A Name and A Room

Since there may be others at the Manor with my name, I thought I would take a new one. My name here shall be Manasi. It is pronounced MAHN-see, and it means ‘of the mind’ or ‘thought-full’.

As to my room, I’ve arrived quite late, so I wondered where I could settle. I was exploring the grounds when I came across a folly in the garden, and saw that it was unoccupied. I knew that I must have it! It looks like a ruined castle turret in miniature, but it is topped with the most incongruous Mughal-style dome, and a flag made of gold – a folly indeed. Inside is a neat but fairly austere room, with a prie-dieu in the corner, under a simple crucifix. I think that after the Abbey purchased the property, this place must have been used as a retreat.


The folly is on the edge of the herb garden. There are rectangular beds, and smaller plants have been planted on the pathway, so that when you walk down it, fragrance rises from leaves crushed under your feet. The beehive in the corner is made of coiled ropes of straw, but someone has molded them into a shape that echoes the pointed dome of the folly.

But friends, I must tell you the most astonishing thing – when I was settling into this quiet, almost bare room, I shifted the prie-dieu and found that underneath it there was a trapdoor in the floor! I lifted it with some trepidation, and took the small flashlight from my purse. I walked down a wooden staircase and found another room beneath it, of exactly the same size and dimension as the one above it. But it was the exact opposite of the austerity of the main room – it was crumbling and filled with dust, but crammed with silken draperies, round cushions, a hookah, small carved tables on which blackened silver boxes rested. I couldn’t see much in the light of my flashlight, but it looked like an Orientalist fantasy.

My head was buzzing with questions. I left the darkness and dust and came back upstairs to think about the meaning of the hidden room. Then it all fell into place: Lord and Lady Someone or Other must have had a younger son, and shipped him off to the Indies to make his fortune. He would have become a wealthy Nabob, and retired to the Manor at the end of his life. But his older brother, the new Lord Someone, would have been strait-laced, and wanted no part of his suspect Eastern ways (though the money would have come in handy to maintain the estate). The Nabob must have moved into the folly which his father had built. He would have put up the Mughal dome as a gesture of defiance to his brother's world, and built the underground room, like the old Mughal summer rooms, which protected them from the scorching summer heat of Hindoostan.

When the Nabob died, the family would have sealed the entrance to the lower room – after all, who knows what shocking things he did there? He might even have put some opium in that hookah, and persuaded some pink-cheeked village girl to wrap herself in a shimmering silk sari...

When the Abbey purchased the property (even the Nabob’s wealth couldn’t prevent the Someones from being forced to sell it) the nuns would have placed the prie-dieu and the crucifix squarely above that museum of heathenism, and ensured that it was forgotten.




I felt that if I so much as sneezed down there, the whole place would have fallen into a heap of dust. I think I’ll leave it as it is. But I plan to bring some of the Nabob’s possessions – the hookah, say, and a few other things – upstairs, so that my austere room will become something a little raffish, a little Other, like the old Nabob himself. When you’re strolling in the garden, do drop in. I’ll make something spicy to go with tea.