The Skeleton Tree

by Diane Janes

  ‘Is that Wendy Thornton?’

  She didn’t recognize the voice, and then misunderstood the initial introduction, so it took a moment or two of confused interaction before she eventually realized that the caller was a distant cousin, Larry, who was barely more than a memory from half-forgotten weddings and funerals.

  ‘Oh, Larry … what a nice surprise. How are you?’ She was conscious that her enthusiasm sounded artificial (though the surprise was genuine enough: she couldn’t recollect Larry ever calling her before). Through the open door of the dining room, she caught a glimpse of Bruce, frowning. They had only just sat down to eat and he objected to this interruption in their normal routine. She turned away before he had a chance to mouth anything about ringing back. Small patches of warmth had already formed on her cheeks, born of the embarrassment of her initial hostility. She could hardly compound the felony by telling Larry that it wasn’t a convenient time.

  Her husband and children had fallen silent, forking in their food while listening in on her half of the conversation. First there was a lengthy pause while she gave her full attention to what Larry was saying. Then, ‘Yes … yes … oh, yes, very sad.’ Another pause. ‘But of course, she was a good age, wasn’t she? I did think about coming down for the funeral, but it’s such a long way for me and I would have had to arrange for someone to collect Jamie from school …’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Wendy saw seventeen-year-old Tara exchange bemused looks with her father across the table. Even as she uttered the words, Wendy knew that they probably came across as a thin excuse to Larry, who was a childless bachelor and, in any case, very probably recognized it for the lie that it was. She would not for a moment have contemplated travelling all the way down to London for the funeral of an ancient relative whom she had not seen in years. Her most recent visit to her mother’s one surviving aunt had been at least five years ago and had only been undertaken because it coincided with some other family excursion south.

  Back in the dining room, eight-year-old Katie, the first to decide that the telephone call was of no particular interest, asked her father whether he intended to watch a programme that night on BBC2.

  ‘Ninety-one? Well, there, I knew she was getting on …’ Wendy knew she was prattling, but it was hard to know what to say, with Larry being a virtual stranger and her having no idea what had put it into his head to contact her at all. The reveal came a sentence later.

  ‘A beneficiary under the will? Me? Goodness, I never expected that!’ A moment of genuine sincerity there, she thought, though if anything, the conversation became even more strained as she felt obliged to reiterate the difficulties she would have experienced in travelling down for the funeral.

  Larry had clearly tired of excuses regarding the funeral, because he cut across this with a piece of information that all but stunned her into silence. After that Wendy stopped attempting to make polite conversation and just listened. Then she said, ‘Thank you.’

  When she finally returned to the dining room – a space so restricted that when all five of them were seated at the table, the backs of the chairs almost touched the wall on one side and the sideboard on another – she found the children all talking at once.

  ‘But it’s a programme about horses,’ Katie was protesting.

  ‘You know we always watch The Rockford Files on Tuesdays,’ said Tara, in the voice she used when attempting to crush any dissent from her younger siblings.

  ‘Why can’t I stay up to watch Dallas? All my friends at school watch it.’ Jamie was getting tired and becoming querulous.

  ‘Be quiet a minute, all of you,’ said Bruce. ‘Your mother looks as if she’s seen a ghost.’

  ‘Ooh, have you, Mam?’ Katie had a tendency to take things rather literally.

  ‘It’s just an expression, pet.’ Wendy resumed her seat and glanced down at her plate, where the gravy was congealing around her slice of home-made chicken and mushroom pie. She hesitated, taking in each of the faces around the table before she said, ‘Though, actually, I have had a bit of a surprise.’

  ‘A nice surprise?’ asked Tara.

  ‘Oh, yes. Definitely a nice surprise. You remember I told you that my aunt Adi had died?’ She addressed the family in general, but Bruce in particular, continuing, without waiting for his acknowledgement, ‘Well, it turns out that she’s left me some money. One of my cousins – well, strictly speaking, I think he’s one of Mam’s cousins – Larry – is the executor of her will, and that’s what he rang to tell me. She left the money to Mam, but under the terms of her will, since Mam is already dead, the money will come to me instead.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Bruce, not bothering to beat about the bush.

  ‘Thirty-seven thousand pounds.’ She said it slowly, savouring the taste of it. Their house wasn’t worth thirty-seven thousand pounds.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Bruce was not much given to swearing, and certainly not in front of the children.

  ‘Flipping heck!’ exclaimed Tara. ‘No one ever told me we had rich relations. Are there any more out there? Who on earth was this Aunt Adi, anyway?’

  ‘She was your nanna Burton’s cousin. Adeline Crawley, her name was. I hardly knew her, to tell you the truth. Her part of the family went down south years ago, before I was born. Mam always said they’d done well for themselves. The thing is, there were a lot of sisters in that branch of the family and, apart from Larry’s mother, none of them got married, so I suppose as the others died off, the money gradually got passed along to Aunt Adi. According to Larry, she left everything to be split equally among her cousins, but she’s lived so long, it’s mostly her cousins’ children that’ll be benefitting and there’s none too many of those.’

  ‘Lucky for you she thought blood was thicker than water,’ said Bruce. ‘She could easily have left it all to the cats’ home.’

  ‘Lucky for all of us.’

  ‘I suppose this means I can have that dress from Topshop after all,’ said Tara, with a hint of mischievous sarcasm. The dress in question had been pronounced of dubious quality and too expensive during a mother and daughter shopping expedition to Middlesbrough the previous Saturday.

  Never slow to scent an advantage, Jamie chipped in with a request for a new bike.

  ‘Hold on, hold on,’ Bruce protested. ‘Your mother hasn’t even got the money yet and you’re already spending it. I’m sure there will be a chance to each choose something nice in due course, but we won’t be spending it all at once, you know.’

  ‘I’ve already decided what to do with most of it,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s like a sort of sign, isn’t it? The money coming just now … It means we can buy that house.’

  The morning after the phone call from Larry, Wendy timed her walk down Green Lane and into the High Street to coincide with the nine a.m. opening of the estate agents’ office. She just had to pray that the legalities accompanying the sale had not progressed too far. Whatever the prospective purchasers had offered for The Ashes, she would simply offer more.

  The same young woman with the toothy smile was manning the front desk. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’ve come about the house in Green Lane. The Ashes.’ Wendy took in the look of mild surprise but ploughed on regardless. ‘I want to make an appointment to view the house with my husband, and after he has seen it, we will be making an offer.’

  The teeth flashed back into smile mode. ‘Well … goodness me, doesn’t word get round quickly? We only heard that the sale had fallen through yesterday. We haven’t even had time to readvertise or take down the sold plate.’

  Wendy sat down heavily in a convenient chair. The sale had fallen through. It was an omen. Not only did she want the house, but the house wanted her. She felt as if she had successfully pulled off a conspiracy with someone she had never met. On the way home, when she looked over the gate, she wondered if she ought to pinch herself.

  Her joyful mood was only slightly dented by the general air of surprise which gr
eeted her announcement over tea that she had made an appointment for the whole family to view The Ashes.

  ‘Good grief, Wendy, I didn’t think you were serious,’ Bruce said. ‘You’ve got to think about the running costs of a house like that. It would be far more than we’re used to. Even with an efficient system, the heating alone would be prohibitive, and I hate to think what the council rates would be. To say nothing of maintenance. Even after you’ve done the place up, old houses are invariably money pits.’

  ‘But we’ll have no mortgage to pay,’ she reminded him. ‘And once this house is sold, we can invest the money we get from it.’

  Bruce nodded, but without much enthusiasm. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in taking a look.’

  Jamie, who had been ploughing through his mashed potatoes, now looked up and asked, ‘We’re not going to move house, are we? I don’t want to move unless we can live next door to Andrew Webster.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jamie, you will still see Andrew at school every day.’

  ‘But I don’t want to move, except next to him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Tara. ‘You don’t live next door to him now, do you?’

  ‘Andrew Webster is my bestest friend and I only want to move if I can live in the house next door to his house.’

  His voice had developed a whining note. Wendy decided that he was overtired. ‘I haven’t told you about the special presents yet, have I?’ she said brightly.

  The younger children eagerly confirmed that she had not. In fact, she had not even thought of the scheme until that moment, but she improvised frantically. ‘We’ll each have a hundred pounds to buy something we’ve always really wanted.’

  ‘Except for your mother,’ muttered Bruce, ‘who will have twenty thousand pounds to buy herself something she’s always wanted.’

  Wendy ignored him. ‘What will you choose, Tara?’

  ‘A stacking system. The one I really like is a bit more than that, but I can put the rest to it out of my building society account.’

  ‘Can I have a proper motorbike?’ enquired Jamie. ‘A real one, with an engine?’

  ‘Too much,’ said Bruce. ‘A hundred pounds will buy you an ordinary bike, but you only had a new one at Christmas. Think of something else.’

  ‘A digital watch then, like Andrew Webster’s.’

  Bruce and Wendy exchanged glances. The digital watch question had come up before. They both knew that such a fragile article wouldn’t last two minutes strapped to Jamie’s wrist.

  ‘How about you, Katie?’

  ‘Is it enough to go to Disneyland?’

  ‘Not nearly enough, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Though if we are careful with the money,’ Bruce paused to give his wife a meaningful look, ‘we could use it to go to all sorts of interesting places.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no hope of a pocket money raise?’ asked Tara.

  The appointment to view the house had been arranged for Saturday morning, so that the whole family could see it together. Wendy attempted to rush everyone into readiness with a haste that was completely alien to their normal weekend routine.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Bruce complained. ‘The house isn’t going anywhere. It will still be there if we’re five minutes late.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Tara. ‘It’s always looked about ready to fall down to me. I bet it stinks too, if it’s been shut up for a long time.’

  ‘I’m not going to live in a house that smells nasty.’ Katie wrinkled her nose.

  ‘You mustn’t be put off by any funny smells,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s a bit damp and dirty now, but once it’s been done up, it will be wonderful.’

  The young man from the estate agents was waiting for them at the gate. Wendy had pictured the younger children’s excitement as they all but ran up the drive, so she was disappointed by the way they hung back, following at a distance and waiting with resigned expressions while the young man stood on the front doorstep fumbling with a bunch of keys.

  Jamie peered through one of the front windows, putting his face up close to the dirty glass. ‘The wallpaper’s coming off the walls,’ he said. ‘It looks horrible.’

  Katie edged closer to Bruce and slotted her hand into his.

  ‘Here we are.’ The young man sounded relieved as the door swung open. ‘I understand you’ve been round once before, so I expect you know your way. I’ll just wait out here for you. Call me if you have any questions. Take as long as you like.’

  In the hall Bruce paused to admire the panelling. ‘That’s a nice feature. You’d need some pictures to break it up a bit. Some old-fashioned hunting scenes would look just right.’

  ‘Not fox hunting!’ exclaimed Tara.

  ‘Only pictures, Tara. No one’s advocating that the Zetland pursues a fox through the back garden.’

  ‘It does smell a bit, doesn’t it?’ said Katie.

  ‘A bit is putting it mildly,’ said Tara.

  ‘It only needs the doors and windows to be left open for a while,’ Wendy said. ‘Fresh air makes a huge difference.’

  ‘I think it needs a bit more than that,’ said Bruce.

  Wendy watched their faces anxiously as the little group moved from room to room.

  ‘You could turn this into a splendiferous kitchen,’ said Tara, when they reached the big room with the old-fashioned range at the back of the house. ‘It would be massive, like a house on the telly … But could you put all this right?’ She nudged a lump of fallen plaster with one foot.

  ‘It would take a hell of a lot to put it right,’ said Bruce. ‘Time and money. And you wouldn’t be able to live here until it was all done, either.’

  ‘But we wouldn’t need to,’ Wendy said. ‘That’s the beauty of having a house already and not needing to sell one in order to buy the other.’

  ‘Is there enough money to do it?’ asked Katie.

  ‘I honestly have no idea, my pet.’ Bruce sounded slightly exasperated. ‘You’d have to ask a builder – that is, if you were going to buy it.’

  Wendy had taken the precaution of bringing a torch.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ Bruce cautioned, as she led the way into the cellar. ‘These stairs may be rotten.’

  In fact, the stairs were remarkably sound. Even so, Katie hung back and declined to join the others as they followed Wendy down.

  ‘Wow,’ said Tara, when they all reached solid ground and Wendy played her torch around the room. ‘Look at that for a wine rack.’

  The structure in question, made in dark wood and covered in cobwebs, occupied the whole of one wall from floor to ceiling. Their wine rack at home was a self-assembled rectangle with room for a dozen bottles.

  ‘Hullo.’ Wendy’s torch beam had reached the wall to the left of the stairs. ‘There’s a gap here. It must lead into a second room.’

  ‘I expect the cellar runs the full width of the house,’ said Bruce.

  The other half of the cellar was divided into three parts. One had a broad stone shelf built into it, one had rusty hooks dangling from the ceiling, and the third was empty.

  ‘Cold slab,’ Bruce said, indicating the stone shelf. ‘As good as a fridge for keeping your dairy produce cool. I expect the hooks would have been to hang meat.’

  ‘Uhh,’ Tara shuddered. ‘It’s dead creepy. Think of coming in here and seeing half a dead pig or something.’

  ‘They didn’t have Asda to pre-pack everything then, you know.’

  ‘Daddy, Mam, where are you?’ Katie’s voice sounded faintly from the cellar door.

  ‘It’s all right, pet. We’re coming back now.’

  When they reached the first floor, Jamie was impressed by the size of the bedrooms, and Wendy encouraged him to see beyond the peeling paper and bare boards, to a time when a railway track might command space in one of them. On their arrival in what had once been the servants’ quarters, Wendy found another unexpected convert in the shape of her eldest daughter. Character won out over space as far as Tara was concerned.
‘I could have these two rooms as a sort of bedsit. My bed in there …’ She indicated the furthest room. ‘And my other stuff could be out here with beanbags for my friends to sit on. It wouldn’t matter how loud we had the stacking system, because we’d be miles away from the rest of the house. You’d need to put some radiators in here, though.’

  ‘You haven’t got a stacking system,’ Katie said.

  ‘No, but I will have. It’s going to be my special present, remember?’

  As they were on the point of returning to the ground floor, Wendy remembered that they hadn’t been up into the attic.

  ‘Is there any point?’ asked Bruce. ‘There won’t be anything to see up there.’

  ‘Well, we want to see all over …’ Wendy said.

  ‘And there might be lots of things to see,’ suggested Tara. ‘Whoever cleared out the house might have forgotten about the attic. There might be all sorts of stuff up there.’

  All five of them trooped back up to the main landing, then followed Wendy as she led the way through the attic door and up a short, steep flight of stairs. Whereas the cellar had been larger than she had anticipated, the attic was much smaller, a single space constrained by the slope of the roof. The house clearers had been more efficient than Tara had anticipated, however, leaving only spiders and dust. There was nothing to see.

  ‘Do you suppose this was used for servants as well?’

  ‘I doubt it. There aren’t any windows and there wouldn’t have been any electricity when it was first built. It was probably just used as storage.’

  When they went outside, there was collective disappointment at the discovery that it was impossible to penetrate any distance into the back garden.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Bruce. ‘You’d have to start with a flamethrower.’

  ‘Look on it as an exciting project,’ Wendy said.

  ‘I have exciting projects at work, thanks. When I come home I want to relax and enjoy life. You can’t even see what you’re taking on. Look how far it must go back. Even after it’s been sorted out, it would be a full-time job keeping it up.’