The American Boy (30 page)

“We must frighten the ghosts!” Edgar cried, and Charlie echoed him: “Frighten the ghosts!”

Mrs Kerridge drew out a large key and inserted it in the door. Mr Harmwell crouched to light the lantern. The two leaves of the door opened outwards on squealing hinges. The boys tried to plunge into the darkness beyond like terriers down a rabbit hole. Mrs Kerridge put out an arm to bar them.

“Please, dear Mrs Kerridge, let us go first,” Charlie said. “Edgar and I have a most particular reason for wanting it.”

“You will wait and do as you're bid,” I said. “Or else you will go straight back to your lessons.”

Mrs Kerridge sniffed the air. “It stinks like a charnel house.”

“It is indeed very bad,” Harmwell agreed. “Though few ice-houses smell sweet at this time of year.”

“They say the drain is blocked.”

“So the melt-water cannot escape?” He glanced over his shoulder at the lie of the land. “It drains down into the lake, I suppose, so the outlet may be frozen.”

“No, sir, they believe that the drain itself is blocked higher up.”

“Can they not clean it out?”

“They cannot reach it without digging.” Mrs Kerridge waved her hand at the boulders and fallen trees that cluttered the slopes of the defile. “The storms in October caused much damage in the park, and not all of it has been made good again.”

Harmwell had the lantern alight now. At Mrs Kerridge's request, he led the way down the narrow passageway that burrowed into the side of the hill. After five or six feet, we came to another door, with two leaves made of thick deal planks and edged with leather to provide an airtight seal. Beyond, there was another length of passage, ending in a great mass of barley straw.

The smell grew worse. Harmwell and I pulled aside the insulating straw, slimy with decay, and pushed it into the alcoves on either side of the passage. There at last was another two-leaved door, this one set at a slight angle to the perpendicular. It required another key to open it.

“I'm told there's a hook for the lantern inside,” Mrs Kerridge said. “On the left.”

Harmwell pulled back the leaves. Covering my nose and mouth with a handkerchief, I edged forward so that I could look over his shoulder. Illuminated in the lantern's fitful yellow light was a dome which at its highest point was perhaps a foot above the ceiling of the corridor. As a whole the chamber resembled the interior of a gigantic egg, with its broader end at the top. It comprised a vault and a well, both faced with dressed stone glistening with moisture. A variety of bundles hung from hooks in the side of the dome. I crouched and looked down into the well itself. Some six or seven feet below was a dark mass of ice, water, straw. I made out at least a score of packages lying half submerged.

“Aye, the drain is blocked,” said Harmwell. “Nothing is so injurious to an ice-house as want of dryness. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon as in a close, damp cellar.”

“Will they ever get rid of this foul smell?” I inquired.

His teeth flashed white in the gloom. “They should empty the chamber without delay. Then, in this weather I would leave the doors standing open to air the place. They should put down quicklime, too, for it absorbs moisture.”

“The master has a sudden fancy for venison,” Mrs Kerridge said. “That's all we need. There should be a haunch in one of the sacks on the left. They are all labelled.”

“How long has it been there?” Harmwell asked.

“Two months or more, I believe.”

“Then I fear it will be rotting in this atmosphere, ma'am.”

“That is not our affair, Mr Harmwell. Let Cook be the judge, eh? Will those rungs bear your weight? Pray be careful.”

The black man edged into the chamber. Rungs for the feet and the hands had been set in the side of the dome, with a line of hooks above. He moved slowly across to the cluster of sacks and examined the labels at their necks, angling them so they caught the light, while Mrs Kerridge kept up a stream of admonition. At last he found the venison, unhooked the heavy sack and made his crab-like way back to us. He passed the sack to me. The stink was now overpowering. The boys retreated to the open air.

“Dear God,” I said, fighting an urge to vomit.

“What the master wants,” Mrs Kerridge muttered to Harmwell, “the master has.”

She pursed her lips and fell silent. Mr Carswall was not popular with his servants. He was harsh and autocratic by nature and, added to this, displayed a sort of petulance, a habit of making impracticable demands upon a whim, that was perhaps a symptom of his advancing age. The unexpected desire for venison was clearly an example of this. I wondered, however, whether there might be a deeper reason for Mrs Kerridge's resentment towards him. Though Carswall paid her wages now, she had served Mrs Frant for many years. Perhaps Mrs Kerridge had acquired a knowledge of Mr Carswall's intentions with respect to her mistress.

Despite the smell, Edgar wished to pursue his researches by scrambling round the interior of the ice-house. I refused to sanction this intrepid plan but I permitted the boys to help pile the straw back against the inner door. This activity made them wet and filthy, and thus was profoundly satisfying to them.

As we were walking to the house, I learned from the boys' conversation that the subject of the monks' treasure was still in their mind. Charlie made the not unreasonable point that the ice-house was such a modern structure that it could not have been used by the monks nearly three hundred years earlier. But Edgar replied with the ingenious suggestion that the ice-house had been built in that spot because there was already some sort of cavity, bringing forward in support of this theory the observation that the stone facing on the interior of the ice-house had looked very similar to the stones used in the ruins of the monks' grange near the cottage. I had not the heart to point out to them that practically every building of any substance within a five- or ten-mile radius of Monkshill was constructed of the local sandstone, the colour of a faded claret stain, so this circumstance was not necessarily of any significance whatsoever when one came to date the construction.

The boys and I were walking at a smart pace. Harmwell and Mrs Kerridge, chaperoned by their rotting haunch of venison, lingered on the way. Glancing back as we approached the door to the kitchen gardens, I discovered that a bend in the path had put them out of sight.

A moment later, the house reared up in a great cliff of stone in front of us. We walked along the terrace towards the side door. I glanced at the window of the ladies' sitting room. Someone was standing on the other side of the glass, as shadowy as a ghost. The outline convinced me it was a woman. It could not be Mrs Lee, because she had a disease of the spine which bent her over and caused her much pain. The shape vanished, withdrawing into the gloomy interior of the room.

Miss Carswall or Mrs Frant, I wondered: that was the question. Indeed, in those days that was always the question.

Mr Carswall rarely entertained in the country, and he had never been honoured by such guests as the Ruispidges. As the day of the great dinner drew near, his voice was heard all over the house, raised in expostulation. With drawn faces, the servants scurried about in their stained and frayed finery, following orders that five minutes later would be countermanded.

It suited Mr Carswall's sense of propriety that the numbers around his table should be evenly distributed between the sexes. There would be five ladies – as well as the three at Monkshill-park, both Lady Ruispidge and Mrs Johnson had accepted invitations. (After Mrs Lee's revelation concerning Mrs Johnson, Carswall had deliberated long and hard over whether to invite her; his hand was forced by the fact that Mrs Johnson was still staying with her cousins at Clearland-court.)

There were to be five gentlemen, so that each lady would have an arm to lean on when they went into dinner: Mr Carswall himself, Mr Noak, Sir George and Captain Ruispidge, and – according to the original plan – the Rector of Flaxern Parva, who providentially was a widower and so did not have a wife to unbalance the numbers. After breakfast, however, the Rector sent over a groom with a note.

“Damn him,” Carswall said to me as I was the only other person in the room. “He's confined to bed with piles. He trusts to the mercy of Almighty God, the application of steam to the afflicted part, and an electuary as a mild laxative. I wish Almighty God may give him inflammation of the bowels. That will serve him.” He screwed up the letter and threw it into the fire. “You will have to sit down with us, Shield, there's no help for it. It could be worse. Mrs Frant tells me that you were intended for the Church: is that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in your best coat you look a gentleman-like fellow. You need not say very much. Make yourself useful to the ladies and do not get in the way of the gentlemen.” The old man hesitated, standing there with his back to the fire in the library, raising his coat-tails so the warmth would reach him. “Or perhaps I should have Charlie instead. He is a fine boy, one of the family, and the ladies like a lad to pet.” He scratched his thigh with a claw-like fingernail. “No, it would not answer. If Charlie dined with us, and not Edgar, Noak might not like it – he and Allan are mighty thick, and they all have that damned Yankee pride. Besides, one can never tell with children – an excess of animal spirits is always a possibility. In this case first thoughts are best. So I will expect you in the drawing room before we go in to dinner.”

When I joined the party in the drawing room later that day, Sir George and Mr Carswall were discussing the weather while around them conversations among the other members of the party flared and spurted like damp fireworks.

“I make no apologies, ma'am,” Mr Carswall said to Lady Ruispidge as he led her into the dining room. “I do not have fancy foreign dishes on my table.”

There is nothing like food and drink for filling up awkward silences. For the first course, we were served capons and boiled beef, a forequarter of lamb and a calf's head, oysters and mushrooms. These were followed by a fillet of veal stuffed and roasted, stewed hare, partridges in a dish, marrow-pudding, squab pigeons, and asparagus. I looked in vain for venison.

Lady Ruispidge grew quite animated as the meal proceeded, and when she tasted the partridge she burst into speech. “This is a young bird, I fancy,” she said in a high, cracked voice. “You are aware, sir, of the characteristics of age as it relates to the partridge? One should examine the bill and the legs. If the bill be white and the legs have a bluish cast, the bird is old. But if the bill is black, and the legs yellow, it is young. One should also look at the vent. If it be fast, then the bird is new, if it is open and green, then depend on it the bird is stale.”

“I am glad it is to your liking, ma'am,” Carswall said. “May I help you to a little hare?”

She understood the gesture if she did not hear the words. “Is it leveret?” she inquired. “I prefer leveret to hare, the flavour is more delicate. To discover the true leveret, of course, you must feel near the foot on its foreleg, and if you find there a knob, or small bone, it is a leveret. But if destitute of this, it must be a hare.”

Carswall tried to rally, but the spirit had gone out of him. Lady Ruispidge had made up her mind that he was to share her interest in the preparation and consumption of food. Her deafness rendered futile his attempts to introduce other subjects of conversation. She swept them aside and told him instead of the best way to salt hams in the Yorkshire manner, and the criteria by which one should judge a turbot.

I was seated between Mrs Johnson and Mrs Lee. Neither gave me much opportunity for conversation. Mrs Lee ate steadily, as usual; she was a lady for whom food was important, and she did not care for conversation at table. When Mrs Johnson talked, she spoke chiefly to Mr Carswall, who was on her right. She looked very striking that evening in a gown of pale yellow silk, and the candlelight softened the harshness of her features and increased the lustre of her dark eyes.

Miss Carswall sat between Sir George and Mr Noak. In a lull in the general conversation, I heard Sir George say to her: “And will you be honouring us with your presence at the assembly next week, Miss Carswall?”

“There is a ball?” She spoke so artlessly that I instantly suspected that the information did not come as a surprise.

“Indeed there is. We have them once a month during the winter months, at the Bell in Gloucester. I'm sure tickets could be arranged.”

Miss Carswall turned towards her father. “Oh, may we go, Papa?”

The old man looked up from his plate. “Eh?”

“They are most respectable affairs, sir,” Captain Ruispidge said. “Ain't they, George? We go to one or two of them every year, and sometimes the Vaudens, as well. But of course Mrs Frant –”

“Pray do not concern yourselves about me,” she said. “I would not prevent your enjoyment for the world.”

“But would it be quite proper for Papa and me to go to a public assembly?” Miss Carswall inquired of Sir George, with touching confidence in his judgement. “Mr Wavenhoe was Papa's cousin, and he died not two months ago.”

He smiled at her. “You need not trouble your head on that score, Miss Carswall. It would be thought perfectly proper. After all, the connection was not close, and we would never see anyone in the country if we allowed half-mourning to stop us.”

“It is a considerable way for a winter drive,” said Mr Carswall slowly. “And at night – all the way back from Gloucester. And what if we have snow, hey? It seems to me very likely that we shall have snow.”

“Those who have far to come usually arrange to spend the night,” Sir George said.

“I daresay we should meet all sorts of interesting people,” Miss Carswall put in.

“Perhaps, perhaps.” Carswall nodded his heavy head. “It is most kind of you to suggest it, Sir George.”