Free Undercurrent by Frances Fyfield Page B

stopped. Even if she had thought she was being chased by an enemy, she would have stopped out of sheer curiosity.

    The radio news droned on, made more important by the perfect English voice reciting it. That must have been where she learned to speak. From a glance at the back window as he rose in the steam and dried himself on a thick, rough towel, Henry could see that it was already dark. He was beginning to like this house. It had a pervasive influence of calm. It was free from all the claustrophobia he feared in strange places.

    I suppose we are profoundly influenced by the surroundings in which we have lived. I sometimes think that buildings are a bigger influence on life than anything else, including people. Not that anyone here could exist without being completely indifferent to the surroundings. There are no views; only faces.

    I must not think of the sea and yet, I do . . . miss it most of all. Even the sea smothered in weather with nothing but the sound of it.

    I am learning new skills. It's called occupational therapy. There is even a choice, so I've opted for the entirely non-intellectual as opposed to the library, which was far too obvious. I spend my days in the kitchen where the company is not curious and there is plenty of noise to block out the sea which I cannot hear and I have worked out who to avoid. I have a friend in the kitchen; I like the smells.

    Oh what drivel I write. Is this the best I can do? No, but I'm afraid to do better, I must simply do more. Steel myself for the anniversary of the day I arrived (anonymously, thank God) at this grand hotel, and all the goodbyes I shall have to say again.
    Better to write about nothing much. Think of the castle and the town, but not about who lived there.
    Including me.

    FMC

CHAPTERFOUR
    'IT'S very good of you to help, Maggie,' Neil said, as he always said.
    'Not at all. A pleasure.'

    'I counted them in and counted them out,' he went on. 'Just like the vicar in church. Do you know, he keeps a running tally of his congregation, written down in a notebook, so that he can work out "seasonal differences"? Odd man. I would have thought it was perfectly obvious, like it is here.
    The colder it is, the fewer go out of doors. Doesn't matter whether they want culture, history or religious solace. Or even an excuse to wear a hat. Here we go.'

    They walked through the entrance which led from the castle's shop out on to the yard beyond, the metal of his steel-capped shoes ringing on the stones. They climbed the steps to the first battlement, following the route of the tourists, past the cannons, then down the steps and round the circular wall of the inner keep. Neil picked up a couple of sweet wrappers which lay on the ground, grumbling as he did so. 'When I think of what people put in their pockets,' he muttered, 'I'm amazed they should think that a bit more litter would make any difference. Why not take it home with you?
    Who do they think cleans it?'

    The complaining was a standard accompaniment to the last trek round the castle before Neil closed the doors for the night. Not the whole castle; that would take half a day; simply the visitors'
    castle, a fraction of the whole and floodlit after darkness as they entered the gloom of the third bastion, past the display and down the long tunnel to the kitchen. There were deep, black bread ovens set in a wall, a vast fireplace for open roasting in an otherwise unfurnished chamber the size of a small church, surrounded by smaller rooms with apertures in the walls for cannons and holes in the ceiling for the escape of fumes.

    Then down the stairs to the lower level. They were in one segment of the castle's flowered shape, five semicircular outer bastions looking out on to an empty moat, five inner for the guarding of the central keep. King Henry's fear of French invasion had persuaded him to build an impregnable fortress of cunning design. From above, it looked like an open rose built in stone, while below, any