The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

of Purgatory on the way to Paradise. I’m afraid I just have a business habit of mind.’

      ‘That’s splendid, John,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a habit I must study now that I’m a man of means. But later!’

      Before Malise, John would have smiled. Now he stared bleakly at his younger cousin.

      They turned right through a small gate out of the forecourt into an allée of pleached hornbeams that faced each other along the west wing like a long set of country dancers. Harry assumed the abstracted enthusiasm of a man at an exhibition, hands clasped behind his back, chin leading. His blue eyes filled with memories and calculations. He nodded graciously at two awe-struck sheepmen beyond the wall.

      I’m certain that Malise didn’t recognize me, thought John as they walked. Is it possible?

      ‘My fields?’ Harry stepped carefully over some green-black goose turds and stopped to survey the green slope beyond the outer row of hornbeams and a low stone wall. ‘They haven’t been sold off?’

      He had time to prepare himself for our meeting, decided John. He pretended strangeness in front of Harry.

      ‘My fields?’ repeated Harry, a little more loudly.

      Sheep grazing in Roman Field below the beech avenue raised their heads at the sound of his voice. The afternoon sun glowed pink through their pricked ears.

      John finally heard. ‘Yes. The nearest, here across the wall is the Roman…Roman coins were dug up there years ago. Beyond that lies King’s, and then our water meadows, there behind the beech ridge and along the Shir. Two years ago, as you will see in the estate accounts, I bought more good grazing from the Winching estate when the widow died. Hawkridge now runs from Winching Hanger across the road, that way…’ He pointed back up the hill past the top of the drive. ‘All the way past Pig Acre to that second wood there, on that hill above Bedgebury Brook. The limit that way is the field you can just see below the east end of Hawk Ridge, called the Far.’

      He counted the sheep that munched down toward the water meadows. The ewe pregnant with late twins was not eating but lay awkwardly on the ground. As he watched, she rose then lay down again. He must send someone to see to her.

      But it’s not my job now to think like that. One way or another, this life was now over. But he would not go back to prison. He would never surrender to the rope or block.

      They reached the far end of the hornbeam allée and passed through a gap in a shoulder-high yew hedge into a flat empty green kept tightly shorn by grazing geese, a quiet green room enclosed by high, dark-green aromatic walls.

      ‘The bowling lawn.’

      ‘Bowling,’ said Harry dully. ‘Not much in favour now in London. I must do something with this.’

      A blue and white cat slipped onto the green from under the hedge, froze when it saw the two men, flattened its ears and streaked under the hedge towards the fields.

      Water glinted through a gap in the yew hedge. Harry crossed the bowling lawn in long-legged strides.

      ‘This is better!’ he cried.

      From the north-west comer of the house they now looked along the north front and over the basse-court. A little farther on, the river Shir slid like oil over a small weir into the highest of the three fish ponds, dug before any man or woman on the estate could remember.

      ‘Now here …’ Harry said, ‘I see possibility! We make these ponds into one long lake, the full width of the house. Try to imagine, coz, if you can…statues. And water jets. A bronze of Nereus, just there below the weir.’ He looked around for his cousin, faltered slightly at John’s set face but surged onward. ‘Conjoin the ponds and there’s room for all his fifty sea-nymph daughters around the edge!’

      John lifted his eyes beyond the ponds to the smooth swell of hillcrest that rose from the orchard blossom like the naked shoulder of a woman from her smock. He had swallowed a brand from the kitchen fire.

      This time, I must kill Edward Malise, he thought fiercely.

      ‘What’s all that?’ asked Harry, pointing at the jumble of brick buildings and walls that jostled against the back of the house.

      ‘That?’ John stared as if unravelling the well-known corners and jogs for the first time. ‘… The basse-court yard …’

      Two hens scratched in the arch of the gate which opened onto the ponds from the yard between the dairy house and a storage shed.

      Not so fast, John then decided. It may be possible that he didn’t recognize me. I may have time to think what’s best to do. But how, dear God, do I deal with my cousin?

      ‘Come with me!’ Harry ordered. He strode along the bank of the pond, to get a more central view of the basse-court and the north face. ‘Oh, John! This is quite wonderful! I can see exactly …’ He pulled John round by the arm to face his vision. ‘We’ll knock all those old buildings down. Make a new ornamental lawn between the house and the ponds…Can’t you see it? Grass from there to there!’ He threw his arms wide like a bishop gathering his flock in a spiritual embrace. ‘Not Hatfield perhaps …’ Harry laughed with the pure pleasure of his vision. ‘But the best in Hampshire!’

      In the eleven years since Malise and I last met, thought John, I have changed from boy to man and sprouted a beard. From fourteen to twenty-five. He was already twenty-seven then. Perhaps he really doesn’t know me!

      ‘Then …!’ Harry pulled again at John’s sleeve and pointed at the house. ‘Leave aside all those little sheds and things. Try to imagine a portico centred between the wings in place of that old-fashioned porch.’

      There was no reply.

      ‘John? What do you think of my idea of a Greek portico in place of that old porch?’

      John focused on his cousin again. ‘No portico, Harry,’ he said quietly.

      ‘The first on a private house,’ insisted Harry. ‘A portico in the new classical style, like the Queen’s banqueting house just built in Greenwich. I shall build the first in Hampshire. The King himself might come to admire it. Oh, coz, we shall have such fun putting this place right!’

      ‘No,’ said John in a voice like a scythe.

      Harry faltered and dropped in mid-flight. ‘What’s wrong?’ He licked his pink lips and swallowed. The long-lashed blue eyes blinked, and looked away. ‘No, I know.’ Then, ‘Please don’t look at me like that! It makes me feel five years old.’ Harry frowned across the ponds as John had done earlier. He squared his shoulders. ‘Very well. I owe you honesty, though I had hoped it would not need to be said.’

      John did not breathe.

      ‘I want you to stay here,’ Harry said thickly. ‘Did you think that I can’t see how much you do…have done? I need you to stay.’ He cleared his throat and hauled an uncertain smile onto his face. ‘Cousin, with my ideas, your organizing and my wife’s money, we shall have more fun than you can imagine!’ He waited for John’s gratitude and relief.

      ‘Harry, who does your dear friend Edward Malise think I am?’

      ‘What?’ Harry looked startled, then defensive, then a little sulky, the way he had used to look when Dr Bowler asked him to conjugate a Latin verb. ‘What do you mean? The same as everyone else, I suppose…You’re my cousin who has been running my estate.’

      ‘And my name?’

      ‘Your name?’ Harry now looked angry, as if John were unfair to ask him something he didn’t know but might have remembered if John hadn’t worried him by asking about it.

      John waited.

      ‘Whoosh.’ Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. It’s John Graffham. Or have I got that wrong too?’

      John walked to the edge of the pond. A grey and white feather bounced gently