Element of Doubt, page 18
I went back to the dining hall, determined to be open-minded about the panels. And would you believe it – I didn’t – they weren’t naughty at all. If evil is in the eyes of the beholder it had certainly gone from mine. I examined every panel, every figure, every bird, beast and flower, took measurements, checked for cracks. Those carvings were quite simply beautiful and fantastical and utterly charming. Nothing more.
I stood and gazed until my eyes misted and the figures seemed to move and I knew it was time to go. Anyway, it was getting on for four o’clock. I looked up and walked down the drive, no backward looks. I hoped I wouldn’t see the girl again. Birds were singing, the sun was shining, the boring old country was glowing.
Mrs. W. was waiting for me at the door of the lodge. ‘Finished?’ she said with her direct charm.
‘Thank you, yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch. By the way, I met your daughter up at the house.’
‘I haven’t got a daughter,’ she said.
‘Your niece then. Such a sweet girl, I could see the family likeness.’
‘There’s no girl.’
‘But there is,’ I said, ‘I saw her, we talked about the school. And other things.’
‘Don’t you go spreading no nonsense!’ She backed into the lodge like a sea-creature retreating into its shell. ‘I’ve got enough trouble as it is.’
The door slammed in my face. I still had the keys of the house in my hand. I pushed them through the letter-box.
As we drove away Adrian asked how I’d got on. Well enough, I said, though there was a girl hanging about – I swear I didn’t use the words advisedly, they just happened she had been a bit of a pest.
Adrian was concentrating on overtaking a petrol tanker. I said ‘What were you doing at Araby?’
‘Doing?’ He frowned. ‘It must be getting on for fifty years ago when I was there. In those days I was starting out and had to take any sort of job. I went as a builder’s labourer.’
I didn’t say anything. I put two and two together and snatched them apart again.
When we were speeding along the fast lane he said, still frowning, ‘Do you know I believe I’ve got another of those brown blotches on my face. The wretched things seem to come up overnight.’
I didn’t say they’re called grave-marks. He still values his looks, so I didn’t say anything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. L. (Audrey Lilian) Barker, known to her friends as ‘Pat’, was born in 1918 at St. Paul’s Cray, Kent. She began writing at age nine, and when she was 16 her father sent her to work at a clockmaker’s, as he did not approve of her receiving further education. She later worked for Amalgamated Press, as a publisher’s reader for Cresset Press, and as a subeditor for the BBC. Although she never achieved popular success, her books were well regarded by critics, with her story collection Innocents (1947) winning the inaugural Somerset Maugham Award and her novel John Brown’s Body (1969) shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was married briefly after the Second World War; her only comment on the marriage was: ‘I couldn’t be bothered.’ Barker was known as a private person and for many years shared a house with a childhood friend at Carshalton Beeches, Surrey. She died in 2002.
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A. L. Barker, Element of Doubt
