Herringswell

The house was built in the first decade of the twentieth century. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, but I don’t think the man who commissioned it was aiming for anything aesthetically pleasing. He wanted a nice big comfortable place for his family; four or five sons and one daughter, as far as I can remember. A solid, middle class house, to match his position. Nothing fancy; no follies, or romantic summerhouses in which to fuck your gardener – or if there had been once, they’d long gone by the time I knew it.

The stables were still there, but I’m not sure they would have appealed as a trysting place. Too big for a start, and probably full of horses for the first decade at least. I suppose the outside staff lived above them too. No, I think the wooded grounds must have been the place to go, as they were when I was there, and in fact the whole reason I was there in the first place.

Those grounds were so beautiful. I think they must have originally been carved out of the forest, because the formal part of the gardens was encircled by ancient trees – hemmed in by them. They looked much older than the house, and grew close together. It was clear they hadn’t been planted as part of a grand scheme. I spent a whole year working there and even on the bleakest winter days, I never tired of looking at those trees.

Every hour I walked the circuit. There were supposed to be two of us at all times, but I often managed to persuade the other person to stay in the warm “ I’ll go on my own – don’t worry – you stay here”. It was so much nicer without anyone else. I could stop and listen to the sounds of the forest. You miss most of them until you stand still. The drip, drip of recent rain from the leaves, the rustling of the undergrowth; what could it be? A squirrel? A bird? Or maybe one of the cats? I always looked out for the cats but I never saw them, not one. They were part of the strange story of the house, as told me by the local people who worked there.

The kitchen staff mostly came from surrounding villages. It was an odd area – the borders of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. You wouldn’t have guessed it was so near to Newmarket except for the racehorses you occasionally came across on the way there. Newmarket must have been buzzing when the house was built. It was King Edward VII’s favourite racing town, and yet you only had to go a few miles outside and there was nothing. Just a few tiny, isolated villages, reached only by narrow twisty roads cutting through the forest.

I’d only just learnt to drive and there was hardly any traffic, only the scary, scary racehorses being exercised by the stable boys from nearby studs. The horses looked very highly-strung, and I didn’t think the riders were fully in control. I’d inch nervously past in the battered old Volvo I had at the time. That was such a nice car. It was like driving a bus. It had big, comfortable seats and you could get a dog and several bicycles in the boot. It didn’t go fast, but it could get through flooded roads and across muddy fields and it was so fucked it didn’t matter what I did to it, luckily.

People coming in the other direction always gave way to me when they saw the condition of my car. It screamed “I don’t care - this couldn’t possibly get any worse”. Eventually the engine exploded, but I loved it while it lasted. The riders would give me nervous sidelong glances as they steadied their horses. I’m not sure which of us was more scared – me, or the horses or the riders.

We were outside any kind of commuter-land in that area at the time. Even though it was quite near Cambridge, the villages seemed mostly inhabited by those who’d been born and bred there. Houses were astonishingly cheap then, compared to now. The kitchen staff all had the broad, slow accent of the area and they loved to gossip. I often stopped outside the kitchens on my walks. There was a little sheltered area where we would smoke, out of sight of the main building. Many of them were the third or fourth generations of their families to work at the house in its different guises, and they knew almost all its stories and secrets. They were the ones who told me about the cats.

The original owner had had the house built for his large family, but he can’t have enjoyed living there for more than a few years before the First World War started. By the time it was over, all his sons were dead and only the daughter remained. How sad it must have been for that man, watching his smart new house grow emptier and emptier as his family disappeared one by one.

Maybe it was because so many of her generation were lost, or maybe she was already a little eccentric; “mad as a hatter she was”, the locals told me; but she never married, and she lived on there alone after her parents died, for many years. She had a passion for cats, and as the house and gardens fell into disrepair, the cats multiplied and grew wild. She had been dead at least thirty years when I was there, but the kitchen staff swore there were still some cats living wild in the forest. I never saw one myself.

As far as I remember, after her death, the house stood empty for a few years, and then sometime in the late sixties, it was converted into an international school – mainly for Americans. Once in a while, during my walks, I’d see strangers near the entrance and they would tell me they’d lived there once and were passing, and wanted to visit for old time’s sake. Sometimes they would be middle aged Americans on holiday, showing their families where they’d spent their time in England. The other visitors couldn’t be categorised so easily. Some looked entirely normal; others still very, very odd, as they’d been when they had lived in the house.

They came from the next group to take over - the Orange People, members of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh sect. They turned it into a commune, or ashram, and the local people thought it was hilarious. “Oh you should have seen them in their robes and stuff, all orange they were, and the goings on they had! Orgies and everything!” It was so strange to imagine this quiet little middle of nowhere place full of those people. I’d seen them in London, but I just couldn’t picture them en masse in sleepy Suffolk. I’m not sure how long they were there for. I think the group collapsed at some point, and the leader was prosecuted for fraud.

When I was at the house, it had taken on another, even stranger identity. It had been bought by a particular Buddhist sect from Japan. It must have cost them millions to convert it. The orange people had neglected the buildings and grounds according to the local people. They had mixed feelings about the Japanese. They liked the employment opportunities so near home, but they didn’t really approve of the people or the school.

The new owners certainly put their mark on that place. Wandering around the old wooded areas, past the Edwardian solidity of the Manor House, you would cross a small bridge, spanning a pond in which you could see enormous Koi Carp swimming. Facing you, across a traditional Japanese garden, with its meticulously raked gravel, interspersed with precisely positioned trees, rocks and plants, was a replica wooden teahouse where the girls would learn how to perform the tea ceremony. Through the windows you could see the pale gleaming wooden floor, the pleated paper room divider, and the low tables.

Following a winding gravel path, you would turn a corner and there was the temple. It had the traditional sloping roof made with big black beams, like you see in old photos of Japan. It was huge, and so unexpected. With everything they added, they made no attempt at all to assimilate – they just unapologetically dumped huge bits of Japan in Suffolk. It was quite extraordinary and it made my walks very interesting.

There was a shiny new gymnasium near the entrance, and then two pale wood dormitories, one for the girls, one for the boys. The manor house was used for lessons, and the stable blocks had been turned into staff accommodation. The curriculum was almost entirely Japanese. There was a small element of English teaching, but I’m not sure they learned much. I don’t quite know why they settled on England for their school. Going there every other weekend to work was like going to Japan.

The children's ages ranged from eight to eighteen. The discipline was harsh. They would be beaten quite often, and some of them had clearly been sent there because they were unwanted at home for one reason or other. Some of them didn’t even go back to Japan in the holidays – instead they were sent to language schools in other parts of the country. Some hadn’t been home for years.

Every Saturday a coach would come and take them to either Cambridge, or London, or Bury St. Edmunds. The fees were enormous – it was the mid nineties when Japan was prosperous and booming. The pupils had massive amounts of pocket money and when they returned from their trips, you could see by the carrier bags that there hadn’t been much cultural interaction going on.

Most of the teaching staff were Buddhist monks – it was so bizarre seeing them around the place in their traditional robes. There were a few English teachers, the kitchen staff, and the people like me, who came every weekend. It was the weirdest job I have ever had. I’d park my car and go to the office in the girls’ boarding house. Mostly I would read, or do some proofreading I’d brought from home.

Every hour, I’d get up and stroll around the grounds. If I caught any couples sloping off towards the wooded areas I was to frown at them and fetch a Japanese member of staff. That was it. Then I’d go back to the office until the next walk. Halfway through the day I would go and eat strange Japanese things in the canteen. It was brilliant. I never did catch any of the students having sex in the woods, and if I had I think I would have left them to it. I felt sorry for them, stuck in that strange little bubble world of theirs; and I never saw any cats either, like I said before.

Once, however, in the half–light of a winter’s afternoon I was passing some of the oldest trees and as I turned, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange little man crouching in amongst the undergrowth. He looked exactly like one of those pictures of how we imagine Neanderthal man to have been; small, half-naked and hairy, with some animal skin wrapped around his lower body. He was looking straight up at me and the expression on his face was one of pure rage.

I looked back immediately, but he’d vanished. I was really scared. I was quite sure I’d seen him. Rationally it makes no sense; the half-light and the trees and the dense undergrowth, even in the winter, can play tricks on your eyes, but he seemed so real to me at the time.

I left soon after that, and the school closed when the Japanese economy collapsed. Now the manor house has another identity. It was bought by developers who divided the main building into luxury apartments and converted the stables into little houses. I think the temple is still for sale. It has three bedrooms and an over-inflated price if anyone’s interested. I do hope they’ve left the trees alone.