by Norland Hughes
Karen's heart beat just a little faster as the dark of the tunnel suddenly gave way to open space. The train squealed to a halt and the doors opened. Karen stepped out onto the platform but unlike everyone else, she didn't immediately stride towards the exit barriers; the commuters hurried by, but Karen's journey had an entirely different purpose. She'd come to bask in the atmosphere of a place she wasn't sure existed. Now she would find out.
Most people ignored her. One or two males flashed an admiring glance at the pretty blonde backpacker with her tight pink-striped top and her shapely sun-bronzed legs which stretched from a rather short denim skirt down to a pair of cute pink trainers. Oblivious to their attention, Karen gazed around the station vista. Her creative mind stripped away the modern paraphernalia, and she imagined the building in all its original Victorian glory. She smiled, tingling in anticipation. Yes, this could be the place... the starting point of Penny Patterson's journey in the well-thumbed novel she knew virtually word for word, nestling at the bottom of her pack.
Karen stepped outside the station into the noisy high street. Her wide blue eyes blinked in the dazzle of early summer sunshine which glinted off the windows of an endless stream of buses, cars and taxis. She stepped back to avoid the tide of pedestrians rudely yet purposefully barging past tourists like herself. Unlike them, Karen had no idea of where she was going next.
The fragile sense of connection she'd experienced as soon as she'd stepped off the train faded; nothing jumped out at her, nothing matched the vivid descriptions in that book. Her shoulders drooped under the weight of her pack and her disappointment. But just as hope began to fade, a fleeting glimpse of bright yellow amidst the crowd caught her eye. A flower seller! Not right outside the station, as in the book, but a little way further along the street. Hope for her quest rekindled, Karen strode towards him.
The gnarled old Cockney paused from the incessant hawking of his wares and peered at the potential punter eyeing his barrow. "Wot 'yer after, Miss?" he asked. "Somefink for Mum, or 'im indoors?"
Karen laughed and exchanged a bit of Aussie banter with the chirpy character who could have jumped straight from the pages of her precious book. On impulse, Karen bought a summer spray from him, just like Penny did on her way to visit her aunt. Mimicking the actions of the character she knew so well brought another thrill of excitement. The few dozen yards she'd walked on her journey of discovery weren't far, but they were far enough to bring into view the very peak of a church spire, poking over the brow of the gently rising high street. A shiver trickled down her spine. Saint Bartholomew's? Yes, it must be! Following a route description that could have come from Treasure Island, and clutching a bunch of flowers for someone who only existed in an author's mind, Karen set off to find the next pointer to the place she sought.
Every step brought a bit more of the soot-blackened spire into view. Karen's mind flicked through book pages as if they were in front of her. You could see the spire of Saint Bartholomew's from Aunt Georgina's house, 'poking above the mews roofs like a stern guardian sentinel'. Her breathing had become shallower, but not through the exertion of tackling the slight gradient. Might it be an actual place? She forced herself to ease her pace, enjoying the atmosphere but bracing herself for disappointment.
Clues dried up when she reached the church. It wasn't Saint Bartholomew's, but All Saints. The churchyard, which Penny had cut through on her way to her aunt's, proved inaccessible. However, the gates, though padlocked and not 'wide open and compellingly inviting' as Penny had encountered, were exactly as she described. Karen looked for a way around but couldn't see anything obvious; bland shop fronts and mundane offices seemed to hem it in from all sides. The sense her quest might have petered out built with every passing second, until a youth pedalling a bike way too fast, shot out of a concealed passage between the churchyard wall and the Shady Sensations blinds boutique. He executed a well-practised, show-off, tyre-squealing turn and shot past her. Karen didn't even give him a backward glance; she only had eyes for the brick-lined narrow snickelway she now strode towards.
After she'd followed it for about fifty yards, it veered gently to the left and widened out into a back lane for a row of townhouses flanking the church grounds. Karen's expectations rose once more when another gate in the wall appeared. A rusty padlock barred any investigation, but it didn't matter. Her pulse quickened. It had to be the gate Penny left the grounds by, and up ahead, just as she recounted, lay the access road to a long row of mews, one in which her guardian aunt awaited her.
Karen sighed and let the atmosphere soak deeper into her with every step. It had all been worth it. Her careful planning to visit the West London area, in an almost childishly naïve hope of finding the setting of her book, had yielded results she could hardly believe. Taking her time to enjoy every moment of the experience, she slowed her pace and clicked frame after frame on her Kodak Instamatic as she passed the arched entrances to the pretty mews courtyards.
At a glance they all seemed identical: ostentatious stone arches, opening out to twin rows of what were originally quite modest dwellings, but which now housed the wealthy and successful, as evidenced by the shiny door fixtures and planters holding exotic, expensive plants. After Karen passed the third arch, she stopped taking photographs, mindful she'd already used up half a roll, and besides, they all looked the same.
All except this one. The one with a 'courtyard within a courtyard' guarded by a lion that could have come out of a Lewis Carroll novel rather than a jungle. Karen managed to stop her hand from shaking and took a photograph of the grinning, cross-eyed creature carved into the apex of the arch before her. It was real, a proper place the author must have known about and must have visited.
She hesitated and reread the prominent, Private Road - No Trespassers sign in the forlorn hope it might exempt young Australian tourists trying to find their favourite author's source of inspiration. How strange, she thought, not a soul in sight, and yet only a couple of hundred yards away, traffic honked and people pushed past in a never-ending stream. She'd risk it.
Good girl Karen, who never missed a lecture, never crossed the road until the green man flashed, and never stayed out late partying, took a deep breath and strode on through. Straight towards the house at the very end: the one with its own private little enclosure.
The two ornamental topiaries, straddling the ungated gap in the six-foot wall, like 'sentries on guard duty at her aunt's castle' pushed Karen's already high hopes to new heights. She edged closer still. When she got nearer, the circular iron railings encircling Penny's aunt's 'own private plane tree' smack in the middle of the yard, clinched it. This had to be the place! It simply must. Karen let her fingers ripple over the shiny leaves of the left-hand bush and shuddered with a tiny thrill deep inside at the sense of connection with a living thing from her book's fictitious world. She glanced behind her. There was still no one around, and she'd already come so far.
Tentatively, she mounted the four steps into the courtyard. She moved to the side of the tree and fired off the rest of her film. Aunt Georgina's imposing front door with its fearsome lion's head knocker, got a shot, as did the mixed mullioned and plain window frames of the first and second floors. But her most special photos were of the three arched-roof attic windows with their cruciform frames, especially the centre one: the one Aunt Georgina gazed sternly down from at her naughty niece, Penny, on the cover of Karen's book. The shutter clicked for the last time. She rewound the film and sighed. All she could have hoped for, and more. Her next read would be so much more special now she had seen the place where Penny got her comeuppance.
"You do realise you are trespassing, don't you?"
Karen jumped. Her head jerked up, and she started again, this time very nearly wetting herself. Gazing down at her from the wide-open centre window stood a tall, dark-haired lady. Karen's mouth popped open, but words struggled to come out.
"I-I'm s-" she began.
The lady stepped back into the interior and Karen turned to scamper. She jumped when a loud, impatient-sounding buzzing started. The door clicked open a few inches, and she caught her breath, expecting to see an angry resident at any second.
"Do come on up."
Karen glanced up. The woman was back at the window, dark-eyed and smiling, but not with a friendly smile of greeting. Karen's vivid imagination ran riot. No, this smile didn't convey any warmth, more a message of 'I've been expecting you' - just as Penny had described when she looked up and saw her aunt at the centre window, waiting for her.
Before Karen could even compose a response, let alone utter one, the lady turned and vanished back into the shadowy interior. The nagging buzzing ceased, but the door stayed invitingly ajar. Common sense and natural caution told Karen to make her escape, but a deeper urge held sway. She threw a last glance at the mews entrance barely fifty yards away, and dismissed any notion of flight. With a trembling hand, she pushed open the door and stepped into a dream.
The ground floor open-plan room, though light and airy, had little in the way of furniture, just a wicker three-piece suite and a small occasional table. It didn't resonate with her, but then why should it? Penny's description of her aunt's house mentioned nothing about the ground floor. It was the uppermost, the one with the arched windows where the confrontation played out. Karen let her hand rest on the banister of the elegant staircase at the side of the room, and in hushed reverence, began her ascent. Unlike the door to the second floor, the one to the top stood wide open. Half-way up the last flight, the lady appeared in the threshold, and Karen got her first proper look at the house's mysterious occupant.
Tall she certainly was; the top of her head, tilted at a silently querying angle, almost touched the lintel. Luxuriously glossy jet-black hair cascaded down either side of a narrow, high cheek-boned face, and easily reached her slim, waspish waist. Karen's eyes rose from the lady's steeply raked cream high heels, on past a calf-length pleated navy-blue skirt, which perfectly complemented a satin scarlet blouse. Under eyebrows plucked to a needle-point fineness, she met a pair of dark and shining eyes, crinkled with a hint of amusement. The scarlet bow of her lips parted into an ice-white smile, and wordlessly, she stood aside.
Karen threw her a nervous, apologetic smile, and without any conscious effort of will, took up the silent invitation to join her.
"Are those for me?"
Bewitched by the speed of the unfolding chain of events that had seen her not just find, but enter her fantasy world, Karen let the lady pluck the flowers from her unresisting hand. The lady held them to her nose and inhaled deeply while her amused eyes stared into Karen's over the cellophane.
"Ah, roses and summer daffodils, thank you so much... er?" A needle-point eyebrow arched, inviting a response.
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