Past Caring (31 page)

He looked up with a careworn, crumpled grin. “4B are bad enough without you turning up,” he said. “But at least it’s an excuse to stop. How’s tricks?”

And I told him—as best I could—while Hester started dinner and Nick treated himself—and me—to some relaxing gin and tonic and assured me how lucky I was to be out of teaching.

“Especially,” he enthused, “when you land a cushy research number. What I wouldn’t give to be writing my biography of John Clare”—the pet project he’d never had time to start—“rather than ploughing through that . . .” He gestured despairingly at the pile of ink-stained books and gulped some more gin rather than select a suitable epithet. “But what brings you down here?”

“Strafford’s family lived at Barrowteign—a National Trust property in the Teign valley.”

“What are you looking for there?”

“Anything I can find.”

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So he wished me luck, as did Hester, over the excellent dinner that followed. As Hester pointed out, I was looking well and sounding happy, so, temporary or not, the assignment couldn’t be bad. She was right. And so far the job had done more for me than I’d done for it. The next day gave me a chance to put that right.

Nick gave me a lift to the bus station on his way into school next morning.

“Have a good time,” he shouted as I got out. “Think of me while you’re swanning around Barrowteign this afternoon.”

Then he disappeared in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

The bus that struggled up the hills west of Exeter dropped me at Farrants Cross on the Moretonhampstead road. It diverted to Dewford only on Thursdays—and this was Tuesday. But a fine spring Tuesday, so I didn’t mind wandering down the empty lane into the Teign valley, the only sound birdsong and the trickle of water seeping from the fields. To my left was a high, overgrown embankment. Nick’s map showed it as a disused railway line: the old Teign valley route that in sixty-odd years of uneconomic working had seen three accidental deaths in one local family.

Who’d have thought it, to see it now brambled and benign beneath a blue sky?

Further south, the valley opened out a little. The disused railway became just a scar across the fields beside the river that I could make out from the higher vantage of the road. Then I saw what I was looking for: a bunching of trees in parkland and, nestled in amongst them, tall slate roofs and red sandstone walls: Barrowteign, waiting unchanged to receive me.

The road descended into a slight hollow and I lost sight of the house. Further on was a crossroads. The signpost indicated Dewford to the right, various hamlets to the left. But a separate National Trust board—BARROWTEIGN: HOUSE AND GROUNDS, OPEN APRIL 1 TO OCTOBER 31—pointed also to the left. So I followed that, dipping down slightly between fields to an old stone bridge across the river. Just the other side, the road forked.

Another National Trust board directed me to the left and there, ahead, were tall stone pillars flanking a gateway. The road led through them past a newly painted sign: BARROWTEIGN.

There was no high wall, no lodge, just fir trees shading a mossy

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bank with new fencing along its top. I stopped between the pillars, savouring the place and the moment. Statues in the likeness of barn owls had been carved at the top of each pillar. They gazed down stonily at visitors and held a small shield between their claws. Time and weather had erased any device the shields might once have borne.

The drive turned abruptly away from a direct route to the house, although a gated road, marked PRIVATE, continued that way through an avenue of lime trees, their leaves bright green and inviting in the sunshine. It looked to me as if that could once have been the main drive, because there were no trees shading the tarmacced route that I followed away from and then back towards the house. And if I hadn’t been on foot and looking out for it, I’d certainly have missed the shallow trench—like an empty moat—that the road crossed a little further on: the railway line, bisecting the park once but now, with its fences and rails gone, its ballast all but grassed over, just a minor undulation beneath a motor coach’s wheels. I was puzzled: there was no sign at all of a level crossing or its keeper’s cottage.

The road topped the bank on which the house stood, ran past a stable yard now serving as a car park and broadened into a grav-elled square at the foot of wide stone steps. These led up to a paved area running along the foot of the house behind a low-clipped yew hedge. I paused at the foot of the steps and looked up at the building: a grand but unpretentious frontage, red sandstone with some lighter stone facing round the windows: wooden doors beneath a rose-windowed arch, the familiar stone owl now placed as if holding the lantern above the doors, tall tracery windows on the ground floor, fewer, though in the same style, on the floor above, oriel windows above that beneath the steep slate roof. Either end of the frontage stood gabled cross-wings bellied out by bay windows.

The porch led straight into a hall, dark despite the high windows, panelled and roofed in wood, with a huge granite fireplace and, at the far end of the hall, broad, shallow stairs that led up to a half-landing, then divided either side and went on up to balconies that ran round three sides of the hall.

An old lady perched sparrow-like at a desk by the fireplace sold me a ticket and a guidebook and said her piece. “The Hall is 178

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a Victorian imitation of medieval tradition: a place for the feudal lord to entertain his vassals. In this case, the first Mr. Strafford sometimes held parties for his brewery workers here. But the tradition soon died out. The staircase is solid teak and leads to the bedrooms. You’ll find a guide in each room.”

I thanked her and went on. On the other side of the fireplace, well-lit by the windows facing it, was a full-length portrait.

There he was, founder of the family, looking just as I’d expected from his grandson’s description: a proud, stout, red-faced man, dressed in a rather faded Georgian style, posing in his own hall and grasping the lapels of his tail-coat with self-satisfied firmness. The small plate read: THOMAS STRAFFORD (1789–1867), but the picture said far more.

In a dark lobby behind the hall I found another family portrait: an alert, dignified figure in military uniform—Colonel George Strafford, M.C. (1819–1904), who “extended the estate and refurbished the house on the death of his father. Colonel Strafford was a Victorian country gentleman, a local alderman and charitable benefactor, but no businessman. The family’s brewing interests were sold off during his time.”

Into the dining room: a long rectangular table laid for dinner, a canopied fireplace, a smaller breakfast table in a bay window looking out into the garden. Another portrait, this time of Robert Strafford, tweed-suited in waders and casting a fly in the tumbling waters of the Teign. “Mr. Robert Strafford (1870–1911) took especial pleasure in country pursuits—hunting, fishing (his efforts greatly enhanced the reputation of the Teign in angling circles) and cattle-breeding (a Royal Agricultural Society gold medallist, 1906–1907–1909), his prize-winning breeds are still to be seen in the park.”

Then into the library, lined with shelves full of leather-bound Victorian books, a globe, chairs and one long table in the centre: more of a working library than most such places. Yet I was disappointed: what I’d looked for, some sign of my Strafford, had eluded me. I could imagine him being there, but why no formal portrait? Why no “Mr. Edwin’s study”?

On his own in the library the guide was looking bored and listless in his chair in the window, so I decided to tap his local

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knowledge. He was an amiable-looking old fellow in blazer and regimental tie, with a clipped moustache and a knowing eye.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Can I help, sir?”

“I hope so. I’ve enjoyed the tour of the house but it’s left me wondering about the family.”

“Oh yes, sir?”

“Yes. I’m an amateur historian and I remember there was a politician named Strafford at the turn of the century. Any connexions?”

“My word, yes. A younger son of the Colonel, if my memory serves. But something of a black sheep, if you know what I mean.” He winked. “Some sort of scandal. He had to go abroad.

Left his mother in the lurch, his brother having died by then.”

“I don’t recall any scandal.”

“No, sir, well, that sort of thing was kept quiet then, wasn’t it?” I decided not to correct him. “Anyway, that was the beginning of the end for the family. By the time Mr. Ambrose—young Mr.

Strafford—came of age, the estate was in bad shape. After the war, he passed it over to the Trust.”

“And what became of young Mr. Strafford?”

“Oh, he still lives here. Well, not in the house, but on the estate. Not so young anymore, of course. We see him about quite a lot. Lodge Cottage is just down the drive.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“No, sir, you wouldn’t. The road up only follows the old drive halfway. Lodge Cottage is on the private half.”

“Would there be any objections to my calling on Mr.

Strafford?”

“Shouldn’t think so, sir. But you’ll not find him in at this time of the day.”

“No?”

“Not as a rule. The Greengage in Dewford is your best bet.

And that’s where he’s most . . . sociable, if you know what I mean.”

“I see. Thanks. I may look in there.”

Out in the garden again I had no difficulty in finding the turn in the drive where the gate marked PRIVATE led up to Lodge Cottage, but decided not to venture further. The guide knew what 180

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he was talking about and I needed a drink. So I headed back to the bridge over the Teign, up to the main road, then took the lane into Dewford: a scattered village strung across the valley side—all ups and downs, narrow bends and muddy gateways. Dewford had none of Miston’s olde worlde charm. It was a working Devon village almost visibly in hock to the tourist trap across the valley. As for The Greengage, it was no place for expense account lunches: a low dark bar full of farm workers eating pasties and drinking lager. Just to be different, I ordered traditional local cider and shouted to the landlord above the clatter of a fruit machine about whether Ambrose Strafford was in. But no. “He allus’ goes into Newton Tuesdays.

You’d best try this evenin’.” I swallowed my cider and left.

It was a nuisance, but it gave me time to explore Dewford.

Further up the hillside was the church, its stone tower looming over yew trees. I entered the little graveyard through a dark lych-gate and didn’t take long to find what I was looking for: the Strafford family plot. Three generations were there, from Thomas Strafford’s plain if oversized tomb to the weeping angels that flanked “Robert Strafford of Barrowteign in this parish, also Florence Strafford, his dear wife, formerly Florence Hardistry of Dartmouth, taken together by tragic accident, 5th January 1911; united in death as in life.” Dwarfed beside this magniloquent memorial, one small stone bore the briefest of inscriptions: “E.G.S.

1876–1951; R.I.P.” That was it. Nothing more. But there were fresh daffodils in the vase formed by the stone. And it was a green, peaceful spot, quite a sun trap in the afternoon in fact, not such a bad place. Suddenly, I wished I’d brought flowers. My only tribute was the Memoir in the knapsack over my shoulder and what I proposed to do with it.

I spent a quiet hour wandering round the church, then walked back to Barrowteign to have a leisurely tea in the refreshment room housed in the old servants’ wing. When the house closed at six o’clock, I made my way out down the old drive from its higher end, also marked PRIVATE, and soon came to Lodge Cottage in its grove of lime trees by the disused railway line. The cottage was a modest, whitewashed little property fenced in with its own well-kept garden. The railway was just an uneven grass track with nothing left of the crossing except a cream-painted,

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five-bar gate now part of the boundary of the cottage garden. An old lineside shack a little distance up the track looked to have been converted into a garage. There was still a cattle grid on my side of the crossing, but the gate had been replaced by a fence.

There was no sign of life in the cottage, but I went in through the low wicket gate and tried the knocker: wrought iron in the likeness of an owl. There was no answer.

Back to The Greengage. It was quiet now, and emptier, in early evening. The fruit machine was silent, blinking mournfully in a corner. Two men played darts with hardly a word. A wisp of smoke curled from a small log in the grate. A grey-muzzled sheepdog lay on the hearth, cocking an ear and opening one eye as I came in. The landlord stood polishing glasses with practised deliberation. Seeing me enter, he leant across the bar and whispered something to his only other customer, a grey-haired old man in a voluminous sheepskin coat, who nodded and sent up a plume of smoke from his pipe.

I ordered a pint of beer and savoured the first gulp. My companion at the bar, perched on a stool with his back against a pillar, sent up more smoke and turned to look at me. His grey hair extended in white mutton-chop whiskers to meet his moustache, yellowed by pipesmoking. He had the red nose and cheeks of a drinking man, but the rheumy eyes and laugh lines of a man happy in his drink, not inflamed by it. A pewter tankard stood on the bar in front of him. My eye shot to the device inscribed on the side of it—the Strafford owl. I no longer had any doubt who my companion was.

“Good evening,” I said hopefully.

“Evening,” he replied, then puffed out some smoke. I had to restrain a cough. “Ted here tells me that some anxious young bugger’s been looking for me today. Would that be you?”