If that’s the case, then the Sandalls Manor experience could be for you. On one of our Midweek or Weekend Breaks, get back in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. What’s more, get back in tune with your own rhythms. Spend some time with the self that you want to spend time with.
Sandalls Manor is set in the splendour of the South Downs, an area rich in history and spiritualism. Leave the cares of the city behind and look at nature as if for the first time. With small groups of like-minded people, enjoy vigorous – but not too vigorous – walks in some of England’s most beautiful countryside. Then, with your appetite sharpened by all that fresh air, sit down to a nourishing organic dinner, lovingly prepared from the freshest local ingredients by our award-winning chef.
And, while the concerns of your body are being catered for, we do not neglect your more spiritual dimension. You’re under no obligation to participate, but during your stay there will be a regular programme of classes in meditation, relaxation, yoga, body-mapping, soul-journeying and other consciousness-raising exercises. All of these are conducted by Charles Hilton, a fully qualified Jungian psychotherapist and teacher, whose book
Sandalls Manor may help you to shed your other addictions, but you’ll certainly find its own atmosphere addictive. Many of our guests come back time and again, knowing that they’ll leave, as one participant put it, ‘feeling that I’d just had a full MOT on my Body and on my Soul’. Sandalls Manor can provide that kind of cleansing experience for you too.
Arrive as the person who gives you problems.
Leave as the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.
There was then a list of dates and prices. The latter confirmed Jude’s opinion that Sandalls Manor certainly was an experience for the well-heeled.
The house, approached by a long gravel drive, was impressive. It had been the centre-point of an extensive farm, owned by Anne Hilton’s parents in the days when farming was both respectable and profitable. They’d sold most of the land, leaving their only daughter extremely well provided for when they died within three months of each other. At the time of their deaths they had assumed she would soon marry one of her own kind, ex-Army perhaps, and stay at Sandalls Manor, breeding children and golden retrievers.
Had they known that Anne would end up marrying Charles Hilton, her parents would have turned in their graves with enough vigour to power the National Grid.
She’d met him through a friend who, as Anne herself put it, ‘had gone a bit doolally’ and set out to ‘find her soul’. Since most of the people Anne mixed with were unconcerned about whether they had souls or not so long as there was plenty of champers, at first her friend’s quest seemed ‘an absolute hoot’. But all that changed when she accompanied her ‘doolally’ friend to a north London literary institute, where a session on ‘soul-searching’ was being conducted by Charles Hilton.
It was love at first sight – certainly as far as Anne was concerned. If the subject ever arose – and they were the kind of couple who brought it up with regrettable frequency – Charles maintained that he’d felt exactly the same.
But Jude, not normally given to cynicism, questioned the truth of his claim. She had the blasphemous thought that, for Charles, it might have been love at second sight, once he had found out about Sandalls Manor and the generous provisions Anne’s parents had made for her.
She also found it hard to take at face value the seam-lessly perfect – though childless – marriage about which the Hiltons went on so much. There were suggestions that Charles was not above taking advantage of the emotional one-to-one situations in which he frequently found himself with young women. His recurrent travels abroad on conference and teaching assignments provided him with plentiful opportunities, and sometimes he came back from these surrounded by a whiff of rumour.
Under normal circumstances, Jude was extremely resistant to rumour, but in this case she gave it credence. Once, when they’d been alone doing a co-counselling exercise, Charles Hilton had made a pass at her – so unambiguous that it was in fact more of a pounce than a pass. She had dealt summarily with the advance, pointing out to Charles that he was married, that she didn’t fancy him at all, and that, even if he had been attractive to her, the manner of his approach would very quickly have cancelled that out.
But that moment of embarrassment gave them a history and even, Jude felt, gave her a sense of power over him. There was always the potential threat that she might tell Anne. It was for that reason that Jude had arrived unannounced at Sandalls Manor that Tuesday morning. She felt confident Charles Hilton would make the time to see her.
She paid the cab driver, but agreed that he’d come to pick her up in an hour, unless she gave him a call on her mobile to make other arrangements. He looked up at the impressive frontage of Sandalls Manor and shook his head wryly. “Number of loonies I’ve brought up to this place you wouldn’t believe.”
Jude was gratified that what he’d said presumably meant he didn’t include her in the category. “What do they do up here then?” she asked, faux naive.
“You name it. Frolicking around naked in the summer, painting themselves, banging drums, screaming and shouting a lot. Down in Lewes,” he confided, “I’ve heard people say they’re into black magic.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes.” He chuckled. “So if I come back in an hour and you’re not here…I’ll know you’ve been used as a human sacrifice, won’t I, darling?”
He was still chuckling as his car sped off in an unnecessary flurry of gravel.
? Death on the Downs ?
Thirteen
Though in many ways run like a hotel, Sandalls Manor kept its front door closed and Jude had to ring the bell. Anne Hilton came to open it. Jude had met Charles’s wife before, but she didn’t expect to be remembered.
She was right. There was no recognition in the woman’s blue eyes as she uttered a deterrently interrogative ‘Good morning?’
Anne Hilton was a large woman, designed for the heavy labour that had supported her family in previous generations. Although dressed in a long purple crushed-velvet dress, she would have looked more comfortable in a tweed skirt, jumper and pearls.
“Good morning. My name’s Jude.” She spoke breathlessly, as if in the grip of anxiety. “There’s something I need to talk to Charles about.”
The approach had been carefully pitched. Charles Hilton, as a psychotherapist, would have a lot of patients unknown to his wife. And, though Anne’s natural instinct might have been to send such unexpected arrivals packing, her husband would have instructed her to be more careful. He dealt with damaged people, and knew how destructive rejection could be to some of them. The last thing he wanted professionally was a suicide on his hands.
“It’s extremely inconvenient,” said Anne Hilton, asserting what she really felt, before grudgingly standing back to let Jude enter the hall. “Charles is busy conducting a session at the moment. You’ll have to wait. And he won’t be able to give you long when they do break.”
“I won’t need long. I just need a quick word with him.”
“Do sit down.” Anne Hilton indicated a hard wooden settle. Jude wasn’t going to be allowed to feel welcome. No invitation to wait in a sitting room. She must be reminded of the inconvenience she was causing.
“You haven’t done any of the courses here at Sandalls Manor, have you?”
Jude shook her head.
“You should try one. Charles would be much more able to help you in a structured session than he will in a few moments’ chat. Have a look at some of our literature.” She thrust across a handful of brochures. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve things to do. They break at half past eleven. I’ve got to get their coffee ready.”
The way this was said made it clear that Jude wasn’t going to be offered a cup. Ungraciously, Anne Hilton marched off to the kitchen, closing the door behind her with emphatic force.
Jude looked round the hall of Sandalls Manor. The door Anne had gone through was marked ‘Kitchen’;
