At the Macauley Villa

I have returned to the gatehouse alone; Bill having stayed on in Tuscany with Lady Macauley and Belle for what has every appearance of being an indefinite period. How this came about – and how it came about moreover at Lady Macauley’s own insistence, she having sprung a bombshell upon us in the very first hour in the villa, which led to her protesting that ‘the lovebirds’ should remain in Italy for as long as possible, Italy itself being the only possible place in which to enjoy a prolonged, if somewhat premature honeymoon... how this rather remarkable state of affairs came about, I shall describe in detail later. Just as soon as I have absorbed the fact that in two weeks, everything has changed beyond recognition; and when I have adjusted to life in the gatehouse again, to shrunken rooms and contracted vistas, and the rough feel of carpet beneath my feet, instead of the cool smoothness of marble.

I should have known that, even without Lady Macauley’s bombshell, Italy would have rendered me unfit for ordinary life; that I should pine for sunken gardens and marble balustrades, and be incapable of looking at an ordinary painting again without distaste - or without, at least, recalling the faded frescoes of Giotto in Santa Croce, or the (to me) still more glorious ones of Fra Angelico, in the dim little monks’ cells of the Monastery of San Marco, in Florence.

I have been ruined, I fear, by the experience of spending two weeks in the Macauley villa. Nothing in real life will ever quite be able to measure up to that. The very act of travelling by scheduled flight with Lady Macauley should have alerted me to the fact that, as Scott Fitzgerald so succinctly put it, “the rich are different” – that they have ways and ways of making life as comfortable as possible; and that a very old lady with an imperious manner can always be assured of boarding an aeroplane first, by the simple expedient of calling ahead to order a wheelchair.

We reached Pisa in the heat of the afternoon, and not even Lady Macauley could do much to ease the tiresome wait for baggage to appear. But from the moment we emerged into sunlight again, with baggage intact, our way was eased by the smooth appearance of an air-conditioned limousine, and our journey north-eastwards into the hills above the walled city of Lucca, was serene and cool.

The Villa Madrigali (or the Villa Jack Macauley, as it is apparently known locally now - though Lady Macauley assured us we would hardly recognise the name, they pronounce it so charmingly) - the villa itself stands upon a high plateau and is visible everywhere for several miles as you approach it. Only when you come near to it does it disappear again, shrouded by the trees which cover the hillside from which it rises; so that its sudden re-emergence at the end of a poplar and cypress-lined avenue comes as a kind of shock, and you feel you are in the presence of something very old and quite magnificent. Vast, four-square, in perfect symmetry, it rises above you; its green-shuttered windows conferring an air of mystery, and the faded ochre of its walls bathed dappled gold in the afternoon sunshine.

That life was going to be be easy, tranquil, here, was evident from the first moment. A little army of chattering, welcoming men and women was at hand to take our bags, conducting us up the double flight of steps and through the echoing grand salon, to the cool chambers with the many-shuttered windows beyond, that had the immensity of ballrooms to my eyes, but that were apparently our appointed bedrooms, each with adjoining marble bathroom. I can conjure it still, that state of almost dream-like wonder with which I took the measure of my new abode; parting long white window curtains to open shutters one by one, for the sheer joy of letting in the light, and then of leaning far out, to look upon landscapes that might have been painted by Leonardo, and of hearing the drowsy sound of cicadas and distant dogs barking, which I now recognise as the characteristic, the unmistakeable sound of Tuscany.

This was never meant to be a travelogue though. Tuscany has a quality of enchantment that loosens the tongue and makes one want to rhapsodise - but I have a story to continue after all, and it was in fact scarcely more than half an hour before we were all gathered together again, in the shade of an open loggia of many handsome portals at the rear of the villa; and Lady Macauley was dropping her little bombshell, calling for glasses of chilled champagne before we took our tea, and asking us to drink the health of that new pair of lovers, Bill and Belle.

“Did you really think I hadn’t noticed?” she gaily cried. “Or that, having noticed, I wouldn’t be overjoyed at the development? How could you think me so blind or so foolish as to have been deceived? And how, come to that, could you have supposed that I wouldn’t welcome with open arms the glorious fact that my daughter has found for herself a man who need not be ashamed to tread in the footsteps of her father, and my own beloved Jack? Oh, I daresay Bill was feeling uncomfortable about the money aspect – and I like him all the better for it, I have to admit. But we have money enough heaven knows! And since the only thing we lack is the one that he supplies, which is to say a man who will carry Jack’s banner into the future – well, don’t you see how avidly we will grab him, and how we will refuse ever to let him go?”

She had known from the first moment, she then explained. A mother could guess such things just by looking, and feeling the little changes in the air. She had known, and she had gloried in the knowledge. But it had amused her to keep them in suspense a little longer; and she had wanted to wait, besides, for the perfectly right moment in which to reveal her knowledge. That moment had come, she said; and now that we were all together here, and the beautiful days stretched ahead of us indefinitely, she could see no reason on earth why the whole world should not be brought in to enjoy the secret. She meant to invite all her old Florentine and Lucchese friends over to join the celebrations. She had an elderly count and countess or two (or six) up her sleeve; who, though largely moth-balled now, would doubtless get their family jewels out again for a night, and bestow a certain faded grandeur upon the occasion.

Nor was there any conceivable reason that she could see why Bill and Belle should not live together as man and wife now, in the villa. She had arranged for the larger of the gatehouses to be prepared to just that effect, indeed - they would have to move their joint belongings over there, directly after tea. And in the meantime we should all have the pleasant occupation of plotting and planning together to dream up some kind of perfectly magnificent wedding for them. She only wondered if they’d like to have it here, at the villa - Jack would have loved that of course. Or whether they’d prefer to wait and have something on an altogether grander scale, in London ?

Bill and Belle were overwhelmed of course, by this sudden public acknowledgement of their situation. Bill took it as he takes everything, with a fairly robust enjoyment – it seemed to amuse him no end that Lady Macauley had been watching him ‘hide in cupboards’ all the while. He embraced her warmly for her words of welcome, however; then raised his own glass, asking us to drink the health of a remarkably astute and generous lady. Belle, on the other hand, seemed a little bewildered by it all. It had all happened too quickly for her; she could not adjust on the spot, as Bill had done, and she entreated her mother not to leap too far ahead in making wedding plans. I think she secretly feared that Bill would find all this just a little precipitate; I saw her glance rather anxiously in his direction once or twice.

We dined quietly beneath the stars on the terrace that evening, and retired early to our respective rooms. We were all weary from travelling, Lady Macauley said: the plans for celebration could wait a day or two. And it seemed, over breakfast in the loggia next morning, that one night in what Lady Macauley now smilingly referred to as ‘the married quarters’, had worked its magic in restoring Belle’s faith in herself, and Bill. She emerged looking happier than I had ever seen her, and no longer seemed to feel the least need to conceal the extent to which she liked to keep physically close to Bill. Lady Macauley too, came down to breakfast in buoyant spirits. And indeed the only member of our little party whose joy seemed in any way alloyed that morning, was Rose. Who had had little real part to play in these proceedings; who must have felt herself rather side-lined, and who perhaps saw in Belle’s sudden ascent into radiant happiness, some vague, unaccountable diminution of her own.

To be continued...

A Taste for Marble (Preface)

I have returned in body, but my heart and soul seem to have been left behind in Italy. It happens every year, and memory reassures me that it will be only temporary; so that by tomorrow or the next day, I shall have accustomed myself to looking out upon a London street and not the Tuscan hills, my feet will have become inured to the rough warmth of carpeted floors instead of the cool smoothness of marble - and I shall be in a frame of mind from which to write and post a new instalment of the story.

It was Mutley I think, who doubted that I should be able to write a word when once the charm of Tuscany had taken hold, and I have to admit that he was absolutely right. I did try, but the enchantment was too great – and even had I been able to get an internet connection for more than three minutes at a time, I doubt that I’d have been able to do much more than endlessly (and tediously) rhapsodise.

I have returned to find many kind comments from friends however, and I thank you all most warmly for not forgetting me. Soon, I shall be back among you whole-heartedly again, telling my own story, and doing my best to catch up on all the interesting and exciting things that you must all have been writing and posting in my absence.

Before that can happen though, I have an explanation and an apology to make. I committed a rather serious topographical error when I spoke of the hills above Florence. I had intended to site the Macauley villa there, as it is a place I love well. But our own villa was situated in the Lucchese, not the Florentine hills; and I now feel that for authenticity’s sake I ought to stick with what I know best, and must therefore ask readers who know the areas in question, to be kind enough to make the required locational leap from Florence to Lucca.

A Taste for Marble, the instalment proper, will follow shortly...

After the party

Hortense has gone away again, to loud farewells and in a flutter of drapery. Back to what we are told are the echoing chambers and chilly corridors of her house in Suffolk; having first extracted from us a promise that we would go down and visit her just as soon as we could.

Lady Macauley was not sorry to see her go. “Well thank goodness for that!” was what she in fact said, after the black cab had borne Hortense away. “I can remove my ear-plugs now. My favourite cousin’s child she may be, but she grows more preposterous with every year that passes. I never was able to understand a word she said, not even when she was a child - and nor I think were her unfortunate parents, whom I suspect of believing there must have been some sort of foul play or accident surrounding the circumstances of her birth.”

Several days have passed since Lady Macauley’s birthday party. The sunshine has vanished again, and squally rain returned; it has been the most dismal of summers. And Bill: is Bill in a blissful dreamlike state over his declared and newly consummated love? Well, yes and no, is the only answer I can give. He suffers no afterthoughts or pangs of doubt; he has made a commitment at last, and he says that it feels better, and wiser, than anything he's done in many years. But Bill is not a patient man, nor one who likes to have to try to conceal his intentions. It has taken him precisely three days to grow impatient with what he calls ‘hiding in cupboards to try to dodge the old lady’; he has begun muttering imprecations against her, and threatens to stage a confrontation just as soon as a suitable moment presents.

I have advised him against it. Unless, that is, he should have reached the sort of understanding with Belle that would make it the natural thing to do?

“An understanding to marry her – I suppose that’s what you mean?” He was bellowing at me now, in a way to which I had been accustomed since our early childhood, but which could still make it necessary for me to hold on to something solid within reach, just to stand my ground. Then as now though, the storm was quick to pass; and it wasn’t many minutes before he was quiet again, assuring me that of course he would do nothing violent that would make life difficult for Belle - but that it was a ‘damned awkward’ thing for all that, and a grotesquely invidious position in which to find oneself, when the wealth of the woman one loved was so vastly in excess of one’s own!

I saw his dilemma, and admitted that it was deep. But all the same I said, I had an idea that Belle would give it all up tomorrow, if it meant the difference between being with him, or not.

“She’s not to inherit anyway” I said. “She has told me so herself. The house, and all the companies and business interests will pass to Jack – and after him to his son Will. And there are several sons and grandsons on what Lady Macauley calls ‘the other side’ besides - by which I have always taken her to mean the offspring of Sir Jack’s first marriage - who will stand to inherit before she does.”

Bill conceded that this was so – but that it still left Flory, Lady Macauley’s family home in Suffolk, which he happened to know had been pledged to Belle.

“And you know as well as I do, Bea” he added. “that with dynasties of this sort there are always assets and properties hidden away. There’s a house in Italy for a start - and that's just the one we know about. And then think of all the millions which must have accrued in companies and shares over the years! No, which ever way you look at it, Belle is an exceedingly wealthy woman – so that if anyone is to propose marriage, it’s probably going to have be her!”

He did take my point though – and agreed that to stage a rumpus with the old lady now would be the most invidious thing of all. What would it look like after all – if not the tantrum of a callow youth who was out to grab the goods? Even the wily parson would have found a better way of proceeding than that! At which point he stomped off with Monty to the Common, where I didn’t doubt he would be meeting Belle in some degree of privacy and comfort; and I went in another direction with my own dog Florence, so as to avoid the risk of intruding upon them.

Bill’s resolve was to be put to a stern test later that afternoon however. Lady Macauley had phoned to ask us to come over on a matter of some importance; and no sooner had we arrived, finding her seated in the little panelled parlour with Belle and Rose, than she saw fit to treat us to one of her more provocative remarks.

“Belle is looking peculiarly radiant just at present, don’t you think?” she observed; thereby directing all our eyes toward Belle, who did indeed have a radiance about her, and had exchanged her usual trousers for a pretty dress. “ I have been asking myself about its possible cause. And wonder if she has perhaps taken Mr Porteous for her lover at last?”

Bill uttered an explosive sound, and seemed likely to break out; so that I prepared myself for the confrontation which, despite his best intentions, must surely now follow. But Belle had kept her head, if no-one else had. She was sharply embarrassed, but she cast the kind of imploring look at Bill which stayed his hand; and so the perilous moment passed. It was observed at all in fact only by Rose, who laughed – rather immoderately, I thought – and remarked that if Belle and Mr Porteous were lovers, they had a curious way of showing it, since she happened to know that David had gone off two days ago on a short visit to his old parish.

It was the sort of throwaway reaction that one has come to expect of Rose, and I confess I didn’t like her any the better for it. But it was enough to defuse the situation. The air in the room, which had seemed suspended for a moment, resumed its natural progress; I breathed again, and so did Bill. And Lady Macauley herself had dismissed the whole thing from her mind the next moment, and was telling us what it was that she had really called us over to talk about.

“I have grown weary of all this rain and want some sunshine” she announced, addressing herself to Bill. “So we have decided to go to Italy, Belle and Rose and I; and would very much like it if you and Bea would join us for a week or two. There’s a villa we have in Tuscany, you know. It’s quite a plain affair – no painted ceilings or anything of that sort. But it’s very spacious, and there’s a pool in the garden. It’s up in the hills above Florence, so the air is pleasant and the views are good. We leave tomorrow – but you can take your own time about arriving, if only you’ll agree to come.... “

So there it is. It required just four minutes for treacherous situations to be by-passed; and the moment of possible confrontation has gone away, at least for the moment. And we have already made our flight plans, and are to go up into the hills of Tuscany on Saturday, by way of Gatwick, Pisa and Florence....

Moving Figures in a Garden ( with guest appearance by Cousin Hortense)

That was the way it composed itself for me, yesterday’s unexpected little party in the garden of the Macauley house. The late afternoon sunshine was of that exquisite pale gold sort that comes in early Autumn, and the shadows were long on the smooth lawn. The strolling guests seemed to me like figures in a painting, sometimes still, sometimes moving imperceptibly from their positions in one group to make up different, but equally picturesque formations in another - though from where I sat, with Lady Macauley in a flowered pavilion just below the terrace, the moving figures were blurred by distance, making it hard for me to know precisely who was who, and where in particular at any given moment Bill was, especially in his possible proximity to Belle.

If Bill had come rushing home from Darwin with the idea of wresting Belle from out of the clutches of David Porteous (and it’s my belief he had), he was to find little opportunity for doing so on this occasion. Belle herself had phoned us the evening before, to say that her mother was holding a little impromptu party in the garden to celebrate her birthday ( we were not permitted to inquire which one); and that, having heard Bill had returned, was especially anxious to know that he would be there.

“She has invited everyone we know, and a good many we don’t” Belle explained. “ And she insists that she will need Bill there to see her through. My cousin Hortense is here on a visit you see, and Mummy feels that it will require a large company to dilute her presence, and drown what she calls her extraordinary great owl's-hoot of a voice.”

Hortense’s voice was the first that Bill and I heard indeed, as we passed through the arched gate which separates the kitchen garden from the formal south lawn, and saw the large company assembled there. Hortense had called loudly, before swooping down upon us from a distance like some great bird, with wings out-stretched and colourful plumage flying. I say she called to us, but really her cry was for the company at large: uttered, as Lady Macauley says she utters everything, as if from a great height – from a belfry, say, or a high tower - and for the benefit of a breathless audience probably seated below.

“Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters!” was Hortense's theatrical cry. “Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man!”

Lady Macauley was irritated by this outburst. “What in the world is she talking about?” she grumbled, after we had both leant down to receive her welcoming embrace. “She really is the most absurd creature. She should be in vaudeville - or a circus! But even she ought to know better than to bellow at poor Bill like that, about bridegrooms!”

“Don’t worry Aunt, it’s only a quotation – and probably a poorly rendered one at that!” Hortense had entered the pavilion by now; had enveloped first me, then Bill in extravagant embrace. After which she held Bill off from her a long moment, as if to drink deep of every remembered physical aspect of him with her eyes. “But Bill knows his Sappho and his Song of Songs, I’m sure!" she went on. " Not to mention his Salinger - he knows everything. And understands my ways by now, besides; so that he knows I mean no personal threat to him with my quotations. I am sick with love of him of course – oh but my dear good people, simply prostrate! But I also know that he can never be mine.”

“You’d do very much better then to keep your more bizarre quotations to yourself!” Lady Macauley sharply returned. "Sappho indeed - you torment and embarrass the poor man beyond belief! You torment and embarrass me, if you want to know – which is a quite intolerable thing to have to suffer at one’s own party!” But Hortense had drifted away out of earshot by then; drawing Bill’s arm within her own and taking him off with her across the wide expanse of lawn to join the other guests. So that Lady Macauley’s last words were lost beneath the receding rise and fall of her continuing monologue.

I would have liked to have gone off with them. I had spotted Belle at last, walking slowly along a shaded path with David Porteous; stopping at intervals to admire the flowers, and to turn towards one another to exchange what seemed to be pleasantly comfortable remarks. I was disturbed by the apparent increase of intimacy between them, and anxious to see if Bill would find her. But Bill had gone off in another direction with Hortense; they had passed into a hedged and secluded area at the far end of the garden that was called the Wilderness, and were presently obscured from view.

It was evidently to be my lot to remain closeted with Lady Macauley inside the flowered tent, where she had collected about her the usual little group of carefully selected guests. Rose was there of course, immaculate in cream linen; Imogen Porteous was there, looking prettier and more relaxed than I remembered - and so, surprisingly, were Roland Baines; and Pamela, leaning attentively in her hostess’s direction, benignly smiling beneath a nodding hat.

It must have been three quarters of an hour that passed pleasantly enough in general conversation, with most of the entertainment coming from bright exchanges between Lady Macauley and Imogen Porteous, who seemed to have perfected quite a line in lively banter with the old lady since I’d seen her last. Rose was not altogether pleased with this development; seeing in it perhaps some erosion of her own position as Court Favourite. She looked bored in fact – she yawned openly at one point; and then found opportunity to lean close to my ear and whisper that Pamela was quite ‘the chosen one’ these days. “It’s because of Roland” she added; “Lady M thinks he’s quite the most astonishingly useful little man to have about. It’s like having a trusty calculator always to hand, she says; so that one no longer has to do any of the difficult sums oneself. She doesn’t see how she could ever have managed without him!”

Lady Macauley seemed to have caught the tail end of this whispered aside, but if she were annoyed by it, chose to give no sign. She had been telling Pamela and Roland about the marvels that ‘clever Imogen and her equally clever sister’ were working with the tapestries; but she was suddenly weary of it all; she had remembered that there was to be a little ceremony with candles and champagne at six o’clock, and she was looking about for Bill.

“What can he have been doing down there in the wilderness with Hortense all this time?” she wanted to know. “ It's not as if they can have been making love after all, is it? I don't believe that, with that extraordinary husband of hers now gone, there can be a man left in the world who could possibly achieve the feat of making love to poor Hortense! I do think it’s too bad of her just the same, to have carried him off like that! She knew I particularly wished to have him with me for the cutting of the cake.”

She wanted Belle too. Belle was to have brought the cake and lit the candles; and with six o'clock drawing near, Rose was dispatched to go and find them both, and bring them back. I thought it fortunate that Rose had gone off in quite the wrong direction. Not having been attentive, as I had, to the changing patterns of people on the lawn, she had missed the moment at which Bill had emerged with Hortense from behind the hedges of the wilderness, to join Belle and David Porteous, and a group of others, beside the roses. Nor had Rose caught the moment, as I had, when Bill had drawn Belle aside, then detaching her from the group, moved off with her slowly in the direction of the house. That had happened at least half an hour earlier, and I hadn’t seen them since; so I suggested to Lady Macauley that two seekers would be better than one, and that I would therefore go off in the opposite direction from Rose, and see if I could locate them somewhere else.

I found them coming out of the house together, carrying between them the tall cake, and another tray with glasses, and several bottles of iced champagne. They looked ordinary, unconspiratorial enough; but it was clear to me that something momentous had occurred between them in that short half hour of their absence. They were close, close. Not touching just then, obviously, on account of the trays they carried, yet together in a way which suggested that nothing would ever separate them again. Bill looked – not triumphant exactly, that was not his style; but buoyant somehow, happy and light of heart, in a way which I hadn’t seen him look for years. And Belle was lovely, suddenly. Her eyes and skin were glowing (she has her mother’s eyes – why hadn’t I noticed that before?). She was smiling too, as if she thought she would never be able to stop - so that I wondered how anyone could ever have thought her plain!

They had a plea to make to me, for all that. They could see I had guessed what had passed between them, and they admitted they couldn’t be happier, and knew that I would be happy for them too. But would I please, just for the moment, keep that knowledge to myself? “We’re not sure how Mummy will take it, you see” Belle explained. “ She has been accustomed to think of Bill as her own – it will be hard for her to have to let go. And besides, we want to enjoy it all in private for as long as we possibly can....”

I promised, of course; I had the greatest possible joy in doing so. And the ceremony of cake and candles passed off without sign that anything remarkable had happened. It did seem to me however that Lady Macauley glanced rather sharply once or twice at Belle’s altered countenance. And that David Porteous had guessed, and was gravely discountenanced. And Hortense did take me aside to whisper ( well, hoot sotto voce would be a fairer description), that if she couldn’t have Bill herself, then there wasn’t a woman in the world she’d rather see him with, than her cousin Belle!

Holiday Season

Author's note:

It seems that quite a number of people are being directed to this post by way of the quotation "Raise high the roofbeam Carpenters" - and that having got here, they must be disappointed to find there is no reference to it. Unless that is, they have also gone to the comment section at the end of the post, in which there is a discussion of the quote, and its origins in the poetry of Sappho.

My own 'roofbeam' reference actually came in another instalment of the story - ie in that one entitled "Moving Figures in a Garden", in which I put it in the mouth of the larger-than-life character,"Cousin Hortense"... This instalment was posted on 12/08/07, and anyone interested enough might go to that post by clicking on the link in the List of Posts archive on the opening page...

So many of my blogger friends seem to be away on holiday at present, that I have deferred posting the next instalment of the story for another few days. I have instead posted a piece on my other page, "Just Blogging", which I hope might be of some interest to anyone who is still around.

I shall be going on holiday myself in ten days' time - but I hope to post at least one more instalment before I go.

Bill returns!

I have had a rather strange and unsettling few days of it. In the first place was Rose, who wanted to know how I thought Belle was reacting to David Porteous. “Do you think she has succumbed yet to the Porteous effect?” was the way she put it. “Or is she perhaps waiting for the go-ahead from Mummy?”

We were sitting in her kitchen at the time: a rare enough event in itself, as Rose is not especially fond of her own house, which she feels lets her down rather badly in terms of peeling paint and out-dated kitchen units. Rose’s house ought in the nature of things to be more like Rose herself – which is to say well appointed, and beautifully manicured and maintained. But alas, dear Curtis left her with just enough to live by: for luxuries she must look elsewhere, as she’s very fond of pointing out. I thought her question rather spitefully phrased, and must have looked at her rather hard; for she had corrected herself the next moment, explaining that of course she had known the Macauleys ‘forever’, and that I musn’t mind if she seemed to disparage the old lady now and then.

“Lady Macauley herself expects no less of me” she said. “She finds it entertaining - and of course gives as good as she gets, as you know. But even allowing for all that, you have to admit that she has been monopolising David – so that one wonders if she means to keep him for herself? I’ve seen her do that before too – you can’t think of all the hopelessly smitten young men she liked to keep dangling about her in the old days. ‘The Freddies’, she used to call them. After a certain Lord Freddie Livesey, an extravagant youth who languished for love of her for several years. Sir Jack turned a blind eye to it all of course – he knew where her heart lay, and I think it rather amused him to see the young men falling about at her feet. But I never saw her set herself up in opposition to Belle before. The lines in the sand were always very clearly drawn. Which makes me ask myself if we’re going to be treated for once to the spectacle of a contest between mother and daughter for the same man? I mean, you must have seen for yourself how Belle looks at him, and how anxious she is to seem sensible in conversation ...? I tell you, this is a situation quite unprecedented, and I for one can’t even begin to fathom how it’s likely to turn out.”

I replied that if she couldn’t foresee an outcome, it was unlikely that I, as a relative outsider, would be able to do so. But she had alarmed me somewhat, I confess; and I left her, half an hour later, wondering if after all I had misread the situation, and Belle were indeed listening to David Porteous when he leaned towards her in that quietly respectful way he has - and listening, at that, rather more closely than I had thought. Bill asked much the same thing of me, when he phoned later that evening.

“You tell me he’s talking to her – but is she listening?” he wanted to know. To which I replied that I couldn’t possibly say; though it did seem to me that Belle was not exactly turning her head the other way when David Porteous leaned in her direction. Bill greeted this remark with a rather long silence, before moving on to talk of other things. He is in Darwin now. For what particular purpose I haven’t yet been able to discern – though he tells me that he wanted to see for himself if reports he’d heard were true, that it’s possible in certain conditions to see crocodiles swimming along High Street, Darwin. I told him I thought the crocodile story just sufficiently fantastic to be true. But not quite fantastic enough, for all that, to keep him dawdling there indefinitely; and that if he wanted to know if Belle were listening to David Porteous, then he really ought to jump on a plane and come home to find out for himself.

I had further reason for disquiet the next day, when I went to the manor house to call on Frances. I hadn’t seen her for some time, and had wondered if she thought I was neglecting her; but was pleased to find her apparently very happily absorbed with her team of Polish builders, and all the marvels they are accomplishing in the house. “See how many bathrooms I’m to have!” she gaily cried, shortly after greeting me. “Tomek tells me that once you have the pipe-work in for one, you might just as well have half a dozen – so I’m having four upstairs; and another nice little cloakroom off the hall.” She gave me a conducted tour of the bathrooms, during the course of which she introduced me to Tomas (‘Tomek’ is the Polish diminutive form, she tells me), who is a large, grave, intensely blue-eyed, late-middle-aged Pole, and apparently the overseer of the team.

“Tomek is a surprisingly talented artist” Frances confided, after he had bowed over my hand and gone away. “I discovered that quite by chance, when he left a little drawing of his lying about among the building requisitions. He had sketched the cedar in the yard – such a noble old tree, he said. I thought that so very sensitive of him...”

She had forgotten Tomek however, by the time we sat down over coffee in the conservatory – brought to us by Mrs Meade, who still seems to regard me with suspicion, and just a hint of frostiness. “I hear that David has been taken up by Lady Macauley now” Frances said then; she seemed to be measuring her words with intense care. “I’m very glad for him of course – though I do think he ought to be accepting payment for his work in the library. He has very little to live by you know – he really can't afford to give up too much of his time unpaid.”

But she too wanted to know if I thought he was ‘making up to Belle’? She said it with some embarrassment, colouring deeply; but seemed resolved to go on nonetheless, so that before I knew it, she had begun to confide to me all the reasons why, if David were making up to Belle, she thought it would be very much better for Belle herself if he were not! I was very much taken aback, both by her confidences, and the unaccustomed vehemence with which she expressed them.

“He will start very quietly with her, just as he did with me.” she went on. “He will be courtesy and respect themselves; and only when he thinks he has gained her trust – or call it her adoration if you will! – only then will he begin to let her see what it is he really expects of her! “

This seemed to me such potentially explosive material that I was loath to stop her; and let her go on to tell me how it was that life with Mr Porteous had gradually enclosed, and finally imprisoned her – so that the day had come when, for what she called 'sheer panic, and shortness of breath', she had felt impelled to summon every drop of her courage, and break free. “It got in the end so that I could only breath freely when he was absent” she said. “When you feel like that in your own house; and when you know in addition that nothing you ever say or do - not even the clothes you wear, or the way you arrange your hair - will ever quite satisfy him .... Why, then, you know that you must flee for your life, or remain subject forever!”

I knew it couldn’t have come easily to Frances to admit such things to me. And I understood, without her having to tell me, that she was admitting them for the very good reason that in doing so she might spare Belle from possibly making the same mistake. In another woman – in one like Rose Mountjoy, say – one might have suspected envy and ulterior motive here; but not in Frances. Frances had loved in good faith and been horribly disillusioned. She had been deeply hurt, and now she wanted me to warn Belle off - though she couldn’t of course come right out and say it in so many words.

This was the message I took away from her, at any rate. I felt profoundly disturbed by it, and uncertain as to what action I should take in response. In the end I could see nothing better to do with it than pass it on to Bill. It would be an ungodly hour in Darwin, but still I made the call - and Bill’s long silence on receiving the intelligence seemed to vindicate my decision. He said little to me at the time; he only muttered something to the effect that he thought ‘that chap’ (it required several expletives to convey the depth of his sentiment here) - 'that chap had taken too much upon himself this time, by God!'

But he had evidently taken the message very much to heart. Since it was scarcely more than twenty four hours later that I heard the rattle of his old car in the yard; and there, all bleached and sun-tanned and visibly jet-lagged, with his worldly goods stuffed into the ancient hold-all he carries everywhere he goes - there he was!

It’s foolish of me perhaps, but I do feel unaccountably easier about everything now that Bill is home. I haven’t the least idea of what it is he means to do – but it seems likely we shall all be the happier and the better for it, whatever it is.

Sweet Thames, run softly

The complete line from Edmund Spenser, is of course Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. But since I am not yet quite in a position to talk of ending my song (though I do have an ending firmly in sight, that much I promise!), I have borrowed the first part only, to reflect the mood of unease and melancholy with which this most brutal of summers seems to have afflicted us all at present.

For many, the floods are already a reality, and the daily routine has become a question simply of retrieving what they can of the ordinary little props of life. Things like chairs, and tables, and sofas; and having enough water to drink – the idea of water to bathe, or shower with, having become for the moment but a cherished memory. For those beside the Severn, ordinary life has more or less been washed away with the rising water; and the promises of politicians, who come to stand knee-deep in flood water to talk bravely about ‘what lessons can be learned from all this’, and ‘what can be done’ ( by the year 2010, say!) to ‘prevent such calamities from occurring in the future’.... the promises of politicians, and newsmen, and Weather and Water Board officials, must ring hollow indeed.

For those of us down here beside the lower reaches of the Thames, the expected surge of water has not yet arrived. Though it has reached Oxford already, and we scan our own part of the river daily, making our little contingency plans for moving what we can of our lives to safety if the surge should come. Lady Macauley wishes Bill were here to advise her. Bill would know what to do, she says. Bill would tell her if she should move pictures, and tapestries, and ancient bedsteads, from basements to the upper floors – or if she should concentrate instead simply on staying alive, and dry herself. Leaving the fate of ancient artefacts in the hands of the old River God, whose ivy-wreathed statue lies mercifully land-locked still in the front forecourt.

In Bill’s absence, she has found David Porteous and his daughters a considerable resource however. And for this she acknowledges the debt she owes to that ‘rather odd little person’, Miss Frances Fanshawe, who had the good sense to release him from an ill-advised engagement before real harm was done. She thinks he is bearing up quite nobly in presence of what must have been, for him, a considerable loss of dignity and face - never mind about all the splendid material comforts he has glimpsed, and been obliged to relinquish. “Only think what it must be for him to have had to give up the luxury of her father’s library, for a start!” she observed to Belle and Rose and me yesterday. “One might have expected that for that reason alone, he’d have clung fast to his engagement in the face of no matter what little local difficulty.”

I was glad that Lady Macauley was the one to put into words what I at least had more or less been thinking. It had occurred to me too, that the loss of the library for working in must have brought home to David Porteous, as nothing else could quite have done, all that he had given up when he allowed Frances to terminate their engagement. I have had opportunity to study him quite closely in the past few days, he and I having both been Lady Macauley’s guests at this and that little impromptu gathering at the old house. And though I persist in my theory that he is the most studied of men, and that nothing he says or does is ever to be taken quite at its surface value – by which I mean that his effects are always carefully calculated so as to show him in the most advantageous possible light; yet I have had to accept that the public face he shows at present is impeccable; and that no-one, simply looking at or listening to him, could possibly say that here was a man who had recently had the unhappiness of seeing his best possible opportunity for social advancement abruptly snatched away.

Bill has continued to find much to amuse him in my little nightly telephone bulletins about the situation here. Bill is presently in Adelaide, enjoying the hospitality of some woman whose husband seems to hold no grudge against him for amorous past associations with his wife. He tells me he is enjoying himself hugely - but he keeps up an interest in the conduct of David Porteous just the same; and wants to know, in particular, if he has yet been successful in ‘laying the ghost of the old monk in the Macauley chapel’?

The old monk had become a familiar presence to Bill and me. Well, presence is hardly the word to use, since neither of us has actually seen him – and nor, we believe, has Lady Macauley herself, or Belle. Others claim regularly to have done so however. Which has prompted in Lady Macauley an anxious pre-occupation with the idea that the brown-robed figure does still on occasion return to haunt that part of the ground floor which had once been consecrated as a chapel. Bill and I had felt uncomfortable about that part of the hall ourselves, as a matter of fact; and had quite seen how easily spectral images might have been conjured there. For it remains windowless, and dark - and unaccountably cold – in spite of all the efforts that have been made to incorporate it into the body of the hall.

Bill has been very taken with the idea that David Porteous might have been brought in as exorcist. Never can such opportunity have been brought by God or Man, he says – or by their opponent in the other place – for unexpected personal advancement on the part of Mr David Porteous! But on this front I have had to disappoint him; since although Mr Porteous has indeed stood gravely with Lady Macauley in that dark and gloomy part of the hall on several occasions, no ghostly presence has yet manifested itself to him. And he has explained that though the Church of England does still embrace certain ancient rituals for the banishment of evil spirits, he is not versed in them himself; so that his advice to Lady Macauley has thus far been no more occult than that the introduction of a window into the space might help. Or failing that - given the restrictions imposed by English Heritage or other ruling bodies - the simple expedient of covering every surface with fresh white paint, and of putting something cheerful in there, like the pretty piano from the morning room, or a painted pillar with fresh garden flowers atop ..... would probably have the effect of neutralising past associations, no matter how malevolent, or deep-rooted.

Lady Macauley thinks this excellent advice, and has called in a man to paint the walls in gentle shades of pale blue and ivory. And has meanwhile drafted David Porteous in to assist her on another front. He is to sift through all the books in her own scattered library, with a view to collecting them together in one carefully selected and vastly superior place that she will be able to call a library. She thinks this will to some extent compensate him for the loss of Miss Fanshawe’s father’s library – “He will be able to come and work there himself, when it’s done” she said. “Quite apart of course, from all the advantages the possession of a proper library will have for us.” It was her idea that he should be paid in cash or kind for his trouble, but he has waved this aside, protesting that the pleasure of the occupation will be compensation more than enough.

His daughters Imogen and Amy are to be properly remunerated however, for their advice and practical assistance in the matter of fraying tapestries and abandoned pictures. A workroom has been set up for them in the old Orangery, and they go there daily to stitch, and stretch, and do their best to clean some of the worst affected tapestries and paintings. Lady Macauley has taken a great liking to both the girls – especially to pretty Amy, whom she thinks likely to take the eye of her grandson Will, when he comes to stay with her next month. Will has apparently attached himself to some impossible girl – Alice, his mother, is aghast at the association. And though Lady Macauley has never had the smallest interest in trying to gratify her chilly daughter-in-law, she does think that in this instance a concerted family effort is called for; and that if anyone can divert Will from the impossible girl, it will probably be pretty Amy Porteous. Of Amy’s sister Imogen she is less certain – though she believes the girl has spirit, and a latent gaiety; and it amuses her at present to try to ‘bring them out’.

“Mummy is very happily involved with all her Porteouses” Belle told me yesterday, when we returned as usual with the dogs. “She thinks Mr Porteous is rather erudite – he mentioned God, and Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More all in the space of one paragraph; which in her book is a sure sign of erudition. She likes erudition in a man - provided it isn’t all he’s got. She thinks erudition on its own would be very tiresome. But Mr Porteous has a breadth of shoulder which suggests what she calls a just sufficient muscularity as well.... She has taken it into her head lately, besides, that the house will probably have to pass to the National Trust when she has gone; since neither Jack nor Will shows the least interest in it, and it certainly can’t be allowed to pass to me! She thanks heaven therefore, for the advent of such a group of highly personable, useful people to help her get the process underway.”

How Belle herself views the association has not yet become clear. Though I have observed that she is always very quiet in David Porteous’s presence; as if she were perhaps afraid of putting a foot wrong in some particularly glaring way. I know how she feels of course – he has the same effect on us all, do what we will to try to withstand it! I have observed too that his own conduct towards Belle is exemplary. He treats her in much the same way as he treats her mother; which is to say with perfect courtesy, and the least perceptible little distance, denoting deep respect. So that if Bill had been hoping to hear he had been caught out in something flagrant or unguarded - or better still, thoroughly ignoble! - then I’m afraid he is to be disappointed on both counts; at least for the present.

The Thames meanwhile continues to flow sweetly enough along these stretches. And although the local water meadows are flooded, bringing the river to within fifty yards of the Macauley gates, the old River God perches safely high and dry still. And I have been obliged to report to Bill that everything goes along here quite satisfactorily, despite his unnecessarily prolonged, and possibly pre-meditated absence.