A LOOK AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

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It all began last Spring while I was staying with my brother Innes and his wife at the house they had bought in a little town called Strode Hillary. They had bought it when Innes retired from his editorial post to become a freelance writer, and Mary had given up her singing so that they could spend more time together than had been possible while both were working. Mary had been often away from home when her concerts took her to distant counties or abroad, and she had confessed to me that she was quite prepared to abandon a career on the concert platform and ‘dwindle into a wife’ as soon as Innes was free.

They were a lively, hospitable couple — Innes distinguished-looking, witty and apt at quotation, a lavish host and extremely sociable; Mary a poised and beautiful woman, ash-blonde, blue-eyed, serene and very charming. They had lots of friends, and I thought it was good of them to invite a widower brother to stay with them and occupy the guest-room to the exclusion of people they might have preferred. The atmosphere was always civilised and harmonious in their company, and I had always enjoyed my visits to their previous home.

This was the first time I had seen the new house. It was modern and convenient and I was looking forward to a leisurely and pleasant week. However, this visit turned out to be vastly different from anything I had expected and it began — now I look back on events — to show its altered character on the very first morning of my stay.

I had arrived in time for dinner on the previous evening. On holiday I am usually an early riser and the next morning, I remember, I had bathed, dressed and shaved by the time Mary called out from their bedroom, ‘Tea’s up, Michael!’ I had known her for so long that I was always invited into their room for the early cup and looked forward to this introduction to the day, for there was vicarious romance in sitting on a bed at the feet of a lovely woman, even though her husband was present. (Not that I grudged Innes his good fortune. My own marriage had been a happy one and my feeling for Mary was almost entirely brotherly, although I was aware that Innes kept his eye on me. This flattered me unduly and made me feel younger and happier than I usually did, so, far from objecting to it, I took his watchfulness as a compliment.)

As for Mary, she had no brother of her own, so I merely filled a family gap so far as she was concerned. I understood this, and kept myself well within bounds. I cherished my visits to her and Innes, and had no mind to risk their being terminated by any lapse of good taste on my part.

I accepted a cup of tea, mutely pledged her with it and, when she had gone off to take her bath, I said to Innes, as I got up and strolled towards the window: ‘Well, how are you going to like it here?’

‘Very much,’ he replied, getting out of bed and joining me. ‘The house is what we wanted, the people round and about are kind and we get invitations from everywhere and give our own little parties, of course. There’s a very good music society which we have joined, I am getting bits of work to do for my old journal just to keep my hand in and myself out of mischief, and Mary — bless her heart! — is as happy as Larry. Things couldn’t be better!’

‘Famous last words!’ I said. He laughed.

‘Be that as it may, look at the garden and the view!’

My own bedroom window in his house looked over the pleasant enough aspect of a wide square which made a turning-point for cars in a cul-de-sac which terminated at the closed end with a fenced bank, and at the open end in a quiet road which veered left towards the town. The view at which I was looking was wider and very different. I gazed appreciatively out over the countryside and promised myself some early-morning walks.

Some miles away — I did not know how far — there rose a conical, tree-clad hill. Against it, and appearing to dwarf it because the distance between them was so great, was the golden-grey, pinnacled tower of the parish church.

House-tops in the high street of the quiet old town cut off the base of the tower from my view, but, between the jumble of roofs and that part of Innes’s garden which was directly below the window, stretched a long green paddock and to the right of the paddock rose an equally grassy hill. This was crowned by a row of dark, sparsely planted trees below which was a well-kept hedge. The effect, I thought, was that of a mildly beneficent god with his hair on end and a necklace of jade around his neck.

This reminded me of a gift I had picked up in New Bond Street when I had accepted Mary’s invitation.

‘I’ve brought her a present,’ I said, half-turning away from the window.

‘Have you? How kind,’ he said. ‘How do you like the garden? We had it landscaped.’ Immediately below the window there was a broad stone terrace from which there descended one fairly steep and one shallow step to a partly paved sunken garden. The paving enclosed a considerable rose-bed, not, of course, yet in flower, and outside the paved portion were broad borders of spring flowers backed by plants and shrubs already in bud.

On the terrace itself were two enormous tubs of teak which had been brought from the delightful cottage which Innes and Mary had had near Tring. The tubs, as I had always seen them at that time of year, were filled with what, to me, was the tumultuous glory of the April daffodils, flowers which, for some reason, always reminded me of Mary herself, although ‘tumultuous’ was hardly a word which expressed what I knew of her.

A hedge separated the garden from the paddock, and at one end of it was a slightly leaning, grey-boled walnut tree, too old now to bear fruit, but of gracious symmetry, and neighbouring it were two close-leaved, dark-green cypress trees. At the other end of the hedge, but not in the garden itself, swayed a sapling ash as graceful as a young silver birch tree.

Nearer the house, on the opposite side of the garden and behind the border plants, there was a bush of myrtle, sacred to Venus, and the tree beneath which Phaedra had waited for Hippolotos, exerciser of horses. While Phaedra had waited, I remembered, she had pierced the myrtle leaves to while away the time, and the prickings can be seen on every leaf to this day. So much for legend which can always explain the otherwise incomprehensible.

My thoughts carried me further. In ancient Israel the Hebrews believed that by eating myrtle leaves they could detect the presence of witches. I mentioned this to Dame Beatrice when, later on, we met. She greeted the remark with an eldritch cackle of laughter and remarked that she numbered a notorious witch among her ancestors, a statement I had no difficulty in believing. I added, I remember, that there was a Gentile, if not exactly a Christian, belief that by crushing the myrtle leaves in the closed palm of the hand it was possible to test the faithfulness of the marriage partner. If the leaves crackled, divorce was probably the best solution. I did not mention murder, but another of those disquieting cackles indicated that, as my friend Michele Slung would say, Dame Beatrice even then had crime on her mind.

Mary, looking rosy and smelling delicious, came back into the bedroom.

‘Out you go,’ she said to me. I retired obediently, went downstairs and picked up the morning paper from the front-door mat. I am an avid reader of newspapers when I am at home, but on holiday I cannot be bothered with them, so, after settling myself on the long couch which was sideways-on to the french windows, I scanned the headlines on the front page and then put the paper down and picked up the parish magazine which was lying beside me.

It was an impressive little booklet, I thought. On its crimson cover, apart from the price (which argued some wealthy subscribers at ten pence a copy), was a heavy black cross on a shaded circle. Around the whole device were the names of the five rural parishes which were served by the vicar of Strode Hillary. Prominent among these and placed at the top, was Strode Hillary itself, where I was staying, and around the arms and stem of the cross were the other four: Aries St. Peter, Paulet Marquise, Lower Gushbrook and Courtleigh Purton, names, I assumed, of historical or topographical significance. Aries St. Peter was an intriguing juxtaposition of the secular and the sacred, Paulet Marquise incredibly aristocratic and Courtleigh Purton reminiscent of some stately home, possibly of Tudor origin. None except the purely descriptive Lower Gushbrook suggested John Betjeman’s: ‘Gloved the hands that hold the hymnbook, Which this morning milked the cow,’ so I felt that Lower Gushbrook and I might have something in common. Little did I guess what that might be, or I might have packed my bags there and then and made what P.G.W. calls ‘the quick dash for life’.

I had questions to ask at breakfast.

‘We don’t know the origin of the names,’ said Mary. ‘We’ve only been here a matter of months. If Michael is interested, Innes, why don’t we take a run in the car this morning and let him see something of the countryside?’

‘Why five parishes?’ I enquired. ‘Are they very close together?’

‘No, quite widely scattered and some are not all that easy to reach. This town, Strode Hillary, used to have a vicar all to itself, and I suppose the other parishes had theirs, so either this lumping them all together under one incumbent is an economy measure, or else there aren’t enough vicars to go round, one would think,’ said Mary.

‘Or not enough churchgoers to warrant five livings,’ said Innes. ‘Would you like a cross-country trip, Mike?’

‘I see they’re going to beat the bounds,’ I said. ‘There’s a sketch map in the parish magazine.’

‘Well, we can follow the same route, if you’re interested. You’ll still be here at the time they do it, so we can show you the lay-out. We can even join in the doings if you like. It’s a church thing — blessing the sowing of the crops, and all that — so it’s being carried out on Sunday, beginning at Ropewalk, and then going to one of the farms to the south and finishing at Aries St. Peter, at the vicarage there.’

‘That’s a very strange name,’ I said, as we started out. ‘What on earth has the first sign of the zodiac to do with the keys of heaven?’

‘You’ll know when we get to the church,’ said Mary. We had set off at half-past ten, proposing to have a ploughman’s lunch at a pub and our cooked meal when we got home. Mary did most of her own cooking and, over the years, I had learned to look forward to her dinners, although, in the ordinary course of events, my appetite is capricious owing to the heavy-handed efforts of various ‘obliging’ domestic workers to sustain me since my wife’s death.

‘Come to think of it,’ said Innes, who was driving, ‘As we can’t very well call at the farms which will be, largely, the object of next Sunday’s exercise, we won’t be able to follow the actual route today, so we’ll just make it a sight-seeing tour, taking in the villages as we come to them. First we’ll have a general view.’

We turned away from the church and the houses and were immediately in open country. A road tunnel through a hill and a turning off to the right brought us to a wide area where was a famous viewpoint. Below us was the little town we had just left. Around were the hills and over them an April sky flecked with wind-blown clouds. Innes, aided by an Ordnance map, pointed out the approximate locations of the other four parishes.

‘We’ve never been to Aries St. Peter or Lower Gushbrook,’ he said, ‘so I hope I’ll be able to find them.’

‘But if you haven’t been there, how did Mary know that I’d realise, when I saw it, why the village is called Aries St. Peter?’

‘It’s in all the guide books,’ said Mary, from her seat in the rear, for they had insisted upon giving me the seat next the driver. We had to return to the town to begin the pilgrimage proper, and as we drove along the high street and past the market square, I realised, as I had not done on my drive through it in the darkness of the previous night, what a delightful old town Strode Hillary was.

There were houses of all periods — the lath and plaster of Tudor times; tall, narrow, dignified Georgians; a double-fronted coaching inn with a royally-collared stag as its sign; old-fashioned shops around the market square which had its butter-cross and its horse-trough; almshouses now restored to make a parish hall; a beautiful house — Queen Anne, I thought — set back from the road behind lawns and flower-beds; intriguing narrow streets opening off the main street and one of them leading to the church; and there was even a little river which entered the town unobtrusively at the eastern end and was soon lost to sight as it meandered out south-westwards away from the houses.

We took a right-hand bend out of Strode Hillary and almost immediately were in a countryside of hills and deep green valleys. The nearest of the parishes was Paulet Marquise. We pulled up opposite the church and got out of the car. From the roadside I gazed in frank disbelief at the edifice confronting us.

‘It isn’t real,’ I said.

‘According to the guide books, it’s a copy of the church which was first built here,’ Mary said. ‘Do you want to take a closer look at it?’

I am a devotee of church architecture and this was something quite out of the ordinary. It was a far too perfect copy of the earliest type of Norman church — squat, square tower, round-headed windows and doorways with chevron moulding around the arches, an apsed end — but it also had transepts and, on an outside wall, more chevron moulding where no Norman mason would have dreamed of putting it, since it served no purpose except that of incongruity.

Although the outside might have deceived an inexpert eye, the inside was so unorthodox that even a visitor unused to churchgoing must have been astonished. The altar, instead of being at the east end of the church where the apse was, had been placed at the end of the north transept and the apsed end was now a baptistry, complete with a late Victorian marble font on three stone steps.

The crossing and the south transept now formed the nave of the church and held the pews for the congregation. What had been the original nave was curtained off. There was nobody except ourselves in the church, so I went over and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. To my further astonishment this disclosed what was most obviously the parish hall. There was a platform at the west end for lectures or the performance of simple plays; a gymnastic box and horse and four balancing forms were at one end of the stage and a useful-looking cupboard stood in the opposite corner. A stack of chairs, of the kind which sit so conveniently on top of one another in order to conserve space, completed the furnishings.

‘Ah,’ said Innes, joining me at my peep-hole, ‘economical and admirable, don’t you think? When they beat the bounds there is going to be a tea-and-bun fight in here. If we join the revels we may be able to snatch a cuppa. Mary attends church once a month and also entertains the vicar at our house when he’s on visiting rounds, and she is doing a weekly stint in the school dinnerhour instructing the female adolescents in makeup and polite society manners, so I should think we’d be eligible.’

‘Do the local magnates join in the jamboree?’

‘Oh, sure to, for the look of the thing, you know. This is still hunting, churchgoing, magistrates’ bench, anti-poaching country — not that there isn’t a certain amount of bad blood between some of the notables. There are people you can’t invite to meet each other at cocktail or dinner parties, and there’s the local sheikh — not that he’ll be joining in Sunday’s procession, being, one supposes, a Moslem of rigid views.’

‘A sheikh?’

‘No less. He lives at Bourne Farley, the Paines’ old place.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I believe he’s got a string of names, like Royalty. I call him Abdul the Bulbul Ameer, after the student song, you know.’ He began to sing, a thing I myself would never have dared to do with a trained professional like Mary standing by.

‘ “The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold,” ’ chanted Innes, ‘ “And quite unaccustomed to fear, But of all the most reckless of life or of limb, Was Abdul the Bulbul Ameer.’ ”

‘Is he reckless of life and limb?’ I asked.

‘He must be. Nobody hereabouts wants him either as an acquaintance or a landlord. There’s a lot of bad feeling around and about. He has had a number of the local lads up before the Bench for trespass and wilful damage and in every case some anonymous well-wisher has paid their fines for them and kept them out of chokey, which was the alternative to their coughing up the money. No, Abdul ain’t loved. In fact, I sometimes suspect the Chairman of the Bench, old Lord Maumbury, of putting up the money for the fines himself, not that he can afford it. He’s got one of these interminable lawsuits on his hands to try to settle the ownership of a local property called Fell Hall. The house itself can be written off as a dead loss because they had a disastrous fire there and the place is gutted, I believe, but there’s a chance of selling the rest of the estate for building plots, and that could be worth a fortune with land the price it is, not to mention the rumour that there’s oil in these ’ere parts. They’ve started drilling in some stretches of the county already.’

‘Under the sheikh’s auspices?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. All his business interests are in the Middle East, but he has bought what is said to be the remains of one of King John’s hunting lodges, later converted into a Tudor mansion. The Paine family was crippled by death duties and forced to sell. I’m told he took over the house and estate at a fabulous price and keeps a harem there of beautiful houris. He goes about with a bodyguard, but I don’t suppose they are armed.’

‘He sounds a colourful character. Have you met him?’

‘No, but I don’t believe the stories about the harem and his servants’ reputed attempts to procure the local girls to add to his collection. However, the hoi polloi loves horror stories, especially when they border on the indelicate. As for the local nobs, well, I suppose they’ll accept him in the end, if only because of his money, but at present he’s a parvenu and a foreigner and there’s enough of the old prejudice left in most people for the persistence of a belief that “the wogs begin at Calais”. Thank goodness Mary and I live in nice, comfortable, middle-class anonymity and don’t have to take part in the local boycotting and skulduggery. Mind you, I don’t approve of wealthy Arabs taking over lovely old places such as the Paines’ house, but perhaps that’s better than letting them fall into complete decay. At least these fellows have the money to keep them up.’

Well, nothing is gained by some kinds of argument, so I made no comment. We returned to the car and went on to Courtleigh Purton.

‘The Sunday procession — all cars, of course, because of the distances between the parishes — will be calling at one of the farms near here,’ said Innes. ‘We can have a look at the church, if you like, but the showpiece is, of course, the manor house.’

We left the car in the road and walked down a long, broad avenue of beech trees with, planted between the trees, clumps of daffodils. There was a right of way through the park, but the house itself was in private ownership and not open to the public. Even so, the glimpse we had of it was well worth the visit. There was a gracious, beautiful, seventeenth-century frontage in golden stone. The house had slightly projecting wings, the entrance was protected by very fine wrought-iron gates, the gate-piers were crowned with stone eagles and were recessed with round-headed niches, purposeless but charming. It was a most delightful place.

‘Does this house figure in Sunday’s revels?’ I enquired.

‘No,’ replied Innes, ‘I’m told the family are away. The procession will go past the church and on to one of the farms from here.’

‘Is the church interesting? You did mention it.’

‘Not particularly interesting, and the village perished at the time of the Great Plague.’

‘This isn’t the manor house your sheikh bought?’

‘Good Lord, no! These owners would never sell.’

After Courtleigh Purton we found a pub for our lunch, and after lunch we lost our way. This, Innes assured Mary and me, was not because of the cider which had accompanied our bread and cheese, but because he was not yet familiar with the countryside and so was dependent upon signposts. These proved either to be conspicuous only by their absence or, where they did exist, unhelpful and even misleading.

We pursued Lower Gushbrook and Aries St. Peter along lanes only just wide enough to take the car, past farms, fields and hedges, between high banks reminiscent of South Cornwall, up and down winding hills, past open country and through woods, past ash trees, oaks and, occasionally, pines, along a high, seemingly interminable ridge from which we could see across the landscape for miles and, here and there, we even obtained a glimpse of the sea.

Once or twice we pulled over to let an approaching farm tractor get by, and on another occasion Innes stopped the car almost in a ditch to allow an immaculately clad rider on a high-mettled horse to pass us. We received a courteous gesture of thanks and I asked who the rider was.

‘Goodness knows. I don’t hunt,’ said Innes.

‘How do you know that he does?’

‘With a horse like that? Besides, they all hunt around here, the farmers, too — although my neighbour tells me there have been some rows about gates left open and young crops trampled. Of course the real locals wouldn’t offend like that, but, unfortunately, some of the big estates have been bought up by people who have made their money but don’t — and never will — really “belong” in the countryside.’

‘Your sheikh, for example?’

‘I shouldn’t think he hunts. He owns a racing-stable somewhere, and an enormous yacht, and plays golf and used to play polo. If it weren’t for local feeling about his buying the Paines’ house and so — in the local view — dispossessing one of the oldest families in the county, he might even be popular. I believe he gives enormous sums to charity and has rebuilt the village hall. They ought to be grateful to him, but they ain’t.’

On we went, past a small, exquisite gem of a Tudor house, past a fruit farm and then, on a long downhill track, past stables, a paddock, a large cottage set on a grassy slope and then past another farm which had a dairy herd of Jerseys. It was after we had crossed a bridge over a narrow stream and come at last upon another signpost that Mary said:

‘I hate to spoil the fun, but if you two are expecting to get any dinner tonight, I think we’d better take the hint from that signpost and go to Fylditch. The car knows its way home from there. I’ll invite Martha Lorne to pop in for a cocktail and then I can ask her the way to Aries and Gushbrook so that we can go there tomorrow.’

At dinner that night I gave her the present I had brought with me. It was a necklace with matching earrings, a charming set. The earrings were in the form of tiny marguerites with dark-blue translucent centres, and the necklace, on a very fine silver chain, was similar — except that the marguerites varied in size from one which was only a little larger than the earrings, to one which was twice their size. The necklace terminated in a flower-bud made of diamonds.

I saw Innes widen his eyes when Mary opened the case and took up the necklace. She was delighted with it.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said, and kissed me. ‘But I’m glad you did. Is this why you asked me to wear blue tonight?’

‘No. I like you in blue,’ I said. When she had gone up to bed that night and we were having our last drink, Innes said,

‘Ought that stuff to be insured, Mike?’

‘Insured? Lord, no, I shouldn’t think so,’ I said. ‘It’s quite pretty, but it isn’t all that special.’

‘Diamonds?’

‘Oh, well…’

‘Where did you get it?’

I named the shop and he whistled.

‘Well,’ I said defensively, ‘I miss not having a woman of my own to buy frippery for.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, I shall get it valued for insurance,’ he said. ‘You’re an ass, Mike!’ But as he said it he leaned forward and gave me a brotherly smack on the thigh. ‘She’s thrilled with it. I expect she’s got it all on and is sitting at the dressing-table mirror admiring its reflected glory.’ Then he added, ‘I suppose it came out of your last book, did it?’

‘No. I had a bit of luck with the gee-gees,’ I said. ‘Backed a rank outsider and it came home at thirty-three to one.’

‘What was it called?’

‘Oofy Prosser.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I’d have backed it myself if I’d known that.’ We were both Wodehouse fans. He came upstairs behind me, laughing so heartily that Mary called out from the bedroom,

‘Is it a rude joke, or can anyone join in?’

‘Not innocent young women like you,’ he called back; and I knew that, because the money had come from a lucky bet and not by the sweat of my brow, plus the equally lucky name of the horse, any doubts as to the suitability of my having given Mary an expensive toy had been removed from his mind. I was glad. I was very fond of him in a casual, brotherly way, and we had always had an excellent relationship.