Take No Farewell - Retail Read online

  It was on 21 October 1908 – so my diary records – that I travelled to Hereford to view the site of Clouds Frome with my prospective client. London was fog-bound, but in the west all was sun-bathed contentment. As the train neared Hereford in the early afternoon, I gazed through the window with growing enchantment at the golden woods, the busy orchards, the deep green pastures and rolling hills of a landscape I hardly knew. My hopes rose as high as the clear blue sky, for this, surely, was the opportunity any young architect dreams of, the chance to match style and place in a form for which he will always be remembered.

  I had by this time exchanged several letters with Victor Caswell and had spoken to him once by telephone. There was therefore no doubt in my mind that he was one of the two tall, slim, well-dressed figures waiting near the ticket-barrier at Hereford station, but which one was not clear. Facially there was little to tell them apart. Both were lean-faced and moustachioed, one adorned in morning suit and top hat, the other in flecked green tweed and a rakish cloth cap. It was the latter, in fact, who identified himself as Victor.

  ‘My brother Mortimer,’ he explained over handshakes. ‘He’s come along to give us the benefit of his opinion.’

  There was much fraternal good humour on Victor’s part but little sign of reciprocation by Mortimer. Their close physical similarity seemed designed to compensate, in fact, for otherwise contrasting character. Victor was eager to set off, and even a brief detour to my hotel frustrated him. He owned a gleaming green and gold Mercedes tourer, quite the most splendid motor-car I had ever travelled in, and attracted many admiring glances as he drove through Hereford, where horse-drawn traffic was still the norm. Out along the dusty by-roads west of the city, he worked up what seemed a furious pace whilst shooting questions back at me over his shoulder about architects I respected, styles I liked and materials I favoured. His face and voice were animated by something midway between pride and pleasure, an impatient, consuming urge to celebrate all that he had achieved.

  As for Mortimer, who sat beside me in the rear, hunched down amidst the polished leather and clasping the brim of his hat, he seemed all that his brother was not: glum, silent and deeply pessimistic. When I ventured a platitudinous enquiry about the cider trade, he countered with the humourless observation: ‘It’s just a business, young man, like any other.’

  We crossed a river which I took to be the Wye (and later learned was the Lugg), then began to climb into wooded hill country, acre upon acre of somnolent Herefordshire stretching away behind us. Before long, Victor pulled off the road by a field gate and there we left the car, striking out across sloping pasture-land fringed by wood till we reached a hedgerow stile and halted to admire the gentle fall of the land west towards the flood plain of the Lugg and Hereford beyond.

  ‘That’s the site below us,’ Victor announced, as soon as Mortimer and I had caught up with him. ‘These three fields, the orchard further down and the farm between. You can see the farmhouse roof there.’ His arm pointed towards a distant wedge of thatch half-hidden in a fold of the land. It was the first I had heard of an existing building and, anticipating the questions I might ask, he added: ‘The tenant has notice to quit next Lady Day, Staddon, so have no fear on that score. I shall have a demolition gang in the yard the very next day.’

  ‘The Doaks,’ said Mortimer in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘have farmed Clouds Frome for six generations.’

  ‘Time for a change, then,’ said Victor with a grin. ‘Except for the name. Clouds Frome. Yes, I like it. What do you think, Staddon?’

  ‘Perfect, I should have thought.’

  ‘And the site, the prospect, the lie of the land. What do you make of them?’

  ‘They’re all perfect.’ And I was not lying. I was not even exaggerating. What I saw before me, taking shape amidst the autumnal fields, was a house to crown Victor’s success and launch mine. ‘I can build you a fine home here, Mr Caswell.’

  ‘I don’t want an artless pile, Staddon. I don’t want a mausoleum.’ He slapped the stile with his gloves for emphasis. ‘I want a house to breathe in, a house to glory in. I want the best.’

  ‘Then you shall have it, Mr Caswell.’ Suddenly, his greed was mine too, my ambition as boundless as his.

  ‘You’re paying Paston over the odds for this land, aren’t you?’ put in Mortimer, but already I sensed that nothing could restrain his brother’s enthusiasm.

  ‘What if I am?’ Victor countered with another grin. ‘I can afford to.’

  ‘It’s no way to do business.’

  ‘I daresay not, but this isn’t a question of business. It’s a question of vision.’

  And that, it seemed, settled the matter. Mortimer fell silent, Victor lit a cigar and I climbed up onto the stile to gain a wider view. Clouds Frome Farm stood in a hollow, open to the south and west but backed to the north and east by the hill we had climbed. There was a stream audible in the hanger of trees to our right, descending towards the farm, and a breathtaking panorama beyond it of rolling pastures, with the Black Mountains forming a distant western horizon. A grand house, reached by a winding drive from the high road below, with water nearby and a sheltered yet open setting: it was scarcely possible to imagine anything better. My brain raced to embrace the opportunity.

  ‘Well, Staddon?’ said Victor when I had climbed down.

  ‘I’d be proud to build a house for you here, sir.’ It was the simple truth and all, for the moment, that I could think of to say.

  ‘And would it be a house I could be proud of as well?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ I glanced back at the view. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Then set to work.’ He shook my hand firmly. ‘Set to work with a will.’

  I meant what I said that day when I stood with the Caswell brothers on the breezy heights above Clouds Frome in the thin October sunlight. That house became and still remains the best I was capable of and the best, I believe, any architect, whatever his fee, could have achieved in the circumstances. I returned to London the following day with most of the outline already formed in my head and half of it sketched out on a sheaf of hotel notepaper. Something elegant yet rural, restrained yet wholly original. That was my intention and that, as the plans took shape, was what seemed to lie within my grasp. A happy blend of manorial and domestic, rooted in the landscape and formed of local materials, serving the practical needs of its occupants yet assuring, by deft touches, its own self-confident novelty.

  Victor Caswell was not, I already knew, a man to quibble over money. Once my drafts of what he might have had commended themselves to him, he was prepared to pay whatever it cost to implement them. With five months at our disposal before the tenant quit Clouds Frome Farm, there was moreover time in which to tailor every detail to his satisfaction. It was with this in mind that he invited me down to Hereford a few weeks later, mentioning in his letter that he wished me to meet his wife in order to explain my ideas to her and to take note of any decorative preferences she might wish to express. So it was that on 17 November I travelled to Hereford once more, bubbling over with enthusiasm for what I proposed and little knowing that I would encounter there something very different from anything I could imagine. For I was to encounter Consuela.

  I had asked the Hereford Times to send their back copies to Frederick’s Place rather than Suffolk Terrace, having no wish to remind Angela of a subject which she seemed to have forgotten by the evening of the same day. They arrived on Thursday, anonymously parcelled, and I immediately found an excuse for immuring myself in my office in order to study them.

  The story they told was disjointed and unsatisfactory. The names of people and places I knew came to me as from a realm of dreams, with no fixed point to guide my thoughts. The issue of 13 September reported with neither prominence nor embellishment the death three days before, following a sudden illness, of Miss Rosemary Caswell, eighteen-year-old daughter of Mortimer Caswell, respected proprietor of the local cider-making firm. An inquest had been opened and adjourned pending a post
mortem. By 20 September, however, sensational developments had intruded. Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the celebrated Home Office forensic expert, had conducted the post mortem and had concluded that death was due to poisoning by arsenic. At the re-convened inquest it was revealed that Miss Caswell’s mother and her uncle, Victor, had both been ill with symptoms similar to though less acute than Rosemary’s following a tea attended by all three at Clouds Frome on Sunday 9 September. A verdict of wilful murder by unknown persons had been returned by the inquest jury and a police investigation set in motion. Officers from Scotland Yard were believed to be assisting the local constabulary and an early arrest was confidently anticipated.

  As I already knew, an arrest had indeed followed. But why Consuela? What were the incriminating letters referred to in the report of her court appearance? And what, if any, was the evidence against her? As to that, I still had no clue. Yet one inconsistency at least had emerged for my thoughts to chafe on. If both Victor and his sister-in-law had been ill at the same time as Rosemary, why did the charge of attempted murder refer only to Victor? I cast my mind back to the day of my first meeting with Consuela, scanning all that I recalled of it in the frail hope that her guilt or innocence might even then have been apparent.

  Between their return from South America and the completion of Clouds Frome, Victor and Consuela lived with Mortimer and his family in a large, gloomy Victorian house called Fern Lodge, a stuccoed pile of few architectural merits set amidst an excess of fir trees on a windy summit towards the northern edge of the city. It was there, on a day of raw greyness contrasting sharply with my previous visit to Hereford, that I made my way for tea at the appointed time, clutching a valiseful of perspective views and floor plans for the new house. I was pitifully eager to please, painfully proud of my proposals and horribly nervous lest any aspect of them should fail to win approval.

  So much has changed since 1908 in the mood and fashion of society that my introduction to the Caswell family seems now to date from a far more distant era than fifteen years ago. Perhaps fifty would be nearer the metaphorical mark, so remote does the atmosphere seem that enveloped me in the drawing-room of Fern Lodge that Tuesday afternoon. Victor was the only person present whom I had met before; Mortimer, it was explained, was attending to his business. Awaiting me meanwhile in a semi-circle of brocaded armchairs heavily shaded by thick curtains and large-leafed pot plants was a quartet of Caswell womenfolk: Mrs Susan Caswell, mother of Mortimer and Victor and widow of the founder of Caswell & Co. – frail and fussy in voluminous grey; Mrs Marjorie Caswell, wife of Mortimer – sharp-faced and clearly the mistress of the occasion in severe but expensive purple; Miss Hermione Caswell, elder sister of Mortimer and Victor – less rigidly inclined than the others to judge by her mischievous expression and carelessly flounced dress; and Mrs Peto, wife of Marjorie’s brother, who now in my memory is no more than a cipher in washed-out turquoise.

  Victor, whose heavy-lidded look suggested that afternoon tea with his female relatives was not a favourite pastime, explained that his wife would join us shortly. Then he perched himself glumly on a hard-backed chair and abandoned me to my fate, which was to unfold more plans than was wise amidst the teacups and cake-stands and to attempt the impossible feat of answering all the ladies’ questions accurately and politely. Old Mrs Caswell had the decency to smile more than she spoke, but Marjorie and Hermione were unrestrained in their competing curiosity and led me a merry dance through what they knew or thought they knew of aspect and proportion. I made the elementary mistake of treating their observations seriously, not realizing that they were actually more interested in putting each other down than interrogating me. What with this and the slice of seed cake I had foolishly embarked upon, I was in a fine state of confusion when the door opened and Consuela entered.

  I heard the rustle of her dress from behind me and saw Victor rise. I rose too and turned towards the door, which clicked shut as I did so. Then she was before me. Consuela Evelina Manchaca de Pombalho, for so she was born, abundantly more than any Caswell could ever be. Clad in a clinging, shimmering tea-gown of maroon and gold satin, trimmed with lace and gauze, she wore the most delicate of flowered hats far back on her head, a single long string of pearls, a lozenge-shaped brooch by her left breast and a plain gold wedding-ring. Otherwise there was no adornment, no distraction from her perfect figure, her slender neck and her finely featured face. In all of this she might have been no more than an unusually beautiful Englishwoman, but her complexion was darker than any Englishwoman’s, her hair thicker, her lips fuller, her eyes more intense.

  ‘My wife, Staddon,’ said Victor, standing to one side as she approached. As he spoke, I thought I caught an unnecessary emphasis on the word my and, as I stooped to kiss her hand and drew back to look at her again, I could understand why. He had found this wild and troubling creature, he had tamed and married her, and now he had brought her home to parade on a satin chain.

  I had muttered something about being her servant. Consuela looked at me directly for the first time and said, ‘My husband tells me you are to build a home for us, Mr Staddon.’ There was no more than the faintest hint of an accent in her voice. Her English was perfect, though more slowly spoken than a native’s, lightly pitched and reserved in stark contrast to the gabbling of her in-laws.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Caswell, I am. It will be my honour.’

  ‘An honour too for us, I feel sure.’

  ‘As to that …’

  ‘Come and see Mr Staddon’s plans, Consuela,’ put in Marjorie from behind me.

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Hermione. ‘They’re really most promising, aren’t they, Victor?’

  ‘It’s shaping well, certainly.’ But Victor sounded positively indifferent. It was a baffling change from the enthusiasm he had displayed during our visit to the site and only the first of many such changes of mood I was to grow used to during our association. He wanted a grand house to live in, a beautiful wife to live with and the respect of all who knew him, but sometimes I suspected that they were all only commodities to him, symbols of a success whose substance remained elusive.

  Consuela sat down, accepted some tea and paid close attention to my explanations. Interruptions from Marjorie and Hermione were as frequent and banal as before, but Consuela’s presence had an unexpectedly calming effect on me. She seemed instinctively to understand what I proposed and displayed more insight by her few searching questions than did all of the others’ enquiries put together.

  Hermione, when not competing with Marjorie for the conversational helm, revealed enough to suggest that a perceptive mind was being carefully veiled. During one of the brief liftings of that veil, she engaged me across the plan-strewn table and said, ‘As you can see, Mr Staddon, Consuela has more of an eye for artistry than the rest of us.’

  Marjorie looked affronted, Mrs Peto giggled, old Mrs Caswell grinned and Consuela lowered her gaze, but the point was well made. More palpably than any words could render it, I detected a sympathy towards me in this cautious, perceptive young woman. At the time, I attributed it to nothing more than a highly developed artistic sensibility and, for the moment, that was enough.

  ‘Of course,’ I stumbled, ‘all of this can much more readily be appreciated when inspecting the site.’

  ‘Victor has not yet taken me to Clouds Frome,’ said Consuela.

  ‘Time enough for that,’ he put in, ‘when we have vacant possession.’

  ‘When you do,’ I said, ‘I’d be delighted to act as your guide, Mrs Caswell.’

  ‘That’s most kind, Mr Staddon. You must make a point of it.’

  ‘I will. Most certainly I will.’

  Then, for the first time since joining us, Consuela smiled. And with that smile my heart took flight.

  It was near the end of the first week following Consuela’s arrest when Giles Newsom, our senior assistant and aspiring partner, revealed that Kevin was not the only member of staff to have noticed the name of Clouds Frome in the papers. A good-looking yo
ung man noted for his elegance of dress and popularity with the fairer sex, Newsom was also a talented architect in the making. Imry had advocated taking him on when it became apparent that he would never be able to resume a full-time share of the business and, though there had always been something too damnably self-assured about the fellow for my liking, he had justified Imry’s confidence in the four years since.

  Laziness, not incapacity, was Newsom’s besetting fault and it was in such a mood that I found him, alone in the office, when I returned there late on Friday afternoon, feet on desk, cigarette in mouth, a copy of The Architect’s Journal open before him. At other times I might have ventured a mild rebuke, but I felt too despondent on this occasion to make the effort.

  ‘Still here, Giles?’

  ‘Catching up with some reading, Mr Staddon.’ He smiled and lowered his feet to the floor, but seemed otherwise unabashed. ‘It always pays to keep abreast of developments, don’t you find? New styles. New designs. New ideas.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘Not that we can’t learn as much from old ideas at times.’