In Love with Lori Ch. 04

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.

"When the caretaker service leaves in the evenings, they turn on the alarms and drop the keys off with mummy, so I picked them up this morning and came on up to wait for you. I have the alarm codes, so I unset them and waited, in the garden, actually; I'm not staying in this gruesome mortuary by myself, not for a big bloody clock!"

She'd reminded me of something.

"Rosie, how are your parents, how are Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sybil?"

Rosie looked sad for a moment.

"Daddy died, of a heart attack, nearly five years ago. It was sudden, but I don't think he even felt it, which is a blessing, I suppose; at least he didn't suffer. Mummy still lives in the same place, with my brother and me. Adam was born a year or so after you left, so you don't know him, he's at university now; he wants to be a banker, like Richard and Hugo, did you ever meet them?"

I was saddened to hear of Uncle Jerry's death, and Lori and I both gave our condolences; he was always good at playing soldiers with me, I remember Aunt Sybil telling me he wanted a boy one day, I was glad he'd had a son. Also, my interest was piqued by her mention of Richard and Hugo; they were Aunt Sophie's sons.

"I never did meet Richard and his brother, but I know their parents; Aunt Sophie was a witness when Lori and I got married in America; we're getting married in church here, Aunt Sophie's organizing it and Uncle Richard is going to give her away. I'd really like to meet Richard and Hugo; do you know how to contact them?"

Rosie smiled.

"Of course I do! They're my cousins too, you know! They live in Chipping Norton, near all those ghastly media people, so not a million miles away; they stop by all the time to see mummy; they sort of keep an eye on her, help her out now and then, and Adam doesn't have any student loans, so I suspect they're paying for his uni; I know they paid for her to go on holiday last year; they're lovely thoughtful boys, but they drive far too fast in those sports cars of theirs!"

Obviously Richard and Hugo took after their parents, and I couldn't wait to meet them. But first, I wanted to introduce my lovely wife to my aunt Sybil, the only aunt I actually remembered well from my childhood, as I used to see her all the time, she and my uncle Jerry, father's first cousin. All the other aunts were a collection of grim old gorgons whose reputation preceded them by quite a long way; I remember mother used to get quite vocal about some of them...

All I knew was, there was no way on this green earth I was going to let any of those poisonous old ratbags anywhere near my sweet wife; to do so would be to sully her permanently.

Lori looked enquiringly at Rosie.

"How did you recognise David in the papers? You said you last saw him when you were five years old."

Rosie grinned back.

"David looks exactly like Uncle David; it really is quite amazing how much like his father he is; look, I want to show you something..."

She took Lori's hand and led her into the study, where she pointed to the large framed painting over the fireplace. I felt a lump in my throat as I looked at my father again, as I remembered him when he used to swing me up and sit me on his motorbike saddle, Charlie and him laughing as I twisted the throttle and made 'brrmm, brrmm!' noises. He was standing with his hands on mother's shoulders as she sat in front of the fire in the drawing room. I could feel my eyes stinging as I saw them together again, as I remembered them, so young and happy, mother's hand on his as it rested on her shoulder. Lori reached out and took my hand as she gazed raptly at her mother again, young, beautiful, before so much had happened to change her world.

"Rosie's right, Davey, it's incredible; you look just like him!"she murmured. I just nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Rosie touched my arm gently.

"We heard about Aunt Jane, David, I'm so sorry; the trustees notified mummy that she'd been given Aunt Jane's power of attorney here in England and handed all the keys and stuff over to her, and mummy's been keeping an eye on the place since, wondering if you were ever going to come back.

Something seemed to occur to Rosie, as she turned to stare at Lori.

"And you look just like Aunt Jane; my God, you could be her twin, you look almost exactly like her!"

Lori moved to head this off quickly; Rosie was obviously pin-sharp, she didn't want her drawing any conclusions just yet.

"I also look just like Aunt Sophie; apparently Denham men have some very particular tastes!" she grinned, drawing a smile from Rosie.

"I'll say!" she agreed, "They say everyone has a double somewhere, and I think I've just met Aunt Jane's! How eerie, especially in this frightful place!"

I was still staring at my parents' picture; I'd only ever been back here a few times since I'd come back to England, mainly to sign paperwork once I'd reached eighteen, and never into the study; something had always kept me out, but now a wash of memories were bubbling inside me, of sitting at my father's desk and playing with the boxes of painted lead soldiers kept in the window-seat, of standing on the window-seat when it was raining, peering out at the rain with my nose pressed to the window pane and wishing the rain away so I could go outside and play, and lying on the floor in front of the fire with my colouring book and crayons while mother, father and Charlie sat by the fire in the big wing-backed chairs and chatted.

The sound of someone knocking at the study door snapped me out of my reverie. Lori reached up and thumbed my eyes dry, then softly brushed my cheek for a second while Rosie answered the door, withdrawing in blushing confusion as Jimmy came in.

"Where do you want me to put the cases, Doctor Denham?" he asked, never taking his eyes off Rosie as she deliberately stared out the window. I decided to help things along a little, helped a little by Lori tapping my ankle sharply with the silver toe of her cowboy boot.

"Rosie, may I present James Roberts, Jimmy to his friends; Jimmy, my cousin Rosamund Fitzhugh-Denham, Rosie to her friends."

Rosie held out her hand, Jimmy engulfing it his massive paw and shaking hands gently, almost as though he was afraid of hurting her. Rosie blushed again as Jimmy stammered and stuttered his way through an introduction, then turned to me.

"Where do you want the cases, Doctor Denham?" he repeated.

"Take them upstairs, Jimmy, I'll give you a hand," I replied, "and my name's David, I thought we established that!"

He grinned apologetically as he picked up two cases, followed by me with two, Lori with her vanity case, and Rosie bringing up the rear carrying the dress case. We dumped all the cases in the master bedroom, and then I toured Lori around the rest of the rooms, deliberately leaving Jimmy and Rosie to have that excruciating first conversation that all couples who instantly fancy each other need to have but don't know how to start...

While the two of them were hemming and hawing I took Lori down and showed her the rest of the house. Mother had decorated the drawing room, the main sitting room, and the dining room, as well as some of the bedrooms. The rest of the rooms were still as they'd been the last time my grandfather had the place decorated, probably sometime in the 1950's.

Lori walked around examining and touching, looking doubtfully at the paintings of my ancestors, all of them with that strained, constipated look disreputable people have when they're trying their best to look respectable, but I knew better; mother had given me the real background to most of them, not the official 'family' version, so I knew each one of those slave-trading, gun-running, mass-murdering, land-grabbing, pillaging, piratical rapists intimately. There were a few good ones, I had to admit, some philanthropists, scientists (or 'natural philosophers' as they liked to refer to themselves), and their collections and curiosity cabinets were still dotted the house, filled with collections of the odd, the strange, the weird, and the bloody scary, collected from all parts of the world. One of them, who fancied himself as an anatomist, liked to collect bones, and I still had the occasional nightmare about the time I opened one of the dozens of small doors in the attic and stumbled into a room filled to bursting with grinning skulls; my screams brought mother running, and the next day father had that door nailed-up; for all I knew, it still was.

I kept the biggest surprise for last. As we walked across the courtyard to what had been the coach-house back in the days of phaeton's, gigs, and landau's, Lori pointed out the new-looking barn behind it. The coach-house used to be father's consulting rooms when he worked from home, and it had been kept spruce by the caretaking company.

There were two medium-sized bedrooms and a comfortable sitting room there, a self-contained bathroom, a kitchenette, and father's old office, and I wanted to ask her if she'd rather stay there than in that echoing creep-show of a main house, but Lori was curious about the barn, wanting to know why it looked so new, so we went there instead. I explained that the trustees had built it, because of what was inside it. She was bursting with curiosity, so I undid all four locks, Lori remarking that it was unusual for a barn to have such a heavy door.