CHAPTER 1
'I bet you could have killed her on the spot!'
Dennis Cooper started guiltily. It was so near to what he had actually thought at the time that he stared hard at his wife. Probably she hadn't meant the suggestion seriously. But these days he could never be sure what Alison was thinking.
He took a sip of his wine, watching her surreptitiously as she ate. She picked her way expertly through runner beans, broccoli and new potatoes, then left her pork chop as clean as if it had been attacked by a scavenger. Her knife and fork sped round the plate as swiftly and deftly as a surgeon's scalpels. She seemed to have become quicker over the years, as if developing this small, deadly skill had been her primary aim in life.
He said, 'I certainly wasn't pleased with her. But Lorna's very knowledgeable. You have to allow her a certain latitude.'
Alison frowned, setting her knife and fork down on the empty plate as precisely as if she had been setting a clock to midnight. 'I don't see why. You seem to me to put up with far too much from the guides. And from Lorna Green in particular. You're the man in charge – or you should be.' A tiny flicker of contempt creased her thin lips for a moment.
Dennis sighed softly, preparing for an explanation he had offered to her many times before. 'There are a lot of privileges with this job. One of the drawbacks —'
'I haven't noticed many privileges myself. But then I'm just a normal person, forced to live with you in this abnormal environment.'
Dennis wondered if she had prepared this little paradox in advance; it seemed to give her some pleasure as she delivered it. He said patiently, 'There aren't many full-time resident National Trust curators in the country. The Trust can't afford many and takes care that the ones it does employ are placed in important centres like this. We are fortunate to live here. I am reminded of that every morning when I wake up and look out over our wonderful gardens. It makes you glad to be alive.'
'Correction: it makes you glad to be alive. It makes me think how odd and frustrating it is to be stuck here miles from the normal advantages of civilization.'
'You don't consider Westbourne Park to be civilized?' He couldn't prevent a small sneer as he delivered what he considered a crushing riposte.
It was a mistake. Derision only increased his wife's aggression. 'Indeed I don't! If your idea of civilization is to be stuck out here miles from anywhere and miles from any friends, it isn't mine!'
Dennis Cooper tried to be conciliatory. He said mildly, 'I think you exaggerate a little. We're one of the busiest National Trust centres, with many thousands of visitors each year and the extensive staff which reflects that. There are friends to be made here, if you care to make the effort.'
Alison sniffed derisively. Dennis admitted to himself reluctantly that she had a good range of sniffs, able to express a variety of emotions. All of them were negative, and the derisive sniff was one of her most effective, conveying contempt without ever straying into a snort. Alison followed it with a voice in a matching dismissive tone. 'Friends? If you mean people like your Lorna Green, then no thanks! Dry as a stick women with pretensions to be historians aren't my idea of friends. Why you choose to let her walk all over you is quite beyond me.'
She sniffed again, needing no words to convey that this time her contempt was for her hapless husband rather than the absent Ms Green. Dennis sighed again, as if in counterpoint response to her sustained nasal fugue. 'When you interrupted, I was trying to explain to you that we have to take into account that Lorna Green and the other guides who help here are unpaid volunteers. She gives valuable service during the hours when Westbourne is open to the public; we simply couldn't operate without her and the thirty other people who come in and work without payment. I have to be mindful that these people are not paid lackeys but enthusiasts for what we do here. The fact that they are unpaid allows them a certain latitude when it comes to expressing an opinion. I have to be more patient with voluntary helpers like Lorna Green than I might be with paid employees.'
Alison's face set into the sullen lines she always adopted when she did not want to confront logic. 'You're too bloody patient, if you ask me. You're allowing yourself to become a bloody doormat!'
Dennis bit back the comment that he hadn't asked her and finished his second glass of Merlot appreciatively. It was a good wine, as were the others in his small cellar. The restaurant bought excellent wines in bulk and he was allowed to purchase whatever bottles he wanted at cost price. It was a small but very welcome perk of the job and it helped to make life here more comfortable. But Alison Cooper wouldn't want to be reminded of that at the moment. He ate his strawberries and cream in silence, then pronounced the quality excellent. His wife nodded, but did not smile.
Five minutes later, they sat awkwardly opposite each other in the lounge, with the evening birdsong floating agreeably outside the open window on the heavy summer air. Dennis eased himself back into his leather-studded armchair and said sincerely but unthinkingly, 'This is the life!'
Alison glared at him for a moment before she spoke, her hostility apparent in every bristling line of her still-attractive figure. 'Some life, with your nearest cinema and your nearest decent shops forty miles away!'
She rose to her full height, walked slowly across the room, and turned on the television as if pressing the trigger of a gun. The strident theme tune of EastEnders was followed by the even more strident voices of the denizens of the soap in strenuous argument. Alison Cooper's bottom hit her chair like a battering ram. She arched her body and her attention away from her husband and domesticity and towards the raucous melodrama of the box.
From nowhere at all, the thought came to Dennis that sex tonight was unlikely. His dignity did not allow him a final sigh. After a sour smile, he rose and left the room in silence.
The gardens soothed him, as they always did. A summer evening was the best time of all. This was one of the great gardens of England, which to Dennis meant one of the great gardens of the world. Whilst all the visitors wandered where they wished during the heat of the day, you had this wonderful place to yourself in the evening. All the sections were beautifully tended, whilst you didn't need to pull a single weed yourself. In the evenings, you lived here like a king, or a duke at the very least. There was not a breath of wind, but the air was cooling now, after the warmth of a perfect day. The sun was setting, a crimson orb touching the summit of the hills to the west, purpling the whole of the sky around it.
Heart of England, this was, in every sense you cared to interpret the phrase. The great battles of the Wars of the Roses, which had shaped the medieval future of the land, had been fought not far from here, by the waters of the Severn at Shrewsbury to the east and Tewkesbury to the south. The great battles of the civil war which had finally established the mother of parliaments had been at places like Worcester, a few miles to the north. And the last great invasion of the land, led by the prancing dandy romanticized as Bonnie Prince Charlie, had been quashed fifty...
