by Tyrer, D.
The first door I tried, the one nearest the stairs, was locked, as was the second. The third one opened onto a library, which I noted without giving the books too much attention; I would save them for later. There were two doors out of it, but one of them was locked. The other led to a study with a heavy mahogany desk and a huge black-leather armchair; the walls were paneled on their lower halves and covered with yellow leather above. From its position, I would have guessed it was approximately above the nursery, but I had obviously got my bearings wrong as the lake wasn’t visible from the window.
There was a ledger on the desk, a heavy volume bound in cracked black leather with the image of a golden crown embossed upon it. I seated myself in the chair and picked up the ledger. It contained a tally, but one without dates and details, just numbers in and – very, very rarely – out, written in a spidery script. What it all denoted, I had absolutely no idea. I closed it and laid it back upon the desk, deciding that I would look in the drawers and see what they contained.
The top drawer on the left-hand side, which was the first one I tried, was locked and I was hardly going to try and break into it given that I was already out of bounds – besides, I didn’t want to attract attention by making unnecessary noise. I wondered what might be in it – I envisaged an ornate letter opener-cum-deadly blade, a heavy revolver that served as a memento of some colonial adventure, or secret papers of import to some foreign power. Of course, it was all sheer imagination. I assumed that it was the desk of the twins’ father, but even that was a guess.
The middle drawer contained a pair of spectacles, a small paperknife and a half-dozen coins. The spectacles were of the sort my Mother always referred to as ‘pince-nez’ and had blue lenses. I tried them on, but they were a little too wide for my head and wouldn’t stay in place. Anyway, they made my eyes ache when I tried to look through them and everything seemed distorted. The letter opener was nothing special, small, plain and made of tarnished silver. As for the coins, they appeared to be the detritus of foreign travels and I paid them little heed. When I was younger, I had kept a coin collection, but they held little interest for me then and none now.
The bottom drawer appeared empty when I pulled it open; then, I noticed that there was a small piece of red wax and a small letter seal. I didn’t pay them much regard, assuming it was just their family crest. My father had such a letter seal in the form of a signet ring. All men of influence did.
The drawers on the right-hand-side contained, respectively, a variety of pens, pencils, crayons and chalks, a selection of loose-leaf papers, and a dozen-or-so empty inkpots that held no interest for me at all.
Having exhausted the room insofar as I could proceed without vandalism, I decided to try my luck elsewhere on the second floor. Even if I gave each room only a cursory examination, I was guessing that it would take me around a week to explore all three upper floors of the house and several more to take full advantage of them, unless most were empty. Then there was the library, through which I had to pass to resume my explorations, which appeared to contain enough books to last a few lifetimes.
Leaving the library, I took the next unlocked door that I found, and found myself in a curious room filled with drapes, diaphanous sheets of white cloth that hung from the ceiling in different widths, with no apparent purpose. A few ran from wall to wall, others were less wide. Light streamed into the room from the far wall, through a window I could not actually discern for all the many layers, transforming the scene into one reminiscent of clouds, heavenly and ethereal.
I pushed my way into the room. It was strangely magical. Other than the drapes, the room appeared to be empty, yet losing myself within it was a marvelous experience. I span about, entwining myself in them, soft and smooth against my skin. I was quite giddy with enjoyment, laughing, almost gasping with delight.
Suddenly, hands grabbed my shoulders and propelled me, roughly, from the room. It was Mrs. Hawberk! Foolishly, I had made too much noise, brought her attention down upon me. She hauled me a short distance down the corridor to where a chaise lounge sat: I was shrieking, although to no benefit, given that there were none who would come to my aid. The housekeeper tossed me effortlessly down onto the chaise lounge, then paddled me furiously with something hard and flat until I sobbed and cried in agony.
“That’ll teach you!” she spat as she rolled me onto the floor at her feet. “I warned you! You are not to visit the upper floors again! Now, away with you – back to your room – and, if I catch you here again, it will be all the worse for you!”
Cheeks burning with pain and humiliation, I pulled myself straight as best I could in my hurried flight and ran back to the stairs and down them to my room. Tears blurred my vision, but I could not help but notice my cousins observing me as I descended the stairs. That my disheveled and distraught progress had been observed only made me blush all the more fiercely.
CHAPTER THREE
Although I confined myself entirely to my room for the rest of that day, avoiding supper – my appetite was almost nil – and did not wander far the next or the day after that, out of fear for the housekeeper’s watchfulness, I had not lost my taste for exploration. If anything, the reminder of the danger of getting caught had added a certain frisson to it. After the brief hiatus demanded by necessity, I returned to the upper floors with a relish, intent upon expanding my knowledge of them, but always mindful of the need to avoid attracting attention.
I resumed my exploration where it had been cut off; returning to the room filled with drapes in order to make certain that it contained no other exits. It didn’t; only the one door and a window of frosted glass. I had to be careful as it made me feel quite giddy to be in there once again and I didn’t want Mrs. Hawberk to interrupt my fun.
From there, I made my way down a long, uncarpeted corridor with many doors along its length. Some of the doors were locked, others opened into empty rooms, windowless with bare floorboards. In the distance, I could just detect the sound of a gramophone playing – it sounded like some lively dance tune. I think it was that which made the rooms seem so eerie as I wondered what I would find when I reached the corridor’s end. After all, if the rooms were unused, why was there music playing? I also noticed that I was being followed – my cousins were trailing me, ducking in-and-out of rooms I had passed in an attempt to avoid my detection.
The next time that I spotted them, I called out to them, only to be ignored. But, the time after that, Camilla delayed her disappearance a little longer and gave me an appraising look when I called “hello”. The third time I greeted them, Camilla remained in the corridor and walked towards me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she told me.
“I know.”
“If Mrs. Hawberk catches you, you’ll be in for it.”
“She caught me the other day and spanked me something rotten.” I rubbed my rear at the memory.
“I know. Be glad it wasn’t Chambers...”
I heard a door creak; Cassilda was watching us from a doorway a little way down the corridor.
“Don’t mind her,” Camilla told me. “So, you want to explore the house?”
I nodded.
“What you need is a guide.”
“I do?”
“Yes. This house is not a place for the unwary. Would you like me,” she stroked my arm in a friendly manner, “to be yours?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Good.”
A door slammed. Cassilda glared at us and disappeared off back down the corridor.
“I am afraid my sister feels a little jealous towards you,” she told me, caressing my cheek in a way that sent a pleasant shiver down my spine. “Let me show you the gramophone room. There is always a record playing when you walk this corridor, yet you never see anybody who could have changed it or wound the player. Here.”
A short walk had brought us to a yellow-painted door at the end of the corridor. She pulled it open to reveal a lime-green room with details aptly painted in lemon yello
w. The room was not very large and, being windowless, was lit by a single naked light bulb dangling from the yellowing, nicotine-stained ceiling. It was empty except for a small table upon which sat a gramophone with a wide-fluted trumpet. The room didn’t seem in keeping with the rest of the house. The song was just reaching its end as we entered. There were no other doors and no other records, yet Camilla had said that a song was always playing when she walked that corridor.
“Very strange,” I said.
Camilla laughed. “A little mystery. Let me show you more.”
She led me back down the corridor, slipping her hand into mine as we went. As we neared the drape room, I could have sworn I caught the sound of a record starting up, but didn’t say anything, accepting that some things just were and need not be understood.
Camilla led me to another, nearby door and showed me inside what proved to be a bathroom of sorts if one were willing to bathe in a room utterly unsuited to the task.
“Now,” said Camilla, “this is strange. We tried to wash here once – it wasn’t exactly practical, but we had quite a bit of fun trying to use it. Would you like a go?”
“No, thank you.”
The bath was one of those roll-top, claw-footed ones – only its sides reached around four-and-a-half feet with no steps to facilitate climbing in; it wouldn’t be impossible to get into the bath but it would be quite difficult and undignified. Furthermore, the taps were raised a further three feet above it which – with the substantial drop within – put them out of reach of us, except, perhaps, on tiptoe. The basin was similarly five feet up and what we took to be the WC was just a hole in the floor. Why anyone would want to design such a bathroom, I had no idea. It was like something out of a bizarrely-distorted dream.
“Well, if you don’t need to use it,” she nodded towards the hole, making me blush, “shall we say goodbye to frivolity? I have something in mind that I think you will enjoy.”
I wondered what she meant.
“No need to look so worried, Sylvia!” she laughed. “Just a room that I think you will like. It’s upstairs.”
The stairs to the third floor were not as grand as those linking the floors below and somewhat hidden away down a corridor. Camilla knew exactly where she was going, so we ignored all the doors we passed as we went through various corridors until, at last, we stood before a tall double door of dark oak. Curious coiling symbols were carved upon it, a little like ivy twisting about staves, but oddly disturbing. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to open them.
“Here we are.” She threw the doors open and we stepped through into what proved to be an amazingly large, if untended, conservatory. The glass and metal edifice rose fully forty or fifty feet above us and had some good-sized trees in it, in addition to a plethora of vines growing over lattices running from floor to ceiling, generally dead looking. A small pond covered with algae and lily pads was at the centre of the conservatory; beside it, a statue of a hooded figure in tattered robes like a monk stood, an ivy-adorned staff in its hand, head bowed as if gazing into the depths. I wondered whom it was meant to represent. Above us a gantry ran the length of the conservatory with a spiral stair at either end. Although light was shining in, it was fairly dark as the panes were grimy and the trees and vines filtered the light. It was like the negative of the drape room with the layers impeding the light rather than turning it ethereal.
“It’s... I don’t know... It’s beautiful, but it’s also... sad... This place should be a gorgeous garden, but it has been neglected. Rather like the house as a whole. Like a clock winding down.”
“All things come to an end,” Camilla sighed. “I think that the clock has already wound down and ceased to tick.”
“Not completely,” I told her, pointing to a bush near the pond upon which grew a single yellow rose. “Isn’t this gorgeous?”
Camilla crossed over to it and took the stem delicately before snapping it free from the bush and handing it to me. A thorn pricked my finger as I took it.
“For you, my dear,” she said, kissing my cheek. “Oh...” she noticed my bleeding finger, took hold of my hand and raised it to her lips, tenderly kissing the red bead away. The slightest crimson smear marked her lips. It was at that moment I knew that we were becoming friends.
CHAPTER FOUR
Camilla became my near-constant companion after that, much to the undisguised chagrin of her twin whose apparent loathing towards me seemed to balance out the liking her sister displayed towards me. Cassilda would often follow us at a distance, watching what we were doing and scowling in our direction whenever we spotted her.
“Ignore her,” Camilla would say. “She is not used to having to share me with another, but she has to learn. If only she would tolerate you, we could all have fun together. I refuse to be drawn into choosing one of you over the other – if Cassilda wishes to sulk, that is her decision to make.”
Over lunch she told me of the lake. “It is a lake of clouds; well, that is my belief. I read a story of a philosopher who was so saddened by all the evil in the world that he wept so many tears that a lake formed. I like to imagine that this is that lake – it has such a melancholy aspect, do you not think?”
I agreed. “It would be an apt truth.”
“I sometimes imagine what it would be like to drown in its water – if it has water. Do you think you would slip into oblivion, or would you drift down to some fairy city like in the old legends?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t like to talk of such things.
Our times together were not always as morbid, however. Camilla showed me a number of interesting rooms, as well as several of the blander sort that comprised much of the warren-like upper floors, half – or totally – empty or utterly mundane in nature. It was the sheer banality of the majority that made the remainder so entrancing. There was a room lined with the distorting mirrors that you see in a funfair that provided us with plentiful laughs as our forms morphed in unusual ways. I shuddered at the most farfetched distortions, seemingly impossible, yet there before our eyes. Then, there was my favourite of those we had seen so far, a large, circular room intended for dancing; the walls were covered in ornate baroque patterning inlaid with amber and mirrors, that made it glow a deep honey colour. But, what made that room so wonderful was the fact that opening the door caused music to begin playing a lively tune from somewhere behind the walls. It was another aspect of the house that reminded me of a scene from a film. I would dearly have loved to have been there when The Yellow House was properly inhabited and a party was being held in that room, beautiful gowns twirling, reflected multiple times in mirrors. Amazing! My imagination gloried in the vision as we two danced together, Camilla spinning me in her arms.
It was a few days later that Camilla invited me to ‘sleepover’ in her room.
“Cassilda might complain, but I hope that it will win her over to you, at least a little.”
I was not terribly keen to risk Cassilda’s ire – in close proximity, I was worried that she might turn nasty; I had noticed a hard look in her eyes. But, at the same time, I was curious to see inside their room and I didn’t want to upset her by saying ‘no’; so, I told her ‘yes’. My answer pleased her greatly.
“We shall have great fun together,” she assured me.
Thus it was that I found myself in their bedroom, which was even larger and more ornate than mine. I was a little surprised to see that there was only one, king-sized bed; apparently they were so close that they slept together. The bed was a curtained four-poster, opened up when I entered, with a full-length headboard at the rear. This had been engraved with a variety of faces similar to those masks worn by actors in Greek plays: tragedy and comedy. I couldn’t help but wonder which I would be in for that night.
There were several paintings on the walls, each of them dark and disturbing. My parents would never have allowed such pictures in a child’s room. For example, one showed a pack of hounds tearing apart a fox; another showed the guillotining of some French noblem
an. Even the quite plain depiction of a chestnut tree seemed to depict it on some dark and stormy evening, heavy clouds hunching in upon the crown of the tree, and a collapsed mound in the shadow of the tree seemed suggestive of something ominous.
But, the things that dominated the room were all the dolls, dozens of them in all different sizes. None were the baby dolls that little girls were supplied with in order to act out the role of mother. These were expensive and finely wrought examples, many of them almost seeming to be alive. The best two were a pair of skaters, one a courtly man, the other a glamorous woman who would dance in circles upon the polished floor, tracing intricate patterns as they went, keeping an exact distance by some means such as magnets. Camilla named them as Clairan and Crespian, names that seemed familiar to me and, simultaneously, inextricably those of the dolls. Camilla suggested that they were probably the names of lakes from an atlas.
“No, I am sure I read of them somewhere else, in a story, perhaps,” I said as I watched them spin in an intricate series of pirouettes.
There were several dollhouses of different sizes, each extremely detailed so that they seemed to be real houses in miniature, and a sort of theatre reminiscent of, only wider and more splendid than, a Punch-and-Judy booth, in which cunningly-crafted puppets could act out the farces of the Commedia Dell’Arte; there was even a little electric motor that, when the puppets were connected to certain tracks, would propel them about their stage in dances that were impressive, albeit not to the degree of those of the two dancing dolls.
All this Camilla showed me, Cassilda glaring at us from her place on the bed as I was offered several of the dolls to examine and admire.
“Are they not a delight?” Camilla asked.
Cassilda, in the meantime, had taken a set of dolls and was acting out some game, mumbling to herself.
