In the Mouth of the Tiger (112 page)

‘I really think you should see the place in daylight,' Mrs Wright was saying. ‘You can't see anything with these torches. The domestic offices are very well-equipped, and there is a perfectly delightful flat over the garages. And you haven't seen the garden. There is a walled garden, glass-houses, and . . .'

‘We have decided to take the place,' Denis said quietly.

Mrs Wright misheard. ‘Please reconsider,' she said quickly. ‘I do feel I made a great mistake by showing you the place by torchlight . . . I beg your pardon?'

‘We have decided to buy,' Denis said, and Mrs Wright just stood there, gaping.

On the way back to Dorchester, I commented on a tall brick wall that seemed to run for miles along the side of the Wareham road. ‘That's your neighbour,' Mrs Wright said. ‘The Drax estate, Charborough Park. It's the biggest estate in the whole of Dorset.'

‘What is behind the wall?' I asked.

‘The Park. There are woods and dales in there that go on forever. They trained the stay-behind parties there, you know. My husband was a member
of one of them. If the Germans had overrun Dorset, the stay-behind parties would have played havoc behind enemy lines. Oh, and later in the war Admiral Drax kept a whole division secreted away in Charborough Park. Have you ever heard of the Decoy Division? It was made up of actors rather than soldiers, and they had all these tanks and planes and guns made out of plywood and canvas. When they were deployed after Normandy, they completely fooled the Germans over and over again. The Germans would think our boys were gathering for an attack in places where there was nobody at all.'

So affable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was also Intelligence, I thought. Of course he was – that was why he'd been at Denis's farewell party. He was probably one of Menzies' Linlithgow Hunt people to boot. The secret world of Intelligence is a curiously small place once you are inside it.

Gillaume & Sons acted for us in the purchase of the Manor, and when we went into their offices in Fleet Street they told us that both Theodore Gillaume and his wife had died years before. I remember feeling an almighty stab of guilt when I heard the news, because I'd promised Mrs Gillaume that I'd make sure Denis kept in touch, and I had let her down.

So they had died forgotten by their blue-eyed boy, as they had feared they would. I couldn't help it, but tears filled my eyes and I tried to dash them away. But then I was glad of the tears because one of us at least had mourned.

We bought the unexpired portion of a ninety-nine-year lease on Almer Manor, together with its acreage and all fixtures and fittings. After the settlement, Admiral Drax took us to his club for lunch and told us all about the place.

‘It's very old,' he said. ‘Eight hundred years or more, so it's stood the test of time. But everything that needs to work is pretty new. The boiler for the central heating is only ten years old: we put it in when the family had some money, so it's the best that was available at the time. I've also had the place replumbed and rewired – I don't think you'll have any trouble in those departments.'

‘Does it have a ghost?' I asked.

‘No ghost. But it does have a secret staircase. It leads up from behind a cupboard in the upstairs hall to a monk's hole in the attic. I think there may be a ghost that haunts the Manor church, though. Either that or the village children have been having people on for years.'

‘Where is the church?' I asked. ‘In the grounds?' A picture came to mind of all the sunny Sundays stretching ahead into the future. Our children would be married there, no doubt, and then there would be christenings . . .

‘St Mary's, my dear,' Reggie chuckled, ‘is a hundred paces from your front door. You must have inspected the place with your eyes shut! It has a Saxon tower, and most of it is pre-Conquest. You'll like the rector very much – a very civilised chap called Ivor King. Writes articles about the local wildlife, and can be quite a wag at parties.'

We moved into Almer Manor on a cold day in March, a day with leaden skies and a sleeting wind. As the Wolseley swung into the driveway my heart was in my mouth. We'd never seen the house in daylight, and it might turn out to be horrid. It might even turn out to be one of those awful Gothic piles that scared me half to death.

It was lovely. It was well-proportioned and constructed in Purbeck marble, a honey-gold local stone that seemed to glow a welcome through the murk. It was spacious, but not so big as to be forbidding, and it had lots of full-length windows that gave it a light and sunny look even in the depths of winter. I had liked the Manor from the first, on the night we visited it, but now I began to fall in love with it.

We were greeted by the Framptons, a local couple we had engaged as our housekeeper and handyman on Admiral Drax's recommendation. They had turned on the central heating and put flowers around to make the place look homely. ‘Shall I serve lunch at one?' Mrs Frampton asked, and when I nodded she dropped on one knee in front of Frances.

‘That's more than an hour away. If you children are hungry after your long drive, I've got some cheese straws in the pantry.'

Denis and I went up to our room, where I hung up my coat, collapsed into a comfortable chair and looked around me. It was a lovely room, wide and comfortable, with an open fire and a great, wide bay window overlooking the walled garden. The paintings on the walls were all of beflagged ships-of-the-line, legacies of the time Admiral Drax had lived in the house before he moved to Charborough House. It was a very masculine room but I liked it immensely.

‘We'll put some of our silver on the mantelpiece . . .' I mused aloud, and as I did, the weirdest, nicest feeling came over me. All this – the room, the house around me, the life that came with it – was ours forever. This was where Denis and I would grow old, where we would die, happy and fulfilled,
with our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren around us. I felt tears pricking my eyes but it didn't worry me in the least. I was home and safe, with no need any more to be brave or to pretend. I could be exactly who I wanted to be. It was the sweetest feeling in the world.

After lunch we explored, and every turning brought fresh delights. There was a spinet in the lounge, an antique type of piano that plucked the strings instead of striking them, and I sat down and played Handel on the instrument Handel had composed for. There really was a secret staircase, and the children shivered and screamed as we clambered up through the stygian darkness to the monk's hole in the attic. Outside, we found an apple orchard, and hothouses full of winter blooms and herbs. And a little lake, covered now by ice but which in summer would be shaded by thick stands of hazel and oak.

Then we explored the church, just a hundred yards from our front door, where I stayed so long that Denis and the children abandoned me. I wasn't praying, as they surmised, but was transfixed by the weight of ages that rested on the tiny building. I wandered around in a dream, touching carved stone and timber, ancient stained glass and smooth-worn marble, totally bewitched. There was a tenth-century grave slab in the floor before the altar, a twelfthcentury font, and on the south wall of the nave a brass that read: ‘Pray for the soul of Master W Trygge, formerly rector of this church, who died 29 day of Dec. AD 1517.' Just outside the porch was a weathered stone cross over a thousand years old.

That night a storm battered Almer Manor, but we were snug behind the thick stone walls and warmed by the superb central heating. I got up in the early hours and checked the children, peering into each room in turn to see all three fast asleep. I padded down the timber stairs, and on a whim I sat at the spinet in the drawing room and played snatches of my favourite tunes. I was warm and happy and lost in thought, and started slightly when I saw the light of dawn through the long French windows.

‘Don't stop. We've got all day to catch up on our sleep.' Denis had been sitting behind me, listening for I don't know how long, and I smiled at him in acquiescence. There is a beautiful piece by Puccini that I love so much that I'd often tried it, even though it doesn't really lend itself to the piano. This morning the gods touched me and my fingers flew over the antique keyboard, filling the room with a lovely version of ‘One Fine Day'. The image of poor Butterfly, the betrayed Japanese lover of the errant Lieutenant Pinkerton, filled my mind, my soul. I felt her anguish, and saw the cherry blossom falling,
and then I felt the pain of the knife as she killed herself, and I abandoned the spinet and rushed into Denis's arms.

‘I think I'm a little overwrought,' I said, smiling through my tears. ‘I'm just so very, very happy that I can hardly stand it.' It was the first week of March 1949.

About that time in London, Malcolm Bryant was given a spare office, an assistant, and a bundle of the Venona files to work on. ‘Unpromising stuff,' Roger Hollis said, puffing his pipe at the doorway, ‘but there might just be something there. There was a surge in traffic out of the Russian Embassy in Canberra, starting about mid-1943. That sort of surge usually means that the blighters had just opened up an important source.'

‘I didn't think we had any Soviet Embassy traffic between 1941 and 1945,' Malcolm said, and Hollis smiled.

‘No one did. Churchill ordered us to stop recording Russian traffic when they became our allies. But the Australians didn't take any notice of the order. I found they had copied every message out of Canberra since the war began.' Hollis had been in Australia, liaising with the Australian Government about a proposed new Australian intelligence service.

‘And you have no idea what was in the traffic?' Malcolm asked.

Roger shook his head. ‘No idea at all. That's your job, Malcolm. See if you can find out what was so important that they had to tell Moscow all about it.'

We settled into Almer Manor quickly and comfortably, and within a month it seemed as though we had been there forever. It seemed natural to wake in the quiet house, and to lie snug and warm, listening to the soughing of the wind in the ancient yew that stood beside St Mary's. To take a bath rather than shower, and then to dress to the smell of eggs and bacon wafting up from the dining room. To breakfast with the children while Mrs Frampton discussed village life, and then to take our morning walk as far as Bluebell Woods. There were of course no bluebells yet in Bluebell Woods, but it was beautiful all the same, the bare branches of the oaks and elms making an elegant tracery against the eggshell winter sky.

‘I'll bring a gun up here one day,' Denis would say, but he was only joking. I could almost hear the squirrels chuckling in their winter dreams as the man who had shot tigers in the ulu wandered past.

Lady Drax called on me in the first week of April, as daffodils pushed their heads through our lawns and tiny leaves made their appearance on the fruit trees in the walled garden. Denis had gone up to London for the day, so I felt rather shy and alone as I saw the dark blue Daimler coming up our drive. But Kathleen was a lovely person, with twinkling eyes and a straightforward manner that put me instantly at my ease. The children were banished to their playroom in the attic, and Mrs Frampton brought us tea in the drawing room.

‘I don't need to ask if you are happy here,' Kathleen said. ‘The Manor is the happiest house I know. We lived here just after our marriage, you know, and in some ways I'm sorry that we ever left. Charborough is a lovely house, but it doesn't have the Manor's charm.' It was a gracious thing to say, but I also think that Kathleen may have been telling me the truth.

‘I've not seen your house, of course,' I said. ‘But it must be very special. People talk about it with bated breath.'

‘It can be a little bit like living in a national monument at times. But that has its compensations. I'm surrounded by history, and if I sit very still I sometimes think I can hear its echo.' She suddenly laughed. ‘I hope that didn't sound too silly.'

‘I know exactly what you mean,' I said. ‘I have the same feeling when I visit St Mary's. It must be very nice, you know, to be part of history as you and Sir Reginald are. I've seen the registers at St Mary's. There have been Draxes here since the year dot.'

Kathleen gave a little laugh. ‘Don't let the name fool you, Norma. Reggie changed his name to Drax when we took over Charborough after the first war, and he's not the first to have done that. Reggie was born a Plunkett. He added Drax because he felt that there should always be a Drax at Charborough Park.'

We talked about local history, and I found that Kathleen had a wealth of stories about our part of Dorset, some of them going back to Roman times. ‘Do you know the story of Corfe Castle?' I asked. We'd seen the tumbled ruins of the Norman castle the previous afternoon and I'd been quite fascinated.

‘Do I know Corfe Castle?' Kathleen asked, her eyes dancing. ‘My dear, our family blew the place apart! It was during the English Civil War. Lady Bankes – there are still Bankes in these parts today – held it for King Charles against a Roundhead army. She surrendered it only on a promise it would not be destroyed, but a Drax broke the promise and blew the place sky-high. To
make things worse, much of the stone and woodwork in Charborough House came from the ruins of the castle. The Bankes family and ours have been at loggerheads ever since.' She looked serious for a moment. ‘So if you ever do invite us to a party, you mustn't invite the Bankes as well. And vice versa.'

It was almost evening when Kathleen finally hoisted herself to her feet with a sigh. ‘You must come to tea,' she said, ‘as soon as Reggie gets back from Ireland. You're very much like me about history, my dear. I'll show you something when you come over that I think will really fascinate you ...'

On the way to her car Kathleen brought out a small parcel from her capacious handbag. ‘Just a tiny house-warming present,' she said. ‘Thomas Hardy's
Two on a Tower
. A much-neglected book but I think you'll like it because it's set right here, in our part of Dorset. The tower in the book is Charborough Tower.'