DEMOLISHING THE PAST

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    The windows showed me his kit was empty, and when I walked back to the front of the cottage and knocked on the door, there ‘as no answer.

    Might he have gone away? It was a time of year when people did go away. But they went to their families, surely, and so Aurelius, having no family, would stay here. Belatedly the reason for Aurelius’s absence occurred to me: He would be out delivering cakes for Christmas parties. Where else would a caterer be, just before Christmas? I would have to e back later. I put the card I had bought through the mail slot a off through the woods toward Angelfield House.

    It was cold; cold enough for snow. Beh my feet the ground was frost-hard and above the sky was dangerously white. I walked briskly. With my scarf ed around my face as high as my nose, I soon warmed up.

    At the clearing, I stopped. In the dista the site, there was unusual activity. I frowned. What was going on? My camera was around neck, beh my coat; the cold crept in as I undid my buttons. Using my long lens, I watched. There olice car on the drive, builders’ vehicles and maery were all stationary, and the builders were standing in a loose cluster. They must have stopped w a little while ago, for they were slapping their hands together and stamping their feet to keep warm. Their hats were on the ground or else slung by the strap from their elbows. One man offered a pack of cigarettes. From time to time one of them addressed a ent to the others, but there was no versation. I tried to make out the expression on their unsmiling faces. Bored? Worried? Curious? They stood turned away from the site, fag the woods and my lens, but from time to time one or another cast a glance over his shoulder to the se behind them.

    Behind the group of men, a white tent had beeed to cover part of the site. The house was gone, but judging from the coach house, the gravel approach, the church, I guessed the tent was where the library had been. Beside it, one of their colleagues and a man I took to be their boss were in versation with another pair of men. These were dressed one in a suit and overcoat, the other in a poliiform. It was the boss who eaking, rapidly and with explanatory nods and shakes of the head, but when the man in the overcoat asked a question, it was the builder he addressed it to, and when he answered, all three men watched him ily.

    He seemed unaware of the cold. He spoke in short sentences; in his long and frequent pauses the others did not speak, but watched him with inteie one point he raised a finger in the dire of the mae and mimed its jaw of jagged teeth biting into the ground. At last he gave a shrug, frowned and drew his hand over his eyes as though to wipe them  of the image he had just jured.

    A flap opened in the side of the white tent. A fifth man stepped out of it and joihe group. There was a brief, unsmiling ferend at the end of it, the boss went over to his group of men and had a few words with them. They nodded, and as though what they had been told was entirely what they were expeg, began to gather together the hats and thermos flasks at their feet and make their way to their cars parked by the lodge gates. The poli in uniform positioned himself at the entrao the tent, back to the flap, and the other ushered the builder and his boss toward the police car.

    I lowered the camera slowly but tio gaze at the white tent. I khe spot. I had been there myself. I remembered the desolation of that desecrated library. The fallen bookshelves, the beams that had e crashing to the floor. My thrill of fear as I had stumbled over burned and broken wood.

    There had been a body in that room. Buried in scorched pages, with a bookcase for a coffin. A grave hidden and protected for decades by the beams that fell.

    I couldn’t help the thought. I had been looking for someone, and now it appeared that someone had been found. The symmetry was irresistible. How not to make the e? Yet Hester had left the year before, hadn’t she? Why would she have e back? And then it struck me, and it was the very simplicity of the idea that made me think it might be true.

    What if Hester had never left at all?

    When I came to the edge of the woods, I saw the two blond children ing dissolately down the drive. They wobbled and stumbled as they walked; beh their feet the ground was scarred with curving black els where the builders’ heavy vehicles had gouged into the earth, and they weren’t looking where they were going. Instead, they looked back over their shoulders in the dire they had e from.

    It was the girl who, losing her footing and almost falling, turned her head and saw me first. She stopped. When her brother saw me he grew self-important with knowledge and spoke.

    ‘You ’t go up there. The poli said. You have to stay away.“

    “I see.”

    ‘They’ve made a tent,“ the girl added shyly.

    ‘I saw it,“ I told her.

    In the arch of the lodge gates, their mother appeared. She was slightly breathless. “Are you two all></a> right? I saolice car ireet.” And then to me, “What’s going on?”

    It was the girl who answered her. “The poli have made a tent. You’re not allowed to go near. They said we have to go home.”

    The blond woman raised her eyes to the site, frowning at the white tent. “Isn’t that what they do when… ?” She didn’t plete her question in front of the children, but I knew what she meant.

    ‘I believe that is what has happened,“ I said. I saw her desire to draw her children close for reassurance, but she merely adjusted the boy’s scarf and brushed her daughter’s hair out of her eyes.

    ‘e on,“ she told the children. ”It’s too cold to be outdoors, anyway. Let’s go home and have cocoa.“

    The children darted through the lodge gates and raced into the Street. An invisible cord held them together, allowed them to swing around each other or dash in any dire, knowing the other would always be there, the length of the cord away.

    I watched them a a horrible absence by my side.

    Their mother lingered o me. “You could do with some cocoa yourself, couldn’t you? You’re as white as a ghost.”

    We fell into step, following the children. “My name’s Margaret,” I told her. “I’m a friend of Aurelius Love.”

    She smiled. “I’m Karen. I look after the deer here.”

    ‘I know. Aurelius told me.“

    Ahead of us, the girl lu her brother; he veered out of reach, running into the road to escape her.

    ‘Thomas Ambrose Proctor!“ my panion shouted out. ”Get ba the pavement!“

    The name sent a jolt through me. “What did you say your son’s name was?”

    The boy’s mother turo me curiously.

    ‘It’s just— There was a man called Proctor who worked here years ago.“

    ‘My father, Ambrose Proctor.“

    I had to stop to think straight. “Ambrose Proctor… the boy who worked with John-the-dig—he was your father?”

    ‘John-the-dig? Do you mean John Digence? Yes. That’s who got my father the job there. It was a long time before I was born, though. My father was in his fifties when I was born.“

    Slowly I began walking again. “I’ll accept that offer of cocoa, if you don’t mind. And I’ve got something to show you.”

    I took my bookmark out of Hester’s diary. Karen smiled the instant she set eyes on the photo. Her son’s serious face, full of pride, beh the rim of the helmet, his shoulders stiff, his back straight. “I remember the day he came home and said he’d put a yellow hat on. He’ll be so leased to have the picture.”

    ‘Your employer, Miss March, has she ever seen Tom?“

    ‘Seen Tom? Of course not! There are two of them, you know, the Miss Marches. One of them was always a bit retarded, I uand, so it’s the other one who runs the estate. Though she is a bit of a recluse. She hasn’t been back to Angelfield sihe fire. Even I’ve never seehe only tact we have is through her solicitors.“

    Karen stood at the stove, waiting for the milk to heat. Behihe view from the small window showed the garden, and beyond it, the woods where Adeline and Emmeline had once dragged Merrily’s pram with the baby still in it. There could be few landscapes that had ged little.

    I o be careful not to say too much. Karen gave no sign of knowing that her Miss March of Angelfield was the same woman as the Miss Winter whose books I had spotted in the bookcase in the hall as I came in.

    ‘It’s just that I work for the Angelfield family,“ I explained. ”I’m writing about their childhood here. And when I was showing your employer some photos of the house I got the impression she reized him.“

    “She ’t have. Unless…”

    She reached for the photograph and looked at it again, then called to her son in the  room. “Tom? Tom, bring that picture from the mantelpiece, will you? The one in the silver frame.”

    Tom came in, carrying a photograph, his sister behind him.

    ‘Look,“ Karen said to him, ”the lady has got a photograph of you.“

    A smile of delighted surprise crept onto his face when he saw himself. “ I keep it?”

    ‘Yes,“ I said.

    ‘Show Margaret the one of yranddad.“

    He came around to my side of the table ahe framed picture out to me, shyly.

    It was an old photograph of a very young man. Barely more than a boy. Eighteen, perhaps, maybe younger. He was standing by a bench with clipped yew trees in the background. I reized the setting instantly: the tarden. The boy had taken off his cap, was holding it in his hand, and in my mind’s eye I saw the movement he had made, sweeping his cap off with one hand, and wiping his forehead against the forearm of the other. He was tilting his head back slightly. Trying not to squint in the sun, and succeeding almost. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbow, and the top button of his shirt en, but the creases in his trousers were ly pressed, and he had ed his heavy garden boots for the photo.

    ‘Was he w there when they had the fire?“

    Karen put the mugs of cocoa oable and the children came and sat to drink it. “I think he might have goo the army by then. He was away from Angelfield for a long time. Nearly fifteen years.”

    I looked closely through the grainy age of the picture to the boy’s face, struck by the similarity with his grandson. He looked nice.

    ‘You know, he never spoke much about his early days. He was a retit man. But there are things I wish I knew. Like why he married so late. He was in his late forties when he married my mother. I ’t help thinking there must have been something in his past—a heartbreak, perhaps? But you don’t think to ask those questions when you’re a child, and by the time I’d grown up…“ She shrugged sadly. ”He was a lovely man to have as a father. Patient. Kind. He’d always help me with anything. A now I’m an adult, I sometimes have the feeling I never really knew him.“

    There was another detail in the photograph that caught my eye.

    ‘What’s this?“ I asked.

    She leao look. “It’s a bag. For carrying game. Pheasants mainly. You  open it flat on the ground to lay them in, and then you fasten it up around them. I don’t know why it’s in the picture. He was never a gamekeeper, I’m sure.”

    ‘He used t the twins a rabbit or a pheasant when they wanted one,“ I said and she looked pleased to have this fragment of her father’s early life restored to her.

    I thought of Aurelius and his iahe bag he’d been carried in was a game bag. Of course there was a feather in it—it was used for carrying pheasants. And I thought of the scrap of paper. “Something like an A at the beginning,” I remembered Aurelius saying as he station, if you like.“

    At that moment the teleph. We exged an anxious look as he picked it up.

    ‘Bones? I see… She is the owner of the property, yes… An elderly person and in poor health… A sister, gravely ill… Some likelihood of an immi bereavement… It might be better… Given the circumstances… I happen to know of someone who is going there in person this very evening… Emily trustworthy… Quite… Indeed… By all means.“

    He made a note on a pad and pushed it across the desk to me. A name and a telephone number.

    ‘He would like you to telephone him when you get there to let him know how things stand with the lady. If she is able to, he will talk to her then; if not, it  wait. The remains, it seems, are not ret. Now, what time is your train? We should be going.“

    Seeing that I was deep in thought, the not-so-very-young Mr. Lomax drove in silenevertheless a quiet excitement seemed to be eating away at him, aually, turning in to the road where the station was, he could tain himself no longer. “The thirteenth tale…” he said. “I don’t suppose… ?”

    ‘I wish I knew,“ I told him. ”I’m sorry.“

    He pulled a disappointed face.

    As the station loomed into sight, I asked a question of my own. “Do you happen to know Aurelius Love?”

    ‘The caterer! Yes, I know him. The man’s a ary genius!“

    ‘How long have you known him?“

    He answered without thinking—“Actually, I was at school with him”—

    and in the middle of the sentence a curious quiver entered his voice, as though he had just realized the implications of my inquiry. My  question did not surprise him.

    ‘When did you learn that Miss March was Miss Winter? Was it when you took over your father’s business?“

    He swallowed. “No.” Blinked. “It was before. I was still at school, he came to the house one day. To see my father. It was more private than the office. They had some busio sort out and, without going into fidential details, it became clear during the course of their versation that Miss Mard Miss Winter were the same person. I was not eavesdropping, you uand. That is to say, not deliberately. I was already uhe dining room table when they came in—there was a tablecloth that draped and made it into a sort of tent, you see—and I didn’t want to embarrass my father by emerging suddenly, so I just stayed quiet.”

    What was it Miss Winter had told me? There  be s in a house where there are children.

    We had e to a stop in front of the station, and the young Mr. Lomax turned his stri eyes toward me. “I told Aurelius. The day he told me he had been found on the night of the fire. I told him that Miss Adeline Angelfield and Miss Vida Winter were one and the same person. I’m sorry.”

    ‘Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I only wondered.“

    ‘Does she know I told Aurelius who she was?“

    I thought about the letter Miss Winter had sent me right at the beginning, and about Aurelius in his brown suit, seeking the story of his ins. “If she guessed, it was decades ago. If she knows, I think you  presume she doesn’t care.”

    The shadow cleared from his brow.

    ‘Thanks for the lift.“

    And I ran for the train.

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