by Diane Janes
‘Mrs Webb—’
‘Please call me Joan.’
Wendy smiled. ‘Joan, if you’re not in too much of a hurry, will you tell me all about the house as you remember it – in return for seeing round?’
‘Gladly, if you’ve got time to listen.’
Katie returned with the glass and Wendy poured out lemon squash all round.
‘How much do you know already?’ Joan asked.
‘Hardly anything, except that the previous owner was a very old lady who had lived here for a long time before she died.’
Joan thought for a moment, as if deciding where to begin. ‘I never actually lived at The Ashes, of course, but I did spend a lot of time here.’
‘Was it always called The Ashes?’
Joan smiled. ‘Yes, but I’ve no idea why. I don’t ever recall there being any ash trees here.’
‘I’ve always supposed that there must have been some, once upon a time.’
‘Well, not in my day anyway. Of course, the house had been here a long time before Aunt Elaine and Uncle Herb came.’
‘Our builder said he thought maybe 1840.’
‘Well, there you are. My aunt and uncle bought it when they got married, which was practically straight after the war, so 1919 or 1920. There was a story in the family that there was a bit of a row over them buying it. Uncle Herb’s parents thought they were over-stretching themselves. It is a big house … but of course they had help in those days, a cook and a maid, I think … everyone did back then. It was all too much for Auntie in the end, I expect. It’s far too big for one old lady living on her own. It’s a family house.’
‘And did your aunt Elaine have children?’ Wendy prompted.
‘Four: two boys and two girls. It was wonderful for me when I came to stay, because I was an only child, so I loved having some playmates. I was only a few months younger than Dora so I fitted in nicely.’
‘Was Dora the eldest?’ Wendy was as eager to keep Joan talking as a child who senses the approach of bedtime.
‘No, Dora was the youngest. Ronnie was the eldest, then Hugh. The boys were only about twelve months apart. Then came the two girls, Bunty and Dora. Four children in seven years.’
‘Hugh …’ Wendy repeated the name as if trying it out. ‘I wonder, could that have been the person who signed the conveyance?’
‘Hugh’s dead. He died about three years ago. I think his son, Charles, would probably have been the one who dealt with the estate. I expect Aunt Elaine left everything to be divided between her three grandchildren, but none of them would have wanted the house. Charles never did like The Ashes. I don’t imagine either of Bunty’s girls would have been overly keen either – and of course none of them live up this way.’
‘Oh dear, why didn’t Charles like it?’
‘Well, of course, he only ever knew it as a gloomy old place where his grandmother lived. He’d tried to persuade Auntie to sell up and move somewhere smaller. I believe they had quite a row about it. Charles thought the old lady was a bit of a liability, pottering about here all alone. Days would go by without her seeing or speaking to anyone. Uncle Herb had been dead for a long time by then, and most of her friends too I suppose, and Charles lived too far away to keep an eye on her, and his wife wouldn’t come at all, on account of the state of the house. I was abroad until just after she died, but I last saw her about ten years ago and things were going downhill then. It was sad to see everything getting in such a state.’
‘Poor lady. She must have been very lonely.’
Joan appeared to think about this. Eventually she said, ‘I think she’d gone a bit funny at the end. At least, that’s the impression one got from the rest of the family. Charles said she always insisted that she didn’t mind being on her own, or even seem particularly pleased when anyone did go to see her. I called in on Fiona a couple of weeks ago. That’s Bunty’s eldest. She said she’d been to see her grandmother a few weeks before she died and Elaine had talked a lot of nonsense.’ Joan hesitated, glancing across the garden to where Katie, still within earshot but apparently uninterested in the conversation, had gone to play with the swing-ball.
‘If you’ve finished your juice, let’s go and look at the house,’ suggested Wendy. ‘What sort of nonsense?’ she asked, once Joan had levered herself out of the lounger and they had put the outhouses between themselves and Katie.
‘Apparently she talked as if she thought Uncle Herb was still alive. Fiona said it was most disconcerting, almost as if he might walk back into the room at any moment. Then she kept on saying, “I was wrong about Ronnie. I was wrong about everything.” I suppose she must have been dwelling on the past. You see, Ronnie had been taken prisoner by the Japs and we never heard a word until the war was over, but all through the war Aunt Elaine was convinced that he had survived. No one knew then, the terrible things the Japs had done to our boys. We found out afterwards that Ronnie had died in a POW camp in 1944. He was only twenty-three.’ The two women stood for a moment in the cool silence of the kitchen passage.
Joan sighed. ‘One heard such terrible stories. Men being starved, beaten, tortured to death. Apparently they picked on the tall men worst of all, because the guards didn’t like looking up to anyone – and I can’t imagine Ronnie bowing to some Jap officer. It wasn’t in him.’
In the passage, Joan exclaimed over the grandfather clock. ‘Is it Elaine’s?’
‘No, or at least not as far as I know. I bought it from a dealer last week.’ (It had been a good price, impossible to resist. Bruce had been forced to admit that it was a bargain.)
‘Well, it’s just like hers, and in exactly the right place. Well done you.’
As they moved from room to room, Joan was full of approval. ‘How lovely you have made everything. If you don’t mind my saying so, you haven’t spoiled it at all.’
At the end of the tour Wendy offered her visitor a cup of tea and they sat at the kitchen table to drink it. Joan needed very little encouragement to reminisce. Visions of long past summers swam before Wendy’s eyes, the characters coming to life as Joan’s memories floated by. There was Elaine Duncan in a shady hat, tending her garden while the children played nearby. Dora stuffing the bedclothes in her mouth to stem a fit of irrepressible giggles when she and Joan traded jokes long after they should have been asleep. Ronnie, the daring elder brother, always running faster and climbing higher; the captain when they played at pirates and the general when they arranged battles with the toy soldiers. The one who never cried when he scraped his knee or got caught when they went scrumping for apples. Hugh was the natural second-in-command, a quieter boy. Bunty was the pretty one who hated spring cabbage and woodlice with almost equal passion.
After pausing to take a breath and glancing down at the last few sips in her teacup, which had long since gone cold, Joan asked, ‘Have you ever noticed anything odd about this house?’
‘It’s got a lot of … unusual features … but I don’t think that’s what you mean, is it?’
Joan laughed. ‘It’s silly, of course, but as children we always believed the house was haunted. It was all Ronnie’s fault. He and Hugh used to come creeping into our room after bedtime and tell us ghost stories. Ronnie had a tremendous imagination and it was all the usual stuff, clanking chains and haunted rooms where people died of shock after trying to sleep there for a night, you know the type of thing. But then one night he told us that there was a ghost here at The Ashes. It wasn’t like his usual stories. It was sort of … matter of fact.’
‘What was the story?’
‘I can’t properly remember. Bear in mind I was only about eight years old at the time. I do remember that the ghost was supposed to have been a girl who only haunted certain parts of the house. The thing is that a couple of nights later, Dora needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and when she was out on the half landing she had absolute hysterics and woke the whole house, claiming that she’d seen the ghost. Well, of course, Aunt Elaine quizzed her the n
ext morning and when she got it out of Dora that Ronnie had told us this story, she was absolutely furious. She took Ronnie into the dining room (it was always the dining room for a severe telling off, I don’t know why) and we could hear her shouting, even from upstairs. When he came out, Ronnie was actually crying. I don’t think we’d ever seen him cry before. Aunt Elaine said we were none of us to ever talk about it again – and after that there were no more ghost stories.’
‘Goodness me, your auntie sounds pretty fierce.’
‘She wasn’t usually, though she did occasionally show flashes of temper. I remember Dora telling me that she’d once seen her get into a terrible, scary rage, but I never saw that side of her. In fact, I really can’t imagine it. Aunt Elaine was such a lady.’
‘And do you think Dora really had seen something, that night on the landing?’
‘I have no idea. We weren’t exactly afraid of Aunt Elaine, but children respected their elders then. Or at least, children who’d been brought up like us. So we never spoke of it again. Or none of them did in front of me. I suppose it’s possible they discussed what had happened among themselves later on, but certainly not in my hearing.’
‘But you think there could have been something in it?’ Wendy asked.
‘I don’t know. Elaine was probably just furious with Ronnie for frightening us younger ones, but when I thought about it much later, what struck me as odd was how it was different from his normal stories. No people dying of fright or being walled up in a nunnery and all that kind of rubbish. I rather wondered if he’d overheard the grown-ups telling the story, or maybe the servants.’
‘But you’ve never asked any of the others?’
Joan smiled sadly. ‘I wish I could, but Ronnie was lost in the war, Bunty died in ’sixty-seven and Hugh about three years ago. They’re all beyond my reach now, I’m afraid.’
‘What about Dora?’
‘What about Dora?’ Joan repeated the question thoughtfully. Her attention seemed to have been caught by a blackbird which had perched on the guttering of the outhouse and was therefore just visible through the kitchen window. ‘Dora disappeared in 1943. She went out on her bicycle and never came back. No one ever saw her or the bicycle again. People mostly believed she was murdered, but I suppose we will never know. I hope I haven’t upset you. I never intended for all this to come out. Ghosts and murders. It isn’t the kind of thing one ought to be telling people when they’ve just moved into a house.’
Wendy ignored the goosebumps on her arms. It came to her that there had been nothing more reported about the Leanne Finnegan case … or Leah Cattermole, subsequent to the discovery of her body. No news of any further arrest. Whoever had abducted those girls, he was still out there. Suppose it had been Peter? Peter who knew his way around The Ashes and knew exactly who lived there. Maybe she should have gone to Mr Broughton after all. But if she had got Peter dismissed from the job, wouldn’t that have given him a reason to dislike her and want revenge? If someone bad came into your life, it wasn’t always possible to be easily rid of them. She pulled herself firmly back to matters in hand. ‘Please, it’s fine. I asked you to tell me all about your family and you have. I’m not at all upset about it. Not by something that happened so long ago … but it must have been terrible for all of you?’
‘As it happens, I wasn’t living up here at the time, because my father’s work had taken us down to Surrey, but I felt it very deeply, because Dora and I had been so close.’
‘Didn’t they find any clues about what had happened to her?’
‘Nothing much. So far as I remember it, the last known sighting was of Dora going along the track which led to Holm Farm, but even that wasn’t very reliable. The lady who saw her was a bit short-sighted and all she could say was that she’d seen a girl on a bicycle, wearing a blue frock. And Dora was wearing a blue frock that day.’
‘Where’s Holm Farm?’
‘It’s gone now. There’s a new housing estate where it used to be. Magnolia Road starts at the place where the farm track used to run off Green Lane. It was all open land across there when I was a child. We often used to walk or bike along the track. The Coxes kept Holm Farm, and before the war you could buy your milk from them.’
‘Do you suppose Dora might have been going to the farm?’
‘It’s possible. The day it happened Bunty was staying with a school friend in Yorkshire and Aunt Elaine was out visiting for part of the afternoon. Uncle Herb was up in Scotland, doing some kind of war work, and the boys were both in the forces, so Dora hadn’t told anyone where she was going – that much I do remember. She might have been heading beyond the farm, down towards the river perhaps. The funny thing is that on almost any other day, one of the Coxes would certainly have seen her, but that particular day they were all out in the motor. That hardly ever happened, what with petrol rationing and everything, but Old Mrs Cox had a hospital appointment and her son and daughter-in-law had gone into town with her. There was a big search, I believe. The police were probably a bit stretched, but I think they got local volunteers and some soldiers to help. They never found anything.’
‘How awful. Did Elaine believe … you know, like she did with Ronnie?’
‘Not that I heard. The strange thing was that though she clung to the idea of Ronnie coming back, after a while she never spoke of Dora at all. Bunty said it was because Ronnie had always been her favourite, but that’s probably unfair. I think she suffered more over Dora, but she suffered in silence. We were able to hold a memorial service for Ronnie. There was no body, but at least we knew what had happened to him. You couldn’t have a service for Dora because no one could ever be quite sure …’
‘None of them lived to be very old,’ Wendy mused. ‘Poor Elaine! Imagine outliving all your children.’
‘I know. Poor old Ronnie was twenty-three and Bunty was forty when she went down to cancer. Hugh was only in his fifties – of course he always was a reckless driver.’ Joan pulled herself up abruptly, as though indulging in a thought which she ought not to have entertained. ‘Killed outright, a great tragedy. And Dora was fifteen when she … went. Well, I think I’ve kept you long enough. I must say you have been awfully generous and hospitable.’
‘It’s been great. You must come again.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you. If you would like to see some photographs of the family and the house as it was in the old days, I have several albums.’
‘I would love that.’
There was an enthusiastic exchange of telephone numbers. Joan lived less than ten miles away, which made keeping in touch perfectly feasible. As the two women walked up the drive together, Wendy explained that she had approached the bank just a few days previously, in the hope of finding out more about who had owned the house from its earliest days.
‘How fascinating,’ said Joan. ‘You must promise to share whatever you find out with me.’
Wendy stood in the gateway to wave her visitor goodbye. The gate was always propped open these days, to facilitate the passage of their car. As she turned to go back to the house she was horrified to see Jamie approaching, hand in hand with Mrs Webster, mother of his best friend. Jamie’s face was smudged, as if he might have been crying.
‘Jamie, what’s happened?’
‘It’s quite all right,’ Andrew Webster’s mother assured her. ‘It’s just that you did promise to collect Jamie at four o’clock, and when it got to nearly five he became a bit anxious so I brought him along. You see, Jamie, I told you it would be all right. Nothing bad has happened to Mummy, she’s just been delayed, that’s all.’
Wendy gathered up her son, red-faced, apologetic and more than a little ashamed of herself, while the expression on Mrs Webster’s face conveyed better than words that some mothers would never forget to collect their own children.
‘Come on, Jamie.’ Having wiped his face with a tissue from her pocket, Wendy took his hand and, thanking Mrs Webster one final time, led him up the drive and into the kitchen.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ Jamie sniffed.
‘Don’t be silly, darling. I had a visitor and lost track of the time, that’s all. Look at the clock! You sit down there and I’ll get you some orange juice, and then I must sort something out for tea.’
Bruce arrived home soon afterwards and found Wendy kneeling in front of the freezer. ‘Hi,’ he said, as he dumped his briefcase on the kitchen table and turned to the fridge for a drink. Looking up, she noticed that his shirt was sticking to his back, where it had been compressed against him by the seat of the car.
‘Are you getting some ice out?’ he asked.
‘Actually, I’m looking to see what I can give everyone for dinner. There’s been a menu change because I forgot to defrost the chicken joints. Here’s the ice.’ She passed the tray across to him as she spoke. ‘You’ll never guess who came to the door today.’
‘You’re right. I won’t.’
‘A lady called Joan Webb. She was old Mrs Duncan’s niece. She used to spend a lot of time here as a child and she asked if she could look around the house.’
‘Bloody cheek! I hope you sent her packing.’
‘Of course I didn’t. She stayed most of the afternoon. She’s been telling me all about how things were when her aunt lived here. It was absolutely fascinating.’
At that moment Katie appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I’m too hot,’ she said.
‘It must be the hottest day so far,’ Bruce said. And then in an altogether different tone, ‘Good God! Come here, Katie.’ He turned her round. ‘Look at her shoulders!’ he ordered Wendy. ‘You’ve surely not let her run around outside all day wearing just a swimsuit?’
‘Oh dear.’ Wendy inspected her daughter anxiously. ‘You are rather burned, pet. Does it hurt?’
Bruce thumped the glass he had been filling on the worktop. ‘She should have put on a T-shirt hours ago. Why on earth didn’t you make sure she did? You know how easily she burns.’
‘I’m sorry, Katie,’ Wendy said. ‘Don’t get upset, darling, come up to the bathroom and I’ll put some aftersun cream on for you.’
