The key was missing. The weathered oak door stared back- heavy, immutable, semi fossilised, rusty studded nails and iron bands swirling like slake-steam. 'Dragon-shaped' he thought.......
Tovey kneeled on the mossy paving and put his eye to the keyhole. nothing. No sound. Just the blackness beyond. Where was the key??
"John?? John! Look will you stop pottering around out there and come and help me with this mess . There's enough fat above this cooker to fry bacon on the ceiling!"
"Ok Sue, I'll be in in a minute." Tovey surveyed the mysterious door once again, got to his feet and shrugged. 'funny!' he murmured to himself as he shuffled across the yard to the house 'we have all the other keys'.
Butterkeld had been Tovey's destiny. Leastways it had seemed so at the time. Holidaying in the Dales, Tovey (out of curiosity) had decided to cycle westwards into the Bowland Fells, that wild & lonely expanse of forest and moorlands which lies twixt Clitheroe and Lancaster. It had been love at first sight- no tourists, lonely, aloof, even slightly forbidding. The Bowlands had seemed as private as the Dales were public. He had been staying at an inn in a Bowland village, and had, on this particular June evening, decided on a brief cycle jaunt around the local lanes. Caught up in his own reverie, he had missed an elusive road junction on the edge of the moor, and had suddenly found himself plunging down a rough track leading into a small wooded dell. Bouncing around a bend in the track, Tovey had come upon Butterkeld, derelict and semi ruinous, perched upon a low crag beside a cascading beck. The sun slanted down through the trees, glinting on the frothy babbling rivulet, pipistrelles swarmed and swooped around the crumbling chimneys, and, lying on a grassy bank, his feet trailing in the cool water, Tovey's enchantment had been total and complete.
The rest had seemed somehow inevitable. Enquiries had been made, an estate agent contacted, a deal drawn up, the building contractors had moved in, and now, a year later, here he was- John Tovey, the new owner of Butterkeld, the first resident owner for some time.
Susan, 'the little woman' had not been impressed by her husband's sudden desire to become a country squire. Her roots lay in the suburbs of Greater Manchester. A lover of parties, gatherings of friends, social evenings, to Susan Butterkeld was some kind of Siberian exile. Still, she thought ... at least Tovey was happy, that at least was something to give thanks for..... for once in his life ambitious, restless, brooding Tovey was actually happy with something. That at least made her self-imposed isolation worthwhile. But would it last?? Susan knew only too well her husband's impulsively enthusiastic nature. Tomorrow they might be emigrating to Canada!
Lunch had been basic- bacon and eggs and tinned tomatoes. No chinese takeaways here! Culinary excellence had never been Susan's strong point. Tovey, (as in all things!) seemed to possess the necessary 'genius', and whenever she prepared anything she always felt somehow inferior. Tovey usually made the evening meal- invariably a 'tour de force'. It made her feel superfluous, unnecessary - and angry inside.
Lunch over, Tovey now was hard at work in what had once been the front garden, felling row upon row of rank, sweating butterbur and Himalayan Balsam, the petrol driven strimmer buzzing like some demented wasp! He was stripped to the waist, the sweat glistening on his back as he laboured beneath the relentless noon sun. Susan smirked to herself as she looked through the kitchen window- the Viet Cong had finally come to Lancashire!
Half an hour later, Tovey had divested the garden of most of its jungle infrastructure, and was stacking the vegetation into a massive funeral pyre. Rotten, moss covered cold frames, borders of paths and the remains of a rockery had now begun to appear.
"Tea up!" Tovey wiped his brow, killed the strimmer and walked towards the house.
Butterkeld was not a grand place. It was, essentially a traditional Bowland farmhouse with mullioned windows. On one side of the house was the farm road, above the stream, and on the other a ruined barn, with gaunt rafters exposed to the sky. At the back of the house a paved yard led across to a range of outbuildings built up against a low crag. The central (and most prominent) of these being the one for which Tovey could not find the key. The house though humble, nevertheless had some unusual features, not the least of which were two rude stone heads on the gable ends and a massive holed stone hanging on an iron stemple beside the front door. 'Protection against witches' the estate agent had informed them.
To either side of the front door stood stone columns with ball finials and above it a datestone with the initials E 1649 C flanked by rudely carved circles of concentric rings. Beneath the whole device a single word- 'Resurgam'. Presumably the family motto of the builder. Tovey was intrigued by this and had resolved to get around to studying the history of the house at the first available opportunity, probably next month, when the editorial work was slack. For years he had struggled through a succession of mindless jobs, struggling to attain the freedom of being his own boss. In the end he had won through, and now, as long as he had access to a phone and a postbox he could live where he liked- and 'where he liked' was here in the country.
It began when Tovey cleared the garden. It began with that cup of tea. Pint mug in hand, he had been pacing around the kitchen pontificating on the injustices of the poll tax when he suddenly stopped in mid sentence. Susan looked up from her knitting, she hadn't been listening to a word, and was startled by this abrupt cessation of her husband's interminably pompous political ravings.
"You alright John? What's the matter?"
Tovey was standing with his back to her, craning his head from side to side and staring out of the window. He turned to her, a puzzled look on his face.
"Thats odd. I thought I saw someone in the garden over by the rockery. I just saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, like a flash of the sun reflecting on something white, but when I looked out...well there's no-one there now."
Susan came over to the window and put her arm around her husband. She looked out. Something was glinting on the path.
"Its the strimmer, the sun's reflecting on the handle. John...it wont ignite the petrol will it?"
Tovey smiled, it was his patronising smile.
"I doubt it. I'll go out and bring it in in a minute".
He drank the rest of his tea- bemused. Susan smiled to herself as she resumed her knitting. At least it had got Thatcher off the agenda.
When Tovey finally returned to the garden a shock awaited him. Earlier he had left the spade by a weed choked flowerbed in the corner of the garden with the intention of starting work there when he had done with strimmer. It was still there, but its position seemed different somehow. Then, as he reached out to pick it up, the full realisation of what it was hit him with an almost electric jolt..The flowerbed had been dug over!
Tovey froze. Tovey... logical minded, intellectually arrogant Tovey was perplexed, his natural confidence shaken and disturbed by this simple undeniable fact. The flowerbed had been dug over. It was Tovey's spade, in Tovey's garden...he must have dug it over himself, but why could he not remember? And why was his heart beating and his pulse racing? For the first time in his life his impeccable self assurance had fled. He knew he had not dug the garden- but yet the evidence of his own eyes said otherwise. Confused and feeling slightly dizzy he grasped the spade and carried it over to the strimmer. The sun was slanting through the trees and midges were swarming over the stream below. Birds were twittering in the branches, and the wood seemed alive with the humming of insects. Strange, he hadn't really noticed the hum before, but yet he felt that it had always been there and always would be..it was like wood, stream, house and landscape possessed a single identity of their own. He thought of the newly dug patch again, and then deciding that he didn't really want to think about it, flicked the choke and pulled on the cord. The petrol driven wasp burst into life, and his rationality buoyed up and reassured by the presence of this 2 stroke ghetto blaster he renewed his assault on the hostile undergrowth with a fierce relish. Reorientated, Tovey was back in control and all was well with the world.
It was 2 am and Tovey couldn't sleep. It was that bloody garden on his mind. He hadn't mentioned the incident to Susan, she would think he was going loopy, and he couldn't have that...it would undermine his authority. It was a warm night - too warm. He had gone to bed naked and had progressively thrown off half the blankets in his fitful doze. Then, suddenly, just as the welcome maw of deep slumber was almost upon him he had jerked awake with a start, cold fear clutching at his breast. It was no nightmare, he had simply opened his eyes to total darkness, and feeling totally disorientated, had panicked! his wild cry had wakened his wife, but she had soon gone back to sleep.
Now Tovey cursed himself for his childishness. Back in Manchester he had been used to the nocturnal glow of street lamps, to the sounds of drunken revellers passing his window in the small hours. Here at Butterkeld, the silence and the silken blackness were total and absolute. It occured to him why the local farmers didn't bother much with curtains... after all privacy was the least of their considerations.
It was no good lying here, sweating and fidgeting he reasoned. He would get up and take a nice refreshing shower. Picking up the torch that lay beside the bed, Tovey crept out onto the landing and groped his way around to the bathroom. Switching on the light, he pulled back the plastic curtain and got into the shower. He turned the on the tap, and within minutes had the hot water running in rivulets down his back. 'Aah! thats lovely'... he murmered to himself, 'nothing like a nice warm...oh Hell!'
The shower had suddenly run cold, icy cold. 'that's odd' he thought, 'the central heating system must be on the blink'. He turned off the shower, and began to towel himself down.
The living room was in darkness when Tovey, now wearing a bathrobe, opened the door. A faint green glow dimly illuminated one corner of the room- the light from the video clock. Groping, he turned on the standlamp and headed towards the tall cupboard beside the fireplace, intent on examining the central heating boiler. Half way across the room he stopped.
Someone was moving about in the yard outside. He could hear footsteps and the sound of laughter. Back home in Rochdale he would have shrugged it off... but here... he looked at the video. What drunken revellers could possibly be hanging around Butterkeld at three in the morning!? Tovey froze. Suddenly he felt frightened. He hurried to the kitchen and took the torch from its charging bracket, his heart thudding in his breast as he headed towards the back door. Plucking up all his courage he drew the bolts and flung the door open.
A warm breeze caressed Tovey's forehead. Framed by the trees a powdery sprinkling of distant stars illuminated the yard in a gentle, shadowy glow. Tovey listened. An owl was hooting in the nearby wood, and he could hear the gentle babbling from the nearby stream. He called out in a low voice- "Hello- who's there?" His only reply came from the owl and the sigh of the rustling treetops, gently animated by the night breeze. Tovey shone his torch around the yard. There were no nocturnal revellers, just the tranquillity of a summers night and the flicker of breeze blown shadows on old stones.........
