it.’
‘And of my marriage,’ I countered. ‘And of
your
health.’
‘Yes. All of those things, waiting to ambush a pair of swell-headed young men. But we didn’t know any of it then, did we? We didn’t know what was lying in wait for us.’
‘So what would you have said, without the benefit of hindsight?’
Imry gazed past me into the middle distance. ‘I don’t know, Geoff.’ Then he looked back at me and smiled. ‘And we’ll never know, will we? It’s too late to find out.’
Chapter Four
FRIDAY 14 JULY 1911 was, like so many days that summer, one of unremitting heat. London was a furnace and to quit it for the weekend was in some ways a relief. But the four-and-a-half-hour train journey to Hereford also gave me unwanted leisure in which to consider what awaited me there. In my pocket I carried the gold-edged invitation to Victor’s house-warming, copperplate sepia on a cream ground with a pen-and-ink study of the Clouds Frome frontage at its head.
Mr and Mrs Victor Caswell request the pleasure
… It was as much as I could do not to tear the card into shreds and cast them from the window. Clouds Frome was my creation and this was the first time I was to pass a night beneath its roof. But it was also likely to be the last time. Whatever the outcome of my visit, it was hard to imagine that I could ever return.
I reached Stoke Edith, the little country station a few miles short of Hereford which was the nearest stop to Clouds Frome, around two o’clock, and set off to walk the rest of the way along the lanes. The locality seemed stunned and breathless, the orchards and fields sapped of colour. I found myself wishing it could have been dark or cold or wet, anything rather than this azure-skied perfection which only deepened the shame I felt at my intentions.
A half-hour tramp took me into the wooded hills and fields above the flood-plain of the Lugg. Even with the height I had gained, however, there was no relief from the heat; Hereford and the distant horizon waved like wheat in the stupefying haze. Then, as I rounded Backbury Hill and began to descend towards the village of Mordiford, Clouds Frome itself came into view.
To see a house that is elegant in its own right as well as appropriate to its surroundings is always a pleasure. To see it and know one owns it adds pride to that pleasure. But to see it and know one built it – designed it, crafted it, shaped it in every particular – is a unique joy, a deep and abiding source of satisfaction. So it was for me that day, when I saw Clouds Frome, newly finished and not yet mellowed by time and weather, but already sure of itself and its setting, already displaying the qualities I had striven to bestow upon it.
I set my bag down by the hedge, leaned against a field-gate and lit a cigarette. As I lingered there, smoking it through, I let the shape of the house – its sun-etched image of roofs and gables – imprint itself on my mind. The curving drive; the orchard awash with blossom; the wooded hilltop behind: these were the frame, these were the context, of the house I had brought into being. And the walls; the windows; the high chimneys; the sunlight flashing on the tall panes of the swelling bay: these were my own, these were the products of my hand and brain.
Fifty yards down the road, I came to the entrance and turned in. The pillars on either side were raw and white, the paint on the name-board so fresh it might only just have dried, the tarmacadam on the drive black and unblemished. But all that, I knew, would change. Lichen would mottle the pillars, the paint would fade and peel, pot-holes and weeds would invade the drive. Where would I be, I wondered, and what would I be doing when age and decay made their first inroads in all this proud immaturity?
I started up the drive slowly, savouring the leisurely pace of my approach. The beech trees that would one day make a leafy avenue of the route were mere staked saplings now, offering no
‘And of my marriage,’ I countered. ‘And of
your
health.’
‘Yes. All of those things, waiting to ambush a pair of swell-headed young men. But we didn’t know any of it then, did we? We didn’t know what was lying in wait for us.’
‘So what would you have said, without the benefit of hindsight?’
Imry gazed past me into the middle distance. ‘I don’t know, Geoff.’ Then he looked back at me and smiled. ‘And we’ll never know, will we? It’s too late to find out.’
Chapter Four
FRIDAY 14 JULY 1911 was, like so many days that summer, one of unremitting heat. London was a furnace and to quit it for the weekend was in some ways a relief. But the four-and-a-half-hour train journey to Hereford also gave me unwanted leisure in which to consider what awaited me there. In my pocket I carried the gold-edged invitation to Victor’s house-warming, copperplate sepia on a cream ground with a pen-and-ink study of the Clouds Frome frontage at its head.
Mr and Mrs Victor Caswell request the pleasure
… It was as much as I could do not to tear the card into shreds and cast them from the window. Clouds Frome was my creation and this was the first time I was to pass a night beneath its roof. But it was also likely to be the last time. Whatever the outcome of my visit, it was hard to imagine that I could ever return.
I reached Stoke Edith, the little country station a few miles short of Hereford which was the nearest stop to Clouds Frome, around two o’clock, and set off to walk the rest of the way along the lanes. The locality seemed stunned and breathless, the orchards and fields sapped of colour. I found myself wishing it could have been dark or cold or wet, anything rather than this azure-skied perfection which only deepened the shame I felt at my intentions.
A half-hour tramp took me into the wooded hills and fields above the flood-plain of the Lugg. Even with the height I had gained, however, there was no relief from the heat; Hereford and the distant horizon waved like wheat in the stupefying haze. Then, as I rounded Backbury Hill and began to descend towards the village of Mordiford, Clouds Frome itself came into view.
To see a house that is elegant in its own right as well as appropriate to its surroundings is always a pleasure. To see it and know one owns it adds pride to that pleasure. But to see it and know one built it – designed it, crafted it, shaped it in every particular – is a unique joy, a deep and abiding source of satisfaction. So it was for me that day, when I saw Clouds Frome, newly finished and not yet mellowed by time and weather, but already sure of itself and its setting, already displaying the qualities I had striven to bestow upon it.
I set my bag down by the hedge, leaned against a field-gate and lit a cigarette. As I lingered there, smoking it through, I let the shape of the house – its sun-etched image of roofs and gables – imprint itself on my mind. The curving drive; the orchard awash with blossom; the wooded hilltop behind: these were the frame, these were the context, of the house I had brought into being. And the walls; the windows; the high chimneys; the sunlight flashing on the tall panes of the swelling bay: these were my own, these were the products of my hand and brain.
Fifty yards down the road, I came to the entrance and turned in. The pillars on either side were raw and white, the paint on the name-board so fresh it might only just have dried, the tarmacadam on the drive black and unblemished. But all that, I knew, would change. Lichen would mottle the pillars, the paint would fade and peel, pot-holes and weeds would invade the drive. Where would I be, I wondered, and what would I be doing when age and decay made their first inroads in all this proud immaturity?
I started up the drive slowly, savouring the leisurely pace of my approach. The beech trees that would one day make a leafy avenue of the route were mere staked saplings now, offering no
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