Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘Well, Gloria, old fellow, you’ve done me proud today,’ I said. Of course, the evening was drawing in, so I could not see his features all that well, but I could have sworn that, as I spoke, the Celtic warrior winked at me and grinned.

3

Beeches Lawn

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It had been agreed that McMaster would send a complete set of brochures to my home address so that I could be armed and well-prepared, so to speak, for my mission. I decided to accept his tip of lumping some of the hotels together, as it was unlikely that tourists who had spent a week or a fortnight in, for instance, Norfolk, would then go and stay in Suffolk, or that those who had stayed at one of his hotels in Yorkshire would then go and spend time and money in the other.

When I had prepared my way by making notes and studying guidebooks, the month of May was almost at its end, but careful planning convinced me that, with any luck, I could finish the job by the end of October at the latest. I decided to start with Yorkshire, work southwards to Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and Sussex, then take in Worcestershire and Herefordshire and finish up with Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

The whole thing took even less time than I had allowed. Some of the brochures needed little alteration, although I made fresh road-plans where there were alternative or new routes, referring for these to the very latest motoring atlas, and I took great trouble to select and photograph what I thought would be an attractive frontispiece for each little book.

I enjoyed the work, was fairly lucky with the weather and by mid-September I was able to send in most of the amended brochures. The hotels at which I had been staying were all much of a muchness, however, in spite of their comfort and luxury, and, after more than three months of them, I was very pleased to receive an invitation to stay for a week with my old friend Anthony Wotton at his ancestral home in the Cotswolds. As for the red-and-black-haired, skeletal Gloria, I had forgotten all about her.

‘I have told Celia about you and she has read one of your novels and is looking forward to meeting you,’ wrote Anthony.

He had been a bachelor when I had heard from him last. I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that Celia was his wife. I could not imagine him married. However, I need have had no qualms on Anthony’s behalf. Celia was a charming woman of about his own age and she made me welcome as though she was sincerely pleased to see me.

‘I don’t know why you haven’t been here before,’ she said. I explained that I had often visited Anthony at his London flat before old Mr Wotton died and his son inherited the estate, but had never been invited to Beeches Lawn before.

‘No, his father and Anthony didn’t get on,’ she said when she was showing me the room I was to have. ‘Anthony thought he might will this place away from him, but he didn’t, and I think they were reconciled towards the end. Fortunately’ — she smiled — ‘the old gentleman took to me and approved of the marriage.’

‘He could hardly help it,’ I said, looking appreciatively at her. She laughed, told me when to come down for cocktails and left me to unpack, bathe and change. I went to the window, a deep bay which gave good views of the garden and the hills, and looked out. I have always loved the Cotswolds ever since, as a boy, I used to stay with a gamekeeper at Nescomb and learnt country lore from him. He was a wonderful naturalist and could recognise every wild plant that grew. He showed me where the badgers had made their sett under a bank in the woods and where the various birds built their nests. He showed me where there was a fox’s den and where to see the now almost extinct red squirrels before those tree-rats, the grey squirrels, took over. He taught me how to shoot, how to recognise every tree in the woods which surrounded his cottage, how to stack wood for the Cotswold winter, how to cook over a wood fire, and how to make cunning flies for fishing by using the feathers of jays. He showed me a green woodpecker, taught me how to handle ferrets and took me to see a grave he revered. It was not in the churchyard, where he himself is buried, but by the side of a woodland ride along which the young owner of the place, before it was sold to become a public school, loved to ride his horse and where he had asked to be laid so that he could dream he was riding there again. The gamekeeper’s name was Will Smith and he lived in a stone-built cottage about a mile from the village. I think I liked him better than any man I have ever known.