‘I did indeed! Went grey overnight when I learnt I’d inherited this place from my brother. Actually, rather when I heard he’d shot himself in the barns the other side of the lane.’
Now Chloë folded her arms too and then stood stock-still awhile, rapidly playing a cine-film of her youth on the wall of her mind’s eye.
‘I do remember you, Gin!’ she said eventually, uncrossing her arms and clambering aboard Gin’s bed. ‘Jocelyn brought you along and we all had whisky in the horsebox!’
‘Including Oscar!’
‘Including Oscar.’
It seemed that the upstairs was exclusively Gin’s and the downstairs exclusively the animals’. It was therefore some surprise to Chloë that none of the extravagantly furnished rooms upstairs at the farmhouse appeared to be allocated to her. Before, that was, Chloë learnt of The Rafters.
‘I’ve put you in The Rafters!’ boomed Gin as she slung down the ruffle blinds in her bedroom.
‘I thought you’d like it up there,’ she continued, pushing Chloë back along the corridor towards the bathroom. ‘You could have the spare room next to mine but as I ronfle comme un cochon, I thought you’d be safer and sounder in The Rafters.’
‘As you what?’ asked Chloë as politely as possible, thinking that it must be French but not as she knew it.
‘I snore like a pig!’ explained Gin quite soberly. ‘Comme un cochon,’ she stressed as she introduced Chloë to a steep staircase hidden by what she had previously presumed to be the airing cupboard door at the back of the bathroom.
‘Just remember,’ said Gin, with a sparkle in her eye, ‘to give a hearty three knocks when you’re coming down – I’m not a pretty sight in the bath, and even less so on the loo!’
Left by herself at last, Chloë contemplated a bottle of mane-and-tail conditioner by the bath before opening the door to The Rafters. The stairs leading there were not carpeted and she trod the boards forever upwards in a symphony of creaks and groans.
The Rafters were vast, half the house at least though the furniture had been arranged to subdivide the space further and create some vestige of cosiness. Thus, in the furnished half of the area, the beams had been painted dark green, the panels in between pale primrose. There was a skylight and a dormer window with small fussy curtains of pastel floral persuasion. They rose and fell conversationally with the breeze. (In March, she would learn they rarely touched the sill, the gales causing them to hover constantly at a ninety-degree angle to the window-pane.)
She looked over to an old iron bed in the corner with a faded kilim at the foot. Next to it was a Regency dressing-table and a stool covered and further filled in the curtain fabric. In the centre of the floor space, a sheep fleece lay like a martyr. A grand old cupboard of the C. S. Lewis type stood sagely in the middle of the room and in line with the first painted beam. Chloë opened it and stepped inside, clacketing the wooden hangers and smelling mothballs. Between the wardrobe and the stairwell was an old, battered armchair over which a tartan travel blanket was slung. It looked conspiring and inviting and was immensely comfortable when she sat deep into it to peruse her lair.
That night, Chloë excused herself after supper and washing-up duty, and before a session of Monopoly was to start. She had caught Carl’s eye many times over the meal and because her stomach leapt into her mouth each time, she found she could eat very little. He had dried while she had washed and though he chattered away most amiably, to her horror one-word answers were all that she could contribute. Each time she felt a longer sentence brewing she would catch sight of his lovely wrists, or his chiselled jaw smattered with fair bristles, and find herself confined to ‘Really?’ or ‘Oh?’ or, worse, a chirrup of a giggle. So she used the excuse of the long rides by train and horse, and the excitement of it all, to gain an early night, and hiked up to The Rafters and into bed with her writing pad instead.
Halfway through a letter to Peregrine and Jasper (in which she mentioned Carl more than once or twice in passing) she felt a certain itchiness which could not be attributed to the fine cotton sheets nor the antique patchwork eiderdown on top. There was something in between. Something heavy and coarse. She rolled back the eiderdown. Of course. There, staring Chloë uncompromisingly in the face, an old New Zealand rug lay spread-eagled. Built for the coldest, wettest weather. Designed for horses living out in the fields in winter. Its green canvas waterproof shell was uppermost leaving the woollen lining to prickle its way through the cotton sheets. For a while, Chloë stood quite still, wearing her now perfected Skirrid End Jaw Drop. Slowly, a smile spread over her face. She sniffed at the rug and found it to be quite clean, the faintest smell of its long-gone wearer pleasant in the distance. She heaved it over so the woollen side was uppermost, rolled the eiderdown back and slipped deep down into the warmth.
‘Really rather sensible,’ she reasoned to The Rafters, ‘so warm and snug. As a bug in a New Zealand rug!’
She would finish the letter tomorrow. She was feeling pleasantly tired and pondered on a wistful innuendo about something from New Zealand keeping her warm at night, until slumber led her away and she slept, deep, dreamless and warm until dawn poured through the skylight the next day.
Mr and Mrs Andrews watched over her, this time in the form of a postcard reproduction from the National Gallery. It was them but they were very little and the closer Chloë looked at them, the more they disintegrated into dots which she found a little alarming. She had slipped the card into the corner of the mirror frame on the dressing-table, just so they could keep her in check first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Just so they were there.
NINE
Barbara stamped her hind hoof and positioned her forelegs squarely. She blew through her nostrils and curled her lips ever so slightly so that a noise midway between bellow and screech could hit Morwenna as soon as she shut the car door. When it reached her ears, a feeling of sinking dread coursed through and settled in the pit of her stomach. She looked over at Barbara who stared back icily with a glint most evil to her eyes. Though she opened the boot to double-check, she knew that her car was regrettably biscuit- and vegetable-free. Not a crumb. Not a shred. Not a bean.
Morwenna decided on polite conversation but it merely served to irritate the goat further. Flattery was the only option left.
‘Ho! Barbara! There’s a good little goaty. My, you’re looking pretty, aren’t you?’
Barbara stamped.
‘Listen, I don’t have a thing in these pockets. Very remiss of me. How about I make it up to you? Next time.’
Barbara intended to ensure that there would not be a next time.
As Morwenna approached, slightly stooped and with her right hand outstretched making strange tickling movements with her fingers, Barbara began to bob and weave like a boxer at the ringside. With just a few yards between them, Morwenna straightened up and put her hands on her hips.
‘You,’ she said, striding assertively towards Barbara, ‘are only a goat.’
However, she had not reckoned on a goat with a grudge and, when it came to the simultaneous butt–bite–kick, Morwenna was viciously winded. Searching desperately for breath, she sat down with a thump on the damp ground, the meagre winter grass providing little cushioning. Barbara, who had turned her back on her and was defecating triumphantly, bleated with pride. Morwenna pressed her hand lightly to her thigh and winced. Once her breathing had calmed, she picked herself up with care and caution and walked to the car slowly. With as much dignity as she could muster, without looking back.
‘It was a goat,’ she mumbled into the neck of her thick jumper. She had rolled down her tights and hitched up her skirt to reveal a whorl of dark crimson and French navy. A splice of dry blood. Her leg trembled slightly but she told herself that this was due to her aversion to disinfectant, to infection, to Trust-me-I’m-a-doctor. It was, in part, also