The Perfect Sinner

‘I’m not a lord,’ I said.

‘The place I’m talking about is Slapton in Devon,’ he said, looking at me expectantly. ‘That’s why I call you Lord.’

‘What?’

‘You have not heard of it?’

‘No,’ and then, slightly irritated, ‘why did you laugh? Is it such a famous place?’

‘It should be,’ he answered, ‘to you at least. You are Lord of the manor of Slapton, as well as Nympton St George, Satterleigh, Newton, Rocombe and Northaller.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. Did your father not tell you?’

For the last ten years of my father’s life he had told me that I was the child of Satan, that he could fly like a bat, that we could eat the stones of the castle’s tower if we only boiled them long enough, and that he was the rightful king of the lost tribes of Egypt. He had never mentioned Slapton. ‘No, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Does that mean you knew who I was all along?’

‘Not until you told me your name,’ said Batokewaye. ‘I knew Guy de Bryan was serving the King, but I didn’t know which one you were. I’m glad it was you.’

‘Did you know my father?’

‘I was ten years old the last time he came to Devon. It always puzzled us that he didn’t come again. It’s a fair place and there are rents collected year by year.’

‘Who collects them?’

‘My father’s the steward. He’s an old man now, but he’s honest’

‘Is there a house?’

‘There is Pool.’

‘What’s Pool?’

‘The manor house, a great house indeed. It lies in the bottom of the little valley that runs inland from Slap ton. It is a shaded place but well built in stone and it has more chimneys than you ever see in that part of the world, and there is enough wood stored in Pool’s barns to make smoke come out of every one of them. You’ll like Pool.’

‘I’ll come to see it, William Batokewaye. I need a quiet place. Shall you and I go there together when this war is through?’

‘There’s a lot more Frenchmen where these came from,’ he said. ‘That may be a while yet.’

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_8b9c37b5-2695-5250-bba5-94d5f91dc7fa)

Having erased Slapton so successfully from her own story of herself, it had simply not occurred to Beth that Slapton’s inhabitants would not have done the same. If no one in London knew she came from Slapton, it seemed that everyone in Slapton knew she had gone to London and even had quite a good idea of what she was doing there. It didn’t occur to Beth that her father might be proud of her, that he might talk about her as if they were often in touch. Carrying in her head the scornful childish caricature of this place as somewhere so cut off from the modern world that it lacked television, radio and newspapers, she had been counting on anonymity. It had come as an absurd shock to find that her father knew exactly what had been happening to her in the past forty-eight hours, that the neighbours had told him, that people here were gossiping about her.

Head down, hurrying, Beth left his house and took refuge in the back lane. It led out of the side of the village towards her grandmother’s cottage, and it had served the younger Beth as an escape route many times before. There was nobody around in the lane, but she imagined eyes inside every window, looking at her, matching her to the stories in their morning papers, and it was a relief to leave the houses behind.

But Slapton wouldn’t leave her behind. It was coming back at her from the closed cupboards of memory, the stony surface of the path, the gate she used to sit on when she had somehow got annoyed with both parent and grandparent at once, and the fence where the dog had cornered her. In the first field, she saw the bushes where she used to make her camp and where, on her tenth birthday, she had buried a tin filled with the toys she decided she had outgrown, vowing to herself that she would never dig them up again.

The path led downhill between two more fields, then up into trees and by the stile she took the old branch to the right that led to Quarry Cottage. This was the spot, she had always felt, where you started to feel Eliza’s presence spreading out through the countryside around her house. She was going to take the familiar short cut straight through the deserted quarry, but something had changed. It was no longer deserted. New gates closed the gap between the trees. The roofs of the old sheds beyond had been repaired, the brambles had gone and a truck was parked on fresh gravel where the big puddle always used to be.

Eliza’s path ran around the far side of the quarry between the trees and Beth intended to take it but, out of mild curiosity and more from an unexpressed wish to delay her arrival at the old woman’s house, she walked towards the new gate, opened it an inch or two and looked in, straight up into the face of the man who had been walking quietly towards it from the other side. He wore overalls and he was pulling off a pair of heavy leather gloves. His face was painted with matt grey dust which accentuated the sharp planes of his cheeks. He was smiling at some private joke and his eyes shone. What was even more surprising was that he stopped, looked at her calmly and said ‘Hello Beth, I heard you were back,’ and for a moment, she had no idea who he was.

‘Lewis?’ she said, after a giveaway pause. ‘Is it you?’ For just one absurd moment, she had taken him for Lewis’s older brother, but Lewis didn’t have an older brother. Seven years had filled him out and toughened him. She knew it was seven years because the last time she had seen him, they were each home from university and she had given him the cold shoulder. Then they’d both moved away.

‘You went off somewhere,’ she said. ‘Scotland?’

‘Ireland. I came back. What about you?’

‘I…seem to be back too. Just for a day or two.’ She looked in through the gate. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Hasn’t Eliza told you? I reopened the old place.’

‘As a quarry? I thought it died on its feet years ago.’

‘Come in and see,’ he suggested, ‘if you’re not in too much of a rush.’

‘I ought to go on.’

‘It’ll only take a minute. I can’t be too long myself. I’ve got to be in Dartmouth in half an hour. It would be handy because I’ve got a bag of Eliza’s shopping in the shed. You could save me time by taking it with you. That’s if you don’t mind?’

Seven years on, and they were talking about Eliza’s shopping. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved.

Inside, the tall face of the quarry loomed out of the trees to their left. Rows of rough-cut stone slabs were laid out on the ground. He took her to the larger of the two sheds.

‘You remember, this whole place was my granddad’s?’ he said as he unlocked the door. ‘He never worked the stone, not after the war anyway. When he died he left it to me, so I decided I’d have a go.’

‘By yourself?’

‘Me and Rob. He’s here part-time.’

‘Who’s Rob?’

‘You must remember Rob. Robin Watson? He was in primary with us. He went to the comprehensive.’

For a moment Beth rejected the very idea that she might remember someone from junior school, that even more connections might be waiting in this place, ready to trap her and wind her back in, but all the same she had a vague memory of a large, shambling boy. The comprehensive? She and Lewis had both gone on to the grammar school, the only ones from Slap ton who did. Seven years of that long bus ride together, twice every day.

‘You make a living out of this?’ she asked, looking around.

‘You mean is it just a hobby? No, it’s a job.’

She bit back her words. She wanted to say, you were bright, you could have done anything. Why are you wearing dirty overalls with stone dust in your hair? Why are you wasting time in Slapton? You got away, why did you come back?

His eyes changed as if he remembered her capacity for scorn. ‘It’s a little gem, this place.’ He checked his watch, ‘Do you know anything about geology?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Have you ever been to Purbeck?’

‘No.’