‘Oh, I shouldn’t do that,’ I said.
She looked at me steadily. I forgot I was in Europe. Suddenly I was a New Yorker again, pushing for the best way to fix an awkward deal. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Sit tight. You don’t need that deed – you’re not going to sell or lease or mortgage Mallingham. Act as if you own the place, and in fifty years’ time when you kick the bucket nobody’s going to know what the true story is. They’ll just assume Paul conveyed the property to you and the deed got lost somewhere along the line.’
‘But legally—’
‘Legally you’ve even got the Statute of Limitations running in your favour. What’s the limit in England for real estate? Twelve years? Well, if you sit tight till 1938 the land will be yours anyway.’
‘I don’t
think so, Steve. I’ve been into all this. I don’t think the Statute of Limitations would start to run until Cornelius knows he owns Mallingham. You see, I’m concealing the truth from him and that constitutes some sort of fraudulent deception. But if I gave him notice that he was the owner – if I wrote and offered to buy it from him—’
‘Dinah, you were dead right about that kid back in 1926. He’s poison. Take my advice, sit tight and let the Mallingham ownership ride for a few decades.’
‘But—’
‘Look at it this way. You’re not committing a criminal offence. Keeping your mouth shut may be a deception within the meaning of the Statute, but it’s not criminal fraud. That deed’s destroyed. You’ve had nearly three years of uninterrupted peace at Mallingham and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have at least thirty more. But if you start dealing with Cornelius, I can guarantee you’re opening a can of worms. I can think of several reasons why he’d be only too happy to kick you in the teeth.’
‘So could Paul.’ She shuddered, then laughed in an effort to be debonair. ‘You
did
change your mind about him, didn’t you!’ she said amused. ‘Why? Tell me the whole story – or is it unfit for publication?’
‘Honey, I could talk about that kid till dawn breaks over Green Park – which reminds me, I’ve got a great view of the park from my suite at the Ritz and half a bottle of the best Scotch around. Why don’t you come back there with me now and let me tell you everything you want to know?’
‘Sweet of you,’ drawled Dinah, beating a double-quick retreat behind her blasé façade. ‘But I really do have to get home. I’m due in Birmingham tomorrow on business and I’ll have to get up at some unearthly hour to catch the train.’
The acuteness of my disappointment startled me. ‘Ah, come on, Dinah!’ I exclaimed, scooping together all my charm. ‘I’m looking forward to telling you the inside story of my life at Willow and Wall!’
‘And I’m looking forward to hearing it!’ she said, matching my charm ounce for ounce. ‘Come up to Mallingham next weekend and we can talk to our hearts’ content.’
I almost swallowed my glass of port. Setting it down with care I said smoothly with as much English understatement as I could muster: ‘How kind of you to invite me! I accept with pleasure – thank you very much.’
Maybe it was my imagination but I was beginning to think I sounded just like Paul.
Well, I knew I was following in Paul’s footsteps – of course I knew that, and she knew it too. But she was a grown woman now, not the baby she had been when Paul had seduced her, and I had no doubt she could handle a fast weekend with one hand tied behind her back. I certainly knew I could. After all I was now nearly forty-two years old, and I couldn’t imagine getting my fingers burnt no matter how far I fooled around with a new flame.
So I escorted Dinah home, kissed her goodnight affectionately and took myself back to the Ritz without bitterness. Progress had been made. The
weekend loomed lasciviously ahead, and I was as happy as a puppy-dog with six tails.
‘Rule Britannia!’ I sang as I tipped my astonished cab-driver ten shillings, and taking off my top hat I flung it joyously into the air at the moon.
[1]
The train drew into Norwich at eleven-thirty and I was leaping on to the platform even before the wheels had stopped. I was wearing my English tweeds and feeling overheated. I’d forgotten how warm March could be in England, but I had some lighter clothes in my small suitcase. My valet had wanted me to take a whole wardrobe but as the really important business of the weekend was going to be conducted in my birthday suit I was determined to travel light.
Tossing my ticket at the collector I plunged outside and immediately saw her sitting in a very pale Hispano-Suiza. This time her cigarette-holder was scarlet, to match her lips.
‘Dinah!’ I darted forward, looked the wrong way crossing the road and nearly got mown down by a bus. ‘I love your car!’ I gasped, leaping in and giving her a kiss.
‘Let’s hope you love my driving!’
We roared away through the streets of Norwich. She was wearing a mustard-coloured skirt and jacket, a chocolate-brown blouse submerged beneath rows of pearls and a matching hat set at a jaunty angle.
‘You look very smart!’ I shouted at her as we zipped around a corner and plunged downhill. Norwich is a very hilly town.
‘You too!’ she shouted back.
‘Do I look English?’
‘What’s wrong with looking like an American?’
‘I want to merge with the English,’ I said, slipping an arm around her shoulders, ‘in every sense of the word.’
‘You’ll end up buried with them if you try and seduce me while we’re driving through Norwich at top speed!’
With a sigh I sank back in my seat to admire the scenery. That wasn’t hard. The countryside was pretty. It took a while to get out of Norwich because the traffic was heavy, but eventually we entered farming country and passed cute little fields fringed with hedges. I lost count of all the thatched cottages, and we passed a string of huge churches which made me realize how religious they must have been in the old days. It was boating country. At Wroxham and Horning the river was stuffed with sail-boats and motor-cruisers and I remembered Paul talking with enthusiasm about the
miles of inland waterways between Norwich and the sea.
‘We’re coming into Broadland now,’ said Dinah. ‘You’ve heard of the Norfolk Broads, haven’t you?’
I somehow managed to avoid making the obvious crack. Paul would have been proud of me.
We bowled along past little lanes and signboards painted with wonderful old English names like Potter Heigham and Hickling, and I was just thinking about lunch and glancing surreptitiously at my watch when Dinah said: ‘This is the road to Mallingham,’ and we turned off on to a rural route. Sheep were dotted in windswept fields and when I glanced up at the huge blue and white sky I felt the sea-wind on my face and sensed the freedom of wide-open spaces. I could see little because the road twisted secretively behind high hedgerows, and I was just thinking I could bear the suspense no longer when we arrived in the cutest little village of them all. It was like an illustration from a picture book. Openmouthed with admiration I gazed at the village green, the gaggle of cottages and the gigantic grey church. There were even real people walking around. A couple of old-timers were sidling into a pub called ‘The Eel and Ham’.
‘It’s wonderful!’ I cried excited. ‘It’s just like the movies! Jesus, if only I’d brought my camera! This is just the greatest little place!’
Dinah snuffled. I was offering her a handkerchief before I realized she wasn’t about to sneeze. She was trying to keep a straight face.
‘Hell!’ I said, annoyed. ‘I forgot my British understatement.’
‘Oh Steve!’ she said laughing. ‘What’s wrong with a good slice of American enthusiasm? Please, please don’t feel you have to pretend to be English!’
‘Well, I don’t want you thinking I’m some untamed uncivilized wild animal.’
‘Darling,’ she drawled as we careered through a ruined gateway, ‘I wouldn’t want to think of you in any other way. Here’s Mallingham Hall.’
It wasn’t a bit as I thought it would be. I’d expected a real British stately home but Mallingham Hall was just a little house about a quarter of the size of my home on Long Island. Yet it had character, I could see that at once. Beyond the driveway the house seemed to grow out of the soil as if it had been nurtured by some gifted gardener, and as we drew nearer I saw the honey-suckle around the front door, the ivy crawling over the flint walls and the moss clinging to the dark thatched roof. Long church-like windows peered at me. I felt as if I were being carefully appraised by an elder statesman, and once I sensed the personality of the house I found it easy to yield to its low-keyed old-world charm.
‘How old is it?’ I said respectfully.
‘The foundations are pre-Conquest but most of it’s much younger than that. The great hall is over six hundred years old.’
I tried to imagine six hundred years and gave up. I can visualize a million-dollar bond issue with no trouble at all, but I can’t visualize huge spans
of time. ‘Six hundred years!’ I repeated, laying on the admiration too thickly to conceal that the number meant nothing to me, and when she looked quizzical I said with haste: ‘I like it, Dinah. I really do.’
‘I know.’ For the first time that day she ditched her blasé manner and gave me her warmest smile. ‘I’m glad, Steve. Come in and I’ll show you around.’
The big hall had a beamed ceiling. They certainly knew how to build rafters six hundred years ago. At either end of the hall was a string of little rooms, nothing grand but comfortable and cosy, like her London home. Everything was smartly painted and in tip-top shape. Beyond the living-room a stone terrace stood above a lawn which sloped to a small reedy lake, and as I paused by the window I saw Alan playing near the boat-house.
It was Alan who showed me to the guest-room while Dinah went to the kitchens to check some domestic details with her housekeeper.
The room had a view over the lake, a sink in one corner but no sign of any other useful facility, so after I’d unpacked my suitcase I asked Alan where the bathroom was. He looked surprised but escorted me to an imposing room where a large bath stood in solitary splendour on four little legs. For one bad moment I wondered if the plumbing arrangements were as old as the great hall.
‘Where’s the—’ I couldn’t think of the polite English word.
‘The lavatory,’ said Alan reprovingly, ‘is at the end of the corridor.’
I could see I’d have to brush up my English vocabulary to say nothing of my memories of English bathrooms.
We had lunch. Alan and his nurse joined us for steak and kidney pie and chocolate pudding but afterwards Dinah and I were left alone with the port.
‘I thought maybe you’d like to do some sailing this afternoon,’ she suggested as I lit her cigarette. ‘The weather’s improved, there’s just the right amount of wind and we could sail up to Horsey Mill.’
Naturally I’d have preferred to sail straight into bed with her but I was on her home ground, she was making the rules and I’d no wish to appear unsporting.
‘Great idea!’ I said courteously without batting an eyelid, and in fact I soon reconciled myself to postponing the bedroom romps. Dinah had a modern twenty-two-foot yacht but that was still out of the water after the winter so we took the dinghy and spun dizzily back and forth across Mallingham Broad. Huge white clouds billowed above us and the wind, which had veered around, fairly blasted us east towards the sea.
I slacked off the peak halyard, shortening the sail and cutting the wobble from the mast. ‘You’re a good sailor!’ I gasped as we reached the shelter of Mallingham Dyke. ‘Why didn’t you ever come to any of our sailing parties on the Sound?’
‘I was probably too busy discussing Hegelian dialectic with the Claytons … Look out, here comes the wind again!’
She clung to the tiller while I dodged the boom, and we whipped out of the dyke. Later as we left the long channel called the New Cut and headed
into another lake, the wind dropped suddenly and in the eerie moment of calm I glanced across the water and saw the bulk of Horsey Mill.
‘A windmill – a real one! My God, look at those sails! Can we go and see it? Can I—’
‘Hold tight!’ shouted Dinah as the wind caught us again, and I quite forgot we could have spent the afternoon indoors. We tacked back and forth, the little boat skimming up the little dyke which led to the mill. The wooden sails were clanking so hard I could barely hear the whistle of the wind over the levels.
We moored the dinghy at the staithe. ‘Let’s see if the millman’s there,’ said Dinah, but the mill was empty. However, as the door was open she said I could go inside.
I stepped into the dark circular room where the shaft of the machinery rose through the ceiling, and climbed the ladder to the floor above. Since the view was obviously better at the top I kept on climbing, fascinated by the angle of the walls, and when I reached the highest floor the boards beneath my feet were vibrating. With my back to the primitive machinery I looked beyond the outer platform. The view was continually sliced by whirling sails but I could see far out over the broads, marshes and meadows to the clear-cut horizon. I tried to count first the other windmills and then the churches but there were too many of them. For some time I stayed watching the lonely levels and thinking how good it was to escape from the shut-in streets of Manhattan, and when at last I retreated to the ground my first words to Dinah were: ‘Tell me about this neck of the woods.’
We lit cigarettes in the shelter of the mill and I listened while she talked of a great inland sea long ago, of a hundred islands in the marshes, of Saxon outlaws holding out from Norman conquerors, of mists and mysticism, little monasteries hidden away in forgotten pockets of civilization, the outer reaches of an unfamiliar England.
‘You mean it’s always been this sleepy and rural?’
I heard about the mighty glory of the East Anglian middle ages. It was funny to think of them having economic booms and big-time trading deals back then. Apparently in those days Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex had been in the front line of continental trade and all those huge churches had been built to cater for a teeming countryside awash with prosperity.
‘But what happened?’ I demanded mystified.