‘I don’t know why you haven’t been here before,’ she said. I explained that I had often visited Anthony at his London flat before old Mr Wotton died and his son inherited the estate, but had never been invited to Beeches Lawn before.
‘No, his father and Anthony didn’t get on,’ she said when she was showing me the room I was to have. ‘Anthony thought he might will this place away from him, but he didn’t, and I think they were reconciled towards the end. Fortunately’ — she smiled — ‘the old gentleman took to me and approved of the marriage.’
‘He could hardly help it,’ I said, looking appreciatively at her. She laughed, told me when to come down for cocktails and left me to unpack, bathe and change. I went to the window, a deep bay which gave good views of the garden and the hills, and looked out. I have always loved the Cotswolds ever since, as a boy, I used to stay with a gamekeeper at Nescomb and learnt country lore from him. He was a wonderful naturalist and could recognise every wild plant that grew. He showed me where the badgers had made their sett under a bank in the woods and where the various birds built their nests. He showed me where there was a fox’s den and where to see the now almost extinct red squirrels before those tree-rats, the grey squirrels, took over. He taught me how to shoot, how to recognise every tree in the woods which surrounded his cottage, how to stack wood for the Cotswold winter, how to cook over a wood fire, and how to make cunning flies for fishing by using the feathers of jays. He showed me a green woodpecker, taught me how to handle ferrets and took me to see a grave he revered. It was not in the churchyard, where he himself is buried, but by the side of a woodland ride along which the young owner of the place, before it was sold to become a public school, loved to ride his horse and where he had asked to be laid so that he could dream he was riding there again. The gamekeeper’s name was Will Smith and he lived in a stone-built cottage about a mile from the village. I think I liked him better than any man I have ever known.
His father had been a gamekeeper before him. They were not Gloucestershire people, but came from Norfolk, and Will never lost that note at the end of a Norfolk sentence which always seems to ask a question. I was reminded of him when I looked out at the hills. Beeches Lawn was just outside Hilcombury, which is not all that far from Nescomb. I thought, as I looked over to the hills, that I would visit Nescomb again, although I knew that, with Will Smith gone, I could never recapture the old magic of his woods and walks, or that of the long lane which led from the stream and the village street up the hill to his cottage, a lane in which the ‘weeds… grow long, lovely and lush’ and the wild flowers proliferate as they please. There was history, too, in that lane. The big, striped, edible snails introduced by the Roman conquerors were still to be found among the weeds and grasses, and the Chedworth villa was not all that far away, and neither were Cirencester and Gloucester.
Meanwhile, my present surroundings were pleasant and peaceful enough. Below me was an immense sweep of lawn. Among trees which, with some bushes between, divided it into two unequal parts, stood an immense lime tree, the largest I have ever seen, and there was a magnificent copper beech at the other end of the garden. Beyond the further part of the lawn, the ground, I thought, might slope down to a little stream, and beyond this again I could see an occasional vehicle making its way along the road to the town.
At the other end of the lawn there were flowerbeds and on my way up to the house, when I had parked my car, I had passed greenhouses, a flourishing kitchen garden and a mighty apple tree laden with fruit. For some reason I have never been able to explain, although the words turned out to be prophetic, I found myself murmuring, as I looked out upon this peaceful and attractive scene:
‘And pleasant is the fairy land
For them that in it dwell,
But aye at end of seven years,
They pay a teind to hell.’
‘Teind’ is a due or a tax, but what, I wondered, had made me think of hell in a place like Beeches Lawn? All I could think of was that the copper beech tree had put the thought of evil into my mind. I would have been about twelve years old, I suppose, when I first came across the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I still think that the twelfth adventure is one of the most spine-tingling tales in the series. That ‘prodigiously stout man with a very smiling face and a great heavy chin which rolled down in fold upon fold’ has always seemed to me a much more sinister and frightening figure than Colonel Lysander Stark or any other of Conan Doyle’s villains.
On the following morning Anthony showed me around. The stables had been converted to garages and the pigsties were empty. I remember he remarked that he was glad to be so near the town as to be virtually part of it, otherwise he might be expected to hunt, ‘and all that sort of time-wasting nonsense, old boy. Anyway, I’m a Londoner and, like the film-star ladies, I am happiest among my books,’ he said, ‘now that I’ve given up rugger.’
His was a curious property in some ways. Within his boundaries were two other dwellings, and these were not estate cottages, but houses in the full sense of the word. One was a beautiful old place which had been the original family dwelling. I, for one, would never have abandoned it. It was stone-built and charming, a typical Cotswold manor house.
‘It’s said to be haunted,’ he told me, ‘but the fact is that it became too small to house my great-great- grandfather’s family, so he let it decay. My great-grandfather had it done up and used to keep a woman there. She was supposed to catalogue the library here and help with the household accounts, but rumour, of course, told a different story. My grandfather left the house to rot, but it’s not in such a bad state as all that. I think I shall do it up again and let it as a couple of holiday flats. I would only need to put another bathroom in and, I suppose, another kitchen, but I’m considering an offer from somebody who is willing to buy it as it stands. The only problem is the staircase, which is in a parlous state and dangerous.’
We retraced our steps, took the path round the lawn to a field, crossed this and came out into a roughly surfaced lane. I noticed that the field boasted a small pavilion.
‘Yes,’ he said, when I mentioned this, ‘a prep school rent the field from me for games. I charge only a peppercorn rent, of course. I like kids and these are very decent little chaps. I have the headmaster to dinner occasionally, so as to maintain the
‘It’s a charming old place,’ I said. ‘What is it like inside?’
‘Coberley — that’s the headmaster — has the only key at present, as I’ve mislaid mine. I’ll get it off him while you’re here and show you round.’
‘Why does he want to buy it?’
‘Goodness knows. I suppose the school is expanding. The kids are mostly day boys, but I believe there are a few boarders.’
