Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  When Emma comes downstairs she makes straight for the dresser, rummaging in the back of one of the cupboards before coming out with two glasses and a bottle of scotch. ‘Granny’s guilty pleasure,’ she smiles, pouring us both a couple of fingers. ‘She thinks I don’t know, but then how she thinks the bottle gets replaced when it’s empty, is a mystery!’ She speaks quietly, and as the evening progresses we both keep our voices low, intensely conscious of the woman upstairs.

  Emma takes her grandmother’s seat by the fire. I lean forward and throw on another couple of logs. We have not lit any lamps and the shutters are open. The amber-blue glow of the fire is met by a strange gloaming light which comes in through the windows, softest mauve, greenish grey. The palette of Yorkshire is difficult to define and almost impossible to capture. I see, in my mind’s eye, John Cressing’s enormous canvas of the moor, dramatic, brooding, in some way tortured and yet viscerally appealing, vibrant with colour and texture. From Evelyn’s memoir I know - as she did not, at the time - what was on his mind when he painted it. By 1942 he must have been deeply embroiled in his under-cover work and involved with my grandmother both professionally and emotionally. His sense of being torn in two, his warring responsibilities, must have been almost crippling. Well, I know how that feels. That painting is being shipped back to Texas for me but even that vivid evocation will not, I fear, replace the real thing for me when I am home on that flat, featureless, loofah-coloured prairie.

  ‘I should go,’ I say, into the flames, as much to myself as to Emma. Of course I should go; my work here is done. I should walk away and consign it to memory, perhaps talk about it in my turn, when I am old, to my indifferent grandchildren. Emma offers no reply. I wonder what is on her mind. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ I don’t have her number, her email address. I don’t know if she’s on Facebook. Sure, I am attracted to her but there is something else; I feel aligned with her, through Evelyn and through Tall Chimneys. I don’t like the idea that I may not see her again.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, addressing some place on the rug. ‘I’ll be here.’

  I drag my eyes away from the fire. I try to make my tone light, conversational. ‘You’ll stay the night here?’

  She nods, and sips her scotch. ‘All day,’ she says, ‘I’ve been answering your questions about our family. But you haven’t told me anything about yourself.’ She looks at me then, a straight look, which I return as steadily as I can.

  She’s right. But what can I tell her? That my wife doesn’t understand me? That my kids are strangers? That I wish I’d made different choices in my life? She’s been so honest with me, holding nothing back. I want to give her something honest in return, something essential and authentic about myself. She’s looking at me still. I feel that she’s watching me work out the dilemma she’s given me. I don’t want to duck out of it so I give her the biggest and boldest and most dangerous thing I have. It’s the thing that has been eating me up and buoying me up and tantalising me and tormenting me since I got here.

  I lean forward in my chair, resting my elbows on my knees, so that there is as little space as possible between us. I don’t want what I am going to tell her to get diluted by the firelight or the purple evening air. ‘Here’s the biggest thing about me I can tell you right now,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to go home to Texas. I want to stay right here. I want to buy Tall Chimneys off Evelyn and I want to rebuild it. There.’ I lean back to watch the effect of my words on her. To my surprise, she isn’t as shocked - or as pleased - as I expected.

  She raises a quizzical eyebrow and says, ‘I see. And, you could afford that, could you?’

  I drain my glass. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I only ask because I couldn’t let Granny sell it to you cheap. It wouldn’t be right, just because it’s you, as opposed to some big-shot American stranger with a pocket full of dollars and no taste.’

  ‘I understand that. I guess it’s your inheritance. You’d want top buck.’

  She smiles. ‘I don’t need the money, particularly. Your grandfather left my mother all his work, which sells pretty well, even now. I suppose by rights it should have been yours.’

  I wave my hand to dismiss her suggestion. John Cressing gave me more than a collection of canvasses and sketchbooks. I have his genes. ‘I’ll pay whatever Evelyn wants.’

  ‘Whatever?’

  I shrug. ‘Sure,’ I say again.

  ‘So, you’re wealthy then?’

  I smile. ‘Like JR, the one who was shot in Dallas.’

  ‘Wasn’t that Kennedy?’ But her mouth twitches, and I know she is teasing me.

  ‘We’re not quite as rich as the Kennedys,’ I laugh.

  Above our heads there’s a shift, a little tremor in the wide oak planks; Evelyn must be turning over in bed, but it feels eerily like she’s sitting up there, listening. From now on I speak as though she can hear every word I say, as though she is in the room, part of our conversation, as she was earlier - listening, reacting, but not contributing.

  ‘Do you think she’d agree?’

  Emma pours us more scotch - another two fingers for her, just one for me. It’s a displacement activity - she is thinking things over.

  ‘Do you think she’d trust me?’ I add, ‘to restore Tall Chimneys respectfully?’

  Emma ignores my question. ‘You know it’s more than just a house, don’t you? You’d be taking on the mantle.’

  ‘The mantle?’

  ‘The responsibility, the bond. And it might… do to you what it did to her.’

  ‘Shackle me? Restrain me?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, it might do. There might be no turning back, once you’d begun.’

  I consider it, very carefully. ‘I wouldn’t want to,’ I say, lifting my head and speaking in a voice which is designed to carry. It is a kind of declaration, almost a vow. It would feel appropriate to have my hand on a bible, but the only book to hand is Evelyn’s where it sits on the low table at my side. Deliberately, I lift my hand and place it on the cover.

  Emma raises her glass in a silent toast, and we both drink. ‘How will the people at home feel about this?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh,’ I sigh, ‘they’ll be mad as hell!’

  Later, I rise to go, and Emma sees me to the gate. A pale moon has risen. The moor stretches out before us, its humps and tussocks silhouetted against a pewter sky, mere shadows and charcoal textures to counterpoint the silver dim. The road to where my car is parked is an ashy line, its dust almost luminescent, a fairy trail. Behind the house, the trees of the plantation shiver with a sudden wind, a swift rush of noise and air which seems sucked from the bowl itself. It is surprisingly warm, smelling of forest and damp stone and wood smoke and something primordial - ancient earth. A ripple of leaves and twigs escalates in an instant to a storm of clashing branches, setting the canopy into a thrashing whorl of wild agitation. It catches Emma’s hair, sending a turmoil of curls around her head and across her face and I want, more than anything, to put my hands in it, but instead of walking into the embrace I am so ready to offer, Emma puts out a formal hand for me to shake and it is such a stiff and British thing to do in the midst of this cataclysm of wind and noise that I want to laugh. Above us, Evelyn’s bedroom window is wrenched off its catch and smashes back against the façade of the building.

  Then, as soon as it arose, it is gone, sucked up, it seems, into the vortex of the heavens. A blanket of stillness and sudden silence descends. I take Emma’s hand in mine, and pull her towards me.

  ‘Kissing cousins, remember,’ I whisper.

  Above our heads, through the wide-open window, as clear and distinct as the call of a nightingale in the tranquillity of a midnight forest, we hear Evelyn speak. Her voice is not the parched voice of a centenarian, it is younger, sweeter, full of life. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she says, ‘I hoped it would be you.’

  Thankyou

  Thank you for reading this book. I really hope you enjoyed it. As a self-published author I don’t have the support of an agent
or a huge marketing department behind me. I rely on my readers to spread the word about my books. Please would you consider returning to Amazon and leaving a short review? Just a few words to accompany your star rating would mean so much to me.

  You could connect with me via Facebook or visit my website at www.allie-cresswell.com where you will find details of my other books. If you don’t live too far away from me I would be happy to visit your reading club, WI or creative writing group to give a short talk or a reading.

  Bibliography

  An English Country Girl: Memoirs of Nellie Self 1899 - 1997 Ed. Liz Griffin

  The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters Ed. Charlotte Mosley. Harper Press

  Requisitioned! The British House in the Second World War by John Martin Robinson. Aurum Press Limited

  Our Vanishing Heritage by Marcus Binney. Arlington Books

  Diamonds At Dinner - My Life as a Lady’s Maid by Hilda Newman with Tim Tate. John Blake Publishing.

  About the Author

  Allie Cresswell was born in Stockport, UK and began writing fiction as soon as she could hold a pencil.

  She did a BA in English Literature at Birmingham University and an MA at Queen Mary College, London.

  She has been a print-buyer, a pub landlady, a book-keeper, run a B & B and a group of boutique holiday cottages. Nowadays Allie writes full time having retired from teaching literature to lifelong learners.

  She has two grown-up children, one granddaughter and two grandsons, is married to Tim and lives in Cumbria, NW England.

  Tall Chimneys is the sixth of her novels to be published.

  You can contact her via her website at www.allie-cresswell.com or find her on Facebook

  Also by Allie Cresswell

  Relative Strangers

  The McKay family gathers for a week-long holiday at a rambling old house to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Robert and Mary. In recent years only funerals and sudden, severe illnesses have been able to draw them together and as they gather in the splendid rooms of Hunting Manor, their differences are soon uncomfortably apparent.

  For all their history, their traditions, the connective strands of DNA, they are relative strangers.

  There are truths unspoken, but the question emerges: how much truth can a family really stand?

  The old, the young, the disaffected and the dispossessed, relatives both estranged and deranged struggle to find a hand-hold amongst the branches of the family tree.

  What, they ask themselves, does it really mean to be ‘family’?

  Readers’ Reviews of Relative Strangers

  ‘… unexpected twists to this story about a disjointed family. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.’

  ‘Beautifully written and observed.’

  ‘…A really powerful and beautiful novel.’

  ‘…a very fine observance of character …. as though she is watching developments from a hidden corner.’

  ‘.….keeps you guessing right up until the end.’

  ‘ A lovely book heavy on character development. Fans of this sort of story will not be disappointed.’

  ‘….the complex politics, desires and heartache of family relationships are at the heart of this book.’

  ‘Brilliant and compelling reading.’

  ‘…quite a writer, a unique voice; it is strange that someone who writes so beautifully is toiling alone in the Indie world, but there it is.’

  The Hoarder’s Widow

  Suddenly-widowed Maisie sets out to clear her late husband’s collection; wonky furniture and balding rugs, bolts of material for upholstery projects he never got round to, other people’s junk brought home from car boot sales and rescued from the tip. The hoard is endless, stacked into every room in the house, teetering in piles along the landing and forming a scree up the stairs. It is all part of Clifford’s waste-not way of thinking in which everything, no matter how broken or obscure, can be re-cycled or re-purposed into something useful or, if kept long enough, will one day be valuable. He had believed in his vision as ardently as any mystic in his holy revelation but now, without the clear projection of his vision to light them up for her as what they would be, they appear to Maisie more grimly than ever as what they are: junk.

  As Maisie disassembles his stash she is forced to confront the issues which drove her husband to squirrel away other people’s trash; after all, she knows virtually nothing about his life before they met. Finally, in the last bastion of his accumulation, she discovers the key to his hoarding and understands – much too late – the man she married.

  Then, with empty rooms in a house which is too big for her, she must ask herself: what next?

  Readers’ Reviews of The Hoarder’s Widow

  ‘I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys superbly written, character-driven fiction. There is nothing flashy in this simple tale, but it is a rich and filling feast of real and complex characters muddling through life’s challenges and finding their way forward together. I would write more, but I need to go find out what else Ms. Cresswell has written, and settle in with a cup of tea and another of her stories.’

  ‘…a lot of dry English wit, [but] it's certainly not a funny story. Allie Cresswell does a remarkable job of telling of a seemingly ordinary life in a way that you can't put it down.’

  ‘There are twists and turns aplenty, and her lyrically descriptive language paints a compelling picture of the house Maisie lives in.’

  ‘It strikes just the right balance for me; approachable, allowing me to relax as I read, and elegant, fortifying her scenes and enhancing them with flavours and sensory experiences.’

  .

  Lost Boys

  Kenny is AWOL on a protracted binge. Michael is a wanderer on the road to wild and unfrequented places. Teenager Matt is sucked into the murky underworld of a lawless estate. John is a recluse, Skinner is missing, Guy is hiding, Ryan doesn’t call.

  Then there is little Mikey, swept away by a river in spate.

  These are the lost boys and this is their story, told through the lives of the women they leave behind. Mikey's fall into the river sucks them all into the maelstrom of his fate; the waiting women, the boys lost beyond saving and the ones who find their way home.

  Lost Boys uses some disturbing, contemporary phenomena; an unprecedented drought, a catastrophic flash-flood, a riot, as well as the much more enduring context of a mother’s love for her son, to explore the ripples – and tsunamis – which one person’s crisis can send into another’s.

  Readers’ Reviews of Lost Boys

  ‘A clever interweaving of fate and consequences.’

  ‘….draws upon emotional experiences at many different levels.’

  ‘The joy of the novel is to discover how the characters all have overlapping and intertwining stories.’

  ‘I was utterly wrapped up in the story.’

  ‘Allie Cresswell has the ability to flesh-out all her characters into a reality that kept me totally engrossed right to the last page.’

  ‘…linguistic banquets of colour, texture, and imagery.’

  ‘Lost Boys is a treasure.’

  Tiger in a Cage

  Who knows what secrets are trapped, like caged tigers, behind our neighbours' doors?

  When Molly and Stan move into a new housing development, Molly becomes a one-woman social committee, throwing herself into a frantic round of communal do-gooding and pot-luck suppers.

  She is blinded to what goes on behind those respectable façades by her desire to make the neighbourhood, and the neighbours, into all she has dreamed, all she needs them to be.

  Twenty years later, Molly looks back on the ruin of the Combe Close years, at the waste and destruction wrought by the escaping tigers: adultery, betrayal, tragedy, desertion, death. But now Molly has her own guilty secret, her own pet tiger, and it is all she can do to keep it in its cage.

  Peer Reviews of Tiger in a Cage

  Erudite, character-driven drama at its best. Allie Cre
sswell is a literary assassin. Just when you think you're safe, the atmosphere and tension in her novels slips home like an undetected, whetted blade between the ribs. What truly makes this novel stand out is the masterful way in which the plot strands are woven together in the final quarter of the book; the explosive events, the straining to release what has been bottled up for decades, the Tiger in a Cage. The climax is satisfying and worthwhile. Highly recommended work from a fine novelist.

  Marc Secchia, author of the Shapeshifter series.

  Cresswell crafts her novels lovingly, taking time to polish them to perfection. She plays with words, linking them together in unique ways, creating stories rich in detail and lavish in language. Her plotlines are subtle and weaving, the characters and their lives all overlapping and inter-connecting in unexpected ways. She is a wordsmith in the true sense of the word.

  Ali Isaac, blogger and author of the Conor Kelly novels

  Cresswell writes about commitment, fidelity, and the gap between public and private lives, as she lays out what we risk when our desires, behaviours, and values are shaped by social convention.

  Beth Camp, author of Standing Stones

  All of the Combe Close characters are so true-to-life that I am extremely relieved not to be one of Ms. Cresswell's neighbours. I would be terrified of ending up skewered to the page in the next episode...