A Prospect of Vengeance

OLD MRS GRIFFIN’S COTTAGE

THE CHILDREN
had spotted the ruin of old Mrs Griffin’s cottage that very first morning, years before, and from the one place in the farmhouse where it could be seen through the trees: a little low window, cobwebby and covered with dead flies, halfway down the narrow twisty back stair to the kitchen. And then there had been no holding them.

Rachel and Laurence had known about it already, of course. The estate agents’ man had explained that it was part of the property, as a more-or-less unwanted appendage to the farmhouse plot below the orchard, also dead on the line of the motorway and not part of the fields which had been already sold to the adjacent farms. At the time this had rather aroused Rachel’s curiosity, so that when Laurence had embarked on a second tour of their dilapidated (but, as they then thought, strictly temporary) new home, she had gone exploring for herself.

Actually, she had never quite reached old Mrs Griffin’s cottage then. But she had seen enough, because what she had seen she had disliked even in the safety of the bright sunshine. Indeed, although long afterwards she maintained that her dislike—even then, even then—had been instinctive, or intuitive, it had also been something fiercer than mere dislike: it was in reality strictly practical and maternal, primarily safety-conscious. The children were still little then, but no longer restrictively little. Rather, they were adventurously active, and she knew from bitter experience that Melanie would surely follow where Christopher led; and Christopher, having once glimpsed that little brick chimney and gable-end rising up out of the mossy ruin of fallen thatch, would somehow penetrate the great tangle of brambles and briars and seven-foot tall stinging nettles which had conquered old Mrs Griffin’s little garden, and which utterly barred her own progress, but had not prevented her glimpsing the pond.

It was a foul place, she had thought, even in the sunshine: foul, because she could see beastly things in the water—rotting branches and vegetation, and even an old saucepan breaking the surface of the water with a circle and a handle, over which a cloud of insects buzzed and skittered; foul also, because, although by the standards of her town-bred, traffic-accustomed ears its silence was absolute, it was somehow deafeningly noisy, with the low buzz and hum of all those insects hunting and fighting and dying and eating ceaselessly around her; and foul, finally, because she could smell all this activity, of plants and insects and invisible animals competing with each other, and winning and losing—a sweet-rotten smell, the like of which she had never encountered before, a world away from the carbon monoxide and Indian take-away smells which had occasionally invaded their London flat on hot evenings.

‘That’s a horrible place, down there, darling,’ she had said eventually to Larry, when she’d found him again, in the barn beside the farmhouse, staring up at the chinks of sunlight high above.

‘Just one or two displaced tiles, Dr Groom,’ the estate agents’ man had been saying. The structure itself is absolutely sound—the timbers, and so on. In fact, as I’ve said, it’s also a listed building—Grade Three—like the house. Late fifteenth century … perhaps early sixteenth … the expert witnesses at the public inquiry argued about that.’ He had given Rachel a quick smile then, acknowledging her presence, if not her words. ‘In other circumstances we’d be thinking about a barn conversion, splitting the property into two, rather than about a few displaced tiles. It really is a great tragedy … Do you see that main beam, up there? Five hundred years old, that beam is. And—‘

‘What’s horrible, darling?’ Larry had overridden the salesman’s automatic spiel.

‘The old Griffin place?’ The estate agents’ man had been quick then, scooping up his error with another smile which embraced them both. ‘Awful, isn’t it? It hasn’t been lived in for years, of course. But it’s amazing how quickly those little places fall to pieces once they’re untenanted. And, of course, nobody wanted to live there, after old Mrs Griffin died. It’s too far off the main road. In fact—
in fact
…
you can’t even get to it from here. You didn’t actually get to it, did you, Mrs Groom?’ He had paused then, but too briefly for her to do more than open her mouth. ‘There
was
a path from here, through the orchard, I believe. But that’s totally overgrown now … The
actual
access to the cottage—not that it is a cottage now, it’s quite irreparable … the
actual
access is from a track on the hill above, through the spinney there. But that’s pretty overgrown, too.’ Another smile. ‘If it wasn’t for the motorway, I’d be advising you to have the whole place bulldozed into the pond, and the trees there cut down. Then you’d have superb views of the moor.’ Another smile. ‘But then we’d be talking about four or five times the present asking price—maybe more, if this barn was included.’ The smile had saddened genuinely at that lost prospect. ‘It
is
a tragedy, as I say … the motorway.’

Rachel had ignored him. ‘It smells as though something had died in it.’ She had addressed the bad news to Larry alone. The children will be into the pond there for sure.’

Her husband’s expression had hardened then. And she remembered too late that he was a country boy, country-bred, and she had known then that resistance was in vain.

‘Well, darling—‘ For an instant he had looked up at the ancient beam above him, with a mixture of love and bitterness, because his ownership of it was to be so brief ‘—well then … they’ll just have to do what they’re told, and keep away from it. It can’t be more dangerous than London, any day of the week, anyway.’

That had made it certain, even though they were a partnership of equal partners. But then he had made it easier by twisting one of his smiles at her, which she could never resist. ‘I’ll talk to Chris, darling—don’t worry. And … while we’re here … you can look for another place, without a pond—eh?’

But with a five-hundred-year-old beam, eh
? she had thought lovingly, understanding that he felt he was coming home at last, even if only temporarily here, but at least away from his hated asphalt jungle in Highbury.

But, very strangely, it hadn’t been like that at all.

Or, at first, it had been—

‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Mel had cried, as she came down the back stair into the kitchen that first morning. ‘There’s an old cottage in the trees down there—‘ She pointed vaguely in the fatal direction.

‘What, darling?’ Rachel had pretended not to hear.

Larry looked up from his yesterday’s paper, which he hadn’t got round to reading in the chaos of their arrival. ‘That’s the old Griffin place,’ he had said, matter-of-fact and ready to fulfil his promise as Chris arrived breathlessly behind his sister. ‘It’s part of our property. But it’s only a ruin.’ He had looked down at his paper again. ‘An old lady named “Griffin” was the last occupant. That’s why it’s called “the old Griffin place”.’

Chris had sat down without a word. And, as Chris played his cards close to his chest even then, that meant that Chris had his plans worked out.

‘Was she a witch?’ inquired Mel. ‘It
looks
like a witch’s cottage, Daddy—it’s … yrrch!’

Chris had considered the choice between cornflakes and muesli with ostentatious innocence. ‘There are no such things as witches,’ he admonished his sister. Then he had selected the cornflakes. ‘Can I have two boiled eggs, Mother?’

Rachel knew her son almost as well as she knew her husband. So she had waited for his next move.

And Chris had waited too until the second egg. ‘I think I’ll go down and have a look at it,’ he addressed no one in particular. ‘Is that okay, Father?’

‘What?’ Melanie, at the age of six, didn’t know anyone very well, but she knew her brother better than anyone else. ‘Me too!’

Larry looked up from his paper. ‘Not just you—all of us, Chris.’ He grinned at Rachel, then at Melanie, and finally at Chris. ‘After the washing-up we’ll go down and look at old Mrs Griffin’s cottage. And then we’ll make the rules. Okay?’

And it had been much better than Rachel had expected, after Larry had slashed his way through all the obstacles with a terrifying weapon he had acquired from somewhere, which looked as though it had last been carried by an angry
sans-culotte
in the French Revolution.

So, finally, they had reached the mouldering wreck of old Mrs Griffin’s home: all the paraphernalia of a humble, long-lost and once-upon-a-time existence had still been there, among the nettles and fallen bricks and timbers, and the coarse-leafed growth: broken chairs and smashed furniture, the bits of an immense iron bedstead; the shards of crockery, and bottles and broken bottles—bottles everywhere—and the rusty evidence of tinned food—tins of every shape and size, mixed with rusty springs from an antique armchair mouldering on the edge of the pond.

‘What’s this?’ Melanie held up half of a chamber-pot by its handle. ‘Is it for fruit salad?’

‘I’ll have this, for my bedroom,’ Chris, eagle-eyed, held up a pewter candle-stick. But then he’d looked at his father. ‘Father—let’s go back now.’

Larry looked at his son. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t like the smell.’ Chris had balanced himself on a sheet of corrugated iron. ‘It smells like … I don’t know what—drains, maybe?’

‘
Yyyrrrch!
’
Melanie threw her half-chamber-pot into the pond, raising oily circles of water, to disturb clouds of insects. ‘
Drains
!’

‘Let’s go back,’ Chris had repeated his demand. ‘This is a beastly place.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Melanie. ‘And … I bet she
was
a witch—old Mrs Griffin!’

So they had gone back.

And it had been all right—even all right while the children ranged far and wide over the moor, and under the hill and over the hill and beyond, on foot and then on bicycle, as times had changed, and public inquiry (and government, and minister) had succeeded public inquiry, and the years had passed over the moor, and overhill and underhill, and Dr Groom’s job had developed. And Rachel had been a member of the Women’s Institute, and then treasurer, and then secretary. And, in the seventh year, Madam President.

And all their plans had changed, as the motorway had taken a different line, and Underhill Farm survived.

Until that day when Chris—Chris with his voice broken, out of the school choir and into the Junior Colts rugger XV, but Arts-inclined in the run-up to his A-level exams, had cycled over to the archaeology unit which was blazing the trail for the new line of the motorway, beyond the edge of the moor—

‘Mother—
Rachel
… ’ (Chris wasn’t sure how a chap ought to address his mother: some chaps thought Christian names were OTT, some were still old-fashioned) ‘ … you know the old Griffin place—?’

Long since, Rachel had stopped worrying about the old Griffin place. It was where it had always been, more-or-less. But after all these years it wasn’t one of her problems. ‘What about it, darling? The old Griffin place—?’

‘I was talking to a fellow—a Cambridge chap on the dig over the hill, where they’re working on that Romano-British village … which they
think
may have some Anglo-Saxon burials … ’

‘Yes, dear?’ Rachel was just beginning to acclimatize to that harsh reality of her son’s greater knowledge in certain areas—like matters Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon, as well as sporting.

‘He was very interesting—what he said was, I mean.’

She must be careful not to irritate him with her stupidity. ‘About archaeology?’ She had driven past the excavations only the day before, and had admired the chequer-board regularity of the work in progress.

‘About dustmen, actually.’

‘Dustmen?’ Now she really had to be careful. So … not another word.

‘Refuse collectors—garbage men.’ Suddenly he was serious. ‘You know,
if my
A-levels go okay … a big
if
, I agree … but
if they
do, and I can get a place at a decent university … I wouldn’t mind reading archaeology. How do you think Dad would take that?’

Rachel felt assailed on two fronts. ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself. And it’ll be your decision in the end. So long as you don’t want to be a dustman … ’