The Judgement of Strangers. Andrew Taylor
his own age. And our doctor has a boy of eleven.’
‘It still seems too much to ask.’
‘Why don’t I have a word with Vanessa and phone you back?’
Henry agreed. I put down the phone and went into the kitchen to talk to Vanessa. She listened in silence, but when I had finished she smiled.
‘That’s a wonderful idea.’
‘I’m glad you like it. But why the enthusiasm?’
‘It’ll make it easier when Rosemary comes home. For her as well as me.’ She touched my arm, and I knew our squabble was over. ‘Besides, you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’
Two days later the Appleyards arrived for lunch.
‘I’m sorry this is such short notice,’ Henry said as we were smoking a cigarette in the drive.
‘It doesn’t matter. Michael’s welcome. I’m glad Vanessa’s here. For his sake, I mean.’
Henry started to say something but stopped, because the front door opened and Michael himself came out to join us. The boy was now eleven years old, fair-haired and slim. He stood close to Henry. They didn’t know what to say to each other.
At that moment a dark-blue car drove slowly down the main road towards the bridge over the Rowan. It had a long bonnet and a small cockpit. It looked more like a spacecraft than a car. The windows were of tinted glass and I could make out only the vague shape of two people inside. It slowed, signalled right and turned into the drive of Roth Park.
‘Cor,’ said Michael, his face showing animation for the first time since he had arrived. ‘An E-type Jaguar.’
Another piece of the jigsaw had arrived.
That evening I telephoned Audrey to see if she was all right. I had not seen her since her outburst in the library. When she answered the phone, her voice sounded weak.
‘Just a headache,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine in a day or two. Rest is the best medicine. That’s what Dr Vintner said.’
‘You’ve been to see him?’
‘He came to me, actually. I wasn’t up to going out.’
I felt guilty, as perhaps she had intended me to feel. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘No. I’ll be fine. Well, actually there is one thing. Apparently the new people have moved into Roth Park. You could go and ask them about the paddock. I’d feel so much happier if that were settled. It’d be a weight off my mind.’
I remembered the Jaguar. ‘When did they move in?’
‘Today at some point. Mr Malik told Charlene when he brought the groceries round this afternoon. They’ve opened an account with him. Their name is Clifford.’
‘Are they a family?’
‘Mr Malik’s only met a young man so far. Perhaps he’s the son.’
I promised I would go to see them in the morning. A moment later, I rang off and went to join the others in the sitting room. Michael had lost that frozen look his face had worn since his parents left. He was talking to Vanessa about his school. They both looked up as I came in. I allowed myself to be drawn into a game of Hearts with them. I hadn’t played cards for years. To my surprise I enjoyed it.
The next morning I walked up to Roth Park. Vanessa was at work, and we had arranged for Michael to spend the day with the doctor’s son, Brian. I had not been to Roth Park since May, when the last of the Bramleys’ patients had moved to another nursing home. Privately I had never had much time for Mr and Mrs Bramley, a red-faced and loud-voiced couple who, I suspected, bullied their patients.
It was another fine day. With a copy of the parish magazine under my arm, I strolled down the road, past the church. The traffic was still heavy. In the last thirty or forty years, houses had mushroomed like a fungus along the highways and byways of Roth. The fungus had spread away from the highways and byways and devoured the fields between them. All the occupants of these new houses appeared to own at least one car.
I turned into the drive. On the right was the south wall of the churchyard. To the left, the turbid waters of the Rowan were visible through a screen of branches, nettles and leaves. It was mid-morning and already very warm. It was too hot to hurry.
I was not in the best of moods. I had wanted to make love the previous evening, but when I came to bed Vanessa was asleep. Or rather – I uncharitably wondered – she was pretending to be asleep.
After about sixty yards, the drive dived into a belt of oak trees. It was cooler here, and I lingered. At the time this felt an indulgence. Now, when I look back, it seems as though I were clinging to my state of innocence. A track went off to the right, following the west side of the churchyard; it passed through the paddock behind the Vicarage garden, which we hoped to use as our fete car park, and ran north-west towards the drowned farmlands beneath the Jubilee Reservoir.
I walked on. Once past the oaks, the park opened out. To the south was the Rowan, now a silver streak, lent enchantment by distance. Beyond it, housing estates covered what had once been pastureland south of the river. On the right were the roofs of another housing estate south of the reservoir, encroaching on the grounds from the north.
The drive, which had been moving away from the river, changed direction and swung towards it in a long, leisurely leftward loop around the base of a small hill. There, sheltered by the hill and facing south, was Roth Park itself.
Looked at with an unbiased eye, the house was not a pretty sight. Thanks to Audrey’s book, I now knew that the great fire of 1874 had destroyed most of a late-seventeenth-century mansion. The owner of the estate, Alfred Youlgreave, had built a plain, ugly, redbrick box on the same site with an incongruous Italianate tower attached to the west end.
As the house came into view, two things happened. First, I had the sensation, rightly or wrongly, that I was being watched, that behind one of the many blank windows was a face. I had an impression of stealth, even malice. I knew, of course, that it was more than possible that I was entirely mistaken about this – that the sensation had no external correlation whatsoever; that I was merely projecting my inner difficulties on to the outside world. That did not make the experience less unpleasant.
The other feeling was, if anything, even more powerful. I wanted to run away. I wanted to turn and scurry down the drive as fast as I could. It was not, strictly speaking, a premonition. It was in no sense a warning. I was simply scared. I did not know why. All I knew was that I wanted to run away.
But I did not. I had spent most of my life learning how to restrain my feelings. Besides, I remember thinking, think how odd it would look if there were a watcher: if he or she saw a middle-aged clergyman in a linen jacket hesitating in front of the house and then leaving at a gallop. Our dignity is very precious to almost all of us; and fear of losing face is a more powerful source of motivation than many people imagine.
I walked towards the house. There was an overgrown shrubbery on the right. Outside the house, marooned in a sea of weed-strewn gravel, was a large stone urn stained with yellow lichen. On the plinth – again, according to Audrey – was a plaque commemorating a visit that Queen Adelaide had paid to the Youlgreaves’ predecessors in 1839. I paused by the urn, pretending to examine the worn lettering. I really wanted a chance to look more closely at the house.
I could see no one at any of the windows, but that proved nothing. The building was not as imposing as it looked from a distance. Several slates were missing from the roof at the eastern end. A length of guttering had detached itself and was hanging at an angle. There was a large canopy sheltering the front door, a wrought-iron porte-cochère supported by rusting cast-iron pillars, which gave the house the appearance of a provincial railway station.
Parked beneath the canopy was the Cliffords’ E-type Jaguar, the car which had aroused Michael’s admiration. I marched up the shallow steps to the front door and tugged the bell pull. It was impossible to tell what effect, if any,