The Abbey Farm Curse
Chapter Six
England in late spring and the countryside around Abbey Farm is so very quintessentially English, soft rolling hills, fields and meadows full of new plants and flowers, all outlined with hedgerows full of blossom and alive with birds and animals. Why would anyone ever want to live anywhere else? And this is my favourite time of year too, the leaves of the trees and bushes are brand new, fresh and green, the grass is growing like there may be no tomorrow and the birds are all singing their hearts out. Add to this the gorgeous sweet scent of the may blossom still covering the hawthorn hedges and it's great just to be alive and experiencing it. I could wander for hours revelling in being an Englishman, even one with a Welsh mother, so with work in the house easily on schedule the next morning I decided to leave the girls to their own devices and hopefully call a truce, and have a stroll around the farm, mainly to see if the all-pervading serenity of the place would help me to think more clearly, something I desperately needed to do.
I couldn't get my brain around what was happening and the entire thing was worrying me greatly. Even if I could persuade my logical mind that the illogical had happened, it still didn't explain why I suddenly got so carnally interested in Angie, and nor did it tell me why we'd been given this 'window' into the past. The whole thing was surreal, I'd never wanted Angie in that way before, but then nor had I ever been witness to a three hundred year old blow job or a Victorian threesome either. I felt instinctively they were all somehow interlinked, but I'd no idea how and it was getting to me. I kept thinking about it, turning it over and over in my mind and looking for the answer I couldn't find.
Angie bothered me too. She seemed to take everything in her stride, perhaps too easily, happy to get me into bed with her and not worried at all about either the potential comebacks from that or about being whisked away into the dim and distant past. Those experiences were straight out of a sci-fi book, and yet she seemed to accept them as normal. Willow had reacted even more unpredictably when I'd tried to tell her about it, immediately becoming consumed with jealousy before I'd got past admitting that we'd been to bed together. It seemed the exact opposite of Angie's laid back response. Thinking about it, Willow had probably hankered after Angie for a long time and then, perhaps just as she thought she'd finally got her, she found that I'm involved too. And this just when we needed everybody to be composed and logical to try and figure out just what was going on.
Nothing seemed to make much sense, and the more I churned it round and round in my head, the less sense it made. I needed to get my head on straight and so I figured a wander round would help me find something else to think about for a while. I've always loved old buildings, even ruined ones, and I can very soon lose myself on trying to figure out how people had lived so many years before, maybe it's what I needed now. We're lucky here at Abbey Farm, for not only do we have this fabulous landscape, but we have a genuine set of ruins as a jewel in our crown, and it was across the ridge top to these old abbey remains that I went, hoping to try and make sense of the layout and get a handle on how the monkish brothers there once lived.
Much of the medieval structure is long gone, but the shell of the abbey church is still there, perched on the very end of the north fork of the ridge with its east window a blank eye looking out from the largest remaining wall, still with a little of the fine stone tracery in situ. The north fork of our promontory is longer and a little higher than the shorter, slightly wider southern fork, and was an ideal site for the church to be seen from all directions. It had once been an imposing building, without a tower but still visible for miles around because of its position, but now only the one wall was anywhere near full height, and even that was little more than an arch over the window opening. The others formed a rectangle of stone between knee and shoulder height, cut through only by the two now empty doorways, one for the monks and one for a congregation. What a shame to see it so ruined, but even so the church had done better than the rest of the abbey, the cloisters, the infirmary, dormitory, workshops, kitchens, and all the other 'appurtenances', as they were called, now only visible as lumps in the grass or maybe as a couple of courses of masonry pushing through it. All the rest had been quarried away over the years for barn repairs, farm walls, and so on, the once consecrated church fabric the only stonework left untouched by man. That, I suppose, was the reason the altar seemed to have survived intact too, and a massive altar it was, about eight or nine feet long and half as wide, with weather worn carving all around its base and one big flat slab as a top.
I went a little over the far crest of the ridge to gaze at the wonderful view to the north, looking over far-away hills at the blue haze of the horizon and then catching the quick flash of sun on a distant windscreen that drew my eyes down the slope and on into the valley below, wondering vaguely why the field layout was so much more higgledy-piggledy on that slope than down the side in front of the house and trying to put some sort of pattern to it.
But then I got waylaid by nature and stood for a while listening to the rich clear song of a wren, a bird which seems to have a voice so much bigger than itself, trying to pinpoint its origin. It seemed to be coming from a briar covered mound that was probably the remains of a workshop wall, but it could just as easily been in the hedgerow behind it. Wherever it was, its musical power kept me rooted to the spot, my spirits rising by the minute. Before long I was lost to the world and smiling from the pure pleasure of nature.
'Beautiful isn't it?'
The voice was soft, melodic, and female, and caught me completely by surprise. I had no reason to expect not to be alone and it made me jump, my reverie shattered by a large dose of adrenalin. I whirled around, wondering who dared to trespass so openly, and came face to face with a blonde angel.
She was a few years older than me, perhaps mid-thirties, tallish, maybe five foot seven or eight, and slim, with tight blue jeans and a black sweater showing off the most gorgeous figure. But by far her best feature was the loose mane of pure blonde hair swirling around a friendly face and beautifully framing her pale blue eyes. I was smitten at first sight. Well, maybe smitten is not quite the right word, smitten implies love, but what I felt right then was closer to pure lust.
'I'm sorry; I didn't mean to scare you.' Her voice contained traces of a musical Liverpudlian accent and her mouth turned up at each corner in a disarming smile.
'Who the hell are you?' I asked, more gruffly than I wanted to. I know she was trespassing, but I hadn't intended to sound hostile. Blame it on my state of mind that morning.
'I did scare you, didn't I? I'm so sorry.' She put my reaction down to fright and her voice contained a tinkle of real laughter this time. 'I'm June Preston, I have a cottage on Field Lane, and I often come up here, it's so peaceful and so old. I love history and this is full of it. But may I ask who you are?'
I ignored her question. 'You know it belongs with the farm, don't you?'
'Yes, I do, I'm a bit of a local history buff and I know a bit about the farm and its past. It was once a manor house you know, or part of one anyway. And before that the land belonged to an abbey -- this abbey.' She indicated the ruins as if telling me what I didn't know. But then how was she to know what I knew? 'Oh, and I know the farm is sold at last. Are you anything to do with that?' She went on before I could answer. 'Because I like coming up here, but I know it's being done up, so I wouldn't mind a warning before the new owners move in and I have to keep away. So have you any idea how long the work is going to take?'
She cocked her head to one side expectantly, and I then realised she had taken me for a contractor because of the dusty jeans and work boots I was still wearing.
'You want to know when the new owners are moving in?' I repeated back to her, a smile in my voice this time.
She nodded innocently.
'Some of us have.'
I know it's not strictly true, as the real owners are Janet and George, but I said it like that for effect, and it certainly had that. She looked at me with the colour draining from her face and took an involuntary step backwards, only to find one of the lumps of abbey stonework behind her, which promptly dumped her on her beautiful backside.
'Sh-sugar!' She exclaimed forcefully, correcting her expletive so skilfully I burst out laughing.
I stepped forward and held out my hand to her, and when she took it I pulled her to her feet.
'I sure got it wrong, didn't I?' She said ruefully. 'But if you want me to leave your property you'll have to let go of my hand.'
I tore my eyes away from hers and glanced down to see that I was still clutching her hand in mine. I let go somewhat self-consciously.
'It's my mother's farm really, along with her partner, so they have the last word, but as far as I'm concerned you're not the sort of trespasser I'm likely to eject. Consider yourself provisionally invited, but with a condition attached.'
