I was taken on a tour of a stately home. Not a haunted one, as far as the brochure was concerned; a fine example of the period, with important plasterwork, a notable staircase, and a tearoom. The family still lives in one wing. The other wings are for us, in small groups, with a guide called Pamela.
I would like to apologise to Pamela.
The problem with reading gothic novels
The problem is that you can no longer walk into a large old house as a tourist. You walk in as a governess. You arrive with the specific feeling of having been hired for a position whose description was vague, and you spend the tour, instead of admiring the staircase, trying to work out which door you’re not supposed to open.
Pamela said, “And this is the Long Gallery.” I thought: where’s the east wing? Pamela said, “The ceiling was restored in 1890.” I thought: by whom, and what did they find?
The inventory
A gothic reader tours a house with a checklist, and I’d like to report the house did well.
- A portrait with eyes. Present, second landing. A woman in grey who the guide said was “the second wife.” I said “the second wife?” slightly too loudly, and a man from Leicester looked at me.
- A locked door. Present. End of the Long Gallery, oak, no handle on our side. Pamela said, “That’s just the family’s side.” I wrote “just” in my notebook and underlined it.
- A housekeeper. Not present, but there was a woman in the gift shop who didn’t look up when we came in, and that’s close enough.
- A room kept as it was. Present. A bedroom with the bed made and a dress laid out, which Pamela described as “a period display” and which I described, privately, as evidence.
- Weather. Rain, starting as we reached the chapel. The house was clearly in on it.
The locked door
I went back to it on the way out. I’d like to say I didn’t try the handle. There was no handle; that’s been established. I did put my palm flat against the oak, the way you do in the books, and I did feel that it was cold, which is also the way it is in the books, and which is also, I accept, the way oak is.
Pamela found me there. She was kind about it. She said, “It’s just a corridor to the kitchens,” and I said, “Of course,” and we both knew she’d never been through it either.
Why we do this
Because the books have taught us that a big house is a question, and the question is “what’s being kept,” and you can’t un-learn the question once you’ve been asked it a hundred times by du Maurier and the Brontës and Shirley Jackson. The tourists see plasterwork. We see a floor plan with one room missing.
I bought a tea towel in the gift shop. The woman still didn’t look up. On the way out I looked back at the second-landing window and there was, of course, nobody in it, and I’ll be thinking about that for a month.