Open Writing

Blackwell Hall lay in a shallow valley beside a stream about ten miles out of town.

My first sight of it was as we passed between huge stone gateposts topped by stone greyhounds the size of bison.

From there it looked the sort of country house where men gallop up every ten minutes with news of the King. Long, two-storey, yellow-coloured stone, with columns, stone urns and ankle-length windows.

When I pulled up outside it I could see they'd probably rather have news of a good plumber. The gutters were overgrown. The walls were stained from leaks. The lawns had become a wilder¬ness. The paintwork was peeling like that on the Alvis.

As the car crunched on the gravel, the figure of an elderly man appeared in the doorway. He was wearing baggy corduroy trousers and was still holding the morning paper in his hand.

'Father!' my large passenger whooped, and he got out and ran over to him in a sort of gambolling lollop.

'What's the problem?' I heard the old chap ask.

'The Alvis! It did it again, father! It stopped again. It did it deliberately. He'll tell you. The man . ..'

'You must be Colonel Danby,' I said.

'Correct. Come in. Charles, you can go and watch some of your videos if you like.'

Briskly, he led me through cold corridors to a big room which opened out onto the overgrown garden. Chunks of scarred oak and sagging sofas stood in lonely islands. You could have driven a bus around them.

Colonel Danby reached up to a high mantelshelf and began stuffing loose tobacco into burnt-down briar. He was a good deal'smaller than his son; grey-haired, trimmed grey moustache, shoulders beginning to bow a little, but unflinching eyes in a nest of tiny wrinkles.

'How bad was it?'

I shrugged. 'He was lashing the car with this.' I dropped the crop on to one of the sofas. 'There wasn't much paint left.'

'Was it very public?'

'In the square. Quite a crowd really. There won't be many who don't know about it by now.'

He nodded. 'Expect you're right.' Quite slowly, he crossed to the long window and looked out. From there you could see where the gardens dipped down to the river, and then rose dramatically into the bare hills of the Pennines in the distance. They were almost beige where the sun had burnt the grass off and the clouds above were purple. Thunder grunted in the distance again. A few fat rainspots hit the window.

'Once,' he said, in a voice so low I had to move nearer to pick it up, 'in my grandfather's time, the Danbys could ride from here to Scotland without leaving their own land.'

It didn't need a reply. After a while he turned to look at me.

'I suppose that seems wrong to someone like you,' he said.

That didn't need a reply either. Or not one I'd care to offer. He had enough troubles. He didn't mind. He turned his face filled with grey grief towards the clouds and rain again.

'My people have lived here for four centuries. It isn't the time that matters. It's the flow of time. Most of them were men of Charles' build. Heavy, big-boned. He's a typical Danby. I was something of an exception. Men with the same names and the same build have lived here all those years. When I hear these modern chaps like Kentish and Walsh talking, it's always about living well. About income and profits, all that sort of business. They're concerned with seeing how well they can do until they die. You too, if you're like the rest. That doesn't bother me in the least. What worries me is what happens after I die. Look at this place. Falling down. Can't do a damned thing about it. Funds won't run to it. So the accountants say.'

He fell silent again. The sky had darkened, as though to suit his mood. The thunder rolled continuously over the hills now, and rain on the window twisted the view.

Slowly, almost unaware of me, he lit his pipe. One match was all it took. All he needed to keep it going was a steady parting of the lips.

'Sold off quite a bit already. Got to let some more go soon. Maybe let the land out to caravans. Might even end up with lions and monkeys running round the place. Pointless.'

He moved to one of the sofas and straddled the arm. Then he examined the contents of his pipe before returning it to his mouth. It was still burning. He could have won prizes for keeping pipes going while conserving energy.

'All pointless,' he repeated. 'I can hardly expect Charles to keep the place going. He was brain-damaged at birth. Can't remember a blessed thing, poor chap. He must've seen that Magnificent Seven rubbish a thousand times and he still doesn't know what it's about. Yet he's lovable.'

'Is he dangerous?'

His head jerked up at my question and a hard look came into his narrow eyes.

'Of course he's not dangerous. What sort of damned stupid thing is that to say?'

I picked up the crop and held it up. Specks of green paint still clung to it.
'He's a big lad to be running round out of control.'

The old man stared at the crop, then began to examine his pipe again.
'He doesn't go out of control exactly. He gets frustrated. He can't understand what's going on. Poor old chap.'

'Why are you telling me all this, Colonel?'

He looked embarrassed. He got up and hunted around the room until he found an ashtray. Then he poked around in his pipe with a matchstick.

'Just a thought,' he said, with a haunted smile. 'You see me like most people do these days. Lord Muck in his big house. Words like duty and heritage don't count nowadays. You chaps are lucky, you live in the here and now, so to speak. Old fellers like me used to think we were part of something a bit bigger.'

'I know what you mean.'

'As I was saying, a bit difficult with Charles the way he is, but I may have found a way out. You've seen him - what would you say to the idea of Charles getting married, eh?'

In the first place, it seemed about as likely as Charles being Queen of the May - and I'd no idea why he was asking my opinion.

'Has he got a girl?' I asked, to fill a conversational hole.

'Yes. That's to say, there is a girl.'

His eyes, brushed clean with age, glowed with a spark of hope.

'I suppose you'd call it more of an arranged marriage,' he said, with increasing confidence. 'Charles thinks the world of her, and she's been very kind to him.'

'Is that enough?'

'More than plenty have, I dare say. These arrangements aren't unknown, not by any means. That's how many of the old families kept going when they hit a snag like this. Royalty too, if the truth be told. If nature didn't always provide the right person at the right time, sometimes they had to give history a helping hand.'

'Who's the girl?'

He looked at me as though I was about to steal her. 'It wouldn't mean anything to you if I told you.'

'Colonel Danby, I am sorry to hear of your family's problems in keeping history ticking over. I'm sorry about your son, and I'm glad to hear you may have a solution, however unlikely it sounds to me. I have to go in a moment because I have to check out of my hotel and leave this town, a parting which will cause me no grief whatsoever. Before I go, would you like to tell me how any of this concerns me?'

He scrabbled around for another match and shot me a crafty look as he lit his pipe again.

'Certainly,' he said, vanishing behind a cloud of smoke. 'I would like you to keep an eye on Charles. Keep him out of trouble, until we can go ahead with the wedding. What do you say?'