Just then there was a knock on the door. I looked through the viewer to see Jimmy standing there, so I let him in. He immediately tried to apologise for the furore that his handling of that little dick had created, but Lori wouldn’t have it.
“I was there, and I’d have done the same thing, only I’d have punched him in the throat as well and watched him strangle, disgusting little prick! None of us knew this would happen, you were protecting us, so please, let it go, I already have!”
Jimmy grinned ruefully.
“I don’t think you’re going to get much sightseeing done today, not with that bunch of vultures waiting to ambush you! I can get you out of here, though; the hotel has a loading bay at the back, it’s where I parked when I saw the mob waiting out there; no-one’s going to see you going out that way, so where do you want to go?”
Lori looked at me enquiringly; Jimmy was right; we had to get out of the public eye for a couple of days, until the next sensation broke and she was forgotten, and I knew just the place.
“Get your stuff, baby, we’re going to Denham Hall; that’s the last place anyone would think of looking for the mysterious “Unknown American Beauty”, unquote!”
Lori grinned and gave me the finger, making Jimmy grin too.
As Lori and Jimmy collected our stuff together, I called down to the manager, explaining that staying there was now out of the question, and that we’d be leaving. He was very understanding, and agreed that leaving via the Loading Bay was the best solution, so, as they already had our card details, I settled the account and a Customer Service Rep came up to the room to assist with our luggage.
Once we were safely in the car, the gates were opened and we were away, the press waiting at the main entrance none the wiser. Our destination was the small village of Meadenham, deep in the heart of rural Oxfordshire, miles from the nearest motorway, flight path or anything even vaguely touristy, slightly chocolate-boxy, but still pretty much the village that time forgot, sort of like Brigadoon, but with much less attractive people living there, so very few strangers or visitors wandering around; the ideal place to lie low and wait it out.
Jimmy and I chatted as he drove, swapping stories, he telling me about his life as a Royal Marine Commando, his adventures in The Falkland Islands, Bosnia, Iraq, and me telling him about my early life growing up in Oxfordshire and moving to Iowa when I was five when mother remarried, then coming home at 16 to take my exams and try and earn a place in medical school. I learned his surname was Roberts, he was 35, single and lived alone.
Lori kept up a steady flow of comments, wisecracks and sharply observed statements, reducing Jimmy and me to helpless laughter; she really was irrepressible, obviously that business back at the hotel hadn’t affected her to any great degree, thank God!
Denham ‘Hall’ is actually a couple of miles from the village proper, in its own grounds, 50 acres or so of meadows, exciting trees and copses for a little boy to play ‘Robin Hood’ and hunt dragons in, and a collection of semi-derelict worker’s cottages at various locations around the main house; I’d never actually been in any of them; father and mother had sat me down and told me to keep out of them at all costs, and I immediately thought it was because trolls or goblins lived in the cellars there, scaring me away; actually, it was because the floorboards and staircases were mostly rotted through, so the floors were dangerous. Still, for a long time after I had dreams about the trolls and goblins in the basement, which kept me out of the root-cellar back in Des Moines for years…
We arrived at almost lunchtime, so I promised Lori a quick tour of the house, then off to the pub in the village to try out their grub before settling in at the house. When we stepped out of the car, Lori swept the place with her eyes, her gaze missing nothing. She pulled off her sunglasses and looked frankly at me.
“Darling Boy, when I saw pictures of this place years ago, when we were young, I thought it was ugly and creepy, and I was real glad I never lived here; now I think I’ve revised my opinion. Davey, it’s hideous and creepy, how the hell did you not run screaming from this place every night? What an eyesore, I mean… look at it, what a dump!”
I wagged my finger at her mock chidingly.
“Now, now, Mrs. Denham, that’s no way to speak of our child’s ancestral home!”
Lori grinned at me, sliding her sunglasses back on and raising her head to look down her nose at me.
“If you think I’m ever going to be moon-calf enough to bring any child of mine within a hundred yards of this Gothic horror story you’ve got another think coming! Look, even Jimmy’s gone pale! If this place can do that to one on England’s finest, what do you imagine it’ll do to my baby? Nope, this is top of my ‘Avoid at all costs’ list, so paste that inside your hat, ‘Mr. Denham’!”
True enough, Jimmy had gone pale staring at the sombre, ugly facade of crumbling limestone, with every Palladian building reference shoehorned haphazardly into the design of the place, as though my loony ancestor who built it had sat down and looked at every stately home in England and picked out the bits he’d liked from all of them, with all the bits that said ‘style’, ‘elegance’, ‘symmetry’ and ‘harmony’ somehow being left out, and only the silly things left in; I could almost hear him saying “It’s my house, so I’ll build it the way I want!”
So that’s what he got, a mish-mash. There were lancet windows, Tudor mullions, medieval gargoyles and angels, obviously looted from some nearby church roof, Norman arches, Gothic arches and flying buttresses, Greek revival columns with a jarring mix of Doric, Ionic, and Corithian flutes, capitals, bases, entablatures and abacuses, and, horror of horrors, a battlemented roof, complete with a Widow’s Walk. Just looking at the house was like walking through someone else’s headache…
Inside it wasn’t so bad; mother had insisted on making the place at least marginally habitable, so things like central heating and windows that actually fitted had been installed, and the place was still fully furnished; most of the furniture was too bulky, old, or just plain ugly for mother to want to take to America with us, so it had been left in the house, and the caretaker service retained by the trustees had kept the damp and rot mostly at bay. Periodically bits still fell off though, and at the back of the house was a pile of mouldering sandstone blocks, mouldings, gargoyle heads, angel’s noses, and interestingly shaped genitalia off the various male nudes nailed, mortared, or wedged onto the outside of the building; clearly, whoever had carved those things had never actually seen one, possibly not even their own, or came from some strange place where all men had odd-looking pee-pee’s…
I had the keys, so we wandered inside, and Jimmy was just bringing in some of the cases while Lori was examining a painting of one of my ‘less criminally insane than most’ ancestors, when a soft voice right behind me nearly made me wet myself.
“Hello David, welcome back!”
Lori gave a small scream as she jumped too, and I spun around, shoulder up against whatever was right behind me, to look in puzzlement at a girl about my age, with shoulder-length, dark golden hair and brown eyes, not outstandingly pretty, but not plain or ugly, just… unremarkable. She looked familiar, and I stared at her as memory unreeled to place her.
“Rosie?” I asked, almost sure, but I still had to ask. “Oh my God, Rosie, what… how… why…!” I gabbled, and she grinned at me.
“Slow down, Robin Hood! There, that’s better. How are you David?”
Lori took my hand, and I remembered my manners.
“Rosie, I’d like you to meet my wife, Lori. Lori, this is my cousin, Rosamund Fitzhugh-Denham, Rosie for short.”
Rosie smiled again and took Lori’s hand.
“I’m glad to meet you. You’re very pretty, David’s a very lucky boy!”
Lori blushed prettily, not knowing what to say, and just then Jimmy came in, a pair of cases under his arms. Rosie’s eyes flicked to him then stayed there, transfixed. Jimmy stopped dead, likewise transfixed, while Lori and I gaped at the suddenly increased level of non-verbal communication going on in the room. The two of them stared at each other, Lori and me staring at them, until Lori nudged me, breaking me out of my study of the two of them.
“Rosie… Rosie… ROSIE!” I called her, Rosie giving a little start as she came back from wherever she’d been, blushing scarlet and grinning ruefully. Jimmy blushed and fumbled the two cases he’d been hold onto the ground, started to say something, then turned and fled back outside, still blushing furiously.
“Sorry about that David, but who’s that?” she asked, seemingly nonchalantly. Lori caught my eyes as she grinned knowingly.
“That’s Jimmy, he’s with us, why did you want to know?” I answered, trying not to grin.
“No reason!” she answered me, blushing furiously all over again. Lori nudged me, harder, so I decided to quit teasing the poor girl.
“So why are you here then, Maid Marian?” I asked her, Lori looking at me questioningly, so I explained.
“Rosie lives down the road in Meadenham, and we grew up together. We used to play ‘Robin Hood’ in the woods here, I was Robin and Rosie was Maid Marian. Rosie’s grandfather was my grandfather’s youngest brother, so she’s my second-cousin. We went to school together in the village for a little while, then father died, and mother remarried and we went to America with her new husband, so…”
(Note how I “explained” things to Lori so Rosie didn’t pick up any hint about how I met her in the first place; Rosie didn’t need to know about that part of our relationship, oh no!)
I looked back at Rosie.
“So once again, what are you doing here, Rosie, you hate this place as much as I do!”
Rosie looked sheepish.
“I saw the papers this morning, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw you with that beautiful girl, and I thought to myself, “David’s going to go to ground, where would he hide?” Of course I knew immediately you’d hole-up here, miles away from anyone, so I thought I’d come and say hello, seeing as I haven’t seen you since you were five…!”
So when she asked about Jimmy, she already knew who he was? Interesting…
I grinned at her.
“After all these years, you still know me so well! How did you get in?”
She held up a bunch of keys.