The Bell Tower Read online

  ‘Wilberforce’s blood?’

  ‘The second year’s. Bleeding hands like you never saw, and that isn’t swearing, it’s a statement of fact. And me with only a bit of sticking plaster in my first-aid kit.’

  Michael passed over a £20 note for the replenishing of the first-aid kit, expressed the hope that the Archduke Josephs would survive, and suggested the donation might also stretch to a couple of large whiskies to steady Jugg’s shredded nerves. He then established the identity of the second year and, on reaching his rooms, wrote a hasty note, apologizing profusely for Wilberforce’s behaviour, hoped the student’s scratched hands were not too troublesome, and promised to stand him a large drink at The Turf after the weekend by way of recompense. About the illicit entry through the buttery window he did nothing, other than make a mental note to ask the Bursar to ensure the catch was secure in the future. It was all very well to be a don and in a position of some responsibility, but Michael could remember nights when he, too, had climbed through a buttery window after being locked out.

  As he let himself into his own rooms, he thought it would be something of a rest cure to get to Rede Abbas and partake in a series of revived Tudor bacchanalia.

  Nell and Beth finished tying up the bundles of old folders and papers by eight o’clock that evening.

  Godfrey had left two large boxes: one had originally contained tinned tomato soup, the other cheese biscuits; but both were now crammed with wodges of papers, books whose covers were too eaten away with damp or mould to be sellable, and partly disintegrated folders. Some of the folders bore remarks in Godfrey’s writing, identifying them as bills or income tax correspondence. The thickest file bore a firmly written legend, saying, ‘Receipts for payments 1990–2000, and every last one copied to the tax inspector may he succumb to the Seven Curses of Egypt.’

  Nell grinned, then contemplated Beth, who was brushing dust from her jeans. ‘You look like a chimney sweep’s boy. Have you finished? Good, so have I. Shall we each have a shower then order in a pizza?’

  ‘I’d utterly love pizza,’ said Beth, surveying the boxes. ‘Godfrey had mountains of rubbish, didn’t he? Did you know there’d be all this?’

  ‘I thought there might be. Michael says Godfrey’s a magpie.’

  ‘He’s a musical magpie,’ said Beth. ‘Did you know there’re music scores in one of those boxes? They must have been crumbling away for years and years. Ought we to make sure they aren’t valuable before we throw them out? Because you always say—’

  ‘Make sure rubbish really is rubbish before throwing it out. I know I do,’ said Nell, ‘but if there was ever anything valuable among all this, Godfrey would long since have found it, and sold it for a disgustingly large sum of money. And the whole of Quire Court – in fact the whole of Oxford – would have heard about it. Why? Have you got visions of an undiscovered Mozart sonata or something?’

  ‘Um, well, not exactly, because I don’t think this is a sonata,’ said Beth, kneeling down and peering into the smaller of the boxes. ‘It’s just an old song. It’s really old, though. Oh, and there’s a spider that’s got in between the pages – ugh.’

  There was a short rustling interval as the spider was routed, then Beth cautiously reached down into the box.

  Nell came over to see what she had found. It would not be anything valuable, because Godfrey really was unlikely to have missed anything. And at first sight it did not look valuable, or even particularly interesting. It was two sheets of music score, handwritten, the edges curling, the paper badly foxed. The writing at the head of the paper was a rather elaborate copperplate and in places sheer age had faded it to pale brown, so that it was difficult to decipher. Then, quite suddenly the letters fell into place, and Nell could read it. A graceful slanting hand had written: Thaisa’s Song. Copied from the original. There was a squiggle of initials alongside.

  But she hardly saw the initials. It was the name that was exploding in her mind. ‘Thaisa’s Song’. Thaisa.

  If anyone finds this, please pray for me, for it will mean the dead bell has sounded and I have suffered Thaisa’s fate … Thaisa’s fate …

  How often did you encounter the name ‘Thaisa’ in the space of three days? As if from a long way off, Nell became aware of Beth saying something about the words of the song being in a foreign language.

  ‘The writing’s pretty clear, but I don’t know what it says, d’you? It isn’t French, I don’t think, or Italian.’

  ‘No,’ said Nell. ‘It isn’t either of those. I don’t know what it is, Beth.’ She tried to focus her mind, but the words strung out beneath the musical notation did not seem to have any root she could recognize. Could it be something Middle Eastern? No, the letters would be formed differently, surely?

  ‘The music’s pretty simple, though,’ Beth said, still studying it. ‘I bet I could play it by sight.’

  Nell was instantly aware of two warring compulsions. Half of her wanted to tell Beth to play this strange old music with the unreadable lyrics, and to know more about Thaisa who had suffered an unknown fate and who might have left this music behind. The other half wanted to tear the music to shreds and bury them under the discarded papers, so that the pieces could never be joined up again, and the music itself could never be played … From what strange, unacknowledged depths of her mind had that last thought come?

  ‘It’d be pretty cool to play an old song somebody threw out, like, a hundred years ago,’ Beth was saying.

  ‘Why a hundred years so precisely?’

  ‘Don’t know. I bet it is, though. See, it’s all musty and splodgy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Foxed.’

  ‘Uh, well, OK, foxed. Can I try it? I mean, can I try to play it? I’m getting really good at sight-reading. It’ll be part of the Grade Four exam, so this’d be extra-good practice.’

  ‘It’s a bit late,’ said Nell. ‘And the pizzas will be here any minute. Go up and have your shower. We’ll have a toasted marshmallow in some hot chocolate afterwards. You can try the music before we leave in the morning.’

  SEVEN

  Thin sunlight lay across the music of ‘Thaisa’s Song’ next morning, showing the discoloration and the spidery notes and words. Beth had left it on top of the cottage piano, which Nell had bought two years earlier. It had not been a very expensive piano, but the tone was good and Beth loved it with a passion.

  Nell hesitated, turned the score face down, so only the blank reverse sides showed, then went into the kitchen to make an early breakfast.

  The kettle had just boiled, and the scrambled eggs were coalescing creamily, when she heard hesitant piano notes from the sitting room.

  Beth was seated at the piano, frowning with the intense concentration that made her look heartbreakingly like her dead father. ‘Thaisa’s Song’ was propped up on the stand. She played a series of notes, then a chord, then stumbled. Nell started to speak, but Beth began to play again, and this time seemed to grasp the music’s pattern.

  At first Nell thought it was rather beautiful in a silvery kind of way. Then, in some way she could not pinpoint, it changed, as if something had twisted it with a deep, hurting wrench. It was like running very fast, and suddenly turning your ankle on an uneven bit of ground, so that you got a sickening pain.

  ‘Beth – stop there, please.’ She had not meant to speak, but the words came out almost of their own volition.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Beth looked round, puzzled. ‘I’m doing really well, and it’s pretty easy to read. I wish I could sing the words as well.’

  ‘I don’t like it very much,’ said Nell, managing not to actually shiver. ‘No, I don’t know why – it’s just one of those things. Come and have some breakfast.’

  ‘Only half an hour late,’ said Beth, as they got into the car. She grinned at Nell, and Nell smiled to see her brimming with such delight at the prospect of the three days ahead.

  ‘Half an hour’s good going,’ she said. ‘And I don’t even think we’ve forgotten anything.
’

  ‘The laptop,’ said Beth suddenly. ‘You didn’t put the laptop in.’

  ‘I don’t need it just for two days.’

  ‘You might. You might want to make notes about – um – all the history stuff you’re looking for. And what if somebody wants you to sell something hugely valuable or find – um, I don’t know – a Chippendale desk or something, and emails you. Oh, and the leaflets for the antique weekends – the printers said they might email the draft of those.’

  ‘I’ve got the mobile—’

  ‘The laptop’d be better.’

  She was already halfway out of the car and Nell bowed to the inevitable. Beth was a modern child, who did not think it was possible to move ten yards without at least one electronic communication device. And the laptop might well be useful. She was hoping to track down that link between Rede Abbas and Quire Court – she could make notes more easily on the laptop.

  As they drove away from Quire Court, she said, ‘I think I’ll go through the side roads. They’ll take us a mile or so out of our way, but the traffic in the city centre will be solid at this time of the morning, so it’ll probably be quicker in the long run.’

  The side road wound around the city’s outskirts, and Nell pointed out a corner of Oriel College between two other buildings.

  ‘Pity we haven’t got time to whizz up to the front door and surprise Michael,’ said Beth.

  ‘Yes, but we’ll see him on Saturday.’

  It was more by guesswork than calculation that Nell turned down a tree-lined street with houses set back from the road. It was still in sight of Oriel, and she was reasonably sure it would lead through to the motorway network.

  ‘These are nice houses,’ said Beth, looking out of the window approvingly. ‘Look at that one with those trees in the garden and the gate with all the scrolly stuff on it. I love that one, don’t you?’

  Nell slowed down to look. Everything seemed to stand still. The house was familiar from a dozen – a hundred – dreams. A tall old house, indistinct until now, slightly misty until today, but a house where she had sometimes thought she and Beth, with Michael, might one day live – doing so contentedly among books and music and a comfortable untidiness. She had always pushed the image away, because she had never known how well it would work in reality. But now, here the house was. Unmistakable. It looked as if it had been built in the early 1900s; it was redbrick, but with white roughcast rendering in places. There was a deep porch and large bay windows on each side of the front door. Bookshelves would line the walls of one of those rooms, and there might be books on the floor as well, because the room would be a study and the shelves would long since have overflowed. There would be another room somewhere for a piano as well … The main sitting room – it would be large enough almost to warrant the dignified term of drawing room – would be at the back of the house, overlooking a garden with flowers that had old-fashioned names: gillyflowers and snapdragons and delphiniums. The afternoon sunshine would slant through the windows, and there would be an immense sense of companionship and safety everywhere …

  Nell snapped off these thoughts before they could develop any further, and, forcing her voice to sound ordinary, she said, ‘It is a nice house, isn’t it? I think that’s a maple tree in the garden – the leaves will be beautiful in autumn.’

  ‘Hold on a minute, I’ll take a photo,’ said Beth, scrabbling for her phone. ‘Well, I don’t know why, just because I want to. OK, got it. Drive on now, Mum, the man behind’s really cross. He’s saying “Women drivers” and waving his hands. He’ll get out and thump you in a minute.’

  Nell put up a hand in apology to the irate motorist, and drove away from the house. It was annoying to discover it took an enormous effort to do so.

  They reached Rede Abbas just after lunch. There was a straight drive along a coastal road and Beth rummaged for her phone again to take some photos.

  ‘We’ll send them to Michael, so he can see what everywhere’s like before he gets here,’ she said, enthusiastically. ‘Can you slow down a bit – well, can you even stop, because I’d really like to get a shot of that house up on the cliff. It’s double-spooky, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a bleak-looking old place,’ said Nell, stopping the car and looking towards the clifftop house. ‘It’d be pretty lonely to live up there in winter.’

  ‘Michael would say it was gothic or something, wouldn’t he, and start remembering people who wrote stuff in old rectories and poems in graveyards and things.’

  ‘You’ll run out of battery,’ said Nell, as Beth aimed the phone’s camera.

  ‘I won’t. Michael will love all this. Oh, and look over there – Mum, do look, isn’t that the creepiest thing you ever saw! No, not the house, the tower,’ said Beth in exasperation, as if it ought to be obvious. ‘Down there – on a kind of ledge.’

  Nell looked to where Beth was indicating, and felt a faint chill. The cliff house had been bleak and gloomy, but the ancient stone tower, visible from the road, jutting up from a ledge partway down the cliffside, seemed to belong to some dark, lost era of its own.

  ‘It’s utterly horrible, isn’t it,’ Beth was saying, bouncing in her seat with delight. ‘Those gaping holes near the roof, like staring eyes – they’re really spooky.’

  ‘I don’t know about Michael talking gothic – you’re definitely doing so,’ said Nell. ‘But it is spooky, I’ll grant you that. I should think that part of the cliff slipped away over the years – it must once have been a lot higher up. The tower looks like an old bell tower – that’d be the reason for those open bits at the top.’

  ‘Would the bell have been inside that bit with the holes?’

  ‘Yes. A massive bell it’d have been, from the look of it. People would have heard it chime for miles around through those open sections.’

  ‘Would it still be there, the bell?’ Beth was photographing the tower delightedly.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Or if it is, it’ll have been silenced.’ A dead bell, thought Nell. If the dead bell sounds, it means I have suffered Thaisa’s fate …

  ‘What would it be rung for?’

  ‘Prayers, I think.’ Nell pulled her mind back to the present. ‘Calling the faithful to worship – it probably belonged to the monastery that used to be here. Or it might be even older than that. Maybe it was originally built to give some kind of warning to sailors or fishermen on this stretch of coast.’

  ‘It’s not for fishermen or prayers, it’s a vampire’s tower,’ said Beth, happily. ‘It’s a Twilight place. If you went inside there you’d come out as – um, what it is when you’re changed to something else?’

  ‘Transformed? Transplanted? Transmitted to another TV channel?’

  ‘I’d like it to be a vampire tower,’ said Beth, ignoring this levity as Nell drove on. ‘And it’d be really good if we could have our midnight feast there. I’ll bet if you went in at midnight, you’d come out all different and vampire’d up.’

  Nell stopped the car again and turned to face her daughter. ‘Beth, I know you didn’t actually mean that, but if you and your friends do go out to that horrible tower tonight or at any other time, I’ll take you straight back to Oxford and there’ll be no music lessons for a month.’

  Beth stared back, and for a moment Nell thought she was going to rebel. But then her small face crinkled with amusement, and she said, ‘I won’t, really, I won’t. I didn’t really mean it, anyway, ’cos it’d be too spooky.’ She looked back at the tower, then gave a melodramatic shiver, made a cross-eyed face at Nell, and stuck out her tongue.

  ‘You were winding me up, weren’t you, you horrible child?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Beth, and returned to her phone and the absorbing task of emailing her photos of the bell tower and the clifftop house to Michael.

  Beth was safely deposited at the Ramblers’ Hostel as soon as they arrived. Nell was pleased to see she was greeted with squeals of delight from several of the girls who fell on her with glee, swore they had be
en lying in wait for her for at least two hours, and demanded to know where she had been. Somebody had been sick on the coach, which had been utterly gross, and they were all sleeping in a dormitory like one of those old school stories, and if Beth had not brought the unmentionable thing as she had promised, the you-know-what was going to be cancelled.

  Beth grinned, and brandished the large cake box bearing her birthday cake, which was greeted with whoops of joy, then hastily covered up with somebody’s jacket. Beth gave Nell a quick hug, and plunged into the giggling mass of schoolgirls (there were a few boys as well, Nell noticed), all of them discussing their planned midnight feast with loud shrieks that could probably be heard all over the hostel. The teacher who was trying to instil a vague semblance of discipline waved to Nell, made a semi-despairing gesture that still managed to indicate she was in control, and shepherded them inside the hostel.

  Nell unpacked in The Swan’s bedroom, which had chintz curtains and oak beams, had a quick wash and brush-up, then went out to explore. Walking through the sharp, clean, autumn afternoon towards the market square was invigorating, and if any spirits threatening to sound dead bells walked anywhere, they did so politely and invisibly. What on earth was a dead bell, anyway?

  The square was efficiently signposted and was only ten minutes’ walk from The Swan. It was clearly going to be the centre of the activities that weekend, and it was crowded with people setting up stalls or carrying crates and boxes. Participants in the festivities were wearing an astonishing mix of costumes and wandering around, like film extras waiting for their scene. Most of them had outfits approximating the Tudor and Elizabethan eras – Nell counted four Henry VIIIs, three executioners with hoods and cardboard axes, various court ladies, several cowled monks, a possible William Shakespeare and a sprinkling of wandering minstrels.

  Three men in overalls were hammering into place a dais for that evening’s performances, and a large notice requested people please to be prompt if they wanted to sit down for the Seven Deadly Sins at 7.30 p.m., since a large attendance was anticipated. Nell wished Michael were with her to appreciate the irony of this polite request.