Grave Goods (Tamara Hoyland Book 3) Page 14

  Miss Christie cleared the table of silk and laid it with tea and scones. Tamara sustained a conversation about her own education, career and background. She said:

  ‘We used to play your school at games.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were one of the Devon Hoylands,’ Miss Christie said. ‘I remember your grandfather when he was the Chairman of the Education Committee.’

  Tamara suddenly remembered Miss Christie too. ‘You were the judge in the Drama Competition! You told me I’d mangled the metre in To be or not to be.’

  ‘Were you Hamlet?’ Jeremy Ellice exclaimed.

  Miss Christie nodded briskly. ‘One of the benefits of single sex education.’

  ‘It certainly meant I got some decent parts,’ Tamara said. ‘Otherwise I’d have been made to play the ingénue every time.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I told them when those competitions began.’ Miss Christie pushed back her chair, taking her weight on her wrists to rise. ‘I still have the programmes somewhere. You would have disapproved, Mr Ellice. Girls fighting, fencing, and swaggering around in black tights and sword belts.’ Ignoring his disclaimer, she brought a box file over to the table. Tamara joined her in leafing through a stack of fading sheets of duplicator paper, arranged in chronological order, and going back over many years. Almost at once, Tamara found the play bills showing her own name, and felt a curious nostalgia for days that she would hate to re-live. She showed them to Jeremy: Tamara Hoyland as Hamlet, as Macbeth, as Portia and Rosalind. On another page, where Alexandra’s name was shown as the ‘First Messenger’, Titania was played by Artemis Leslie.

  ‘I remember it!’ Tamara said. ‘I had been taken to see my sister, I can’t have been more than five or six, but I can still remember the Queen kissing the donkey. She had the most beautiful hair, apricot coloured.’

  ‘All my girls played some part. I thought being on the stage so good for them, it gives confidence, and they learnt to speak up and stand up. We had big performances every term. One of the parents built a proper stage for the assembly hall, and after a few years we had gathered as good a wardrobe as most small theatres can supply. The girls used to bring things from their homes, and sometimes we would get donations from shops. One girl brought in her grandfather’s uniform, he’d been in the Brigade of Guards, and another found a cupboard full of eighteenth-century dresses. Nobody would pay money for second-hand clothes in those days, though now some of them would be regarded as museum pieces I expect.’

  ‘Did Mrs Leslie provide things? There must have been quite a lot in the Folly.’

  ‘Yes, we had a whole trunkful from Clem. It had belonged to her great grandmother, the one she named Artemis after. It had never been opened, just stored away by Lady Clementine somewhere, until it came down here along with the other things that were inherited from her. That was after the Lamberts’ house in London was sold, and Clem and Will Leslie decided to convert the Folly. We believed in The Countryside in those days, it was the fashion – back to the soil, and the dignity of physical labour, and the degradation of towns. But of course Will was seldom here to till the soil, he was away in the navy, which is one of the reasons Clem was glad to have me nearby.’

  ‘So you acquired a lot of the Victorian things that had belonged to Lady Artemis Bessemer?’

  Miss Christie looked surprised at being dragged back to that subject, but answered readily enough. ‘It was the sort of collection nobody can face sorting out. Old clothes, and brushes with hairs straggling through the bristles, and a good deal of that heavy Victorian jewellery our Victorian ancestors liked, glass, and beads, nothing valuable and all perfectly hideous. It was just the wrong time to have unpacked that trunk; if we had left it longer the clothes would have seemed charming, but to us they were disgustingly dowdy. Clem insisted that I should choose something to keep so I took a ridiculously ornate vase. Terribly tasteless and Victorian, pinchbeck, with ugly purple and green glass ornaments on it. I used to use it for hyacinths. Of course, the Victorians liked loud colours. I remember my own mother in magenta and maroon and yellow ochre.’

  ‘I should love to see it,’ Tamara said.

  Miss Christie looked surprised. ‘Really? I am afraid I haven’t got it any more. I gave it to Mrs Patel for the Peace Movement’s stall. A real white elephant, I’m afraid. I told her she wouldn’t get much for it, but she seemed quite pleased, nice woman that she is.’

  There were deep blue hyacinths on the window ledges, planted in plastic pots of Wedgwood design, and a china basin with blue roses on it.

  ‘Look,’ Miss Christie pointed to the basin. ‘That was Artemis’s too, but that’s charming, I would hate to lose that. Copeland, I believe.’

  The heavy scent made Tamara’s head swim.

  Jeremy said, ‘I don’t suppose that a flower pot would have been much use to your drama wardrobe.’

  ‘No, that’s why I chose it, there were other more attractive things; I should have liked a crucifix, for instance, just glass, nothing valuable, but rather handsome I thought. But that was the year we were doing Henry the Eighth; it was just right for Cardinal Wolsey. And of course the whole trunk was full of useful things. Some of them most unexpected, I must say, and we found some very useful props – a sword, for instance. Nigel insisted on keeping that of course, but we got it when he was grown too old for dressing up. Yes, we were extremely well provided, in that department.’

  The regalia of Charles the Great used to adorn amateur dramatics; Tamara wondered whether it was tragic or laughable.

  ‘Miss Christie, what happened to everything in your school, after it closed down?’

  ‘We sold the buildings, of course. I say we, I mean the trustees. It was bought by the West Devon Health Authority to be a geriatric hospital, so I may yet end my days under the same roof.’

  ‘And the equipment?’

  ‘Why do you ask? No – don’t tell me, I am sure you have your reasons. It’s been my lifelong principle to answer reasonable questions from the young. Always remember when you are dealing with children how important it is not to stunt their natural curiosity. The mind must be allowed freedom to expand and grow.’

  ‘The equipment . . .?’

  ‘Let me see. We sold some of it by tender. I was quite surprised at the demand for good solid desks and tables, even those as old as mine. The fashion seems to be changing from spindly metal legs that trip you up and nasty laminated surfaces. The boys’ school over in Carmell took a good deal of the furniture. I could check if you are really interested.’

  ‘What about everything else?’

  ‘I simply passed it on to the new comprehensive. After all, in a way it’s the successor to my school. I wish them well. I rather think that the days of private education are over, though you won’t want to hear about that, my dear. Well, all schools need extra equipment, new costumes, props, that sort of thing, if they are to have a high standard for drama. I believe that they were genuinely grateful.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  I cannot tell how I tell, she thought, but it’s certain that I depend on such certainties. Tamara shook her head, and willed herself to concentrate. This was no time for being diverted by the ambiguities of the English language. It was unnecessary to identify the source of her knowledge that she had been followed, and that danger waited. What mattered was to realise it.

  Kim Rice? Jeremy Ellice?

  Which of them was waiting there in the car park?

  Tamara had gone straight to the school after parting from Jeremy Ellice. It was a sprawling expanse of glass and imported brick, its three storeys towering incongruously in a landscape of small fields and stone cottages. Rows of buses waited beside the teachers’ cars in the car park, for the two thousand children came from villages as far as fifteen miles away. The bell was ringing just as Tamara approached, and she waited, parked in a row of mothers, while the buses filled and the car park emptied. She kept hairpins and cosmetics in the glove compartment, and used them now to conventional
ise her appearance, removing an Italian knitted coat of many colours to stand up in navy blue anonymity suitable for a teacher.

  Heat and the invariable smell of schools were bottled up inside the glass entrance hall, parquet floored, littered and lined with notices that flapped on their pins in the hot air arising from the radiators below them. A boy and girl, kissing as they walked, went by without a sideways glance. An elderly man hustled out muttering like the White Rabbit; two middle-aged men, complaining loudly about the fourth year, left the building with their piles of exercise books.

  At the back of the hall a long wide corridor led past rows of darkened classrooms. Tamara entered one to find a stack of notebooks, which she carried in the crook of her arm like a badge of pedagogic office, and went back to the hall. She stood at a slight angle to a notice board that was covered with invitations to sign on for educational trips to European capital cities, and tried to decipher the direction boards without obviously staring at them.

  A young man in denim and sandals said, ‘You observe that young Crosthwaite signed on for the Aegean cruise, having been let off his fine for under-age drinking because the family pleaded poverty.’

  ‘So he has,’ Tamara said. ‘Isn’t that just typical.’

  ‘You on your way in or out?’

  ‘In.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do it, you know, it’s overtime,’ he said, carrying on towards the outer door.

  The signs were painted on white arrows of wood clustered round a central post. Tamara could see the way to the administrative offices, headmaster’s room, deputy headmaster’s room, assistant deputy headmistress’s room and secretary. She crossed the hall, and stood beside the Head Boy’s notice board. He, like the Assistant Head Girl, was full of worthy exhortations to his flock.

  For a moment Tamara allowed her thoughts to wander resentfully in the by-ways of feminism. She watched a woman, with a shopping basket over her arm, and a pile of the inevitable exercise books slipping from her grasp, run from the building. Girls from the fifth year domestic science group will provide the refreshments, the Head Boy promised those who came to discuss nuclear disarmament; the board next door invited actors to audition for next term’s play, Henry IV Part I. Tamara had once played the part of Hotspur. Not much chance for the girls of this establishment to indulge in the glorious showing-off of the stage duel, dying gallantly on a half breath, no – ‘Percy, thou art dust and food for . . .’. Miss Christie had been right about that.

  From this angle the sign showing the way to the auditorium was visible. Tamara walked down empty passages, down steps, up steps, through a gymnasium where enthusiasts were playing badminton, past a row of rooms full of cookers, sewing machines and ironing boards, and eventually to a double door labelled ‘Auditorium’.

  Tamara pushed it a little open, to hear a voice declaiming: ‘I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious and a damned nuisance.’ Professor Higgins with a Devon accent.

  A smaller door led into a passage that skirted the auditorium. Tamara marched along it into another lobby where some girls and boys were waiting with their copies of Pygmalion, some muttering their lines, others pushing and giggling like any children told to keep quiet. The voices of the actors came through from the stage; Eliza Doolittle spoke country not cockney.

  Tamara whispered to a studious girl, ‘Where’s the wardrobe?’

  ‘There’s nobody there now, Miss. Mrs Davey had to get into the shops before closing time.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, thanks. I just have to . . .’

  The girl pointed at another unlit passage. Tamara nodded her thanks. A self-confident air will get you everywhere, she told herself, and carried on into the wardrobe room. She shut the door and pulled the blind down before turning on the light to reveal racks of period costumes, shelves of head-dresses, stacks of props. It was well equipped indeed, but, luckily, logically arranged. Tamara was quickly able to narrow down her search to a stack of drawers containing ‘knights in armour’ props.

  Most of the swords were plastic. One, its broken blade rusty, with lumps of stone – or of what could be taken for glass – on the pommel, was heavy: a real weapon.

  And the crown? There was a deep drawer stuffed with gilt coronets with mothy velvet centres, with cardboard bent into a circle and sprayed with gold paint, with glitters of fake tiaras. One studded headdress looked likely, but when Tamara pulled it from the drawer it weighed no heavier than a straw hat.

  A smaller cabinet contained jewellery, ropes of pearls, flamboyant rings, glass set into pendants. One drawer was full of dandyish shoe or belt buckles. In it there were six segments of metal, folded together, each blackened by age so that no shimmer of silver remained. The plaques were decorated with chunks of stone, and attached together by tiny hooks, so that when they were held upright and shaped into a curve they formed a circlet.

  The cross had become detached. Tamara found it in a polythene bag, along with a wooden pectoral cross of the type worn by bishops and cardinals, and the top curve of a carved crozier.

  It had been used by generations of children; it had lain unidentified for years. Tamara held the crown and sword, waiting for the flash of emotion that would indicate a portent, or some warning of sacrilege. She could induce no mystic certainty in herself. But her trained intellect and experience in identifying objects from the distant past were an adequate substitute for logic-less vibrations. Here, used to confer mimic royalty on amateur actors in a modern school, were the crown and sword of Charlemagne.

  Tamara chose a canvas bag from a peg on the wall, and wrapped her trophies in a Bedouin shawl before putting them into it. She turned off the light and raised the blind. It was then, in the beam of a departing teacher’s headlights, that she saw the brief movement, obscured by the falling snow, of someone lurking beside her own parked car.

  The window opened smoothly, and no watcher could see it on this dark face of the building. Snow came settling softly and quickly onto the window sill, like Christmas cotton wool. There were flower beds full of hardy shrubs against the school walls. Tamara dropped the canvas bag onto the ground between the wall and a clump of evergreen laurel, and even as she looked where it had fallen, concealing snow began to cover it. She shut the window and screwed the catch tight before returning through the now empty passages to the front of the building.

  A young man in a track suit was leaving too. Tamara smiled and chatted enticingly to him so that he walked beside her to her car and stayed close, leaning on the roof. Tamara waved her empty hands, and managed to spill the contents of her shoulder bag onto the ground. She and the young man picked them up together. She pulled her belt tight over her narrow coat: look, no treasure.

  The young man held her door open, and went on talking until she had started the engine and begun to move away.

  No persistent headlights followed her home.

  October 1st, 1863

  Your Serene Highness should know that the widow of Prince Joachim von Horn, formerly the Lady Artemis Bessemer, died after a long illness on September 3rd. She had long since ceased to wish that her son should return to his father’s country or inherit his worldly dignities. He will be educated by the man whom he knows as his father, and live ignorant of a name, Heinrich von Horn, that your Serene Highness may safely forget, and of the fortune and status that pertain to it. He will be known to himself and the world as the son of one whose name is no longer Ehrenstamm.

  That name, Tamara thought, would mean nothing to Nigel Leslie, had meant nothing to her father, nor would either of them know more about its recipient than that he must have been the then reigning Prince of Horn. The copy, or draft, of the letter had been in old Captain Leslie’s papers, and Rob Hoyland was sending it on. Although you and Artemis told me to forward nothing to you, I am sure that this paper, which came to light when I was clearing up your father’s orderly affairs, should be disposed of by you in person, especially as it may mean something to
you. I have had a translation made from the German, which is attached. If you wish, I can have enquiries set in train to elucidate the matter.

  Pompous language that even that most umpompous of lawyers, her father, used when dictating letters to their clients, Tamara thought. She shuffled the letters back into the pile on her father’s desk, and replaced what she had taken from the revolving stand that held Rob Hoyland’s reference books; he often brought his work home.

  Lawyers needn’t know the law, he’d sometimes said, just where to look it up. Tamara was no lawyer, but she had spent three vacations earning money in her father’s office, and her prolonged education had taught her, if nothing else, where and how to look almost anything up. There seemed to be no doubt that the regalia she had found would be the subject of litigation from now till Kingdom Come; what with the complications of private international law, of the recognition of states, of the disposal of enemy property, the acquisition of title to stolen property, the loss of title by passage of time, the ownership of princely paraphernalia, the existence of a substitute, previously unrecognised as such, for that paraphernalia – the list would delight those who set law exams, and give an examinee heart failure. As for the political complications – Tamara could not force her tired mind to think of them. It was unlike her to sleep badly, though perhaps this was the right house for insomnia to strike if it had to, for the sitting room was warm all night with big logs smouldering in the wood burning stove, there was plenty to read, and no likelihood of disturbing her sleeping parents whose room was above the kitchen.