I got out of the car, walked through the creaky gate, then turned and stood by the wall to admire the view of the opposite daleside. About halfway up stood a stone ruin, framed by the trees, half buried in the hill. I thought it was perhaps a folly of some kind.
The only other thing that Mrs Barlow had been particularly concerned about was my attitude towards the grand piano. It would be possible to move it out, she said in one of our many telephone conversations, but difficult. There would be no extra charge for it, of course, should I decide to keep it, though she would quite understand if I did want rid of it.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I had been about to order an upright piano, or perhaps even a small digital model. Now I had a grand. All I would need, Mrs Barlow went on, surprised and pleased at my acceptance and excitement, was a piano tuner.
Although I was unaware of it at this point, Kilnsgate House also had a history, which would soon come to interest me, perhaps even to obsess me, some might argue. A good estate agent, and Heather Barlow was good, clearly becomes adept in the art of omission.
I was tired after my long journey. I had spent three days in London after my flight from Los Angeles, a confusing period of jetlag punctuated by lunches and dinners with old friends and business acquaintances. I had then bought a new Volvo V50 estate – a good car for northern climes – at a showroom a friend had recommended in Camberwell, and driven down to Bournemouth to spend two days with my mother. She was eighty-seven and still going strong, proud of her son and anxious to show me off to all her neighbours, though none of them had heard of me except through her. She couldn’t understand why I was returning to England after so long – it had only gone downhill even more over the years, she insisted – and especially to Yorkshire. She had hardly been able to wait to get out of there, and when my dad, bless his soul, retired in 1988, they had bought a bungalow on the edge of Bournemouth. Sadly, the old man only got to enjoy three years of retirement before succumbing to cancer at sixty- seven, but my mother was still hanging in there, still taking her constitutional on the prom every morning and her medicinal bottle of Guinness every night.
If pressed, I realised that I wouldn’t have been able to explain to my mother, or to anyone else, for that matter, why I was returning after so long. I would perhaps have muttered something about coming full circle, though what I was hoping for was more of a fresh start. Perhaps I thought that I could accomplish this time what I hadn’t been able to accomplish in my first twenty-five years here, before I went off to America to seek my fortune. The truth was that I hoped, by coming back, that I would discover why I had felt such a deep and nagging need to come back, if that makes any sense.
Now, as I stood before the large house I had bought, suitcase and computer bag in hand, I started to feel the familiar fear that I had overstepped my mark, that gut-wrenching sensation that I was an impostor and would soon be found out. The reality of the house intimidated me. It was much larger than I had imagined, rather like some of the old English-style mansions in Beverly Hills. To enjoy such luxurious excess in southern California had seemed perfectly normal, while back here, in jolly olde England, it seemed an act of encroachment on something that was not, by right of birth, mine. People like me did not live in houses like this.
I grew up in a rough part of Leeds, only fifty or sixty miles away geographically, but a million miles away in every other sense. When I was younger, affluence and privilege had always been more of an affront to me than the source of wonder they seemed to so many Americans, who thought the castles and history and royal family quaint. My family was more of a Royle Family than a ‘royal’ one. I never forgot that my ancestors were the ones who had to tug their forelocks when the lord of a manor house such as Kilnsgate rode by, nose in the air, and splattered them with mud.
In my youth, I had been an angry young man, if not quite a card-carrying communist, but now I didn’t really give a damn. So many years in America had changed me, softened me – central heating, air-conditioning, a beautiful split-level penthouse apartment in Santa Monica, complete with a hardwood floor and a balcony overlooking the Pacific, and a large dose of that ‘everyone is created equal and anyone can be president’ bullshit.
But the change was only superficial. Some things run far deeper than material comforts. I must admit, as I stood and surveyed my magnificent new home, I could feel the old socialist, working-class values rise and harden into a big chip on my shoulder. Worse, I could feel again that deep-rooted, unnerving sensation that I didn’t deserve it, that such houses were never intended for the likes of me, that I would wake up in the morning and it would all be gone, and I would be back where I belonged, living in a back-to-back terrace house on a decrepit council estate and working down the pit or, more likely these days, not working at all.
I had once tried to explain all this to Laura in my cups the night I won my one and only Academy Award – that I didn’t deserve it, that at any moment the bubble would burst, everyone would realise what a phoney I was, and I would be put back right where I belonged. But she didn’t understand. To her American mind, of course, I deserved the Oscar. The Academy wouldn’t have given it to me otherwise, would they? So why didn’t I just accept the damn thing and enjoy the party like everyone else? Then she laughed and hugged me and called me her beautiful fool.
Kilnsgate House towered over me. It had a typical enough Dales facade, from what I could see as I walked up the path between the trees and the overgrown lawn, a broad symmetrical oblong of limestone with a hint of darker millstone grit here and there, two windows on either side of the front door, the same upstairs, and a slate roof. There was an arched stone porch at the front, with wooden benches on either side, which reminded me of the entrance to an old village church. I guessed that it was a useful area for taking off muddy boots after a day’s grouse-shooting or riding with the hunt. There was even an elephant’s-foot stand for walking sticks and umbrellas.
Above the lintel was a date stone carved: ‘JM 1748’, which I took to be the initials of the original owner. The keys were taped under the bench on my right, as Mrs Barlow had promised they would be. She had also said she regretted that she couldn’t be there to greet me, as she had an urgent appointment in Greta Bridge, but she promised to call by around six o’clock and see me settled in. That gave me plenty of time to get acclimatised and have a good look around, though I was beginning to regret that I hadn’t stopped to pick up some supplies at the Co-op I had passed on my way through Richmond. I didn’t want to have to go out again tonight, not now that I was here, but I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, and my stomach was starting to rumble.
It took me a few moments to turn the large key in the deadlock, but I managed, picked up my cases again and walked into the hallway. It was more of a large antechamber or vestibule, by the looks of it, and it took up most of the central part of the front of the house. A small stained-glass square high above the door split the sunlight into blue, red, yellow and purple beams that seemed to shift, kaleidoscope-like, as the trees outside swayed in the breeze and cast shadows with their branches and leaves.
I had seen photographs of the interior, of course, but nothing quite prepares you for the impact of the real thing. Size, for example. Like the exterior, it was so much larger than I had imagined that I felt intimidated at first. In my memory, English houses were small and cramped. But I was standing in a high-ceilinged room large enough for a party, with a broad wooden staircase directly in front of me leading to the upper landing, with railed galleries and doors leading to the bedrooms. I could imagine a host of people in Victorian dress leaning against the polished wooden railings and looking down on some theatrical performance, a Christmas pageant, perhaps, presented below, where I was standing, by unbearably cute children and costumed young ladies demonstrating their accomplishments.
A couple of well-used armchairs stood near the door by an antique sideboard, and a grandfather clock with a swinging brass pendulum ticked away to the left of the staircase. I checked the time against my wristwatch, and it was accurate. The walls were wainscoted to waist height, above which they were covered by flock wallpaper. A chandelier hung from the high ceiling like a fountain frozen in midair. All the wood surfaces shone with recent polishing, and the air smelled of lemon and lavender. Several gilt-framed paintings hung on the walls: Richmond Castle at sunset, two horses at pasture near Middleham, a man, woman and child posing by the front of the house. None of them was especially valuable, I thought, but nor were they the kind of cheap prints people pick up at a flea market. The frames alone were probably worth a fair bit. Who could afford to leave all this behind? Why?
Taking the suitcase that contained my toiletries and what few clothes I had brought with me, I climbed the slightly uneven and creaky wooden stairs to seek out a suitable bedroom.
Two large bedrooms took up the front of the house, one on either side, mirror images across the gallery, and I chose the second one I peeked in. A bright, cheerful room, with cream, rose-patterned wallpaper, it had windows at the front and side, four in all, letting in plenty of sunshine. A selection of sheets and a thick duvet lay folded
