'It's pretty much of a ruin, isn't it?'
'The western end of the chapel and a corner of the refectory are relatively intact, but elsewhere there isn't much that's higher than a couple of feet. Cromwell slighted it so thoroughly that they probably couldn't face the thought of rebuilding. It must have cost the most appalling effort originally, with everything having to be brought up on pack-animals.'
After another twenty minutes or so they turned off the road through a stone gateway and drove up between two lines of trees to a substantial house. Churchill realized that their journey from the camp had brought them along the diagonal of a kind of flattened square, with the village and the mental hospital at the other two corners and the Priory somewhere in the middle. There were lights burning in the house, though dimly.
Ross-Donaldson parked the jeep next to two other cars. He got out and straightened his jacket.
'I'm getting fat,' he said morosely. 'It's all that eating and drinking we do. But what I can't see is why being fat isn't good for you. Surely you'd be much fitter, you'd get much more out of the exercise, give your muscles more work to do, sweat more and so on, if you walked and ran about the place wearing a special boiler- suit padded with thirty pounds or so of sand. But that's an exact equivalent of being thirty pounds overweight. And why doesn't being fat make you thin? The boiler-suit arrangement certainly would.'
'There must be a fallacy somewhere,' said Churchill as they waited in the extensive portico.
'No doubt. I suppose Lucy hasn't gone off to St. Tropez and left the lights on. It would be in character. Ah, here we are.'
The door opened slightly. A man's voice said something brief.
'Good evening,' said Ross-Donaldson. 'We've come to see Lady Hazell.'
'Who are you?'
'A friend of hers. Who are you?'
Further indistinguishable words were said, this time in a grumbling tone, then the door was pulled wide. Following Ross-Donaldson in, Churchill looked about for the man who had opened to them, but he was nowhere to be seen. This would have been more surprising if the hall had been better lit. As it was, the only illumination, wan and pinkish, came from a couple of bulbs on or near the staircase that mounted the far wall. Across this there hung a gigantic figure, a mythological personage or beast portrayed perhaps on a tapestry. Other beings looked down from elsewhere on the walls and stood about the place in three-dimensional form. Directly ahead was a doorway from which a slightly stronger light was shining. Churchill walked through it.
The room he entered was as full of pictures and statuary as the hall had been. This gave so strong an impression of over-crowding that it was some time before he was sure that there were only about four actual people present. Two or three men were calling to one another.
'Get her cage up here.'
'I'm not going to lift that thing.'.
'Can't you see she's frightened? Leave her alone for a bit.'
'Go on, grab her and get it over.'
One of the men was standing on a chimneypiece, clinging with one hand to the corner of an ornate picture-frame while he lunged upwards and outwards with the other. A periwigged face stared past his hip.
'Gin and tonic,' he said coaxingly. 'Gin and tonic, gin and tonic, gin and tonic.'
'Gin and tonic,' said another, ghostly voice.
'Come here, you fool.'
The man made a quick snatching motion and over-balanced, sending the picture swinging to and fro on its nail. He fell noisily but, it soon proved, without hurting himself, across a table, a chair and the corner of a large writing-desk. At the same moment a small dark shape detached itself from the picture-rail, where it had been practically invisible, and made with a beating of wings into the middle of the room. A grey parrot with a bald crown to its head settled neatly on Ross-Donaldson's right shoulder.
'Okay now, keep still and we've got her. Cage over here quick. You're all right, birdie-gin and tonic.'
'Gin and tonic.'
A half-full glass was proffered and the parrot seemed to drink.
'That's it, you love the stuff, don't you, you old soak?'
'Here we are. Come on, in you get, curse you.'
'She can't, she's got her foot caught in this wire or whatever it is on this chap's shoulder.'
'Chain mail,' said Ross-Donaldson. 'Quite customary.'
'Customary or not, let's get her perishing foot out. Now…'
'That's no good, somebody'!! have to hold her.'
When no one else moved, Churchill clasped the bird with the palms of his hands over its wings. Its heart was beating very quickly. After a moment it struck down at his finger with its beak. He kept his hold, eased the parrot into its cage and sucked at the tear in his finger.
'Let me see that,' said Ross-Donaldson.
