by Emlyn Rees
Jimmy climbed over her and she smiled at him. As he walked away, laughing with Scott, Verity noticed how good Jimmy looked in his jeans. Feeling momentarily shaken by this guilty thought, she picked up the pencil lying in the pages of her diary and dreamily wrote Denny’s name surrounded by a garland of daisies, then, below it, the lines from a Shakespeare love sonnet she’d learnt off by heart.
Chapter X
IN THE SAME way that Ned didn’t believe in angels, he didn’t believe in ghosts. Death, as he saw it, was the end of everything and the beginning of nothing. And yet, sitting here on the windowsill in what he now knew had once been Caroline Walpole’s bedroom, on this unseasonably hot Tuesday afternoon, he was at least hopeful of extracting some information from the dead.
An hour ago Stan, one of the craftsmen from Coalbrook Marbles, had come and knocked on Ned’s Portakabin door. Stan had been engaged in the intricate task of re-creating the fluted pilasters on either side of the Robert Adam fireplace in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He’d told Ned that he’d got something to show him, but had refused to say what it was.
Once he’d led Ned up here, Stan had guided him past the fireplace and pointed at the base of the bare brick wall to its left. ‘Look,’ he’d said.
A single red brick, dry and split in two, had lain on the new oak floor.
‘Mac’s out working on the kitchen garden wall,’ Ned had told him, peeved that Stan hadn’t gone and found the bricklayer himself. Ned had been busy swotting up on the original designs for the ballroom ceiling and Stan’s interruption had wrecked his concentration. ‘I’ll get him to pop up and take a look at it before he goes home.’
‘No,’ Stan had said, ‘it’s not the brick that’s bothering me. That fell out when I chucked my toolbox up against it this morning. I mean the hole. Look inside.’ He’d shot Ned a sardonic smile at this point. ‘I thought that if someone was going to disturb it and maybe wreck it in the process, it should probably be the boss, eh?’
Ned had stepped forward and knelt down, first peering inside the dark and musty recess which the brick had once half filled, then reaching inside and gently removing what had been hidden there.
It was remarkable that it had survived at all, Ned considered now, as he turned another page of Caroline Walpole’s private diary. The diary’s fine red morocco covers had lost their flexibility and were brittle and scorched. Its gold clasp had been tarnished by the heat of the blaze and the smoke. Damp had seeped across the bottom half of each page, leaving the handwriting there illegible.
But even so, enough had been preserved of Caroline’s words for Ned to have bothered skimming through her sentimental scribbling in the hope that she’d have recorded some period detail – observations regarding her room, or any other part of the house or grounds – which he’d have found of use in his work. But now, as he finally reached the last page, he accepted that his hope had been in vain. ‘What a waste,’ he said aloud.
‘Say what?’ asked Stan, looking up from the fireplace.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Ned weighed the diary in his hand, annoyed over his wasted effort and half tempted to have it bricked up again. It was of no practical use to him. All it contained were the foolish notions of a naïve girl who’d read too many romantic poems and novels. Other than giving him a glimpse into Caroline’s private world – a place where love reigned supreme – the diary had told him nothing he hadn’t already known.
The events leading up to and surrounding Caroline’s death had been recorded by the local magistrate during the inquiry that had followed her suicide. The recorded facts of the case were that Caroline’s bigoted father, Alexander Walpole, had learnt of his daughter’s plans to elope with Leon Jacobson. On the night of the elopement, Alexander had intercepted Leon on his way to their clifftop rendezvous and had negotiated a fee for him to leave and never return. With Leon safely on his way to Southampton docks, then, Alexander had gone to the clifftop himself to bring his daughter home. Only when he’d told her how easy her lover had been to buy off, instead of having been cured of her infatuation (as her father had assumed), Caroline had thrown herself off the cliff, broken-hearted and betrayed.
Jonathan Arthur had Fedexed Ned copies of the inquiry’s records some months ago, in case they might have been of interest to him. But they hadn’t been. Ned was more interested in bricks and mortar than flesh and blood. The records were buried now in some drawer or other in the Portakabin. Ned neither knew nor cared where.
He snapped the diary shut and refastened its clasp. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to rely on Caroline’s help in renovating the room. As well as having obtained all the legal documents relating to the house and its former occupants, Jonathan Arthur had secured for Ned the original plans and specifications for the house and gardens. Physically, then, the room as it now stood was how it would have appeared when first built.
As for the way in which the bedroom would have been furnished and decorated, Ned was spoilt for choice. The style of the period during which the house had been destroyed had been one of great eclecticism, and Ned had already sent Mr Arthur a variety of schemes to consider, any one of which Ned would be happy to implement.
The sound of a woman’s laughter reached Ned and he walked over to the window and looked out. Down on the lawn stood Ellen Morris and the short, dark-haired man who’d been with her in the car on Friday. Disconcertingly, Ned felt a dart of happiness run through him. He was glad to see her, though he couldn’t immediately comprehend why.
He thought back to how she’d nearly rammed his beloved Beetle. He remembered how he’d reacted to her plans for her documentary. Or overreacted, as he now felt. Because, even though he’d meant every word he’d said about making money out of other people’s misery … well, he hadn’t known that that was Ellen’s only motive, had he? Maybe – and this was the bottom line – she was a sympathetic journalist. In which case, maybe she’d deserved the benefit of the doubt.
Ellen and the man were standing next to the honeysuckle arbour by the newly pointed kitchen garden wall and Ned watched in fascination as they bowed formally to one another, before bursting into laughter at some comment made by Mac, who was working on the wall a few yards away from them.
With her blonde hair glistening in the sunlight, Ellen cut quite a figure, even from where Ned was standing. She was dressed in a white, open-necked shirt and dark denim jeans, which stretched down her long legs and terminated in a pair of glitzy silver trainers. A chunky brown leather belt hung loosely round her waist and, as she cocked her hip now and pointed at the arbour, the belt draped down lower still across her thigh, giving her the appearance of a gunslinger itching to draw. As she broke into another laugh, throwing back her head so that he could see her face, subconsciously the corners of Ned’s mouth twitched into a smile.
There’d been a time when Ned would have been hopelessly attracted towards a woman who looked like Ellen, when he would have walked straight up to her – no matter where she’d been, or whom she’d been with – looked her directly in the eyes and asked her out. There’d been a time when he would have sent her flowers at home, posted letters to her at work and left restaurant addresses on her answerphone, and a time when he would have bought aeroplane tickets in his and her name, and shown her places he loved but she’d never seen.
And there’d been a time when Ned would have been hopelessly attracted towards a woman who acted like Ellen, too. He’d been thinking a lot about their argument in the Portakabin four days ago. It had left him exhilarated. And not because – as he’d thought at the time – he’d been justified. (How, he now understood, could he know whether he’d been justified or not, when he’d hardly let her speak?) No, the buzz he’d got from their encounter had been something far less self-righteous than that.
He’d been left exhilarated because she’d stood up to him, because she’d acted as his equal – his better, in fact – and had seen fit to challenge him. She’d demanded his respect. And Ned couldn’t rec
all the last time that had happened, in either his business or personal life. In both he was king. No one at the site ever questioned his wishes and no one (with the obvious exception of Wobbles) at home did either.
What Ellen had made Ned remember was that he liked being challenged, liked being forced to think on the spot, liked the feeling of adrenalin racing through his blood.
Oh, yes, he thought, looking deliberately beyond her now, at the elms and alders and half-restored walls, there’d been a time when he’d have been drawn to a woman like Ellen all right. But that time had long since past and all thoughts of her now were nothing other than idle speculation. Ned wasn’t looking for someone to share his life with any more. He’d done that with Mary and he couldn’t face that kind of pain again.
‘OK, Scott,’ Ned heard Ellen telling her companion a few minutes later, as he walked unobserved towards them across the dry grass, ‘let’s forget about filming the first formal meeting and go for something more intimate instead.’
‘Sounds good,’ Scott agreed.
Scott … Ned stared at him for a moment, wondering who the stocky young Australian was. Probably a work colleague, he deduced, stopping a few yards away from them. He turned his attention back to Ellen, enjoying the rarity of not finding himself shouting at her and not being shouted back at in turn.
He felt strangely nervous, now that he was no longer observing her from afar. He could see the subtle make-up on her face, the designer squiggle on her jeans pocket, and the labels and insignia on her trainers and shirt, which he’d never encountered before. She was from a different world, one he’d lived in but had now left. She was city. She was media. She was what he plainly was not.
‘OK, Scott. I’ve got it,’ she said, sitting down on the bench beneath the arbour. ‘How about we go for something more romantic … maybe Leon reading a Tennyson poem to Caroline. And then we could film them kissing. We can shoot it after the section with them inside the house. Yes, that would be perfect: their first kiss.’
Ellen leant back against the bench and, with a giggle, closed her eyes and began to feign kissing an imaginary Leon, hamming it up for all she was worth.
‘Nine,’ Ned said, stepping smartly into her line of sight.
Ellen sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed in the sunlight as she turned to face him. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Out of ten,’ Ned explained, smiling now. ‘For your kissing technique,’ he elaborated.
There was a pause as the penny dropped, then: ‘For your information, I was actually planning out how to shoot a scene,’ Ellen answered, clearly embarrassed, her cheeks beginning to smart.
‘Well, your technique certainly looked very professional,’ Ned joked.
But Ellen clearly wasn’t in the mood for his attempts at humour. ‘How about you keep your opinions to yourself?’ she suggested. ‘You shouldn’t be snooping around here anyway, not when we’re trying to work.’
‘It might have escaped your notice yet again,’ Ned said, the anger in her voice filtering through into his own, ‘but this happens to be my site and I can therefore snoop wherever the hell I want.’
‘Jesus,’ Scott implored. ‘Will you guys just give it a rest, yeah? I’m sorry, mate,’ he said, turning to Ned. ‘I’ve never met you and I don’t want to go offending you, right? But all these bad vibes you two keep throwing up, they make me want to dig my way back home, I swear to God.’
Ned stared at him. Seconds passed. He had to admit that the Australian did have a point. Finally, he turned back to Ellen.
‘So why are you here?’ she asked evenly.
‘Glasnost,’ he replied.
‘What?’
‘You know, the dissemination of information.’
‘You’re talking in riddles,’ she said with an impatient tap of her foot. ‘Nothing’s ever easy with you, is it? Everything always has to be a struggle.’
‘Fine,’ he told her, turning his back on her and starting to walk back towards the house. ‘In which case you probably won’t be interested in this.’ He held the diary up above his shoulder where she’d be able to see it. ‘Caroline Walpole’s diary,’ he shouted back. ‘You know, the girl you’re making the film about, the girl who used to kiss so well …’
Ned started to count to ten.
‘Wait!’ Ellen shouted.
Ned smiled. He hadn’t even got to two.
It was ten minutes later, and the spirit of glasnost engendered by the handing over to Ellen of the diary had developed into a somewhat cagey entente cordiale, which had in turn resulted in Ned, Ellen and Scott leaning against the bonnet of Ellen’s car, basking in the sunshine while they drank from bottles of Diet Coke provided by Scott’s cool box.
‘You’re lucky working here,’ Ellen was saying.
‘On days like today,’ Ned agreed, assuming she was referring to the weather.
‘No,’ Ellen went on, ‘I mean being in charge of a project of this size, being able to have a vision and follow it through.’
‘It’s no different from you two and your film,’ Ned said, trying to hook Scott in, still curious about what his part in the documentary was. But the Australian had his eyes shut and his face to the sun.
‘No,’ Ellen answered, ‘there’s a world of difference in scope between us. I mean, just look at the size of that house. And from the photos I’ve seen of what it was like a year and a half ago, the way it looks now is all down to you.’
Ned felt a swell of pride in his chest when he heard this. Jonathan Arthur hadn’t been over for an inspection for six months now and the opinions of the artisans working here on how progress was going were as subjective as Ned’s own. It felt good, getting a compliment from Ellen, though. It felt earned, because he knew from recent experience that if she’d thought that what he’d done to the house was rubbish, she’d have had no hesitation in telling him that, too.
‘Maybe you’d like a tour,’ he said, before he’d had time to think about it. ‘I mean, you haven’t had a chance to look around yet, have you?’
‘No.’
‘I could introduce you to my foreman, Dan, and a few other people, so they can help you out with whatever you need if I’m not around.’
They both glanced up at the sound of a car horn.
Ned’s Beetle trundled over the drying mud towards them and creaked to a halt. Debs grinned out through the open window, pushing her sunglasses back on to the top of her head. ‘Oh, good,’ she said with a deliberate lack of tact, ‘we’re all speaking now, are we?’
‘So it seems,’ said Scott.
Debs ran her eyes up and down the Australian with obvious interest, before turning back to Ned. ‘I’m off to collect Clara from school,’ she said, ‘and wanted to know if you needed anything picking up.’
‘No thanks, and don’t worry about coming to collect me later,’ Ned told her. ‘I’m in the mood for a walk.’
‘Right you are.’ Debs flipped open the glove compartment and took out an envelope. ‘This came for you and I opened it by mistake. Sorry,’ she said, handing the envelope over to Ned.
‘Er, hang on,’ Scott said, quickly stepping forward as Debs ground the car into gear. He turned to Ellen. ‘Um, are we done here for today? Only I’ve … there’s something I’ve forgotten … that I need to pick up from … and I could …’ He shot Ellen a look of appeal.
Ellen shrugged and Scott turned to Debs.
‘Hop in,’ Debs told him, stretching across the passenger seat and pushing open the door.
Ned opened the envelope. It was a wedding invitation from Gareth Riley, one of Ned’s old student friends, but Ned didn’t even bother checking the date, knowing he’d RSVP in the negative, the same as he always did these days. What with work, he hardly had enough time for Clara, let alone old friends from way back when. Pushing the invite into his pocket, he watched the Beetle disappearing through the gates.
‘You’re pretty laid-back, aren’t you, letting her give a lift to a strange man like that?’ Ellen
said.
‘He seems harmless enough.’
‘Oh, he has his moments …’
Neither of them spoke for a minute. Ned examined his watch, feeling suddenly awkward at being left on his own with her, as though he might say the wrong thing if he opened his mouth. It reminded him of how he’d been in his early teens, when he’d always run out of things to say to girls. It baffled him that he felt this way, that even though this was his place of work and Ellen was now here at his suggestion, he no longer felt completely in charge. It was with relief, then, that he heard her clearing her throat.
‘Have –’ she began, before stopping.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. It’s none of my business.’
‘No, go on, what?’
‘I was just wondering how long you two have been together,’ Ellen said.
‘Who two?’
‘You and her.’ With a nod of her head, Ellen indicated the gate through which Debs had driven. ‘Clara’s mother …’
Ned smiled, amused by the assumption. ‘Ah, you mean Debs,’ he said, ‘although she’s not Clara’s mother.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, we’ve been’ – he repeated her choice of word carefully – ‘together for about three years now.’
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘I suppose so,’ Ned concurred, deciding to let the ruse run a little longer, ‘but you know how it is with people: you don’t notice their faces after a while.’
There was a satisfyingly long pause after he’d said this and it was all Ned could do not to laugh.
Ellen looked at him curiously. ‘Er, no, Ned, actually I don’t,’ she said.
‘Still,’ Ned went on, ‘ours is a good, solid and, above all, practical arrangement. So I mustn’t grumble.’
‘Practical?’ Ellen’s question came out half garbled in disbelief.
