House of Echoes

6

As the removal van drove slowly out of the drive and turned out of sight Joss turned to Luke. She caught his hand. ‘That’s it. Bridges burned. No going back. No regrets?’ She looked up at him.

He smiled. ‘No Joss, no regrets. This is the start of a big adventure.’

Slowly they walked back into the kitchen. The room had in many ways not changed at all since the first day they had seen it. The range was still there, and to their joy had been found to be fully functional after an overhaul; the plates and cups on the dresser had been washed and were sparkling. The heavy table, decorated now with a scarlet poinsettia, a gift from John Cornish, had been scrubbed almost white by Joss’s mother, Alice. The crates of their own china and glass stood piled along the wall. Tom’s high chair was pulled up at the head of the table.

Alice was bending over the pan on the stove, stirring something which smelled extremely appetising as they walked in.

‘Removal men gone?’ Her husband, Joe, was unwrapping saucepans with his small grandson’s help, making a huge pile of newspaper in the middle of the room.

‘Gone at last, thank God.’ Luke threw himself down in one of the chairs. ‘That smells wonderful, Alice.’

His mother-in-law smiled. ‘You know, I’m really enjoying cooking on this range. I think I’m getting the hang of it at last. This is real cooking!’ The range had been one of the urgent things they had had repaired before the move. She glanced at Joss. ‘Why don’t we all have a glass of wine, while I finish this. Let Lyn take Tom, Joe. She can give him his tea.’ Comfortably she stood away from the stove, wiping her hands on the front of her apron.

There were two bottles of wine in a Sainsbury’s carrier on the table and a six pack of beer. ‘Corkscrew?’ Joss extricated the bottles and stood them in line with the poinsettia. After the weeks of worry and packing and organising the move she was so exhausted she could hardly stand.

‘On my boy scout knife.’ Luke grinned at her. ‘Do you remember the removal foreman telling us: “Leave out the kettle and the corkscrew or you’ll never find them again after.”’ He fished around in the pocket of his jacket and produced a corkscrew which had obviously been nowhere near a boy scout in its life. ‘Beer for you, Joe? And I think I’ll join you. It’s thirsty work, moving house!’

Sitting at the table, watching her sister cut up an apple and put the pieces in front of Tom Joss felt a sudden wave of total contentment. It would probably take them years to sort out the house; months to unpack, but at least they were here properly now. No more London; no more office for Luke as he tried to sort out the last-minute details of his former life. And here they had enough room to put up Joe and Alice and Lyn and anyone else who wanted to come and stay for as long as they wanted.

Helping herself to a glass Alice sat down next to her. ‘I’ll leave that to simmer for a couple of hours. Then we can eat. You look done in, love.’ She put her hand over Joss’s.

‘Done in, but happy.’ Joss smiled. ‘It’s going to work. I know it is.’

‘Course it is.’ Joe had gone back to pushing the crumpled newspaper into a black plastic sack, considerably hampered by Tom who was pulling out the pieces as fast as Joe was putting them in, and tossing them around the room. ‘You’re all going to be very happy here.’ He reached for his beer. ‘So, let’s drink a toast. To Belheddon Hall and all who sail in her!’

The sound of the back doorbell was almost drowned by their raised voices. It was Luke who, with a groan, levered himself to his feet and went to answer it.

They had met Janet Goodyear several times since she had introduced herself on their first visit to the house almost three months before and Joss was beginning to like her more and more. Her first impression of an interfering and nosy neighbour had been replaced by one of a good-hearted and genuinely kind, if not always tactful, woman, who, far from being pushy was in fact diffident about intruding on her new neighbours. In her basket this time was a bottle of Scotch (‘For emergencies, but I can see you’ve thought of the alcohol bit already’,) and, what turned out to be a corn dolly. Accepting a glass of wine from Luke she pulled up a chair next to Joss. ‘You’ll probably think I’m dotty,’ she said cheerfully, ‘but I want you to hang this up somewhere in the kitchen here. For luck.’

Joss reached over and picked up the intricately plaited figure. ‘It’s beautiful. I’ve seen them of course –’

‘This isn’t a souvenir shop piece of tweeness,’ Janet interrupted. ‘Please don’t think it is. It was made specially for you. There’s an old chap who used to work on the farm – he does some odd gardening jobs for us now – and he made it for you. He asked me to bring it. It’s to ward off evil.’

Joss raised her eyes from the plaited straw. ‘Evil?’

‘Well –’ Janet shrugged ‘– you have probably gathered by now that the locals are a bit funny about this house.’ She laughed uncomfortably. ‘I don’t believe it. I’ve always loved it here. It has such a nice atmosphere.’

‘What do they say exactly?’ Clearing away the remains of his apple, Joss pushed a plate of scrambled egg in front of Tom and put a spoon into his hand.

‘I don’t know that we want to know, dear,’ Alice put in quietly. ‘You look at the range, Mrs Goodyear. What do you think of it now?’ Joss had told her mother about the estimate of twenty thousand.

‘I think it’s wonderful.’ Still cheerfully unaware of the consternation her initial comments on the state of the house had caused, Janet swung round to inspect it. ‘It’s so clever of you to get it fixed so quickly.’

‘You could join us for supper later,’ Joss interrupted. ‘Mum has made enough for an army as usual.’

‘Thank you but no.’ Janet drained her glass and stood up. ‘I only came to bring you the dolly. The last thing you all want is a visitor on your first evening. Later, though, I’d love to come. And in the mean time if you need anything at all we are very close. Please, please don’t hesitate to ask.’ She smiled round at them, then pulling her scarf back over her head, she was gone.

‘Nice woman, Janet Goodyear,’ Luke said to Joss when they were alone in the great hall later. They had made no attempt to introduce any of their furniture there. The room was too big, too stately, and, they both agreed needed no more than was there already.

The meal had been eaten and the beds made up and Luke’s first job, a rusty, shabby 1929 Bentley, had been ushered into the yard on the back of a low loader. It hadn’t even required an advertisement in the paper. A card in the shop, and a few words in the pub and the phone had rung three days later. Colonel Maxim, from the next village had owned the car for twelve years and had never got round to working on it himself. Luke could start on it as soon as possible, and when that was done, there was a 1930 Alvis belonging to a friend.

Tom, exhausted by the excitement of the day had gone to bed in his own room without a murmur. The old nurseries led off the main bedroom which was to be Joss and Luke’s, and, with the doors open into the short passage which separated the two rooms they would easily be able to hear him if he cried. The nursery complex consisted of three rooms, one of which had been converted into a bathroom. It was a cold, north facing room, and even the string bag full of Tom’s colourful bath toys did nothing to cheer it up. ‘Curtains, bright rug, wall heater and lots of vivid, warm towels,’ Joss dictated as she took the little boy on her knee after his bath and cuddled him dry. Lyn was making a shopping list, sitting on the closed lid of the loo. ‘Tom’s bathroom and bedroom are a priority.’ She shivered in spite of the heat from the gas cylinder heater Luke had put into the room. ‘I want him to love this place.’

‘At least your four poster will keep the draught out,’ Lyn commented. The bedroom she had been allocated off the main staircase, although facing south across the garden, was bitterly cold. In the past it was obvious a fire had been lit in the grate in there. There was a rudimentary central heating system, working off the range, but the heat didn’t seem to reach the bedrooms, and they had already decided that they would just have to stay cold. A thousand blankets, hot-water bottles and thermal pyjamas were going to be the order of the day from now on.

‘How long do you think Joe and Alice will stay?’ Joss pulled the fleece-lined pyjama top over Tom’s curls.

‘As long as you like.’ Lyn was adding soap, loo paper and cleaning materials to her list. ‘Mum doesn’t want to get in the way, but she’d really love to stay right up to Christmas. She’d help you get the place straight.’

‘I know she would, bless her. And I’d like her to. In fact I’d love you all to stay, if you’d like to.’

* * *

‘So, what do you think of it all?’ Luke put his arm round Joss’s shoulders. They had lit a small fire and were standing looking down at it as the dry logs cracked and spat. Lyn and Alice and Joe had all gone to bed, exhausted by their day.

‘I suppose it’s like a dream come true.’ Joss leaned her elbow against the heavy oak bressummer beam that spanned the huge fireplace, looking down into the flames. ‘I think we should have the tree in here. A huge one, covered in fairy lights.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Tom will be thrilled. He was too young to know what was going on last year.’ Joss smiled to herself. ‘Did you hear him talking to Dad: “Tom put paper there”. He was getting really cross, taking it out of the bag as fast as Dad put it in.’

‘Luckily your father loved it.’ Luke frowned. ‘It must be very strange for them, knowing this house belonged to your real parents.’

‘Strange for them!’ Joss shook her head hard, as if trying to clear her brain. ‘Think what it’s like for me. I don’t even like to call Dad, Dad. It’s as if I feel my other father might be listening.’

Luke nodded. ‘I rang my parents while you were upstairs. Just to say we’re here.’

Joss smiled fondly. ‘How are they? How is life in Chicago?’ She knew how much Luke was missing them, especially his father. Geoffrey Grant’s sabbatical year in the States seemed to have dragged on for a long, long time.

‘They’re great. And they’re coming home early next summer.’ He paused. He and Joss had been planning a trip out to see them. That was not going to happen now, of course. ‘They can’t wait to see the house, Joss. It’s hard to know how to explain all this over the phone.’ He gave a snort of laughter.

Joss smiled. ‘I suppose it is!’ She lapsed into thoughtful silence.

‘Have you had another look for the key to the desk in the study yet?’ Luke nudged the logs with the toe of his trainer and watched with satisfaction as a curtain of sparks spread out over the sooty bricks at the back of the hearth.

‘I haven’t been in the study since we arrived this morning.’ She stood up straight. ‘I’m going to have a tot of Janet Goodyear’s present and then I think I might go and have a poke around while you have your bath.’

* * *

The room was cold, the windows black reflections of the night. With a shiver Joss set her glass down on one of the little tables and went to close the shutters and pull the heavy brocade curtains. The table lamp threw a subdued light across the rugs on the floor, illuminating the abandoned work basket beside it. Joss stood looking down at it for a long time. There was a lump in her throat at the thought that her mother had used those small, filigree scissors and that the silver thimble must have fitted her finger. Hesitantly Joss reached for it and slipped it on her own finger. It fitted.

There was a key in the bottom of the work basket, lost under the silks and cotton threads – a small ornate key which Joss knew instinctively would fit the keyhole in the desk.

Reaching up she switched on the lamp which rested on the top of the desk, and stared at the array of small pigeon holes which the opened lid revealed. It was tidy but not empty and it was immediately obvious that the desk had been her mother’s. Taking a sip from her glass Joss reached for a bundle of letters. With a strange feeling half of guilt, half excitement she pulled off the ribbon which bound them together.

They were all addressed to her mother and they came from someone called Nancy. She glanced through them, wondering who Nancy was. A close friend and a gossip by the look of it, who had lived in Eastbourne. They told her nothing at all about her mother, but quite a lot about the unknown Nancy. With a tolerant smile she retied the ribbon and tucked them back in their place.

There were pens and a bottle of ink, paper clips, tags, envelopes, all the paraphernalia of a busy person; a drawer of unused headed note paper, and there, in another drawer by itself, a leather-bound notebook. Curiously Joss pulled it out and opened it. On the flyleaf, in her mother’s hand was written ‘For my daughter, Lydia’. Joss shivered. Had her mother been so sure then that she would come to Belheddon; that one day she would sit down on this chair at this desk and pull open the drawers one by one until she found – she flicked it open – not a diary, as she had half expected, just empty pages, undated.

And one short scrawled paragraph, towards the middle of the book:

He came again today, without warning and without mercy. My fear makes him stronger –

‘Joss?’ Luke’s voice in the doorway made her jump out of her skin. He was dressed in his bathrobe and from where she sat she could smell the musky drift of his aftershave.

She slammed the book shut and took a deep breath.

‘What is it? Is something wrong?’

‘No. Nothing.’ Slotting the notebook back into its drawer she pulled down the flap on the desk, turning the key. ‘The desk was my mother’s. It seems so strange to read her letters and things –’

My fear makes him stronger

Who, for God’s sake? Who was her mother so frightened of and why had she written about him in an otherwise empty notebook which she had left especially for Joss to read?

As she lay in the four-poster bed, staring up at the silk decoration in the darkness over her head Joss found it hard to close her eyes. Beside her Luke had fallen into a restless sleep almost as soon as his head had touched the pillow. They were both worn out. After all, the day had started at five in London and now, at midnight, they were at Belheddon, and for better or for worse this was now their home.

Moving her head slightly to left or right Joss could see the squares of starlight which showed the two windows on opposite sides of the room. Divided by stone mullions in the old plaster one looked over the front of the house and down the drive towards the village, the other across the back garden and down towards the lake and beyond it, over the hedge to the river estuary and beyond it the distant North Sea. Initially Luke had closed the curtains when he came upstairs. They were heavy with woollen embroidery, double lined against the cold, luxurious. Looking at them Joss was grateful for their weight against the draughts, but even so, she pulled them open before she climbed into the high bed. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ she explained to Luke as he lay back beside her. His only answer, minutes later, was a gentle snore. Outside the moon shone onto a garden as bright as day as the frosty sparkle hardened into a skim of ice. Shivering, Joss huddled down under the duvet – a modern concession, the embroidered bed cover carefully folded away for safety – glad of the solid warmth of her sleeping husband. Surreptitiously her hand strayed to his shoulder. As she snuggled up against him in the darkness she did not see the slight movement in the corner of the room.

7

It was still dark when Joss slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the icy floor in bare feet. Behind her Luke gave a quiet murmur and, punching the pillow turned over and went back to sleep. Switching on the light in the bathroom Joss reached for her clothes, left piled on the chair. Thick trousers, shirt, two sweaters, heavy thermal socks. In the ice cold room her breath came in small clouds. On the window pane, as she held back the curtain and peered out into the darkness she was enchanted and horrified to find the beautiful, lacy designs of Jack Frost on the inside of the glass. With a rueful smile she padded across the floor and glanced through Tom’s door. Worn out by the excitement of the day before he was sleeping flat on his back, his arms above his head on the pillow, his cheeks pink with sleep. Tiptoeing to the chest where his night light burned she glanced at the thermometer which Alice had suggested they keep in the room. The temperature was steady. With a fond smile, she tiptoed out of the room and left the door slightly ajar. If he woke, Luke would hear him.