Don thought it was gross to even mention things like that, and Donna thought it embarrassing to have your parents singing ‘All You Need is Love’ all round the cottage, and trying to remember the sequence of the verses in ‘American Pie’.
But after the first week their father discovered all over again how much his children’s constant presence interrupted his study of the quarterly business review, and their mother discovered afresh how tedious it was to have to cook every night, and demanded to be taken out to dinner at the local pub, or at the very least into the nearest big town to buy good-quality prepared food. One forgot how extremely tiresome it was to peel potatoes and cut up meat, she said, while as for washing-up after every meal…
The only thing that had really been different at that stage of the holiday, had been Maria’s project about historic landmarks, and a sudden out-of-the-blue question from her as to whether it might be possible to buy Quire House. It was a bit dilapidated, but it would scrub up very nicely and it would be splendid for summer entertaining and weekend parties, what did anyone think?
What Donna thought–what she later said to Don–was that their mother had spotted a new toy, and was visualizing herself playing lady of the manor. Donna did not much like Quire House which seemed to her a rather sad place, and which Don, who was going through a slightly effete stage, said was an ugly specimen of an ugly architectural period. But they walked dutifully round the house one afternoon, peering in through windows and disturbing jackdaws’ nests. Their father was forced into agreeing to try to track down the owner, although the owner would probably be some inaccessible property company and there would be preservation orders and listed-building prohibitions on every square inch of brick so you could not even change a light bulb without permission. That being so, he said, Maria was not to build up any hopes.
Maria Robards promised not to do so, and switched temporarily back to her scavenging expeditions for historic buildings. She went off most afternoons armed with camera and loose-leaved notebook, dressed in co-ordinating trousers and tweed jackets because she refused to be seen in public, or even in private, wearing denim (shudder) or trainers (God forbid).
These well-dressed expeditions, inevitably, took her to Twygrist.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Twygrist. Even years afterwards, the name conjured up a smothering darkness for Donna.
Twygrist was the old watermill just outside Amberwood’s little market town. It was no longer working, but it was a bit of a landmark; local people said, ‘Turn left just past Twygrist,’ or, ‘He lives about a mile along from Twygrist.’
Twygrist might have been any age at all, but it had an air of extreme antiquity as if it had crouched there malevolently all through the Dark Ages. Even the clock set into one wall in memory of somebody or other, looked a bit like a face, so that from some angles you could imagine it was watching you as you went along the road.
Donna’s mother was fascinated by Twygrist. She scoured the local library and the offices of the local newspaper to find out about its history, which she related to her family. (‘Ad nauseam,’ said Don, who thought watermills nearly as gross as spending summer holidays with parents.)
Twygrist, said Maria undaunted by Don, had once stood on the edge of a vast estate owned by the local baronial lords, but a fire had destroyed almost the entire estate in the middle 1800s. After this, somewhere around 1860, the mill had been bought and put into working order by a certain Josiah Forrester, who had clearly been one of those canny Victorian gentlemen with an eye to a profit. ‘Your father would have had a lot in common with him, dears.’