The Hiding Place

By Paul Westmoreland

It was his safe place. No wonder that he would do anything to protect it.
Of the friends who visit Mark Atkinson on his island retreat, one of them, a girl called Lori, has been there before. What happened on that earlier visit and where is the friend her parents brought with them? Also, where is the jewellery Mary Arnold entrusted to Mark’s safekeeping before her death?
The Hiding Place deals not only with things concealed and the answers we seek, but with friendship and the demands that can be made by pursuing a quest.
“Whatever I tell you, I can’t get anywhere close to the impact this saga has made on Lori; and don’t lose sight of the fact that Mark has been working on it pretty well all of his life.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398435544

Paul Westmoreland

Paul Westmoreland was born and raised in Nottingham. Shaped by Memory is his fourth novel following Raineland (2017), Christmas Night (2020) and The Hiding Place (2022). His professional life has been as a teacher in Buckinghamshire, Leeds, and, for twenty-three years, in Carlisle. He lives with his wife in Penrith, where Shaped by Memory was completed.

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About the Author

Paul Westmoreland was born and raised in Nottingham. The Hiding Place is his third novel following Raineland (2017) and Christmas Night (2020). A few of his short stories can be found on his website. His professional life has been as a teacher firstly in Buckinghamshire, then Leeds and finally, for twenty three years, in Carlisle. Paul Westmoreland lives with his wife in Penrith where The Hiding Place was completed.

Dedication

The Hiding Place is dedicated to all those who have supported me in my work.

"It is a great comfort to have the support and praise

of those whose opinions I value."

Copyright Information ©

Paul Westmoreland 2022

The right of Paul Westmoreland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398435537 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398435544 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

Thank you to the production team at Austin Macauley Publishers for their diligence and support.

Part One

Mark Atkinson’s tale The Enchanted Circle is explained and considered by his cousin Fay in Chapter 49. His own ideas about why he writes are in Chapter 70.

Chapter 1

Mark Atkinson spent a long time trying to imagine a truly original idea for a hiding place to use in his story; in the end, someone else was to provide the answer. By then, he had known for a long time how difficult it could be to make that one leap we usually call inspiration.

Mark Atkinson rarely spoke to his father, Andrew, about his writing. As a successful merchant banker, Andrew, as his own father had done, had spent much of his life making profits and amassing a sizeable fortune. He had assumed for most of his son’s school years that Mark would follow a career doing much the same thing. Certainly, the boy achieved creditable exam results and good written reports. Andrew Atkinson had sent his son to a fine public school as a matter of course; he had attended one himself. He did not realise that the eleven- and twelve- and thirteen-year-old Mark was the victim of bullies, because Mark never discussed this with him. It was convenient to Andrew that his son should board at school from the age of nine. He hoped, though Andrew did not like to dwell on it too deeply, that it would help the child deal with the early death of his mother, help him grow up with a sense of independence and do the things Andrew had done himself as a boy.

There was a time, when Mark was thirteen, that they had sent a letter from school saying that Andrew’s son was unwell, was in the school’s infirmary and that the nurse had recommended he come home for a weekend.

This coincided with a time that Andrew was trying to cement his relationship with Mary Arnold. Mary had been married to his friend Patrick; he had met her at a dinner party. He remembered someone saying that she was very wealthy and wasted on a philanderer like Patrick. Mary Arnold was nothing like Mark’s mother, Judith; she was more outward-going, far better able to stand up for herself and, as he discovered, more willing to experiment in the bedroom.

At the time Andrew received the letter from school, Mary had broken up with Patrick whose infidelities had become well known to everyone in their circle. For some reason, Atkinson had told Mary about this letter and she had responded as though Mark’s return home must follow.

Andrew had been hoping to share the weekend with Mary. He told her that Mark was a survivor and would get over whatever the problem was. But Mary had surprised him. Her bright, alert and piercing eyes said it all.

We can still go on your boat and take him with us, she said. I ought to meet him since he is your son. Don’t you want him?

What Atkinson senior wanted was to have his weekend with Mary to himself. But these were still early days with her and he did not want to disagree with her or seem to be an unloving parent. He could not explain yet that Mark had always been Judith’s child, timid and reserved and lost in his own world just as she used to be.

So it was that Mary was in a position to dictate matters. St Stephen’s was a place of grand Victorian buildings and manicured lawns and they had driven there to collect Mark soon after.

It costs enough to keep him here, said Andrew tetchily. You’d have thought they’d be expert enough to look after him.

Mary looked at Andrew with surprise. Anyone would think you didn’t want him! she protested.

Realising that he was getting into bad books as they turned into the drive, the rich banker made no more fuss, planned his weekend on his boat to his island destination and collected the boy.

Mark was, Mary thought, a pale, quiet, unhappy-looking child with wispy fair hair that would no doubt one day disappear, leaving him as bald as his father. He was not very tall for his age and his glasses, with their dark frames, did nothing for him; had no one advised the child about a suitable style?

She found it difficult to talk to Mark on this first day. She might say, How’s school? and he would reply, OK.; or she might try him with, When did you first feel ill? and he would just shrug.

But Mary had the patience and curiosity to work on Mark that weekend. She had herself been successful in the business world and had been tough enough not to allow Patrick to break her heart. She had two children of her own from that broken marriage and was alert when it came to the needs and ways of teenagers. That weekend they did some sailing in Andrew’s launch and went out to the island she had heard about. While Andrew was checking his fishing equipment, Mary spent time with the thirteen-year-old and tried again to understand the reason for the school nurse sending that letter.

He was nothing like her own children. In those days, Richard, her oldest, had recently started university; Selena was involved with GCSEs. She could not recall these two ever being as timid as Andrew’s boy. But, in those days too, she thought she should get to know more about him.

She liked Mark’s father. She found Andrew attractive; she knew a lot about him through his friendship with Patrick. Andrew had been kind; he had helped her to deal with Patrick’s cheating; so now it had seemed right to get closer to this boy.

It had not taken her long. She did not struggle to shape ideas as Mark did.

Are you happy at school? she had asked him.

It’s all right.

I’d like us to be friends. If something were not OK, could you tell me? Or your dad?

Mark had kept his eyes averted; but she had not let him go so easily and soon asked how he got on with the other boys.

Some are all right, he told her.

Did he have good friends, she asked. Had he a best friend?

Out of nowhere, Mark told her he did not like Thursdays.

What’s wrong with Thursdays, Mark?

We have cabbage and I don’t like it.

Have you told them you don’t like it?

They make you…eat it. You have to…and…I don’t like it. She had seen him weakening even then and, though she had known there might be tears any minute, she had quickly realised that he might be able to confide in her things he would not tell his father. Indeed, that moment had been her chance. Her intuition made the next question very easy.

Is everything OK in the dorm?

He had shrugged.

Mark, is someone being horrid to you?

And then he had nodded.

Can you tell me?

He had shaken his head.

Tell me, she had found the most coaxing voice she could to help the boy provide the information he had only then said he could not give.

In the distance, Andrew Atkinson was fiddling with some tackle on his boat. Right alongside Mary, Mark Atkinson’s tears began to flow and, once Mary had released the dam, even she had been amazed by the on-rush of misery.

By the time Andrew had re-joined them, he was amazed at the sight of Mary, the mother having emerged from her, holding his son in her arms, turning the boy’s head into her breast, as he sobbed uncontrollably.

Later she would say to Andrew in the bedroom she shared with him at his old renovated cottage on the island, That child is being driven out of his mind by bullies at the school. Take him away from there immediately. Don’t even bother to ask the head whether he knows what is going on!

Mary was helped in her insistence on this plan by a friend known to both her and Andrew before their relationship had been formed—a friend of long-standing. This was Dick Ford whose career went back to the last decade of British rule in Africa where he had been a big-game hunter, a warden and a trader. Indeed, Dick was quite flattered by Mary’s seeing him as another Allan Quartermain. He had once been a finely built figure in the Errol Flynn mould, but in recent years that figure had run to seed, helped along, as in Flynn’s case, by excessive drinking.

Dick had joined them for a few days that weekend when she had first got to know Mark and had gone out fishing with Andrew. He had known Andrew at school and Mary wanted his support. Had she and Andrew done their sailing together without Mark, she sensed that Andrew would have said things like, Where did he come from? But Mark’s company affected the chemistry of their party and Andrew welcomed Dick. At the time, Dick spoke of his plans to go to Canada (he had never lost his love of travel) and Mary saw him as a messenger to take news to her son, Richard, who had been spending time there.

If the school’s anything like ours, she heard Dick tell Andrew, then the boy could be having a hell of a time. You and I were better designed to deal with all the beating and fagging if you ask me.

Young Mark liked Dick because he was the kind of adventurer whose story-telling seemed to have no limit. Ford, in turn, saw Mark as eccentric but likeable; he didn’t care if the lad was timid and harmless. The former game warden had become expert in relying on the kindness and hospitality of his friends and was quick to see that Mark would most likely be Andrew’s heir and that the boy was a friend worth having.

So determined had Mary been in her plan to have Mark moved to another school that she quickly enlisted Dick’s help in arranging for Mark to take a place at the co-ed school where Selena was a pupil. The surroundings were more civilised, the boy would not have to board and his life would be much happier. So it was that, in due course, Mark achieved grade A’s at A-level and went to university to take a joint honours degree in English and History.

For the three years that Selena Arnold spent at school with Mark, three years below her, Mary’s daughter was asked to keep an eye on Mark. The girl agreed to do so, but assured her mother on several occasions that the boy was a ‘weed’. Nor did Mary’s entreaties for tolerance help Mark since Selena also said, He’s one of those kids who somehow or other just ask to be bullied. You got the better deal, Mum.

By ‘deal’, Selena meant of course that Andrew Atkinson was the manlier character; Selena had also by that time come to like the idea of worldly riches and, just knowing her mother’s boyfriend was loaded, helped her accept him quickly.

Selena went off to university herself, met a wealthy American there, returned with him to Illinois and married him; but she never managed to lose touch with Mark Atkinson.

Mark meanwhile duly became an honours graduate, found a post in the civil service and privately continued with his own writing. He never forgot Mary’s kindness and understanding even when, some years later, she split with his father and travelled abroad, spending some time with her son, Richard. Mark wrote to her loyally and toiled away at his own writing when he was not at his office in the civil service. Mary, for her part, continued to see the boy in him even when he had entered manhood.

When Mary had finished visiting with Richard in Canada, she pressed on to the United States in the days when Selena was still resident there. One day, and this came about before she told Selena of her illness, Mary spoke openly of Mark Atkinson. It displeased Mary that Selena had continued to find little good in him. The conversation had taken place at the time when Selena was soon to split from her wealthy factory owner, Tony Delahaye.

Mother, she had said emphatically, there is something so sad about Mark and, I may as well be honest, I have never seen what you find to like in him.

I see much to like in him, Selena. For one thing, he’s gifted.

Not that again! All because he got a couple of stories published in a magazine!

Have you read them?

"As a matter of fact, I have! Don’t you remember, he was all for dedicating them to me!"

There will be worse than that inflicted on you, my dear.

I guess so; but, Mum, they are so…childish…so…there’s no reality in them!

Once again, we look to use different words. You say ‘childish’; I insist on ‘child-like.’ In any case, he has always admired you.

And what does that mean, Mother! I have a husband.

With whom you’ve quarrelled.

Admittedly. But I’m not yet ready to divorce him—in any case, what the hell! You can’t imagine I’d marry Mark. He’s growing fat and he’s going bald and he looks a boffin in those glasses. He might be younger than me and a baby, and yet he’s nothing more than a little old man.

What you call fat could well be muscle development—he’s a wonderful swimmer. In any case, Selena, I know it would never do for you to marry Mark!

I’m glad we agree!

You’d only ever make him unhappy.

Thanks a million! I do have feelings myself, you know. As a matter of fact, he did once propose to me!

This left Mary startled and she asked her daughter whether she were sure. Selena had laughed, pleased to have caught her mother on the back foot.

He proposed—and I refused.

I hope you weren’t cruel.

Your faith in me is overwhelming, Selena had sneered. The fact is that I told him exactly what you told me just a few minutes ago—that I couldn’t make him happy—that I was too much of a nag and a scold—that he was too young in his mind and that I did not love him. He then tried to say that didn’t matter, but I told him that it mattered more than all the other stuff put together.

In that case, you were cruel.

You are so much on Mark’s side it isn’t true! As I said, I have feelings too.

No one said you didn’t. As for Mark, I take it as a compliment that he wants to share his creative work with me.

Then be happy, Mother, since nothing I say is going to do any good. But Mark’s book is as childish as his short stories were.

Or child-like.

He writes fantasy—he lives in his own little world—it’s a way he has of protecting himself; and what’s worse, he’ll end up publishing it.

So what? What’s that to you?

He’ll publish it ’cos now he’s rich; it won’t be because it’s good.

He’s doing no harm, Selena.

Then let’s just drop the whole subject. We never agree. I think you’ve paid too much attention to Mark, Mum, when you’d have done better to have stayed with his father. Andrew would have given you anything. You should have married him!

And make your sort of marriage, Selena?

Oh, here we go! Surprise, surprise! A bad marriage doesn’t have to sit on me like a saddle forever, Mum. I’ll not go poor at any rate.

Mary, who hated this comment, had replied that she too would never be poor.

I know how to make money just as Andrew did.

Andrew must be a millionaire, Mother. Now Mark will get all his father’s money; he’ll not appreciate it.

This meeting had reminded Mary of the many other disagreements she had had with her daughter; but she was determined not to be overruled. She had broken with Andrew Atkinson because the closer she had known him, the less she had liked him; but she was relieved when he made it clear that he planned to leave the bulk of his considerable estate to his son—perhaps, Mary reasoned, Andrew’s conscience had finally caught up with him. He had neglected the boy but now he would at least help the man his son had become.

Mary had tried on various occasions to get Andrew to talk to her more of the boy’s mother, Judith, though he claimed to have loved her, but even Mark himself did not talk much of her. Mary reasoned that Mark had probably loved her so much that he could not speak of her loss and that this had led him to withdraw. Mary herself struggled to recall what little she knew of Judith; though she had known Andrew Atkinson in earlier years during the time of her own marriage to Patrick, Judith had remained one of those people in the background, mentioned but seldom present.

Mary also knew that Mark had known only one of his grandparents which was unusual for someone born in the twentieth century. The loss of his own mother, he felt, had hastened the death of his grandmother.

There was another member of Mark’s family Mary had met and liked. This was Mark’s cousin, Fay. She was the daughter of Andrew’s brother. Like Mark she had attended boarding school. She had been shipped off there when her parents went off to enjoy life working for a travel firm in Spain. Mary remembered forming her first impression of Fay at a family get-together at Andrew’s beautiful cottage in the Dales. It had helped to distract her from the bad news in the first report from the clinic.

Fay was tall and angular and highly intelligent. She had a serious manner and had what many would consider a plain face with a long nose while her spectacles only helped to make her seem aloof; and yet Mary had quickly learned that it was unwise to judge this girl on appearance. Though Fay never spoke of boyfriends during that visit in the Dales, she did show kindness to Mark and liked to discuss with him ideas for his stories. Mary was pleased to see these signs of friendship. She tried to ignore what Selena told her about Fay’s liking Richard, but she listened with sympathy to what Andrew told her about the early death of Fay’s sister, Catriona. As for Richie, she took this to be nothing more than Selena’s fondness for tattle—or mischief.

Mark would be in Mary’s thoughts again when she accepted that she must be the one to tell him that her growing illness was terminal. She did not want to tell Mark any more than she had wanted to tell her son and daughter, but she believed that Richard and Selena each had the necessary strength to deal with bereavement. Would Mark be strong too? What would he do when his father died? She knew about Andrew’s will because they had discussed it while they were still together and she had made it clear that Mark should be his heir.

Don’t you mean to leave him your property?

Andrew had not given her an immediate answer, but he told her a week or two later that he had listened to her and made everything watertight in Mark’s favour. This talk of wills had caused her to think of that long, lean solicitor—what was his name? Black? Gray—yes, Gray. Suitable name. She had only seen him once but he had looked the sort to make a document watertight.

As she neared the end, this business of death seemed too much of a mystery for Mary. She had attended church sporadically during her time with Andrew. He did not believe—never mind what he said in discussion—he didn’t believe…but the nearness to death found Mary wondering about it all again. She had forgiven Patrick for playing her false—she was quite sure she had forgiven him; but never mind Patrick. He was a boy himself in some ways—the way he thought of himself as still young—every second thought on his virility—he was a bit like that Italian prime minister in that respect. There was something quite shocking about Patrick’s collection of sex films—not because of the sex but because of what it said about him as a person.

Never mind Patrick—she had forgiven him. But what would Mark be like when his dad died? Would he cry about his father? Would he cry when Mary told him she had a journey to make? Yes, she knew he would shed tears for her. Mark was the most spiritual of them all. That was another reason why he got on with his cousin, Fay. They were both devout.

As Mary thought of him then, she realised that no matter how much he cried about her own death, it would always be Selena who caused him to cry most.

Because her conversation with Selena had proceeded so badly that day in Illinois, Mary made plans to fly home to the UK earlier than she had intended. The dying woman came to see that this trip had failed to distance her from an inevitable conclusion. She did not fret too much about the fact that she had never been as close to Selena as she could have wished; indeed there was some similarity between her own relationship with Selena and Andrew Atkinson’s with Mark.

Mary left Illinois without ever fully discussing her condition with Selena and yet she knew that Selena had understood there was little time left. She remained firm to another plan she had made and that was to tell neither Selena or Richard that she had given Mark a legacy in her will. She wanted no fuss from Selena but intended to write a letter for her daughter and son’s attention.

Mary did not know for certain when she left America that this would be the last time she would see Selena. She knew now that Selena would soon be divorced from her rich canned fruit and veg. magnate and that there would be none of the grandchildren she had hoped for. Once Selena’s divorce settlement had been completed, Mary knew that Selena would return to London, but there could be no certain date yet. One of Mary’s parting pieces of advice did not, for once, draw any riposte from Selena.

Whatever you think of Mark, Selena, he adores you and you should try to think well of him. After all, whatever inheritance he receives, he’s more likely to leave you all his money than anyone else.

She said nothing of her plan to hide her own treasure where only Mark would find it.

Chapter 2

Picture then Mark Atkinson a few years later on his way to make his final visit to see his father at the house in the Yorkshire Dales. It surprised him to think he had not seen the old place for a long time. Here it was standing in its own grounds; here were the wrought-iron gates and the gravel drive and the blackened stone walls with the spread of ivy as though nothing had ever changed. This was his mother’s favourite house. She and Andrew had bought it long ago as a hide-out from the pressures of life in London. Judith had been born and spent her early years in this area and a chance had come up through a business contact to secure this beautiful place.

The housekeeper had changed. The old lady he remembered from his boyhood had died two years ago and now there was a much younger couple who did all the cleaning and gardening and who lived in the village nearby.

Andrew Atkinson had spent time in hospital but he had hated it there. It had always been his contention that he would make a lousy patient wherever they put him, but this had never mattered very much since he had enjoyed robust health throughout his life. But once he realised there was no hope, Andrew had returned to the house Judith had loved, partly because she had given it the name Woodstock after a novel by Scott which had always been one of her favourites.

The housekeeper was there and told Mark that his father was sleeping. Mark was in no rush, having travelled from London. He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee and, when she had gone to make it, began inevitably to look about the old place. Still naturally diffident and unsure with strangers, he hardly met Jane’s eye. She was well turned-out that day knowing that he would inherit everything and decide on whether or not she would keep her job. She wore a jacket, blouse and skirt as though she were ready for an interview. Jane was thirty, had a fine, shapely figure and a carefully made-up face. Mark had never met her before. He did not think of her as a servant.

His mother Judith had loved the idea of the house’s being called Woodstock. Scott’s novel had always been special; she had told the young Mark (he still remembered) how thrilling she had thought the description of the old tower with its secret light and its history of the royal lovers’ trysting place.

There was no tower in the Atkinsons’ Woodstock. Mark had always thought it very quiet. He had never liked the grandfather clock in the hall no matter how old and valuable it might be; and here it still stood, knocking out the hours with that nasty old tick he disliked.

Here too was the old hallway mirror with its unrelenting reflection which Mark had always thought made people somehow fatter than they really were. Now thirty years old, Mark did not need the mirror to tell him he was overweight. His life had been a roller-coaster of ups and downs with rare but precious moments of belief in himself. The worst time had already happened; that was when Selena had told him she neither loved him nor would ever marry him. He had concealed the cascade of tears from her and tried to find consolation, when he heard of her marriage to Tony Delahaye, by thinking that, in far-off Illinois, Selena could be Mrs Delahaye out of his view.

…Now, here in the mirror, he saw the thick, dark-rimmed spectacles and the bald head and wondered to see how old he looked. How much better it would be were he to return to the mountain forests of the story he was writing. This tale had occupied him in some way or another for half his life—better to go there now and be safe from these memories surrounding him in dark oak furniture inherited from some Victorian ancestor.

His mother had always liked Scott’s novels. Mark left the hallway and entered the dining room where her bookshelves had been left untouched since her death twenty years before. Judith’s copies of The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and the others were all still here—leather-bound nineteenth century editions kept behind the elderly, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling cabinets.

Mark found the door of the first cabinet had a key in place. He opened it and reached for Woodstock. He had read this and some of the other novels because she had been fond of them; but even this tale of Cavaliers and Roundheads had never been a true favourite. In the fly leaf someone had written—‘To Judith, with love from Auntie Louisa.’

Mark admired the fine paper, scarce touched after a century, and the binding was beautiful…and he liked the illustrations by Lunt…

The name of ‘Judith’ inscribed there was not, he knew, his own mother, but his grandmother, an earlier Judith. It was more usual, his mother had once told him, for boys to be named after their fathers than it was for girls to receive the same name as their mothers; but in her case such had been the arrangement.

Judith Atkinson…departed this life…a loving wife and mother…

As he looked at this old favourite story, Mark saw her again lying in her coffin that day.

Would you like to see her?

…and no one had been there to help him…and there she had lain—looking surprisingly untouched by illness—with that serene expression—but very pale…

He had thought of her like that many times after and wondered whether he should have remembered her better had he never looked at her lying in the coffin. He had known nothing of the undertaker’s skill to make the dead as they had been in life; he had learned about the existence of that later and he blamed it for the image of quiet serenity he had never been able to shift entirely from his thoughts, to replace it with a view of her smile and that kind voice and the comfort that always came by just being with her.

Mark replaced the book and brushed away a tear. He could remember nothing of ‘Auntie Louisa’. What had become of her? Had his mother told him very much about her?

He looked about him to see if her photograph stood on one of the cases or on the sideboard. Never mind the old auntie, where was his mother’s photograph? Her photo should have been everywhere here. What did it say of the father he had come to see that there were no family pictures in this room where her books had been preserved?

Whoever Auntie Louisa was, she had written a message in the novel for his grandmother and his mother had then become its keeper. But the importance of this was not as great as the absence of family pictures in the library. His mother liked to have pictures on display.

Mark crossed the room past the elegant dining table with its six chairs and went unfailingly to a sideboard where the photo albums had once been stored. Would they still be there?

It was a relief to this man, so troubled by memories, that the albums were there but it caused disquiet to think of how they might remind him of the past.

Had his father looked here recently…last year?…longer?…and had the old pictures been left to forgetfulness?

If he means to leave me the house, thought Mark, I shall have photographs put on every available space…

He had been scarcely ten when she had died. No one had expected it—this speaker and that at the funeral had said so while praising her kind-heartedness and her gentle nature.

Here she was as a young woman sitting for a portrait—still with a girlish figure; here she was with his grandparents as a child, she and her sister who had emigrated to Australia.

Mark remembered the first school holiday that Christmas time—that first holiday home from boarding. She was no longer there so he had to ask his father instead not to send him back; but his father had told him that he must make a business trip to Hong Kong…it had already seemed to the boy to be an eternity, that time between the funeral and the Christmas holiday.

Simon Joseph had boarded in those days, a little dark-haired lad—Mark’s best friend in those long-gone days—Simon had been a true friend—and he too had missed home since his own father was ill and undergoing treatment…and then, somewhere in the new year—Mark could not remember exactly when—Joseph’s father had died and they had withdrawn his friend from the school. What Mark remembered most from that time was how he had been expected to go on.

He stayed with his grandmother, Judith’s mother, for the school holiday and he had made some protest to her. But she had told him that it would be hard for her now that Grandad had gone and that, in any case, Mark’s father was in Hong Kong and his poor mother would have hoped for him to go on at St Stephen’s prep school—and, then again, Mark was not to know that his friend Simon Joseph was soon to be withdrawn and return to Scotland.

Here was his mother with him in this photo taken at the seaside—they had buckets and spades and a sandcastle to show for their efforts; but what he truly remembered was the crab they had caught, though his mother had said they could only keep it long enough to inspect it, for it was cruel to keep them out of sea water; they were bound to die; they needed water that was always moving—needed to be free.

He used to have a dog—and a guinea-pig…his mother liked them too. The dog was an old retriever called Dan; they had got him as a puppy when Mark was a toddler and the dog was old in this next photo; here was the old boy—look at the dog’s grizzled face—as he plodded along with them by the canal. Dick Ford, their friend with the East African background, had been with them at the time; there he was in a slimmed-down version of himself—and he had liked both Dick and this old dog.

Here was a photo of his other grandparents though they had both died before his third birthday and he had never got to know them properly. His mother had told him how his grandad had once given him a pound note and warned him against wasting it. As he looked at this old black and white image, Mark could easily see the signs of Grandad’s ill-health. He had died long before his seventieth birthday. Mark had always believed in people having a right to their three score years and ten; but not only had his grandfather died in his early sixties, it was now clear that Andrew, lying upstairs, would soon be gone too. Mark did not wonder then about his own life ending prematurely.

They were all gone now, these grandparents. He had better stop looking at these snapshots. The images were no doubt good and true though the days were gone when you waited a day or two for your pictures to be developed.

Mark tried to remember other Christmas times and other holidays when his mother had still been with him.

She had always insisted that he attend Sunday school—he still had the Bible awarded for good attendance; he still had the scripture stamps they had given you each week.

His father had not pressed him to attend church, but you had to attend at school with its Anglican foundation.

Mary’s son had become a minister somewhere out in Canada. He asked her why Richard should go to Canada when there were plenty of churches in Britain.

He thought of Mary again as he went through the pictures. He knew that it was thanks to her more than to anyone that they had found him a new school.

He returned the photos to their place. He had a photo of Mary he kept with him anyway and one of his mother. The memories were tiring him. He didn’t like it in the library room any more. As though she had understood this, the housekeeper, Jane, suddenly appeared with his coffee. It was a warm day and he asked could he drink it in the conservatory. Jane noticed that he asked instead of telling her.

His mother had liked the conservatory, but Mark was startled to find no plants there now—just a clean, tidy tiled floor and a few wicker chairs and a table. It was warm and continually quiet.

Jane looked young for a housekeeper; she was probably younger than Mark himself. He thought she had a serious face and yet supposed that some might think her pretty. She had well-shaped dark hair.

He’s still asleep, sir, she said. Would you like me to wake him?

No, no, I’ll just have my coffee.

She left him. He looked through the conservatory glass out on the garden bathed in sunshine. The photographs were still in his thoughts. He thought of another of them now, this time it was one of his father as a young man just setting off for the city, already bald-headed as he was himself, but not cursed, as Mark had been, with short-sightedness.

How bad that had been! More tears over not being able to see properly—more need for his mother to comfort him when he could not see the board, and then the fear of having to wear spectacles and then feeling better because he could take them off again once the lesson had finished—feeling better because he would not have to wear them in the playground.

Sitting in the conservatory with his coffee, Mark Atkinson tried to think about his story, the tale that had occupied him so long—the tale that had perhaps first come to him in his sleep.

When he had last worked on it the day before this visit, Mark had been struggling to explain in this, his magnum opus, the significance of a giant wolf in the far off valley in the world he had created. The idea of this land of long ago and far away had first come to him, he liked to think, as a boy of fourteen. The truth was that he could not say for sure exactly when the first ideas had begun to take shape, but he liked to believe that the creative force had helped to save him just as the nightmare presence of Geoffrey Taylor and his henchman Peter Bloude had threatened to destroy him. These two archetypal bullies had appeared in St Stephen’s when Mark had reached the age of thirteen, but their true powers of menace had made fullest impact when they had been put in the same dorm as Mark Atkinson.

As he drank his coffee in the conservatory, he thought of them once more and their monstrous shadow settled on him as though he had only seen them the day before—as though he would have to go to bed that very night knowing no prayers could summon the Saviour to protect him…

Enough, it was over now; he had been saved and moved to another school; he could not be fourteen again; enough…but his hand could still shake and set the cup and saucer rattling.

He had sensed those two were wicked from the things they had done in the classroom. They had a predator’s sense for identifying the weak. One early sign had been when the teacher had been late for a French lesson and Mark had been reading through some notes he had to do for a test; and he had sensed a movement close at hand and yet not turned or reacted. The next moment a punch was delivered into his back at short range, a blow so hard that it had made him sick inside—and then the close proximity of Taylor’s face and smell: If you do that again, you little twat, I’ll kick your fuckin’ head off…

Someone had set him up of course; someone had planted Taylor’s bag near his chair. The worst had not been the punch, but the knowledge that turning and doing nothing would not keep them away and guard Mark himself against future violence. Peter Bloude, a big, hulking second-row forward, had come over to Mark in the yard and told him he did not like people making trouble for his friends; and yet Mark had said not a word to a teacher or prefect in keeping with boys’ etiquette.

But somewhere after that the real torment had begun; that night in the dorm, they had put a spider in his bed. There were other dorms, but Mark did not question why they had put these two tormentors in his dorm, for his teachers had seemed to him to be old men nursing some private grudge of their own against children who were letting standards at St Stephen’s fall away…

Enough…shake the mind free of this…

Mark saw the empty coffee cup in his hands and could not remember how it came to be there, broken on the floor. At school, there used to be punishments for breaking anything—and so he was careful now to put the broken pieces on the table.

He had wanted more than anything for there to be a safe haven—a sanctuary—and perhaps it was this need for a sanctuary that had helped him imagine a group of people, almost like monks, secluded from the perils of the world by their home in Winding Stair Mountain—‘winding stair’ because there was just such a stair he had seen on the top floor of the main teaching block and it had captured his imagination and made him want to know about it.

There had been in those days a cleaning lady who had looked after that second floor landing. She had sometimes talked to some of the boys in his year though he had got the feeling that she did not like him…but there was a mystery about that stair that left him wanting to know more…

The sanctuary stair dwindled and became the conservatory and Mark thought that, if his father would allow it, then Mark himself would ask for the real sanctuary which he had first seen when he was only nine—the last time his mother had been there to share it with him. Yes, he now convinced himself, that it was surely then, as long ago as that, he had first thought of it as the safest place. So he must ask.

What would his father say? If it was his plan to leave Mark his money but not the sanctuary, then perhaps Mark could persuade him to give the sanctuary to his son and not worry about the money at all.

The day before Mark had set out on his mission, Selena had phoned him.

Don’t be a fool, she had said in her strict voice. He’s your father when all’s said and done. I’ve seen him and said all I want to but if he asks for me, I’ll follow you up there. But it’s better if you have some time with him by yourself. Let him know he has a duty to you! God knows, he’s failed you in times gone by, Mark, even if we only believe half of what my mother has told me.

Mark had listened to Selena without making any stir of his own. Selena had always had a hold on him, from before his merciful deliverance from St Stephen’s to King Edward’s where she had been three years ahead of him. In this instance it did not truly matter what she had said, for he did not suppose he had any influence over his father and expected that he must go on working in the tax office until his book was published.

As he sat waiting in the conservatory, Mark was in no hurry to see his father. He had driven north that morning and arrived at Woodstock House in the early afternoon of a sunny day. His father had written to him to come. When he told Selena about this event on the phone, she had attached great importance to it; but Mark knew he would never be close to his father. However, he had taken a few days’ leave to which he was entitled and he had planned to stop at the house; though, had he needed, he would have accepted B and B. He contacted Selena instinctively. She was staggered to hear about a B and B option.

You are truly mad! The house will soon be yours! Andrew can’t possibly imagine you’d stay anywhere else, and on no account, Mark, let any of the people he’s hired start telling you what to do!

Though Selena had always complained to her mother about the promise Mary had once extracted from her to ‘keep an eye’ on Mark when he moved to King Edward’s, the truth was that she often behaved as though she were there to protect his interests.

Mark never tried to argue with Selena Delahaye. She had already told him, with her sternest disapproval, that her mother should never have left him money in her will.

It’s not just that, Mark, think of the amount! And for what? Because you got her to feel sorry for you!

I’ll give you the money back immediately, Mark had replied in that non-attritional way he had which always succeeded in making her even more angry.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, why should I care! If she meant you to have it, then you’d better keep it! Only don’t waste it!

I won’t, Selena.

Don’t give me that! You know what I mean! Don’t start paying out a fortune to publish the nonsense you spend your time writing!

When she had said this, Mark had made no answer on the phone. At the time she called he had not seen her for three weeks. He hated it when she was angry with him, but she had been little else since Mary had left him the money. He had followed Mary’s own instructions to say nothing to Selena who had been left to read the will for herself. He had promised Mary to say nothing about this legacy and so could not, to be honourable, tell Selena about the promise elicited from him.

You must under no circumstances tell her about the treasure either, Mark. Please keep faith with me in this; my spirit will not rest properly otherwise.

Mary had chosen her own time to actually tell Selena of the cancer that was killing her. As though this were a trigger, Selena’s divorce from her faithless but immensely rich husband, Tony Delahaye, was finalised and Selena had returned to London where she had lived since.

This time Mark heard his father’s housekeeper coming even though, as her footsteps drew close, he was thinking of the letter with its secret that Mary had left with him—a secret he had kept even from Selena.

They had inevitably to pass through the hallway to go up to his father’s room and Mark saw himself in that unforgiving mirror once more; while Jane looked presentable and attractive, the self-consciousness of a lifetime rose out of the glass to mock him.

As he climbed the stair following Jane, he thought that the old oak panelling from the original building of the house might be very fine and antique and decorative, but it did nothing to cheer the location.

Jane, consistently proper and the sort of woman his father would call appealing, ushered him into the dying man’s bedroom. Mark had not been in Andrew’s room for at least half a lifetime. Even the school holidays had presented him with no occasion to enter here; once it had ceased to be his mother’s room, he had lost any wish to cross its threshold.

Chapter 3

It surprised Mark to see his father sitting up in bed; he had assumed the sick man would be in his chair for this conversation. He had spoken to his father three times in the last seven months; he had not seen him for nearly a year; then he had read the letter. It was a shock to see the cadaverous head slumped back on a bank of pillows. Mary had always spoken of Andrew as an attractive man. He had never been short-sighted like Mark, but now Andrew’s cheeks were sunken, his eyes rimmed in a ghostly way and his bald head made him seem older than ever Mark could remember.

When he had been at St Stephen’s, Mark had often longed for his father to write to him, but no letter had ever come. As the years had passed, Mark had realised that his father’s career had been strengthened with numbers and that he had little use for the written word. His first letter to his son for many a long day had said:

Things are looking bleak for me. I should have looked after you better, but please come.

So there you are, said Andrew. I’m glad you were able to come, Mark.

His voice was quiet and feeble but it sounded to Mark like Andrew Atkinson.

This is so stupid, his father went on. I’ve always been a useless patient. No time for illness. I should have realised how lucky I’ve been to have good health until now. What’s the use? The sooner it’s over with, the better.

Mark had come into the room as far as the edge of the bed, as though he were still being ushered in. It had no more occurred to him to approach any further than it had to tell Jane, fine figure and all, that he was master here now and he would give the orders.

But Jane had gone and this had left him with his father. Even then, he only got a chair and sat closer to the bed when Andrew told him to.

You can’t catch anything, Andrew said grimly. Tell me, has that lawyer got here?

When Mark told his father that he had seen no one but Jane, Andrew told him that it was of no importance.

His name is Gray. He can be an imbecile, though he claims to know what he’s doing. Get him to tell you what’s in the will. You’ll do well enough out of it, Mark. It’s more about you than anyone else. I hope it will make up to you for—let’s say my failings.

But, Dad—

Now don’t start! I can’t do with a lot of blubbing and such. Your mother, bless her, said I ought to have been more loving.

Dad, you are the reason—

And don’t start being all Christian and forgiving on me when we both know I’ve been useless to you. Your mother and then Mary tried to tell me, you know.

Tell you—

That I’d regret it if I didn’t do more for you, and do you know what I said? I said, ‘I’m not clear what more I can do.’ Even when she told me how bad it was at that school, I took some persuading. You see, I’d heard the school was good. Thing is, Mark, you have got to stand up for yourself more; life’s not fair…and…the truth is you’ve never been much good at doing it. There it is. It may as well be said.

Mark usually did not reply to criticism of this kind, but his father did not wait for any reply.

Fact is, I’d hoped you’d go into the firm, but I’m sure you know that. History and story-writing may suit you, but they don’t mean much to me.

When Andrew fell silent, he did not look at Mark; he simply lay there with his eyes fixed before him. Mark was sitting at the bedside but was unsure of what he might say that could do any good. Neither of them spoke for the next two minutes. Mark by then had decided that his father had nothing more to say to him. He did not like to look at his father because the pain in Andrew’s face was only too clear as he struggled to summon whatever strength he had left.

You’ll manage, he said suddenly, his voice increasingly listless. You always seem to manage. It’s what Dick says too and you like him. I wonder what you’ll do with the money. You’re…a…mystery. There’s a sizeable sum, you know.

Dad, I wondered…I meant to ask…

What is it? Ask what? You must try to be more confident. No wonder you found it tough at school.

I wondered—whether I might have the sanctuary.

I wondered too, Mark—about what you’d done at my old school. It was all beating and fagging for me and Dick, too, you know, just as he said that time…

The sanctuary, Dad; is it to be mine?

There were a few agonised seconds now that they had reached the point Mark was most concerned about (it might have been the only thing he was concerned about) when it seemed that his father had chosen not to hear him. His father could be like that—there was that time of the first Christmas holiday without his mother when he had feared his father might leave him at the school just as Scrooge had been left. The only time the Dickens’ story had been mentioned between them, Andrew had told his son that he need not fear being like Scrooge since Mark showed not the slightest inclination for business.

Look at me, Mark, Andrew said in the same subdued voice. I’m a wreck and yet you still want to make mysteries for me. Did you say ‘sanctuary’?

The sanctuary, Dad. I’d be so pleased—so grateful.

Since I’m trying to make some amends here even though I don’t know what we are talking about, tell me what is this place? Where is it?

Back at St Stephen’s, there had been that winding stair where the cleaner had been working. Mark had not dared press this woman too much about what might be at the top of the stair; but it had occurred to him all those years ago that it might offer a hiding place from his tormentors.

He and his boyhood friend, Simon Joseph, could have explored it together, but by then Mark had steeled himself to take on the expedition up that winding stair alone.

He had finally travelled that way for the first time two days after he had seen the cleaner busy there…a cleaner like the old lady at Woodstock who had once helped his mother—not one like Jane…when no one was looking…when all the others were in the TV room during the relaxation hour…he had crept on tiptoe up this winding stair mountain of the film story he had enjoyed…

…but the stair, after turning on itself, had not taken him far and brought him quickly to a door. Perhaps this was far enough for a timid boy, but, had he described it in a story, he would have made it wind further…he did not know that one day there would be another door with its own secret.

The twelve-year-old Mark had placed his ear close to the door, listening for the slightest sound to tell him whether anyone was within.

But there had been no sound, indeed the silence up there had frightened him and made it harder to turn the door handle…

He remembered the adventure well enough. He had turned the handle and found it…locked?

Actually, it had opened immediately; the latch was weak and the mystery room had been filled with two buckets, some mops and dusters, a large hoover, a roll of bin liners—plastic containers full of cleaning fluid…

But there had been space for a small boy to see the ventilator high up on the wall and for him to notice where the light switch was positioned—just in case he had to run there when he needed a sanctuary.

It was difficult for Andrew that day at Woodstock House. It had done him no good at all in the hospital and he had made his decision to come here. It had been hard enough to receive the doctor’s report just as he had reached retirement; but it was worse than that. He was an intelligent man. Everyone had said he had done well as a merchant banker, but what had he done with his life? After Judith, who had always managed to make him feel guilty, there had been that brief business with Emily, then there had been Mary and yet he had failed them all in some way or another. There he was slumped down on his death bed having discovered that his life had been unfulfilled after all. Mark had disappointed him so much that the sudden remorse that had driven Andrew to make a new will had been a false prompting after all. He might have left it all to Claire, the last of his companions, had he not discovered she was cheating on him.

He had been angry about breaking up with Mary though. She had kept in touch but made it clear that she didn’t want him as a lover. What an attitude! The best of it was that she still expected to be able to moralise to him. Small wonder that Patrick had grown tired of her!

Mum liked it too; she said so.

Mark was somehow still there. How annoying his son had always been—and still was. Andrew was inclined to think that Mark had been easier as a boy; for here he was, thirty years old or whatever it was and more a child than ever.

Damn Mary! She had been one of those people you felt you had to tell stuff to—and she had made him so fond of her…

It must have been hard for him, Andrew—to lose his mother so soon. He was only ten.

Eleven actually.

Are you sure? But does that matter? Eleven then. Why did you have to send him straight off to St Stephen’s? Didn’t you want him at home?

And he had told Mary that he had done what he felt a father should do by sending his son to get a good education.

He needed your protection, Andrew.

She had made him wince by saying such things. She had told him it must have made it harder for Mark being an only child. She could be so annoying—pecking away.

Not guilty there, Mary, he had told her with annoyance. I nearly lost Judith when she was having Mark. We talked about it and decided, a joint decision, not to ask her to take any risks by having another.

He had not wanted to be tormented in this way.

"Whatever I think or say now, Mary, I can’t go back and do it differently. You are right to think Judith was a good influence—a good person—don’t you think I