Death be Not Proud by C F Dunn

you?”
    I nodded.
    â€œWell, he came here to recover – psychologically as well as physically. He had a job as their pig man to help him through it.”
    â€œA swineherd! No, really?”
    The image of my gentle, learned and erudite grandfather mucking out the pigs tickled my sense of humour, before I remembered why he had needed to do it.
    â€œDid it help him?”
    â€œHe met Nanna, so it must have done.”
    â€œSmall world,” I murmured, thinking about someone else; “and getting smaller.”
    â€œIt is,” he agreed.
    Â 
    We came to an opening in the low hedge that indicated an entrance, and he turned into a driveway of sorts that ran along a ridge of land east–west with far views over the gentle hills towards the expanse of Rutland Water in the distance. Tall, sand-yellow stone pillars flanked the entrance, each capped with a swan made of the same material, the carving worn with time. A large, ornate metal gate lay drunkenly to one side, entangled in a decade of broken brambles, their brown stems forming a twisted stranglehold on the rusting metal. A startled hare darted out in front of the car. Dad peered out of the window, his mouth turned down at the corners.
    â€œIt’s changed – it wasn’t always this ramshackle. I take it you have phoned to let them know we’re coming?” he asked as we pulled to a stop outside the remains of a small gatehouse.
    â€œNo, not really,” but I had already climbed out of the car, shutting the door as he began to remonstrate. Leaning on the warm bonnet, I shaded my eyes and surveyed the building some fifty yards away. Trees had grown up around the oldhouse, shrouding the aged stone walls with bare branches, camouflaging the outline that gave away its age. The drive – or what was left of it – led anyone approaching the house over a deep moat and through the high stone arch of the gatehouse. Originally, this was an expensive and well-defended building, but not any more. Now, the moat was filled with the twisted cousins of the brambles that decorated the gate, the visible floor matted with the long stems of seasonal grasses, brown and decaying. It was anybody’s guess whether it held water in its day. Much of the simple gatehouse had collapsed, the stone robbed for the building of a later range of barns, partially visible beyond a line of trees to the east. All that remained intact seemed held together by the tendrils of ivy that covered most of it. I glanced over my shoulder at my father, still sitting in the car as if ready to make a quick escape, and walked purposefully towards the entrance.
    Sunlight dissolved into darkness beneath the arch, cushions of emerald moss, dew-dripped where the frost had lately melted, no longer catching the low winter sun. Although it was only just past midday, deep shadows clung to the walls of the stone-flagged courtyard into which I passed, and here the air felt perceptibly colder. The only signs of habitation were a thin curl of smoke from the tall chimney close to the east wing, and a bedraggled pelargonium – stem split brown by the frost – sitting by the side of the broad stone step in a lopsided pot. My heart thumping loudly in the still air, I raised a hand to the ancient door. Oak – bleached silver with age and studded with nail-heads the size of my thumb – it echoed hollowly to my enquiring knock. I didn’t have a moment to prepare my introduction, as the door swung silently open, and an elderly woman – eyes wide at the sight of me – halted abruptly on the step. Her handhad shot up to her mouth and she now brought it down to clasp the other in front of her, automatically compiling her face into a mask of serene composure almost as soon as it had registered her surprise.
    â€œGoodness, you gave me such a fright,” she said, her enunciation precise and clipped, instantly making me want to stand up straight and behave myself.