Ferney Read Free Page A

all these past weekends. That thought overcame his scruples about trespassing, but once indoors he soon found the house was not on his side in the matter. Under the vegetation, the roof
was obviously still good. It still felt like a house. She stopped in front of him, seemed about to speak, but then moved on. They were in a passage that ran the length of the building, filled with
green ivy half-light. Four large rooms opened off it in a line. There were stone flags on the floor in the first three, covered by decaying domestic jetsam – tiles, yellowing magazines and a
discarded boiler, red with rust. Below each window there was an arc of damp on the stones, very clearly defined, where the house had said, ‘Stop, that’s far enough.’ Apart from
that it was dry; damaged by intruders, not by weather. Horsehair plaster hung in long dusty strips from the walls and holes had been poked in the ceilings so that splintered laths dangled, rimming
the edge of the holes like exit wounds.
    ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit past it, isn’t it?’
    Her voice had soft wonder in it. ‘Poor thing. It’s been so brave. It just needs some love.’ She turned away from him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said,
‘we’re here now.’
    They went on into the room at the end and he heard her give a small, sad groan. Here the house had suffered its death wound. The far end wall was bulging, cracked and crumbled, roof timbers
sagging into a gap, unsupported as the gable leaned outwards. There were no flagstones here, just wooden floorboards with their strength almost gone and white mould spreading across them. One had
been pulled up. There was a cast-iron range in the end wall and the nearer corner steps led down into the darkness of a cellar. Gally moved towards it and the floorboards creaked and cracked under
her. Before she got to the first step, her foot caught a lump of plaster lying on the boards and it shot forward into the hole, but instead of an eventual thump there was an immediate splash. Mike
knelt and peered down. Six inches below the level of the floor, black water glinted, sullen and disconcerting. The cellar steps disappeared into it. Fragments of dried, rotten wood from the boards
drifted down on to it as he looked and he saw them move with deliberate speed out of sight beyond the fringes of the hole in the planking.
    ‘It’s a stream,’ he said aghast. ‘It’s running water.’ He stood and stepped back, heard a footfall on the boards behind him and knew immediately with a rush
of shaming fear that where there had been two of them, there were now three.
    He turned and found himself face to face with an old man, gazing at him with grim, questioning suspicion. Two clear eyes locked on his, challenging his presence with disconcerting authority.

CHAPTER TWO
    Each day for the past six weeks, Ferney had walked to the main road to watch the digger’s metal mouth slicing cross-sections down into time, hoping to solve a cruel
mystery that had obsessed him for two thirds of his long life. He stood back, out of the way of the busy men and their machines, but sometimes the spring sunlight would trick him, splashing some
fragment of chalky rock to imitate the smooth gleam of bone. That would lure him forwards for a closer look and then the roadworkers, who usually ignored him, would turn on him and challenge his
purpose with inarticulate questions. They labelled him a mad old man. They didn’t know he was driven by deep sadness and ancient love.
    So much had changed down by the road. By now, the hole was two hundred feet long and fifteen feet deep, eating out its void along the surveyor’s pegged and taped lines, eating up history.
The drivers slowing for the roadworks thought they were on the A303, but for more than ten centuries a narrower track had followed much the same course. For much of that time, the only deviations
from the track had been caused by slow, natural things, the patient inroads of a