Under a Watchful Eye(79)
‘That woman?’ was all Mark said, quietly.
‘She’s expecting me.’
‘Well, let’s find out if anyone is in, eh?’ Mark said cheerfully, though it sounded forced.
Pushing and lifting one gate between them, they made enough of an opening to squeeze into the grounds.
The overgrown thickets they then crashed through must once have been part of a landscaped woodland garden. Seb was no gardener but he recognized some of the plants, the rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias. They grew untamed about the feet of the larger trees. Deeper inside, the vivid purple buddleia flowers reached out of the undergrowth, and swathes of pink and rose-red verbena erupted upon a mass of stems where the shrubs were better spaced. The air thickened with the hum and frenetic antics of bees. Had the circumstances been different, Seb may have found the untamed gardens beautiful.
It was hard going through the lower levels. They couldn’t see for more than a few metres in any direction. Nothing had been topped or felled for decades. Only the crunch and slide of gravel beneath their feet provided any indication that they were still on the original drive. After a few hundred metres further in, an expanse of grass became visible through a border of overhanging tree branches.
‘Look here.’ Mark touched the white stone rim of a pond, the water entirely covered by vegetation. Part of a stone bench emerged from the undergrowth concealing the water. Further along, the stamen of a cast-iron fountain, resembling an open flower, appeared close to another concealed water feature. Relics of former follies and grottoes built by Prudence Carey’s family, and now reclaimed by nature.
All Seb knew of the Carey family Mark had told him the previous evening. In the 1920s a business empire of grand hotels had enabled Prudence’s father to buy a near-dilapidated eighteenth-century country house. It now appeared the property was determined to return to a prerestorative state.
‘Impressive,’ was all Mark offered when the house finally came into view upon the summit of the hill.
Seb’s own first impression of the house was that it proved its Georgian origins, probably Neo-Classical Revival. It wouldn’t have been out of place as a temple in Rome or a museum in London. A large building, simply designed and undecorated. Typically Palladian style with strong, vertical lines, squat windows on the lower ground floor with long sash windows above. A pillared portico framed a grand front entrance.
The spectacle also called for an awed consideration of Hazzard’s ambition. The cross-dressing con man, the dishonourably discharged private from the Signals Regiment, the convict and former barman at a holiday camp had dispossessed Prudence Carey of her family seat with his talk of projection and celestial spheres, astral doubles and paradise belts. Many others had flocked here to hear the gifted ‘doctor’ speak, and to maintain his lifestyle. A lifestyle befitting a status that he’d elected for himself. Hazzard had genuinely believed that he could fly and he had reached the social climber’s mountain peak.
Between the edge of the wooded parkland and the Hall, a series of tiered lawns were now just visible amidst waist-deep nettles, weeds and brambles. The terraces extended to a stone patio, bristling with weeds, that encircled the front of the building.
Mark and Seb trudged upwards in weary silence, moving wherever a path became visible.
Before the front door a final terrace surrounded an oval garden, or what was called a circus. Short borders of masonry formed an avenue, interspersed with garden plots that were a morass of weeds and wildflowers.
Inside the portico the panelled doors were locked. Above them a semicircular fanlight had been designed like a rose and the glass was intact.
Once closer to the walls, Seb noted how the white stucco and paint had flaked to reveal a pebble-dash of dark bricks. Moss stained the paintwork in long beards beneath the ragged gutters.
The ground and first floors were shuttered, though the top-storey windows were uncovered. The glass up there was black and reflective. Not so much as a ceiling could be seen inside.
Staring up and into the inner darkness transmitted a peculiar, unwelcome feeling of exposure, so Seb moved his attention to the slope they had just ascended, and looked further out. The view from the house reached for miles, a vista of great hills, shaded fields and plains, tufted with patches of woodland.
Exploring the rear of the building, they waded through long grass and discovered a disused tennis court, the net rotted away. Curling about a row of cider apple trees, the old chain-link fence was orange with corrosion and had collapsed into metal tongues.
Another twenty metres beyond the court a walled garden of red brick was intact. Whatever had been planted inside had rioted and thrust itself untidily at the sky. Faint engravings of narrow footpaths, marked by overgrown earthen banks, disappeared into more parkland which obscured the far boundary of the estate.
Hunter’s Tor seemed endless, a wild infinity. A place for a mind to stretch unto its furthest reach.
Seb briefly imagined figures dressed in white, sat at patio tables outside the front and rear doors. How they must have surveyed the landscaped gardens and the distant hills. How they must have discussed journeys to places still further afield, invisible to the naked eye, while their bodies had remained inert inside this great white edifice.
Mark removed his rucksack. ‘No one here, Seb.’ The back of his shirt was dark with sweat. ‘Place is abandoned. Hasn’t seen any attention in years. All locked up and forgotten.’