But that’s probably just a kind of morbid sentimentality, the effect of knowing what would happen on the overgrown fringes of the Ancraime estate, in the sweaty height of high summer, a few years later. At the time, no matter what I like to think I remember, it probably meant nothing special at all.
I slipped away through the bracken, heading uphill for the trees and the meadow, careful to move with as little disturbance as possible, but I was never in any real danger. I heard distant yelling, adult and kid, but it was faint. There could be some blowback because of this — Dom in particular might want to exact some retribution for my abandoning ship — but I thought I’d been sensible and they’d been stupid and, what with my new-found semi-parity in the pecking order, it didn’t bother me too much. I’d got away, it was a fucking lovely day, and I might finally even get to see something more of the fabled Murston house.
Beyond the line of trees, the steep meadow led up into the fields and then the gardens of the house, though the building itself was still unseen, hidden by the undulations of the hill.
I saw the girl riding the horse then; a brief, lithe vision on a blond horse at a half-trot, moving daintily across the sunlit higher field. The girl gave a little kick, the horse picked up speed and they jumped a small hedge, disappearing.
I’d caught only a glimpse of her, but she’d been beautiful: graceful, long legs and a serene face on a slender neck, her hair either short or gathered up under her riding hat.
It was Ellie, I think. When I mentioned this to her years later she wasn’t so sure, and said sometimes her friends came and rode her ponies — not horses, at the time — so she couldn’t be certain. But I’m sure it was her. Probably. I guess I’d heard of her by this time but I don’t think I’d seen her, even around town. Both the Murston girls were sent to the Stonemouth Girls’ Academy rather than have to rough it with their brothers in the High School, so this was quite possible. Anyway, seeing her there only added to the mystique of the half-hidden house on the hill and made me all the more determined finally to cop a glimpse of it close up.
So I climbed up a steep grass slope at the side of the meadow, crossed the field and a barbed-wire fence, then worked my way up through the tangle of whin, broom and bramble to the trees. I kept looking for the girl on the horse but I didn’t see her again.
I saw the house, at last, from halfway up a tree.
It was a little disappointing, frankly, after all the build-up I’d given it: just a big house with lots of garages and outhouses, not especially old, maybe sixties vintage, possibly originally a bungalow but with lots of big dormers and Veluxes and various bits added on: two conservatories and a substantial structure along one side of the house, which was all windows and blinds and white columns. Some of the blinds were raised to show there was a swimming pool inside. A couple of cars were parked outside a triple garage; a winding slope of drive led through a front garden of lawn and trimmed shrubs to two tall, ornate gateposts on the skyline, the black wroughtiron gates forming the only gap in a high stone wall.
I looked back to the house, and saw that a man in an upstairs room was watching me through a big pair of binoculars. I froze, then grinned, waved and got down out of the tree as smartly as I could. I ran down the hill, expecting to hear dogs yowling after me. I skirted the perimeter of the golf course, not daring to cross it, and got wet up to my knees crossing the Kinnis Burn before achieving the relative safety of the play park by the Meriston Road Recycling Centre. I took a long route home to help everything dry off and was back in time for tea.
At school the following morning the whole thing had been spun into a daring raid on a repressive bastion of adult privilege and Dom had merely been exposing his naked behind to the dozen or so men — who’d finally caught them after a long chase — to express his contempt for a prescriptive society and its piffling rules. The real story had leaked, of course, and was already being sniggered over throughout the school, but such was the public line.
The guys got off with a caution eventually, though Dom was singled out for the evil eye by the cop delivering the finger-wagging and told We’re On To You, Laddie.
‘Mr Murston says to see you now,’ a female voice says, and I follow the Asian girl through the house.
‘I’m Stewart,’ I tell her as the pop music gets gradually louder (Now Playing: Prince & the New Power Generation — more early nineties stuff). ‘And you are …?’ I ask her. (I’m opposed to all this nameless servant shit.)
