The Devil Walks

by Anne Fine

  Folding the letter, I wrote the direction carefully, then put it in my pocket, where it sat while I unpacked my carpet bag and laid things out with sour thoughts of making life a little easier for those who spied on me.

  Then I sat twiddling my thumbs until a surge of restlessness drove me down to the empty drawing room. To my unhappy eyes the book shelves seemed filled with nothing but the leaden histories of pompous men. Boredom and the sheer mustiness of the room combined to make me lift the latch of the French doors and walk out on the terrace to kick at weeds and peer in cracked and empty urns.

  And see that selfsame gardener watching again.

  Now irritation spurred me into action. Drawing the letter from my pocket, I strolled across the lawn towards a wooden bench, as if all my attention was on the paper in my hand and he’d no need to play his usual game of sloping away into the shadows. But, just as I went past him, I swung round, demanding, ‘When will your curiosity be satisfied? Am I so strange? Have I two heads, or five arms, that you should be forever gawping at me?’

  To my surprise, the gardener broke into a broad smile.

  That irritated me even more. ‘Now I amuse you?’

  ‘No, no!’ He tried to set his face more soberly. ‘It was a memory that made me smile.’

  ‘A memory?’ I dropped my peevish tone. After all, wasn’t this why I’d stayed – to find out more? ‘What, of my mother?’

  He nodded. ‘The thought sprang up at me that you’re not just the image of your mother in looks, but you’re alike in temperament as well.’

  I was amazed. ‘My mother had a temper?’

  ‘Temper?’ The gardener grinned. ‘At times she was a spitfire.’ Mistaking my astonishment, he hastened to assure me, ‘But though I didn’t guess it at the start, and offered you sharp words, I think you probably take after her in other ways as well.’ Again he smiled. ‘She too would have saved a servant from a roasting by saying nothing to give him away.’

  ‘Because he failed to meet me from the train?’

  ‘Meet you?’ He looked disquieted. ‘That’s what you understood?’

  ‘It’s what my uncle assured my guardian would happen.’

  The man’s expression darkened. ‘Perhaps if the captain had cared a little more about your welcoming, he would have thought to mention it to those he hoped would undertake the task.’ He shrugged his irritation off. ‘No, I meant earlier today, when I was in the woods.’

  I wasn’t going to confess I’d been discreet back there only to hide my tears, and so I said, ‘My thoughts were elsewhere. Captain Severn was showing me my mother’s childhood haunts.’

  He laughed. ‘An easy enough task, since there’s no place for miles around that wasn’t one of them!’

  Again I had that strange, unsettling feeling that my old world had been some weird delusion – nothing real. In Hawthorn Cottage had lived my shuttered, silent mother. Yet here she’d been the Liliana of whom the captain and this gardener spoke: some talkative and merry Liliana, who had a fiery temper and jumped from trees, and wandered far and wide among the brambles.

  How could these two so very different creatures have been one and the same? I stood confused, watching the gardener raise his eyes to the windows of the house as if he feared that we’d been talking too long.

  Then he reached for the letter in my hand. ‘Better to leave that with me than trouble the captain with it. I will make sure that it gets sent.’

  Was it a warning? Some bland suggestion that Captain Severn was not to be trusted with any confidence that might be on the page? So was it, then, my uncle who had searched my bag with such great care?

  And yet – to have the gardener offer to take charge of my letter! Even, perhaps, pay for its carriage onwards from his own small funds. Now that was surely out of the usual way of things. I stood in indecision. Who, in this strange house, was I right to trust?

  Needing a moment more to think, I tried distracting him. ‘This is our second meeting. I should know your name.’

  ‘Thomas.’

  So this was Thomas. And he was a man who knew my mother well. I stared. For what was my name? Daniel Thomas Cunningham. And why would a mother choose a name for her own son, except from her past loyalties and old affections?

  The choice was made. I put the letter in his hand. Then, since the man seemed generous-spirited enough, I burst out, ‘Thomas, please! Tell me about my mother!’

  It was a reasonable request. After all, wasn’t I now some kind of orphan? Who could begrudge me the comfort of knowing more about my family?

  He answered carefully, ‘I’m sure the mother who raised you was the same soul who left this house.’

  Now we were both uneasy. How could I say, ‘Impossible! The Liliana who raised me was secretive and silent. And she was frightened all the time. And she went mad enough to rip her clothes and hurl her food away from her, and hang herself from a rusting window bar!’

  I couldn’t say it – no, not yet. Still, something about his face and gentle manner made me determined to confide in him. ‘I thought I knew her well enough.’ I felt tears gathering. ‘But since her death she has become a stranger, even to me. She told me nothing of her childhood. Nothing! And though I’ve looked, I’ve yet to find a single painting in this house that might show her as a child.’

  ‘Oh, there you’ll be wasting your time!’ he burst out bitterly. ‘There are no portraits any more. No, not of her, nor any of her brothers.’

  Brothers?

  Not just the one? How many secrets had my mother kept from me?

  He’d seen my shock. ‘You didn’t know? She didn’t even tell you about her brothers?’ I watched him hesitate before he added softly – perhaps for fear he had raised hopes in me: ‘And their sad deaths.’

  ‘She told me nothing!’ I burst out again. Then the tears truly sprang. ‘She’s left me stumbling here alone and—’

  Already his hand was on my shoulder, and he was chiding me, ‘You’re not alone!’

  I made a scornful face. ‘Oh yes! Forgive me! I have an uncle who forgets to send a man to meet me at the station, then taunts me with the details of my dead mother’s life.’

  ‘No, no,’ he soothed. ‘You’ve better friends that that.’

  I grabbed his sleeve. ‘Then tell me more about my family. How did these brothers of my mother die? Why did she run away? And if my uncle thinks she fled from all who loved and trusted her, why has he sent for me?’

  Once again Thomas glanced towards the house. I turned to see what he was looking at, but now the sunlight gleamed so hard against the windows it was impossible to tell who stood and watched.

  But Thomas must have seen something, for, ‘Not now!’ he warned.

  ‘Thomas—’

  But he’d already turned to stride back into the woods.

  I stood a while, distraught, then tried to follow, but he’d been too quick for me. Soon I no longer even heard the rustle of his footsteps, or saw more of the shadows that led me to believe he might have gone this way or that.

  So, still in tears of misery and abandonment, I turned back slowly to the house.

  Dusk had crept into the air by the time Martha rang the gong for supper. I joined my uncle in the dining room. Now, as at breakfast, he was grave in mood and narrow-eyed with concentration.

  And full of questions still. ‘You say your mother never spoke of her past?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He waited while Martha heaped potatoes on his plate. ‘And if you questioned her?’

  ‘Questioned her?’

  Already he was impatient. ‘Yes, Daniel. Asked her a simple question like, “Where were you born?” or, “Was your childhood happy?” Even’ – and here he nodded up at Martha carelessly – ‘“Who was the patient soul who sat for hours teaching you how to make such pretty lace?”’

  Behind him Martha stiffened, as if to arm herself against the casual cruelty of this reminder of a happier time. Then she came round the table and made a trouble ou
t of filling up my plate, giving me time to search for any answer that might prove honest enough.

  I spread my hands. ‘I know that we had very little money, and so our lives were narrow. If I’d had company, I might have thought a little more about my own childhood – even asked my mother more about hers.’ I shrugged. ‘But, as things were …’

  ‘It seems to me,’ he said incredulously, ‘you asked your mother nothing.’

  I tried to defend myself. ‘You claim she was a lively soul. And yet, with me, my mother was always steady and quiet. And I accepted how things were, and was content.’ I thought some more, then added frankly, ‘Indeed, I think I must have been a very incurious child.’

  He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Incurious? Perhaps we should go one step further and call you stupid.’

  Oh, he was in the worst of moods. He shovelled food into his mouth, then set about his questions again as if his only aim was to torment me. ‘So here you are, your feet under my table. Yet you have nothing to tell about your mother and your upbringing. Why, you could be no more than some false interloper who has wormed his way into this house!’

  If he was trying to browbeat me, he’d chosen the wrong tack. I barely needed to remind myself that I’d begged to be left where I was happy, and it was this man glowering at me across the table who had insisted that I come. Interloper, indeed! Since at that moment I’d have sold my soul to have him order me back to Dr Marlow’s house, I summoned up the courage to say to him coldly, ‘Yes, I suppose I could.’

  We ate in silence for a while. And then, as if he had more toads to spit from his mouth, he asked, ‘So what did your mother think most precious in this little house of yours?’

  I stared. Here was a hint indeed as to who might take trouble to root in secret through a visitor’s bag! And Martha, bringing in a jug of water, seemed to freeze at his words as if even to let him know that she was in the doorway behind might lead to trouble.

  Impatiently he rapped the table top. Hot drips of wax fell on the backs of his fingers but he ignored them. In flickering candlelight his eyes were slits. ‘You heard the question! Before she died, which of her few possessions did Liliana value most?’

  I had no reason to help him in his greedy quest. I answered stonily, ‘We had so few things of our own by then, I wouldn’t trouble you with a list of them.’

  My uncle leaned closer across the table and asked me fiercely, ‘Was there a doll’s house?’

  I saw the start of anguish on Martha’s face. Begging me with her eyes not to betray her, she stepped back into the shadows of the hall. My blood ran cold. Was this some old vendetta from the nursery? Or the first clue as to why I’d been fetched to this house? I slid my hand into my pocket to touch the little ivory case that held my mother’s lace-making tools, and hoped the memory of her unhappy life and pitiful death would give me courage not to answer him directly.

  ‘After she died, all that she owned was sold to pay her debts.’

  Our poverty meant nothing to him. ‘Yes, yes! But did you never see a model of this house, set up with dolls?’

  I would not lose this battle easily, so I played dumb. ‘Dolls?’

  I was frustrating him with my stupidity. ‘Yes, dolls! Dolls that your mother stole from this house.’

  The hateful look upon his face! This desperate grilling! Was he like this in childhood? Was this why my mother fled? I kept my fingers round the little ivory case and told myself I would not have her bullied by her brother in this way, even in death.

  Taking a breath for courage, I raised my head and told him coldly, ‘I’m sure my mother only ever took away from any house things that she thought her own.’

  Still he was watching me with those cat’s eyes. ‘So you have seen no doll’s house and no dolls?’

  I knew he didn’t believe me, but I stared him out. ‘I had no sisters, sir.’

  He gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘No more you did. Nor any brothers, either!’

  And I will swear, as Martha dared to bustle back to us with heavier tread, still carrying the jug, I heard him adding softly to himself: ‘Thin pickings from our dearest Liliana – and yet, to pit against that, quicker work.’

  Cunning grows fast. Instead of going up to bed when I was ordered, I walked no further than the hall, then slid from sight behind a tattered screen. I waited till I was sure that Martha had made her last shuffling journey back and forth along that dank and gloomy passage carrying her plates and crocks, and then I hurried after her into the kitchen, determined to trick her into spilling some of the secrets of my mother’s life.

  She was already in the scullery, washing the pots. I pulled a drying cloth from its hook and set to work beside her, wondering if I should confess I’d lied to my uncle, or whether it would be wiser not to mention to someone I was not yet sure that I could trust that this old doll’s house was now mine.

  In the end I hedged and, after a few words about the meal she’d offered us, I asked her only, ‘Why is my uncle so determined to track down a nursery toy?’

  She kept her head down, playing as dumb as I had earlier. ‘A nursery toy?’

  ‘The doll’s house,’ I insisted. ‘You heard him say that it went missing when my mother left.’

  ‘As well it might,’ I heard her mutter, ‘since it was hers to take!’ Lifting a dish from the water, she turned to me and said more openly, ‘You should have seen it, for it was a marvel. You wouldn’t have believed how like it was to this house, down to the last coil of ivy.’ Her old face softened at the memory. ‘Inside, the rooms were perfect – even the patterns on the wallpaper. And every stick of furniture was like for like.’

  ‘Who ordered it to be made?’

  ‘Ordered?’ She shook her head. ‘Nobody ordered it. It was a labour of love.’

  They were the very words that Dr Marlow used when he first saw it, I recalled. And I repeated them. ‘Labour of love?’

  Her withered lips creased in a smile, as if some thought from long ago had warmed her heart. But all she said was, ‘Ah, to know more of that, you would do better to ask the gardener.’

  ‘Thomas? Why? Did he make it?’

  She was amused by my astonishment. ‘Indeed he did. It took him four long years, and it was done only to please your mother.’

  I stared. ‘They were so close?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Back then, Thomas’s father was head gardener, so Thomas spent a good part of his own life joining the children in their games.’

  ‘The children,’ I repeated to myself. These were the brothers I had never known my mother had. How strange the idea still seemed!

  But Martha was explaining about the doll’s house. ‘By then, of course, Thomas was grown enough himself to have a host of jobs around the house and grounds. Yet we all knew he had a gift for working with wood, and Liliana stood in front of him day after day, teasing and begging, “Please make me a doll’s house, Thomas!’”

  Again it came, that unnerving feeling that the child they’d known was not the woman who’d raised me. I stood, quite baffled. How could the intervening years have turned a frank and cheery-sounding child into the stiff, unbending soul who kept me so immured she’d even imprisoned herself?

  Forcing my thoughts to settle, I pressed Martha to keep on with her tale. ‘So Thomas agreed?’

  ‘No, not at first.’ She laid more dishes to drain. ‘He claimed he’d no time for a task like that. But she kept on at him till he gave in.’ She shook her head, remembering. ‘And after that I was forever coming across Liliana struggling with a hoe, or clumsily trailing nets over the raspberries. I’d ask her, “Now what are you about, you naughty imp?” and she’d insist that she was doing Thomas’s work for him so he’d keep whittling some tiny table for the doll’s house, or one more trail of ivy up its walls.’

  I reached for another dish. ‘So was it Thomas’s idea to make it look exactly like this house?’

  ‘No, no. Thomas, I’m sure, would have preferred to make something far, far simpler.
But Liliana was a strange little soul, and she was adamant: “It must be perfect, down to the last small roof hatch.” And when I teased, and asked her why she’d set poor Thomas a task as long and hard as any in a fairy tale, she’d only shake her head and say that one day I would understand, because the doll’s house, made just so, would save a precious life.’

  ‘Save a life? How would she know that? Nobody can foretell the future.’

  Martha laid the last pot to drain. ‘Your mother had a way of sensing trouble even before it came. Often, I think, she knew the secrets of the future that was coming to her. She told me once, “Martha, I know I shall be loved. But I shall not be happy. And misery and worry will follow me for my whole life.”’

  She broke off. Down the passage, coming towards us, were the ringing steps that we both recognized.

  ‘Quick!’ Martha urged. ‘The captain’s on his nightly rounds. He won’t be pleased to find you still about.’ Snatching the cloth from me, she pushed me hastily through the door to the servants’ back stairs. ‘To bed – and quietly!’

  Easily enough said. For those who’d trodden up and down those steps for years, no doubt there was no problem with a creaking here, a sudden turn in the dark there. But for a boy who knew this cramped and unlit staircase only from the games his dolls had played, it was a trickier matter. In the end one step too many gave out a noisy groan as I crept up, and I thought it was safer to hold still till my uncle left the kitchen.

  I heard his voice below. My heart thumped. Had he realized that I was missing from my room, and come in search of me? Or was he just embarking on some discussion with Martha about the meals to come? I sank down on my heels to wait, and in my nervousness my fingers wrapped around the step’s wooden rim.

  To feel a tiny coil of rusty metal underneath. Was it a hook?