He pressed his lips together for a moment. His hands, the while, continued to tease and tug at the knot of twine he held. ‘The closer it is, the more impossible,’ he said, cryptically.
I frowned. ‘You mean,’ I interpreted at last, ‘the closer you are to Tall Chimneys, the more impossible it is to believe that she’s gone?’
He threw me a wild, exasperated look and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he almost cried.
‘Of course I do,’ I replied, ‘with John’s ghost in every room. If I don’t understand, who can?’
He shook his head again. ‘You don’t understand at all,’ he said again, and stalked away.
Without him and the family across the stable yard, I felt bereft indeed. I missed Rose’s help in the house, her cheerful company and friendship. I missed the sense of safety and protection I had gained from Kenneth’s quiet, reliable proximity. Awan was lost without the boys for company. She moped around the house and gardens finding amusement in none of her usual pursuits, and in the end I gave in to her requests to be allowed to cross the moor and visit the village. She had turned ten at the tail end of the previous year and would soon be contemplating the move to the secondary school in the local town. I felt she was ready for a wider sphere of adventure.
Throughout ’46 and ’47 Tall Chimneys continued to host the occasional weekend party for Ratton and his associates and I was glad of it in spite of the effort of having to prepare the house on my own, the poor quality ‘gentlemen’ he brought and the ribald, boisterous goings-on I sometimes heard from below stairs. The supplies he provided ameliorated very considerably the deprivations we would otherwise have suffered along with everyone else in the country. How he was able to source such luxuries I did not enquire too closely into, but could guess - there was a lucrative black market for rationed goods. For ordinary people like us, the meat ration was reduced to one shilling a week and the meat itself was poor quality, always supplemented by corned beef, which I grew to loathe. Coal supplies were adulterated with shale, flour was often half chalk, tea was almost impossible to get at all, likewise sugar, petrol, margarine and soap. America had ceased to supply Britain with meat and vegetables and the goods we got from Commonwealth countries were diverted to the starving in Europe, from where we heard stories of people reduced to eating grass, cats and dogs. I took to pressing a list of commodities I needed into Ratton’s hand as he departed with his friends, and he rarely failed to supply me with what I needed. I was not selfish with the booty of Ratton’s nefarious dealings - I saw to it they were shared around in the village. Heaven knows, we all needed a lift where we could get it. Day by day, life was a terrible struggle ‘mending and making do’ as the phrase of the day was. I had expected peace to bring a kind of inner rest to us all - we might be at rock bottom but could comfort ourselves that the worst was surely over - but in fact the struggles we had endured during the war years just went on and on. Depression was wide-spread - everything seemed broken and hopeless.
It took all my effort to resist the temptation to sink back into the slough of despair I had experienced after the death of Cameron Bentley, and take up my life once more. With a heavy heart, and missing Kenneth’s benign company, I took up my gardening tools and went into the kitchen garden. If we could grow fruit we would have jam and cordial, I thought. Potatoes were in short supply, but if I could get seed-stock I could grow our own. Ann Widderington had hatched some chickens and gave me four of them, so I had eggs to eat and to barter until the dreadful winter of 1947 when two of them died of cold and one went mysteriously missing. That winter was terrible. The arctic conditions killed virtually everything I had planted, brassicas were frost-scorched and withered and it was almost impossible to get root crops out of the iron-hard ground. Our coal supplies were scant. Together Awan and I scoured the woods for fallen branches we could burn, but we were not alone; I often found evidence of others who had had the same idea, and even of trees felled and dragged away for firewood, but no amount of wind-fall wood seemed able to banish the chill which gripped the house. Awan and I hibernated in the kitchen and my bedroom, where she began to sleep, wash and dress. I unravelled old woollen jumpers to knit back into warm cardigans and socks for her. The house suffered with ingresses of damp, burst pipes and an infestation of mice who, like everyone else, wanted shelter from the cold. The rooms above stairs were uninhabitable without heat, but fuel could not be spared. Ice rimed the windows inside and out. Upholstery was spongy with damp, wallpapers peeled away and plaster crumbled. Above our heads I could hear the creak and groan of the towering chimney pots, and frequently their decorative brickwork shattered, sending cascades of shards rattling down the roof.
Ratton’s visits stopped and with them the occasional supply of food and any little luxuries that sometimes came with them. I heard nothing from Colin and his payments abruptly ceased. My letters of enquiry went unanswered. I was often hungry, passing my share of our rations to Awan to make sure she had enough. I grew thin, and my hair began to fall out in clumps.
Spring of 1948 brought little relief, even though the cold abated. Utterly alone, I wrung my hands in despair at the garden. It was rank with weeds. The hedges were wild and tangled with inveigling briar and bramble. The terrace was slick with moss, the fountain only a bowl of decomposing leaves and greenish slime. Ivy ran riot up the east wing, choking the gutters and downspouts so when it rained water gushed down the walls, washing out mortar from between the stones, pooling on the window sills and soaking into the window frames. I longed to call Kenneth and ask him for help but something - pride? - prevented me. I heard he was very busy doing general repairs as well as in great demand for fixing motorcars. Awan told me Bobby was being trained in car mechanics at the weekends. I asked her if she’d like to help me around the house a little more, but she made a face and ran off. Personally, I didn’t blame her. I had run out of energy or enthusiasm for keeping the house clean and aired. It stood all but ruined, its furniture shrouded, the shrouds themselves bloomed with dust. Cobwebs coated the curtains and laced the chandeliers. Water dripped into buckets, mould grew everywhere. The books in the library swelled with moisture, grew pulpy and then began to disintegrate on the shelves. Every surface - every table-top, shelf and mantel, and all the floors - developed a gritty, greasy coating. I could feel it under my fingers and beneath my shoes, like ash or old skin. I didn’t know what it was or where it came from. It felt as though the house was decomposing, subject to some degenerative wasting disease born of age and neglect and death. I struggled to keep body and soul together, and sometimes failed. Evenings would find me shivering in front of a fire which threw out no heat, crying into my empty hands. Sometimes I felt as though the house was weighing down on me. I could feel the press of its stones on my shoulders and crushing my heart. From being a monument of family pride and a place of personal refuge, it felt like a burden, an impossible, unwieldy encumbrance. Sometimes I hated it with an impotent, helpless passion. At other times I feared it would suffocate me, crush me, kill me. I soldiered on, day to day, doing my best to endure for Awan’s sake. But when she was at school, or playing in the village, or, at night, in bed asleep, I longed to lay my head on the old kitchen table and sleep, and never wake up. I wondered if, somewhere beyond the veil which divided life and death, John or Cameron waited for me. I pictured them bathed in light, warm and well-fed, and smiling to me with beckoning hands. The urge was hard to resist, and only the idea of Awan coming home to find me smashed on the cobbles of the yard, or swinging from a high beam in the stables stopped me from answering their call.
In April I had an unexpected visit from Sylvester Ratton. He arrived in one of his sleek motor cars and instead of pulling up on the gravel sweep, he drove round to the stable yard at the rear of the house. The first I knew of him was the sound of his footsteps down the passageway and a knock on the door which was surprisingly timid. I whirled round to find him standing on the threshold.
Time had not improved Ratton’s lo
oks and no amount of expensive tailoring could ameliorate for his essential ugliness. He looked more like the Michelin man than ever. His tiny eyes were sunk into folds of flesh so they seemed to peep out from behind curtains. These were similarly shielded by thick-lensed spectacles with heavy black frames. His nose was a ridiculous pudge of flesh now discoloured by purple thread-veins. His teeth, from a lifetime of smoking cigars, were yellow. Nevertheless there was something in his demeanour and expression which caught my attention.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ I said, hastily untying my apron.
‘I know,’ he said, through lips which were strangely rigid.
I ran a hand through my straw-like hair - not that I cared what I looked like, for his benefit, but I knew I presented a woebegone sight. ‘Have you come to stay?’ The idea was appalling - the house was in such a terrible state.
‘That depends,’ he muttered. He indicated a kitchen chair. ‘Do you mind if we sit down?’
I shrugged. ‘Do you want some refreshment? Tea? It will be weak, I am afraid, I haven’t much left.’
‘I’ll get you more,’ he said, and I slid the kettle across the range.
‘Thank you. We’ve seen nothing of you for months, and Colin does not answer my letters.’
Ratton left my remark in the air, but only said ‘You ought to have an electric one,’ nodding at the kettle and unbuttoning his jacket. He took a seat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs gingerly, as though afraid it might collapse under him.
‘Not much good without the generator,’ I said, lightly. Without petrol, and without Kenneth to coax it for me, I had not even tried to run it. ‘We’re still not on mains electricity, you know, not that it makes much difference. I hear there isn’t any at peak periods. I suppose it affects your production.’
‘Yes,’ he said, heavily, and looked around the kitchen with a bleak, almost daunted expression. ‘There is much to be done.’
I poured the tea into the pot and set it with two cups and a jug of milk on the kitchen table. Ratton motioned towards a chair at the head of the table. ‘You sit down too, if you will.’
I took the chair cautiously. Ratton did not speak, but continued to look around the kitchen like a man who had never seen it before, eyeing the rows of saucepans, the stacks of crockery on the shelves, the windowsill where spindly herbs struggled from their pots, the worn flags on the floor, the peeling distemper on the walls, anything at all, in fact, but me.
Presently I coughed, and poured tea into his cup, adding two spoons - but miserly ones - of precious sugar because I knew that’s how he took it. ‘So,’ I said, into the silence. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
Ratton gave a wan smile. ‘I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news. Your brother Colin has passed away.’
I let the news sink in. It wasn’t a surprise. I had known the last time I had seen Colin he was unwell, and Amelia had confirmed it. I hadn’t liked Colin much. But he was my brother, the sibling with whom, for good or ill, I had had the most contact. He had given me a home when he could have sent me packing. ‘How… how did he die?’ I asked, in a small voice.
‘A growth - cancer - in his gut. It has eaten him away from the inside out.’
‘Poor Colin. The end, was it..?’
‘Peaceful? No, sadly not. I believe he suffered a great deal.’
‘You weren’t with him, then?’
‘Not at the last, no. But I had visited a month or so beforehand and we had concluded some business which, I know, set his mind at rest on one question.’
I nodded, not really taking in what he said. ‘Good,’ I said, thinking of Colin as a child in short trousers, teasing me by threatening to torture my dolls, his vicious accusation that my birth had hastened our mother’s death, his refusal to side with me against Ratton. Despite these perfidies, I would not have wished a painful death on him. ‘I suppose Amelia will come home for the funeral,’ I mused. Would I attend it? I presumed it would be in London but if Amelia were to meet me there, I might brave the journey, I thought.
‘Alas, the funeral has already taken place,’ Ratton said, stiffly. He fixed his eyes on me. I got the impression he was not expecting this news to go down well. I did not disappoint him. ‘What?’ I shot up from the table, ‘with no family present? Why was I not even informed? I’m his nearest relative, after all!’
Ratton put out a podgy hand and laid it on mine where it quivered on the scrubbed table. From where I was sitting, I could see a tiny scar in the curl of his ear, where I had bitten him all those years ago. The sight of them evaporated my ire and reminded me I was dealing with a dangerous man. ‘There was a memorial service in the chapel at the House - very well attended, the great and the good turned out in force; Baldwin, Churchill, even Atlee[15] was there. But there was no funeral as such; Talbot gave his body to science. It’s quite common now; people have had enough of graves.’
I sat back down and removed my hand from beneath Ratton’s. The enormity of his news crashed upon me like a cold wave. I was alone - entirely alone. Amelia was far away in every sense, and could provide no help or support. The fleeting question as to whether Tall Chimneys would become mine was swamped by practicalities. There would be death duties, which had recently been increased to 75% of a person’s estate. I had John’s paintings, but I had already determined that any income from their sale would be saved for Awan’s future; it is what John himself would have wanted. I thought of the dozens of other country houses being demolished by bereaved families who could not afford to pay their taxes, of houses which could not now be staffed, in any case, of estates which represented a way of living and a stratum of society which did not exist any longer.
My dread must have shown on my face. Ratton moved his hand as though to cover mine once more, but thought better of it and instead pushed my cup towards me. ‘Drink your tea,’ he said, and, for the very first time, I saw a light of human sympathy in his eye. It was the first, the very first gesture of kindness he had ever shown me in our twenty year acquaintance.
‘I’m done for,’ I said, dully, ‘aren’t I?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Ratton said, and I saw a spark, a stiffening in his whole body. This, I realised, whatever was coming next, this is what he had really come to say.
Maddeningly, he lifted his cup and gulped his tea before speaking. When he had finished there were wettish reservoirs of milky tea at the corners of his child-like mouth. As he began to speak, they glistened, and in spite of myself I was as fascinated by their revolting, slightly greasy refusal to dry or be licked away, as by what my visitor had to say to me.
‘You recall I mentioned a moment ago,’ he began, ‘that your brother and I concluded some business before his death which set his mind at ease?’
I nodded.
‘Currently, you may know, death duties stand at 75%. Colin’s estate was not enormous but was considerable. He had business interests with - certain other parties…’
‘You mean, with you.’
Ratton pressed his lips together. The drops of tea squeezed into creases at either side of his mouth but did not dissipate. ‘Amongst others, yes. But the contracts were prepared in such a way that we need not bother the probate office with these matters.’
‘You mean you’ll just appropriate for yourself Colin’s entire share of the business. I expect it was his money that set you up in the first place’ I put in indignantly.
‘That’s partly true, but your brother was amply repaid for his initial investment many years ago. His support has been taken into consideration in the transaction I want to explain to you, if you’ll let me.’
‘Go on,’ I said, stiffly.
‘This house constituted the lion’s share of the estate,’ Ratton said. ‘The super-tax on large houses imposed in 1942 has had a serious impact on Colin’s finances. The London house went years ago, you know, to cover the death duties for your father and oldest brother. Colin sold the Scottish shooting lodge to cover George’s.’
‘I
didn’t know we had a shooting lodge,’ I murmured.
‘Indeed? Colin knew this one too would have to be sold to pay his death duties or knocked down to avoid them. Selling to a stranger was unacceptable. Even if he could have found a buyer which, to be honest, was a very remote possibility, he would not have entertained it. He had you to think of, of course. It may surprise you but he felt responsible for you. The burden of your continuing security weighed heavily on him. So,’ Ratton took a deep breath, ‘he sold the house to me.’
I felt sick. ‘To you?’
‘Yes.’ He licked his lips. ‘I’m now the owner of this house.’
The tea on his mouth melded with his spittle to form globules of greyish matter. I forced my eyes away from them and searched his face carefully, for a glimmer of triumphalism or sickly gloating, but found none. He was sincere. My throat contracted. I was sure I was going to vomit. The nausea was accompanied by a violent chill which made me shudder.
‘You’re cold?’ Ratton stood and reached for my cardigan which I had thrown over the arm of an easy chair. He draped it awkwardly round my shoulders. ‘It is rather raw, today,’ he observed.
I swallowed. ‘I cannot conceive,’ I said, shakily, ‘how Colin thought that selling Tall Chimneys to you could in any way provide me with security.’
‘Can you not?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
Ratton sighed. He had not resumed his seat and he took a turn or two around the room, an exercise which I suppose was designed to give me time to work things out.
‘No?’ he asked again.
‘No,’ I repeated, but I was lying. I saw exactly his plan. He had manoeuvred himself into a position where he could control my whole life; I would be beholden to him, his housekeeper, a prisoner, at his beck and call for the rest of my life.
He lowered himself back onto his seat and leaned across the table towards me. ‘Let me explain, then,’ he said, quietly. He laid his hands face down on the table. His fingers were inches from mine. As he spoke, without seeming to move at all, they slid infinitesimally nearer and nearer like a line of pink slugs. I watched them, fascinated. How could they seem to remain so absolutely still and yet slide, imperceptible iota by undetectable smidge, across the table towards me? ‘When you first came here,’ he said, his voice low and somewhat hesitant, ‘I behaved very badly towards you.’
Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years Page 28
