Page 10

"The house feels scary and she popped into my mind. She said someone called Madame Blavatsky spoke words that came from a Great Universal Spirit."
"Blavatsky was a fraud too - great men like W.B. Yeats were fooled by her."
"Aunty Doris told mum she celebrates the anniversary of her death called White Lotus Day. It's magic - the same day as your birthday. Unlucky for you."
"Doris stuffs your mother's mind with all kinds of bunk. She spends too much time slandering me - a life squandered in bitchy spinsterhood."
Rory's sisters saw Doris as a death's-head peering through London fogs. Her smoky lamp-lit house suggested a dockland nightfall. Jack the Ripper was the kids' recurring story book of
horrors.
"Look up. There's enough light - Elizabethan plasterwork. Encrusted. . . ageing effects and pretty authentic."
He elaborated.
"Tudor roses. . . nice detail. Quality embossing is expensive; chose it myself. The staircase - a pastiche of Hampton Court's. Venn showed me a postcard of the real thing."
Parnell quickened his pace and Rory struggled to keep up.
"Appreciate my taste; your mother won't."
Rory tried to track muffled noises. The maze of passages led between lost places and nowhere. His bewilderment intensified with every step. Tension lifted when they came to a large room where tall French windows looked out onto the tangle of autumn. A wide York-stone terrace drew attention to the sum of it. Parnell had taken pains - choosing fine campana urns and sandstone balusters.
"Classical features do look right. If this benighted war leaves us intact, you and I will retrace the Athenian route to Troy."
Beyond the terrace, glowing in remnant light, a line of blood red beeches dressed the scene with sombre beauty.
"Over two acres. An interesting lot of gardening."
Parnell searched the dial of his watch and made a guess.
"Time to quit, son."

The iron studded door thudded but barely registered with Rory whose mind was again searching dreams for a golden girl on a silver horse.
"It's great but spooky, dad."
Parnell inhaled and stood his ground.
"Spooky? Just as I'd hoped. This area has stone-age settlements. Ancient settlements cherish their ghosts."
The night was chilly. Rory shrugged. Accelerating away Parnell held the rearward view of the house until trees obscured it.
"Cold enough for frost . . . if the sky clears."

Trees closed rank to become woodland. The windscreen steamed up and Parnell wiped it vigorously and wound down his side-window.
"There's vixen out there. After dark they would take over the
valleys of my boyhood. You never forget that scent."

10

Ernest Parnell was forty six years of age. His only physical setbacks in years of hard living were the result of war. Wounds thought to be mortal had him stretchered out of the Somme. Severe headaches and an ugly scar across his forehead were Blighty's legacy. His obsession with the 'mess on my face' soon went when the pain eased. He intended to do something about his weight. In boyhood women described men of ample girth as reliable. But fat was out of fashion. He envied the lean and hungry 'Cassius look' of his youth. He palmed his spreading waistline. People remarked on his easy charm and he had no cause to doubt himself in the society he courted, although one lack nagged. He had to suppress a visceral urge to excuse the lack of an Oxbridge degree. He'd done well in biochemistry - honours BSc but beyond that what does a graduate claim for Cardiff? He hankered after the prestige Oxford would have conferred: 'never have to explain myself with an Oxford Bar to my Military Cross'. His Irish blood-line was fact and there was little he could do about origins. In prejudiced debate he'd quote Joyce and Wilde and remind listeners that the Irish bled to the last man in Flanders.

This is a page from Milk and Honey by Gerald Moore, available for purchase from Lazarus Press.

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