Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [37]
Ruth hastily pulled off her pinafore and touched up her hair. It was a wasted effort. Mortimer didn’t come to the door. He sat in the Humber and sounded the horn, twice, and George, shaved and in his Sunday best, hurried to the summons.
In Norfolk you don’t need to build very high to have a commanding view of your territory. So when, in 1780, the Mortimers commissioned the architect van Wyck to design a new home a short distance from their rambling Elizabethan farmhouse, he settled for a mere three stories under a shallow-pitched roof. (Usefully, this meant that the servants, who lived in the attics, acquired the habit of stooping.) The problem was, van Wyck quickly realized, that visitors to Bratton Manor would be able to descend from their carriages and walk directly to the front door. And this would never do. The Mortimers would need their guests to ascend. So he had the low slope in front of the site leveled for a forecourt, and he extended a grand terrace from the front of the house. That was a far better arrangement; now visitors would have to climb a splendid balustraded staircase onto the terrace in order to gain admittance.
George tried to seem unimpressed as the Humber approached the house. They’d not talked much on the way there. Gerard had driven with exaggerated care, but slightly too fast. Once or twice he’d belched, and George had caught the whiff of alcohol. They passed along the flank of a high-walled garden and then drove through a Victorian archway into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by brick-and-flint outbuildings. The car was immediately surrounded by a small pack of thrilled and noisy spaniels. George, who disliked and feared dogs, hesitated with his door part-open.
“Oh, don’t worry about this lot,” Gerard said. “Too bloody useless to actually bite anybody. They’re the wife’s. She’s dog mad.”
He led George through the furry maelstrom into a large room containing an extraordinary number of boots and coats, as well as a distinct reek of horse. A low, heavy door gave on to a dim passageway.
“This way, George. We’ll talk in the morning room. The females know not to come in there.”
He shoved open a door on the left and led George in. The room was lit by mellow and angled sunlight. It seemed to be both a library and an office. A wall of shelves slumped under the weight of books, box files, and ledgers. A desk strewn with papers stood in front of the tall bay window. A pair of tapestry-covered armchairs sat like plump old ladies at either side of the fireplace.
“Sit,” Gerard said, gesturing, and marched over to a mahogany cabinet. “You a whiskey man, George?”
“Ah . . . now and again.”
“Excellent.”
Gerard brought two heavy glasses and a decanter to the fireplace and sat down. He poured the drinks.
“Cheers.”
“Ta,” George said. He shuddered as the Scotch burned down his gullet.
Much of the wall opposite the fireplace was covered with eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white photographs pinned together into a complex single image. Gerard saw George looking at them.
“An aerial view of the domain, George. We’ll come to that in a minute. First things first.”
He swallowed a glug of malt and leaned back in his chair, resting one foot on the ankle of the other.
“I’ve been talking to Bill Ling about you. He says you’re the best man he’s ever had.”
He raised his free hand, halting whatever it was that George might have been about to say.
“We’re talking man to man here, George. No bull.”
“Fair enough.”
“You were in the REME. North Africa. That right? Heavy armor support?”
“That’s right.”
“So you know all about tracked vehicles? Tanks and half-tracks? Bulldozers? Heavy equipment?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“A skill is a skill, George. I doubt that you’ve lost it.”
“Well . . .”
Gerard leaned to top up George’s glass.
“You probably know — well, everybody knows everything about every other bugger’s business in this part of the world — that I was in Canada for several years. ’S where I met my wife. Montreal. But I spent