The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,112

the park on that side by taking over some of the common ground.”

Guided by his host, Kemp was able to see, across the motionless expanse of water, beyond the boat with the Chinese pagoda, through a fringe of weeping willows, the broken towers and arches that he had glimpsed the afternoon before from the window of his room.

“You will scarce believe it,” Spenton said, “but in my father’s time these grounds were still laid out with formal walks and straight avenues, in the old, outmoded style, you know. I took care to have copses planted out with oak and beech and ash. These are trees with a quality of the picturesque, of course, but that is not the only reason. When the time comes for thinning, they are the most profitable timber to sell.”

Only a politeness deriving from self-interest held Kemp back from some expression of sarcasm at these words. His host had spent enormous sums on these improvements; he had appropriated common ground, perhaps destroying woodland in the process, at a loss to the local people. And all this not for any sound commercial reason but simply to extend the view, make space for a totally unnecessary ruin. And now here he was, congratulating himself on the small profits he would make from the sale of timber!

The grotto had a pool and a waterfall divided into three streams that descended over the face of a shallow cave. The central stream fell onto the boards of a water wheel and kept it turning, and this, by the aid of some instrument that Kemp did not see, caused a water nymph, fashioned in polished tin, with a painted smile and painted nipples, to stand clear of the water for some moments, sink to her midriff, rise again, dripping and smiling.

“My own invention entirely,” Spenton said. “It was inspired by the water show at the Spring Gardens, which you will recall we visited together. I am planning to introduce another wheel, which will revolve in the opposite direction and bring forth a triton or perhaps a seahorse.”

As they returned, Spenton led Kemp up a short rise, which brought them to the highest point in the grounds. There was a gazebo on the crest, with steps that led up to an open lantern. From here the views were extensive, and Kemp remarked on the yellowish mist of smoke that thickened the air at a distance below them. “I suppose that marks the colliery,” he said.

“Indeed, sir, yes. It does something to spoil the vista, but up here it does not much trouble us. We may see it, but it does not accede to the nostrils. Bad odors keep close to the ground, they lurk, sir.”

From here there was a clear view across to the sea, more now than a difference in the quality of light, as it had seemed earlier from Kemp’s window, but a definite territory of water, slate blue in the morning light. He could see gulls wheeling above, not the forms of the birds but the flashes that came from them as they turned in flight. However, what mainly took his attention was the long seam of green that lay toward the sea, in fact appeared to join it. It was the same wooded cleft that he had seen from his room, but from this point of vantage he had a stronger sense of the strangeness of it, this deep scrape in a landscape of pasture fields and sparse trees. Impossible from here to determine how deep it was, how deeply it had gouged out the land. But the cleft must be narrow and the sides steep, he thought; otherwise the depth of the cut would be easier to judge from a height so far above.

“That valley down there,” he said. “Strange in such a setting. It looks like a kind of ravine.” In fact it was like a wound, he thought, a wound stitched by the vegetation that had sprung up but still not healed.

“A kind of ravine is what it is. The people here call it the Dene. There are a number of such narrow valleys here in East Durham, where rivers have cut trenches in the limestone. Scientific gentlemen from London have sometimes asked permission to visit this one—botanists, naturalists, people of that kind.”

“Why is that?”

“It has its own climate, quite different from the land surrounding it. The sides are very steep and they are thickly wooded, so they can sometimes protect the valley floor from winds,