I saw the skull and bones at one end of the other tomb, where part of the stone casing had caved in, for it was nearly warm already in the little mausoleum, the sun well up above the lake. I stood there instead, between the bodies wondering who they were, or had been, as if I’d spent an intimate night with two strangers who’d disappeared unaccountably at daybreak, companions who had given me vital sanctuary and warmth, whose names I had to know …
I looked on top of both tombs and along the sides. But apart from the old-testament inscriptions there was no other writing. Then I saw the ivy-margined tablet set in the wall above the doorway. I brushed a few leaves aside, displaying the whole stone, woodlice and earwigs caught in the light suddenly running madly now, escaping from crevices in the deeply cut inscription. There was no religious or other preamble, it started in straight away.
George Arthur Horton, Kt., M.P., J.P.
1830–1897
Formerly of Harrisbrook House, Nottingham,
and of Beechwood Manor in this parish.
Rose Horton (née Blumberg)
1840–1914
Of Brompton Gardens, Kensington, and of Beechwood.
This Avalon, on the waters they loved,
made over into their final resting place.
Together Again.
The tablet had an admirable simplicity, I thought, so happily lacking in the usual verbose and grandiose pieties expected in such Victorian inscriptions — this almost Arthurian legend applied to some Midland coal-baron, as I imagined, who had bought Beechwood estate, built himself a Gothic pile in the middle of it as a sort of re-created Camelot, perhaps, and had lived here with his Jewish wife, disdaining an appropriately Christian resting place in the local churchyard, choosing instead this lesser Gothic folly where, in due time, his wife could join him, passing eternity together in the middle of their lake, which the two of them had probably created, far from the prying, gossiping eyes which would otherwise have found them in some public burying-place.
For I sensed at once a clear attack on convention here, in the inscription as in the lives of these two people. The Jewish maiden name need never have been so bluntly included, after all — nor, indeed, in those severely Christian times, could it have been an expected marriage in the first place. The words here were an affirmation of something, a confirmation, in life, of some social disregard in this man who, with his traditional industrial honours, seemed otherwise so conventional. I admired what seemed such forthright deviations.
Something had changed George Horton, with his dour Midland background: a snub to his wife, perhaps, among the county gentry where he had come to live — the fault of ‘new’ money compounded by a Jewess. Or perhaps, more simply, his wife had changed him — softened the puritan industry, his hard familial ambition, had ironed out the rough nature of his soul. So that halfway through life he had changed course and they had built themselves a water garden, a pleasure-haunt where they were indeed together again now. It was all conjecture … But I could at least, with certainty, admire their love.
Then I saw the vase of flowers. It had been placed outside on the small terrace, shielded from the wind just beneath the stone balustrade that gave over the water: a dozen fine red roses, which had been the smell, I realised now, that had wafted in on me as I woke that morning in the faint breeze. They were fresh blooms, early hothouse roses I thought, most of their petals still firmly sheathed around the bud, a sheen of moisture on the deep colour. I was not the only person to have been here recently.
I turned quickly, involuntarily, searching the empty space behind me as though some fourth person had crept in with these flowers during the night while I slept, and might still be there, somewhere on the island, who would come on me through the bramble-filled doorway at any moment. But there was nothing: only the morning sun slanting directly on the tombs now, warming them once more.
Five
I returned to my beech tree at the south end of the lake and with painful stiffness managed to pull myself up the branches to my hammock. Lying back in safety at last I saw that the valley beneath me was not so inviolate as I had imagined.
Someone else had been in the little mausoleum within the last few days. Yet how had they gained access to it? Had they waded across the channel, as I had, with a vase of roses held high? Difficult. But how else? The footbridge would have held no weight, not even a child’s. They must have come by boat, I thought suddenly, from the other, northern end of the lake perhaps. And if they had come by boat, they must, too, have come from the big house above me, for the boat would have to be kept somewhere along the margin of the water. I was nervous about this strange intrusion, and yet curious, so that having slept again for most of the middle of the day, I climbed down from the tree later in the afternoon and set out along the eastern shore of the lake to see if I could find such a boat.
I took Spinks’s bow with me for the first time, with a single arrow tied to its belly. Later I always brought two arrows with me, for a second shot. But these were early days. I don’t know what I expected to shoot with it. I hadn’t even sharpened the arrow tips yet. The bow, I suppose, was simply an emblem to begin with, an earnest of something I intended to achieve in the way of protection or pursuit, I didn’t know quite which then.
My legs still ached, and my back too, so that I moved slowly, pausing behind every tree and bush for a minute, as I moved round the lake edge in the late-afternoon sunlight. Again, in those early days I moved almost too cautiously, before I found the rabbit and other woodland paths, where I could travel faster and more securely, well back from the lake, hidden by the thicker undergrowth.
The lake shore on this far side had less cover in any case than on the western margin which led up to the parkland. And the hill that rose from the valley here was not so steep, a more gentle rise, with the beech trees even taller, their branches less accessible.
At the far end of the lake on this side I found the old pumping-shed some yards back from the water, overgrown with elder and bramble: a stone shed, roughly built many years before with the roof largely collapsed. But the wooden rafters here, protected from the weather by the heavy canopy of trees, were nearly all sound: more than a dozen 8-foot lengths, 6 inches by 2: ideal material, I saw at once, for the tree-house I had in mind. There were even a number of old nails which I picked up before realising that, in hammering them in, the noise could give me away. I needed twine, and there was none of that. Nor was there much else of use to me in the place apart from some broken lengths of old lead piping and a huge monkey-wrench, a kind of steel shillelagh. I put these potential weapons aside for possible future use.
Immediately beyond the shed the lake narrowed quickly to where the brook fed it from the north. Here the trees and undergrowth thinned, and the steep sides of the ravine gradually gave way to easier slopes which led out to more open, and thus to me more dangerous country. But I had to move into it. I had to see how the land lay, how far the safety of this valley went.