The Road to Paradise Island Read online

  Granny M came sometimes to watch me at work. There was speculation in her eyes. Her grandchildren were a credit to her—both of them caught up in the fascinating world of maps. She could not have asked anything better. She was a schemer by nature and there was nothing she liked better than managing other people's lives because she was always sure she could do it so much better than they could themselves.

  At this time she had made up her mind that Philip should marry a sensible girl who would come to the Manor and bear more Mallorys to continue in the business of map making in Great Stanton and at the same time making sure that squiral status was kept up in Little Stanton. As for myself she was beginning to see that neither Gerald Galton nor Charles Fenton was the man for me. She would wait until she found someone who would fit more neatly into her ideas of suitability.

  This was respite for me—to pursue my vicarious adventures in the shop and enjoy life at the Manor.

  The Manor was a house full of interest which one was apt to forget having been born in it and lived one's life in it. For one thing it was said to be haunted. There was one dark corner on the second floor where the structure was rather unusual. It was at the end of a corridor which seemed to come to an abrupt termination—almost as though the builder had decided he had had enough of it and wanted to cut it short.

  The servants did not like to go along that corridor after dark. They were not sure why. It was just a feeling one had. There was a rumour that someone had been walled up in the house years and years ago.

  When I tried to find out something from Granny M, I was told: "Nonsense. No Mallory would be so foolish. It would have been most unhealthy."

  "Nuns were walled up sometimes," I pointed out.

  "They were nuns—nothing to do with the Mallorys."

  "But this was long ago."

  "My dear Annalice, it's nonsense. Now I want you to go over to Mrs. Gow and take some of that calf s foot jelly. She's poorly again."

  Mrs. Gow had been our housekeeper for many years, and was now living with her son over the builder's yard which was situated between Little and Great Stanton.

  I could never fail to admire Granny M who dismissed walled-up ancestors as decisively as she had Granny C.

  But I used to wonder about that spot in the corridor. I would go up there after dark and I was sure I felt a sensation—a little frisson... something. Once I imagined that something touched me lightly on the shoulder and I heard a sibilant whisper.

  I was trying to create something out of a long-ago rumour just as I dreamed of those coral beaches when I coloured my maps.

  I used to go down to visit my mother's grave and make sure that the bushes there were well tended. I often thought about her. I had built up a picture of her from Granny C who had always wept a little when she talked of her Flora. Flora had been beautiful, too good for this world, said her mother. She had been a gentle, loving girl. She had been married at sixteen and Philip had been born a year afterwards so she had been only twenty-two when she died.

  I had been able to tell Granny C how very sad I was because it was through me that she had died. That was the sort of thing one could never have said to Granny M who would have immediately retorted: "Nonsense. You knew nothing about it and therefore had no say in the matter. These things happened, and she was a weak creature."

  Granny C was more sentimental. She had said that my mother would willingly have given her life for me. But that worried me even more. There is nothing that makes one feel worse than having great sacrifices made for one.

  So I had not talked nearly as much as I had wanted to to Granny C about my mother.

  However I did visit her grave. I planted a rose bush on it and a rosemary "for remembrance," and I used to go down rather secretly for I did not want even Philip to know of my remorse for having caused her death. Sometimes I would talk aloud to her and tell her that I hoped she was happy where she was and I was so sorry that she had died bringing me into the world.

  One day when I was there I went to get some water for the bushes. There was an old pump some way off and a watering pot and jugs. As I turned away from my mother's grave I fell sprawling, for I had caught my foot in a jutting stone. I had grazed my knees a little, but nothing much, and as I was about to pick myself up I examined the stone which had been the cause of my fall, and I saw that it was part of a curb.

  I delved beneath the weeds and discovered that it was part of a surround of a plot which must have been a grave. I wondered whose it was. I had always thought that piece of land was waste ground. Yet it was among the Mallory graves.

  I set to work pulling up the tangled growth and there it was—a grave. There was no headstone, otherwise that would have betrayed its existence. But there was a plate on the grave. It was dirty and the letters were almost obliterated.

  I went to the pump and brought back water. I had an old rag with me which I used to wipe my hands on after I had watered the plants, and with this I washed the grime from the plate.

  I started back with dismay and I felt a shiver run down my spine for the name on the plate might have been my own.

  "Ann Alice Mallory. Died the Sixth Day of February 1793. Aged eighteen years."

  I was Annalice, it was true, and on the plate there was a division and a capital letter for Alice ... but the similarity shocked me.

  For a few seconds I had the uncanny feeling that I was looking at my own grave.

  I stood for a few moments staring at it. Who was she—lying there silent for ever among the Mallory dead?

  I went back to the Manor. Normality returned. Why should not one of my ancestors have a name like mine? Names continued through families. Ann Alice. And Annalice. Eighteen years. She had been just about my age when she had died.

  At dinner that night I said to Granny M, "I saw a grave in the cemetery today which I hadn't seen before ..."

  She was not very interested.

  I looked at Philip. "It was someone with my name ... or as near as makes no difference."

  "Oh," said Philip. "I thought you were the one and only Annalice."

  "This one was Ann Alice Mallory. Who was she, Granny?"

  "Ann is a name that has been used a great deal in the family. So is Alice."

  "Why did you call me Annalice?"

  "/ chose it," said Granny M, as though it was therefore the best

  possible choice and that settled the matter. "It was because there were so many Anns and Alices in the family. I thought either name a little commonplace, but as you were a Mallory I combined the two and made something which you must admit is somewhat unusual."

  "As I said," put in Philip, "the one and only."

  "This grave has been neglected."

  "Graves do become so after the occupant has been dead some time."

  "Nearly a hundred years ago she was buried."

  "That is a long time to be remembered," said Philip.

  "It was a queer feeling... finding the name under all the weeds and then ... my own almost... looking up at me."

  "I must go and look for a Philip there," said my brother.

  "There are Philips, several of them."

  "You have this morbid fancy to read the gravestones, I know," said Philip.

  "I like to think about them all... all the Mallorys... people who have lived in this house before us... people who are connected with us... in a way ... a long line of our progenitors."

  "It is pleasant to know you have such family feeling," said Granny M crisply and thereby dismissing the subject.

  But I could not get Ann Alice Mallory out of my mind. I suppose because she had been more or less my age when she had died and she bore a name which was almost my own.

  The next time I went to the cemetery to clear the grave of its weeds I asked one of the gardeners to give me a bush to plant there. He scratched his head and said that it wasn't the time for planting. But he gave me a rose bush and I said that I wanted rosemary as well.

  "It'll never take," he said morosely.

/>   If they didn't I would plant others, I told myself. I planted the bushes and cleaned the plate. The grave looked quite different now, as though someone cared about Ann Alice Mallory.

  I thought about her often. She had probably been born in the Manor; she would no doubt have lived there for eighteen years; and she had my name. She might have been myself.

  She intruded into my thoughts. It was rather uncanny.

  She had died in 1793. That was not quite a hundred years ago. What would life have been like here then? Very much the same as now, probably. Life in country villages had not changed very much. Great events would be taking place in the outside world. The French Revolution would be in progress and the very year of Ann Alice's death the King and Queen of France would have been executed.

  There would be nobody living now who knew Ann Alice. Even

  Mrs. Tern-would not have been born when she died —although she came into the world soon after. Mrs. Gow was seventy-nine: she might have heard some tale from her parents. They might have known her.

  When I next visited Mrs. Gow I decided to bring up the subject.

  Mrs. Gow had been our housekeeper for forty years. She had become a widow when she was twenty-eight and had taken the post then.

  The Gows were, as Mrs. Gow herself would have said. "A cut above" the rest of our working community. They had been superior for a long time, owning their building and carpentering business, which served not only the needs of Little and Great Stanton but the surrounding neighbourhood as well.

  There had always been an air of superiority about Mrs. Gow as there was about all the Gows. It was as though they must perpetually remind everyone that they were made of superior clay.

  I remembered Mrs. Gow from my childhood—a stately, dignified figure in black bombazine, whom both Philip and I held in a certain awe.

  Even later I felt I had to defer to her. Once I asked Granny M why even she treated Mrs. Gow with such respect.

  "What is it about Mrs. Gow?" I asked. "Why do we have to be so careful with her?"

  "She's a good housekeeper."

  "She sometimes behaves as though she owns the Manor."

  "Good servants feel this loyalty." Granny M was thoughtful for a few moments, then she said as though she had started to wonder herself: "The Gows have always been respected in this house. They've got money . . . We're lucky to have a woman like Mrs. Gow. We must remember that she does not depend on the post for her living as so many do."

  There was evidently something about the Gows. Granny M always made sure that she gave Mrs. Gow little luxuries. She would not have accepted the ordinary gifts which came the way of the deserving poor—blankets and coal at Christmas and so on. For Mrs. Gow the brace of pheasants, the calf s foot jelly ... the gifts of a friend ... or almost. Mrs. Gow was not gentry: but nor was she of the sen-ant class: she hovered confidently between the two. After all. her father-in-law and her husband —when they had been alive —had been master craftsmen. And William Gow. Mrs. Gow's only son. was now carrying on the flourishing business.

  I decided I would call on Mrs. Gow and see if I could learn anything about Ann Alice.

  Having delivered the marzipan fancies which I had prevailed upon cook to make and which I knew were special favourites with Mrs. Gow, I seated myself on a chair near the sofa where Mrs. Gow reclined, Recamier fashion, and began my interrogation.

  I said: "I was in the cemetery the other day visiting my mother's grave."

  "A dear sweet lady," commented Mrs. Gow. "I shall never forget the day she left us. How long ago was it?"

  "Eighteen years," I said.

  "I always said she'd never get through it. Too frail, she was. The prettiest thing you ever saw. He thought the world of her."

  "You mean my father. You must remember a long way back, Mrs. Gow"

  "I've always had a good memory."

  "I found a grave in the cemetery. A very neglected one. I cleaned up the stone a little and it was someone who had almost my name. Ann Alice Mallory. She died in 1793 when she was eighteen years old."

  Mrs. Gow puffed her lips. "That's going back a bit."

  "Nearly a hundred years. I wonder if you ever heard anything about her?"

  "I'm not a hundred yet, Miss Annalice."

  "But you have such a good memory and perhaps someone told you something about her."

  "I didn't come to these parts till I married Tom Gow."

  "I wondered whether anyone in the family had ever mentioned anything."

  "My Tom was older than me and he wasn't born till 1808 so that would be well after she was dead, wouldn't it? Funny you should mention that date. I've often heard it spoken of in the family."

  "The date?"

  "When did you say she died. 1793? Well, that was the year we started up our business. I've always noticed it. It's over the Gow yard. It says Founded 1793. That's it. So it was the same time."

  I was disappointed. Mrs. Gow was far more interested in the achievements of Gow's, Builders and Carpenters, than in the occupant of my grave. She went on at length about how busy her son William was and that he was thinking of handing over a lot to his son Jack. "You have to give them responsibility. That's what William says. It just shows you, Miss Annalice, what reliable good work can do for you. Everyone knows that it's Gow's for the best workmanship and I'd like to hear anyone contradict that."

  I could see that I was unlikely to discover anything from Mrs. Gow; and I decided it was worth having a try with Mrs. Terry.

  I found her in bed.

  "Oh, it's you," she said, her greedy eyes looking into my basket to see what I had brought.

  "This heat don't let up, does it?" She shook her head. "Well, they've brought it on themselves. Do you know they was dancing in the barn last Saturday ... and carrying it on over midnight into the Sabbath. What can you expect? Then they ask me, What about the drought, eh? What about the cattle? What about the grass all being dried up?"

  "Why should they ask you, Mrs. Terry?"

  "Why indeed. They should look into their own souls, that they should. It's a judgement and there'll be worse to come if they don't stop their evil ways. Repent, I tell them, while there's time."

  "Did you ever hear anything of an Ann Alice Mallory?"

  "Ah? What? That's you, ain't it?"

  "No. I'm Annalice. This is Ann Alice ... two separate names."

  "I always thought it was outlandish. Why couldn't they call you plain Ann or Alice like the rest. What did they want to muddle them up for and give you two in one. Ann was a name you heard a lot up at the Manor. So was Alice."

  "I'm asking about the two together. Ann Alice."

  "No, I can't say I ever heard that."

  "You're ninety, Mrs. Terry. Isn't that wonderful."

  "It's the godly life that does it."

  She had the grace to lower her eyes. Her godliness had only been in existence for twenty years and I had heard it said that Mrs. Terry after the death of Jim Terry at sea—and even when he was alive during his absences—had not been averse to what was known in the locality as "A little bit of the best" on a Saturday night behind the bushes or even in her own cottage.

  "It must be," I said, looking innocent as though I had never heard of these clandestine activities, for I was anxious to keep in her good graces. "I found a grave in the cemetery. Ann Alice Mallory. It looked like my name and it gave me a shiver to think that when I die my grave will be rather like that."

  "Mind you're not took sharp with all your sins upon you."

  "I wasn't thinking so much of that."

  "That's the trouble nowadays. Young people—they don't think. I've made my Daisy promise that when I go, she'll have the parson there just to help me over ... not that I'll need it."

  "Oh no. You'll be certain of your place in heaven; and I bet you they'll send a company of angels to escort you there."

  She closed her eyes nodding.

  I felt very disappointed. Nobody seemed to know anything about Ann Alice. And yet Mrs
. Terry must have been born soon after her death. She was a local girl who had lived in the neighbourhood all her life. Surely the name must have been mentioned. I had never yet known a villager who was not interested in what was going on at the Manor.

  "Mrs. Terry," I said, "the lady in the grave must have died just before you were born. Did you never hear any mention of her?"

  "No. It was something that wasn't spoken of."

  "Wasn't spoken of? Do you mean it was a forbidden subject?"

  "Oh. I don't know about that."

  "Do you remember anyone talking about anything during your childhood?"

  "Well, it was always the Gows. That's who they used to talk about. The Gows being stuck up and all that... and getting on and having their own business... That's what they used to talk about. My mother would say, 'Look at Mrs. Gow. Her and her purple bonnet... walking into church like a lady. Nobody would think that a few years back they was nothing... just like the rest of us.'"

  "Oh yes," I said a trifle impatiently, "we know the Gows got on."

  "Oh, it wasn't always like that ... so I heard."

  "They've been going for a long time. Since 1793 it says over their sheds. Founded 1793. I saw it the other day. That was the year this lady died."

  "One goes to glory and one makes all the money and gets ideas about being better than the rest of us folks."

  "So you don't remember ..."

  Mrs. Terry said: "There was talk ... no, I can't remember. Something about one of the ladies up at the Manor. She died sudden, I think."

  "Yes, Mrs. Terry, yes."

  Mrs. Terry shrugged her shoulders.

  I prompted: "You must have heard something."

  "I don't know. People die. It's to be hoped they've had time to repent before they're taken."

  She sighed and then was off on the subject of the Gows again.

  " Tweren't right. There was a lot of talk about that. Couldn't do nothing wrong, them Gows. I remember way back ... I couldn't have been much more than a nipper. Caught he was. What was his name? Dashed if I can remember. Tom I think. That was it. Tom Gow. Caught redhanded with the pheasant in his jacket... poaching. Brought up before the magistrate he was... and what happens? The Gows go to the master and before anyone can say Jack Robinson, there's Poacher Gow strutting about the place as proud as two peacocks. Got