Peculiar Ground
‘One of the best novels of the year so far’ The TimesA SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Unlike anything I’ve read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful’ Tessa Hadley‘I just enjoyed it so very much’ Philip PullmanIt is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate.Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all.Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood.From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.
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4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright 2017 © Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Lucy Hughes-Hallett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover images © plainpicture/Melanie Haberkorn
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Map drawn by John Gilkes
‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (from Hollywood Canteen), words and music by Cole Porter © 1944 (Renewed) WB MUSIC CORPS. All rights reserved. Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008126544
Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008126537
Version: 2018-01-16
We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’s wide wilderness.
ISAAC WATTS
Contents
1663–1665
John Norris – landscape-maker
Arthur Fortescue, the Earl of Woldingham
The Countess of Woldingham, his wife
Their children – Charles Fortescue, Arthur Fortescue and a little girl
Sir Humphrey de Boinville, brother to Lady Woldingham
Lady Harriet Rivers, Lord Woldingham’s sister
Cecily Rivers, her daughter
Edward
Pastor Rivers – brother to Lady Harriet’s late husband
Another pastor
Robert Rose – architect and comptroller
Meg Leafield
George Goodyear – head forester
Armstrong – ranger
Green – head gardener
Slatter – farm overseer
Underhill – major-domo
Lane – steward
Richardson – apothecary
Lupin, a pug-dog
1961–1989
Living at Wood Manor
Hugo Lane – land agent
Chloe Lane – his wife
Nell – their daughter, aged eight in 1961
Dickie – their son, aged five in 1961
Heather – nanny
Mrs Ferry – cook
Wully, a yellow Labrador, and later his great-nephew, another Wully
Living at Wychwood
Christopher Rossiter – proprietor
Lil Rossiter – his wife
Fergus – their son
Flossie/Flora – Christopher’s niece, aged eighteen in 1961
Underhill – butler
Mrs Duggary – cook
Lupin, a pug-dog, and later another Lupin, also a pug-dog
Grampus, a black Labrador
Visitors
Antony Briggs – art-dealer
Nicholas Fletcher – journalist
Benjie Rose – restaurateur, interior designer, entrepreneur
Helen Rose – his wife, art-historian
Guy – Benjie’s nephew, aged thirteen in 1961
On the estate
John Armstrong – head keeper
Jack Armstrong – his son, aged seventeen in 1961
Doris, Dorabella, Dorian and Dorothy – all spaniels
Green – head gardener
Young Green, his son
Brian Goodyear – head forester
Rob Goodyear, his son
Slatter – farm manager
Meg Slatter – his wife
Bill Slatter – their son
Holly Slatter – Bill’s daughter
Hutchinson – estate clerk
In the village
Mark Brown – cabinet-maker
Nell’s fellow students at Oxford in 1973
Francesca, Spiv Jenkins, Manny, Jamie McAteer, Selim Malik
In London
Roger Bates – wartime military policeman, subsequently in Special Branch
It has been a grave disappointment to me to discover that his Lordship has no interest – really none whatsoever – in dendrology. I arrived here simultaneously with a pair of peafowl and a bucket full of goldfish. It is galling that my employer takes more pleasure in the creatures than he does in my designs for his grounds.
He is impatient. Perhaps it is only human to be so. He wishes to beautify his domain but he frets at slowness. When we talked in London, and I was able to fill his mind’s eye with majestic vistas, then he was satisfied. But when he sees the saplings reaching barely higher than the crown of his hat he laughs at me. ‘Avenues, Mr Norris?’ he said yesterday evening. ‘These are sticks set for a bending race.’
The idea having once occurred to him, he set himself to realising it. This morning he and another gentleman took horse and, like two shuttles drawing invisible thread, wove themselves at great speed back and forth through the lines of young beeches that now traverse the park from side to side. There was much laughter and shouting, especially as they passed the ladies assembled at the point where the avenues (I persist in so naming them) intersect, the trees forming a great cross which will be visible only to birds and to angels. I confess the gentlemen were very skilful, keeping pace like dancers until, nearing the point where the trees arrive at the perimeter, where the wall will shortly rise, they spurred on into a desperate gallop in the attempt to outdistance each other, and so raced on into a field full of turnips, to the great distress of Mr Slatter.
