Touch Not The Cat (21 page)

I had thought about this, too. "You mean like those people who spend all their time reading stories about ideal lovers and ideal relationships, so that a real ordinary man or woman never can measure up?"

"Something like that. Any imaginary world has its dangers. The edges between light and half-light are indistinct, and tend to blur more and more the longer one looks at them. You know, Bryony, you've given me almost too much to think about. Will you give me a little more time, and come and talk to me again? I'd like to clear my mind. I'm sorry I haven't been more help."

"Oh, you have, you have. You believed me, and that's almost enough in itself. Thank you for that."

"My dear child," he said, then, smiling: "You've relieved my mind, too. I said you were treading a dangerous road; I doubt if I need have worried about you. You have a clear head, for so young a woman, and you are not afraid to think things through. That's not as easy as it sounds, and not common at all. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? I see Rob Granger on the other side of the garden, and he seems to be coming this way."

I turned to look out through the glass. Rob was standing between the rows of vegetables, pointing something out to the boy, Jim Makepeace, who helped him sometimes. Jim nodded and picked up his spade, and Rob headed towards the greenhouse. I turned back to the Vicar, and asked quickly: "Did you ever find out what the prowler was doing in the vestry?"

"Yes, indeed. What a very strange thing that was! I am glad to say that I was right in thinking that no one from these parishes would have attempted to open the safe. It had not been touched."

"No? Do you mean that nothing was missing after all?"

"Nothing of value—that is, none of the 'valuables,' but something worth much more in its own way, and quite irreplaceable. One of the registers."

"One of the
registers?
A parish register?" The ones at Ashley, I knew, went back without a break to the sixteenth century. It was a serious loss, but for the moment I could not get far beyond a sort of blank amazement and reassessment of what I knew. What in the world could James have wanted with one of the parish registers? Anything less like a "disposable asset" I couldn't imagine. "But I thought you said no one had opened the safe?"

"Oh, not one of the Ashley registers. One of those which were on the vestry table, from One Ash. Unhappily, it is one of the earlier ones which is missing, the second volume, 1780 to 1837. .

. . The latter, as no doubt you know, was the date on which the full procedure of registration was instituted as we know it today. Before that it was a question of signatures, or indeed marks, from the parties concerned. In the registers before 1754, when the Hardwick Act was passed, there is merely an entry of the fact of marriage; nothing else was required. . . ."

"But surely—" I was thinking hard. If James had laid the pictures down on the vestry table in the dark, while he fumbled for the main switch, he might just possibly have picked the register up in error, and carried it away. It seemed unlikely, but I made a mental note to telephone him as soon as I could. It was obvious that the Vicar was very worried; the thing must be put back without delay.

"But surely, it won't have been stolen, Vicar. Who would want it? It'll turn up soon, you'll see."

"Quite, quite. I comfort myself with the thought. I am not seriously worried," said the Vicar, looking very worried indeed. "It seems clear that someone must have wanted to consult it, and seeing it here, has simply borrowed it. It will be returned in time, surely. The fault is mine, and only mine. When I left the volumes in the vestry, it never entered my head that anyone besides myself would be interested enough to abstract one of them. Indeed, I still may be mistaken; I shall be going to One Ash tomorrow afternoon, and will make sure. . . . Ah, Rob, good morning. Were you looking for me?"

"Good morning, Vicar. Mrs. Henderson said to tell you that a young couple called from Hangman's End about a license."

"Oh, dear," said the Vicar, "and I did want to get the plants finished this morning."

"I'll do them," I said. "That is, if you'll trust me after breaking that shoot."

"Of course, but you must have plenty to do."

"I'd like to finish them," I said. "Good morning, Rob."

"Good morning."

"Are the Underhills at home today?" I asked him.

"They're going out later. But Mrs. Underhill said if I saw you to say you were welcome at the house anytime. She tried to phone you this morning, but you'd gone out."

"Oh, thanks. I'm going to take a look in the library, Vicar. I thought I'd look through the family section."

"Oh, yes. Well, anytime you want me, you know where to find me. Rob, what have you done to your hand?"

"Nothing. Hit it with a hammer, that's all."

"Was that you mending the fishing cat last night?" I asked him.

"Fishing cat?"

"The cat statue at the Overflow. It's broken off. Had you seen it?"

"Oh, that, yes. The metal's rotten. I left it be. It's not much use wasting time on that kind of thing." It was an echo of what my cousin had said last night, but without the bitterness; Rob spoke with an indifference verging on the surly. He was already making for the door. "I was wedging the sluice gates shut, that's what you heard. Looked as if they'd been tampered with, but then the whole thing's rotten anyway."

"Is it safe?"

"Safe enough. The High Sluice can take care of anything the river likes to send down, and the Overflow's there to keep the moat level steady."

He was at the door, opening it. I got quickly to my feet. "I'm going over to the Court again. May I have your keys now, please, Rob?"

"You know where they're kept. Help yourself." The greenhouse door shut behind him.

"His hand must be hurting him more than he'll admit," said the Vicar. "He's not usually rude. I hope it's nothing serious. Well, I must go, I suppose. If you really will finish the tomatoes for me—?"

"Of course I will."

Alone in the greenhouse I went back to the plants. The silence of the glasshouse, the stillness of the air, and the monotony of the task were somehow soothing. God knows I had plenty to think about, but I thought about none of it, not then. I shut myself off from it as the glass shut me from the air outside, content to let my mind stay closed and blank, and to work automatically along the rows of plants.

What slipped it into my mind I do not know, but it was suddenly there, clear as if spoken ... no, not as if spoken; as clear as if it were written up between me and the garden, scrawled on the steamed glass.

William Ashley, 1774-1835.
It might be pure chance that a parish record of William Ashley's time had vanished, but also it might not. And anything to do with William Ashley was of interest to me, at least until I had managed to interpret my father's cryptic words.

I was on the last row of tomato plants. I finished the job as quickly as I could, then let myself out into the air, and hurried towards the Court.

Ashley, 1835

"You have the key safely?"

"Aye. See? But I'll not need it."

"Never be too sure. You know what they say about a maze?"

"No. What, then?"

"That a compass won't work there. While we're here, we're in a world without bearings and directions. Even if you could see the weathervane, it would be no help. We're outside the world."

"Sounds like we're dead, surely?"

"Hush, oh, hush. It just means that once we're here, at the center, no one can touch us."

"Till we go out again."

"Even then. Nothing can touch us now."

And what obscured in this fair volume lies Find written . . .

—Romeo and Juliet,
I, iii

No ghost had ever walked in the Ashley library, but now, as I let myself quietly into the still, spacious room, it seemed haunted, probably only by the frail parchment ghosts of the books that had vanished from the shelves. It was so empty that it echoed. Somehow, I thought, a library looked worse than an ordinary room that had been stripped of its furniture. The books had been the brain of the room, its soul, its
raison d'etre.
I shut the door quietly behind me, as if afraid of disturbing those pale ghosts, then, ashamed of the impulse even as I gave way to it, turned the key. Quietly as a ghost myself, I walked the length of the room to the locked cases which housed William Ashley's books, and Nicholas' sad little collection, pushed the library ladder up close, then climbed up and unlocked the grille.

"William's hook
. . ."? I might as well start with Scholar Ashley's own verses. I took out
A New
Romeo to His Juliet,
sat down on the top step of the ladder, and opened the book.

There was the bookplate with the maze and the rampant wildcat with its grim motto—how touchable had Julia Ashley been? I wondered briefly—and opposite this the dedicatory letter with its extravagances which, for once, and how pathetically, sounded no more than true.

"To the peerless and beautiful Mistress Julia Ashley, my wife . . ."

I read it through. It was much the usual letter, fulsome to our ears and circumlocutory, but through it came very clearly the idolatry he had felt for her. The touch at the end was pure pathos.

May we never reach that end, but if we do, let it be together, that we may never from our palace of dim night depart again.

Your

Romeo.

I turned the pages slowly. The work was privately printed and very prettily produced; it was doubtful if William Ashley could ever have found more than a local immortality, but to me, another Ashley, the book was fascinating. A great many of the verses were about the Court. One or two of the shorter ones I knew already; they had been printed elsewhere, and we had been set to learn them as children. Each poem had, as head- and tailpiece, some small and rather pretty engraving, and these I found enthralling. There was a picture of the main bridge, more or less exactly as it was today; a distant view of the Court minus the Victorian gables and a chimney or two; a view of the orchard beautifully kept and improbably heavy with fruit; one of the maze, trim and neat and little more than shoulder high, with a detailed drawing of a pavilion perched for the artist's convenience on a high platform that had certainly never been there.

The poem below this picture was called "The Maze": In this fantastickal and Cretan maze

No Theseus to find the centre strays;

This gentler Monster lurked within these Groves

What time the Romans trod their secret ways.

No Cretan Bull guards the abode of love,

But where the gentle waters, straying, move,

See! Dionysus' creature here enskied

To greet our 'raptured gaze . . .

And so on. It was bad verse; so bad and so meaningless that, conversely, I thought there must be meaning there. William Ashley's poems were usually transparent as glass, his conceits more than simple, only lamely imitating the stately periods he admired. "Secret ways," I thought. It was surely only the usual conceit about a maze, the Greek myth of Theseus and the clue. Then why

"Romans"? Well, it probably hardly mattered. But the maze was William Ashley's private refuge, and the pavilion was built for his Juliet. And past the maze went the Overflow. I read on.

Time passed slowly. Somehow the silence of the library, which should have helped me to concentrate, oppressed and distracted me. The clear north light showing up the half-empty shelves, the stuffy smell of a locked room, the waiting echo of emptiness, seemed to symbolize the vacuum inside my mind, the shut gate, the lack of presence. . . . Try as I would, the parable of the swept and garnished house kept coming back to me. "Possession," in any context, was a forceful, not to say frightening, word.

The thought came between me and the book, so persistently that I knew I could not go on reading here. I decided to take the books back to the cottage, make myself some lunch, then telephone Herr Gothard and find what James had said to him last night. After that I would settle down once more to my reading. I carried the
New Romeo
down the steps and laid it on the table, then climbed back to lock the grille.

A title in one of the Shakespeare shelves caught my eye, and the name
Juliet
in gilt on tooled tan leather. The real thing. Any comparison with Scholar Ashley's transports would be unfair in the extreme, but some impulse, sparked off perhaps by the thought of the star-crossed lovers and my own divided house, made me take the small volume out. Then I locked the grille, let myself out of the library, and locked that, too, behind me.

There was very little delay on the line. Herr Gothard was at home. Yes, Herr Gothard would speak with me. . . .

"Bryony? How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you, Herr Gothard. Can you hear me all right?"

"Perfectly. Now, how can I help you?"

"I'm awfully sorry to trouble you again," I said, "but there were one or two things I wanted to ask you. I, er, I understand that my cousin James was to telephone you last night?"

"That is so. He did telephone me. He has not been in touch with you about this?"

"I've been out all day. I wondered what news you had had for him."

"Ah." He sounded faintly surprised that I should have telephoned Germany rather than Bristol, but he went on with his usual calm courtesy. "I'm afraid there has not been much progress here. There is no sign as yet of the car which did the damage, but the police are still making inquiries."

"Yes, I see. Thank you. Did he—did my cousin ask you anything else?"

"No, only questions about the accident—had they found the car, were there any more clues to who had done it, all the same questions. I am sorry I have nothing more to tell you. And yourself?

You are well?"

"Oh, yes, perfectly, thanks. There was one thing I wanted to ask you, though. Do you remember, among Daddy's things that you gave me, a silver ballpoint pen?"

"Ye-es . . . ach, yes, of course I do! It had his initials on it, yes?"

"That's the one. Where was it found, do you know?"