by Peter James
Please don’t let’s row again tonight, she thought, standing up and walking across the small room. She gazed at the bookshelves, at the toy Ferrari she’d put in his Christmas stocking, at a copy of Inner Gold. She picked up a Rubik cube and gave it a gentle twist; dust flew off.
‘Did you discuss it with the acupuncturist?’
A car hooted in the street outside; the cubes rotated with a soft crunch. ‘He had some pretty crackpot theories,’ she said.
‘So do you.’
‘They’re not crackpot.’
‘What about the crap therapy thing you went to with Laura. Rebirthing?’
‘Rebirthing was good.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘One session of rebirthing and no sex for two months.’ He rocked his drink from side to side, rattling the ice. ‘You don’t make babies without screwing — or didn’t anyone tell you that?’
She was silent.
‘You ought to get on and do this regressive hypnotism you keep talking about. You’ll probably find you were a nun in a previous life.’
‘Laura says —’
‘I’m not interested what Laura says.’ He drank some of his gin. ‘Do you really discuss our sex life with your friends?’
Three yellows lined up down one side. She twisted the cube again. ‘Don’t you discuss it with yours?’
‘There’s not much to discuss. We don’t have a sex life these days, we have scientific experiments. When did you last enjoy sex?’
She put the cube back on the shelf, walked over and kissed him again. ‘Don’t be like this, Tom. I always enjoy it. It’s just that’ — she bit her lip — ‘time’s running out.’
Tom’s voice became a fraction gentler. ‘Darling, everyone says you didn’t conceive before because you worked too hard, because of tension. That’s why you gave up work. No one said you have to give up sex.’ He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Listen, there’s a house I like the look of. The particulars arrived today.’ He flipped open a file with a wodge of estate agents’ particulars.
As she looked at the coloured photograph in the centre a fleeting sensation of familiarity rose inside her, then sank away like a shadow underwater. The photograph was fuzzily printed and the view of the house was partially obscured by shrubbery. Tudor, more a large cottage than a house, the lower half red brick and the upper plaster with wood beams. It had small mullioned windows and a steeply pitched roof tugged down over it like a hat that was too large. It seemed tired, neglected and rather melancholic.
ELMWOOD MILL, ELMWOOD, SUSSEX. A delightful 15th-century mill house in outstanding secluded position, with outbuildings including the original watermill and large brick barn. In need of some modernisation. About 3 acres. For sale by private treaty or auction at a date to be agreed.
‘I think I — I’ve —’ Her voice tailed away.
‘You’ve what?’ Tom said.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I — I thought for a moment I knew the house.’
‘What do you think of it?’
‘It’s very pretty.’ She glanced through the particulars. ‘Doesn’t say a price — it’s probably way out of reach.’
‘I rang them up.’ He smiled triumphantly. ‘They’re asking two-fifty, but they might take two twenty-five.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s a complete wreck.’
‘Just what we want!’ she squealed, and Tom was suddenly touched by her glee and enthusiasm, by something that seemed rekindled inside her. A drop of rain water fell on his cheek, but he barely noticed. Even soaking wet she smelted nice. She always smelled nice; it was one of the things that had first attracted him to her. Her face was pretty with an impish toughness behind it, and there was an element of tomboy in her that had always appealed. Her body was slim, but strong and she could look dynamite in a mini and just as good in jeans. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a raw animal sexiness about her that was part of the chemistry between them. It had barely dimmed in all the time they had been together. Until now.
He should be patient and understanding, he knew; he should be sympathetic and caring. Instead he felt chewed up inside. He was guilty about his resentment against her childlessness (when maybe it was his fault — or at least partly his fault). Moving to the country. That was what they had both decided to do. Get out of London, out of the Big Smoke and the Big Hassle. It would be different in the country. It would come right there.
‘I’ve made an appointment for tomorrow. There’s someone else keen, apparently,’ he said. ‘Three o’clock. OK?’
She nodded and looked down at the photograph. The sense of familiarity returned.
‘Have you fed Ben?’ she asked.
‘Yup.’
‘And Horace?’
‘Rats, I forgot.’
‘You never remember Horace.’
‘Teach Horace to bark and I might.’ He yawned and closed the file. ‘I must get on.’
‘How was the lasagne?’
He was already reading his documents. ‘Fine.’
She went downstairs. Ben ran after her and over to the front door. ‘Sorry, boy, I’m, not going out in that rain. I’m going to have a hot bath. You can go into the garden on your own.’ She walked through to the kitchen and unlocked the back door. ‘OK, boy!’
Ben sat down and sighed like an old man.
‘God, you’re a wimp!’ She went to the dresser. ‘Hi Horace, you don’t mind getting wet, do you?’ She pressed her face against the glass bowl. The magnified red carp swam over and watched her as if she were a good movie, mouth opening and shutting. ‘Had a good day, have you?’ She opened the lid of its food. ‘How do you feel about moving to the country, Horace? It’s a shitty old place, London, don’t you think?’ She dropped a pinch of food in and it spread through the water like a cloud of fallout. The fish swam unhurriedly to the surface and took its first glum bite.
Elmwood Mill.
Something stirred deep in her memory. Like a forgotten name on the top of the tongue it hung there, tantalising her, then slipped away.
She went upstairs and into the bathroom. As she turned the taps and water splashed out she felt, for some reason she did not understand, afraid.
Chapter Three
The property was by a lake at the end of a mile-long lane that sloped continuously downhill. They had passed only three other houses, the last over half a mile distant. Charley saw the green and white estate agent’s board through the trees beside a crumbling brick wall which had jagged glass cemented along the top. Daylight glinted through the slats of the rotting wooden gates.
The appointment was for three o’clock. The car clock said 3.44.
‘He must have buggered off,’ Tom said.
Charley let Ben out. The golden retriever hurtled clumsily past her, shook himself, then bounded over and cocked his leg against the wall. Eight months old, still a puppy. They had got him when she’d given up full-time work.
The car ticked and pinged and smelled of hot oil. She stretched, feeling flat suddenly, and silently annoyed at Tom for picking her up so late. Always something. For over a year they’d been house-hunting, and every time something was not right. The rooms were too small or the neighbours were too close or someone else got interested and the price went too high. Both of them knew, but rarely spoke, of their need for a fresh start.
Black clouds like locomotives shunted through the blue sky. Gusting wind tugged at the roots of her hair. The foliage, lush from a long spell of heavy rain, bent in the wind and the sodden grass sparkled under the coarse sunlight. Moisture seeped into her shoes.
The lake stretched like a grubby carpet between the walls of trees around it, slapping its creases out against the banks. A solitary upturned skiff lay on a patch of grass in front of them under a faded sign nailed to a tree. ‘PRIVATE. NO FISHING. MEMBERS ONLY.’ Beyond it was a metal footbridge over a weir, and a path leading up into the woods.
A flock of starlings flew overhead. She felt the chill of the wind, more like Marc
h than June, and hugged her arms around herself. She heard the rattle of branches, the woodsaw rasp of a crow, the roar of water from the weir. Behind the sounds was an odd stillness after the bustle of London. Strange not to hear any traffic, or voices.
There was a sharp clank as Tom pushed the gate open, the metal bolt scraping through the gravel of the drive. He was unchanged from court, in his pinstriped suit and Burberry mackintosh. They must look odd together, she in her jeans and baggy pullover and bomber jacket.
Then her heart skipped as she stared down the sweeping drive at the cluster of buildings nestling in the hollow a hundred yards away, between mossy banks that rose up into the woods on either side. The house — a different view from the estate agent’s photograph — a brick barn, and a dilapidated wooden water mill.
There was little sign of life. The windows were dark. Water tumbled from the weir into a brick-walled sluice pond below them. It frothed angrily around the motionless wheel and slid in a fast narrow stream through the garden, under an ornamental wooden bridge, past the barn and into a paddock beyond.
Excitement thumped inside her, although the house was smaller than she’d thought it would be, and in worse condition. Shadows boxed on the uneven roof as the wind punchballed the trees; an L-shaped single-storey extension seemed as if it might collapse at any moment on to the coal bunker and an oil tank beside it in a bed of nettles. Then she stiffened.
Something was missing.
She stared around, noticing something new all the time. A bird bath, a shed, a wheelbarrow, a hen run. Two uprooted oak trees leaned against one another on the front lawn, their branches interlocked like fighting dinosaurs.
The hollow had once been the river valley, she realised, before the river had been dammed to make the lake. Apart from the grass, which looked as if it had been cut, it was wild. There were some rhododendron bushes, a few desultory clusters of wild flowers, a small orchard.
Something was missing.
Her eyes were drawn to a level patch of scrub grass halfway up the bank above the barn, between the mill race and the woods. Her armpits were clammy; she felt dizzy and held on to Tom’s arm.
‘Are you OK?’ he said.
Strands of hair thrashed her cheek. A bird chirruped.
The slapping of the waves on the lake. The tumbling water of the weir. The wind in the trees. The quiet. It was touching something, stirring something, like snatches of an old tune.
‘Charley? Darling?’ He shook her arm. ‘Anyone home?’
‘What?’ She came back to earth with a jolt and felt disoriented for a moment. ‘Sorry, I was just —’ She smiled. ‘It’s wonderful.’
‘Don’t get your hopes too high. There’s someone else interested, and we might hate the inside.’
‘We won’t!’
Ben tore down the drive and loped across the grassy bank.
‘Ben!’ she shouted.
‘It’s OK, the house is empty.’
‘Why don’t we phone the agent and tell him we’re here now?’
‘Let’s go and have a look first.’
The sluice pond was deep and cold. Slime coated the wall. The thunder of water grew louder as they walked down and she felt a fine spray on her face.
‘We’d be wanting to pee all the time,’ Tom said.
Further on clear water flowed under the ornamental bridge and Charley thought how on warm summer evenings they could have supper, the two of them, by the stream. Bring her mother down on fine days. Convert the barn and maybe Tom’s father could live there. If Tom and his father could stop hating each other.
The house seemed larger as they neared it, partly because it sat up above them. The front was the pretty view in the particulars. Elizabethan, one end slanted and the other square. The plaster of the upper floor was crumbling, the wooden beams were rotten and the brickwork of the ground floor was uneven. The windows were small and differing sizes.
They heard a car door. Ben ran back up the drive, barking. A man hurried in through the gates, short and purposeful, a blue folder tucked under his arm, hands and feet pointing outwards like a penguin. He paused to pat Ben, and was rewarded with muddy pawprints on his trousers. He hove to in front of them, puffing, a plump, dapper man in polished black loafers with shiny pens in his breast pocket and alabaster skin.
‘Mr and Mrs Witney? I’m sorry, so sorry to have kept you.’ He leaned slightly backwards. Wind lifted the hair off his bald pate.
‘We were a bit late ourselves,’ Tom said.
‘Ah yes, tricky to find the first time.’ A Rotarian badge glinted smugly in the lapel of his grey suit. ‘Budley, from Jonathan Rolls.’ His fleshy fingers gave Charley’s hand a sharp downward tug, as if it were a bell-pull. ‘Moving out of London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Something like this comes on the market once in a decade.’
‘Windows look bad,’ Tom said.
‘Reflected in the price. So little’s been done for years.’ He gave his signet ring a twist. ‘Dates a long way back — to the Domesday Book. Been added to since, naturally.’
Charley stared up the mossy bank at the level patch of scrub, at the woods, at Ben playing happily, then at Tom, trying to read his face, but it was blank, giving nothing away.
‘Wonderful place for children,’ Mr Budley added.
Charley caught Tom’s eye.
Tom tied Ben to the boot scraper at the bottom of the steps and they followed Mr Budley. The front door was oak with a tarnished lion’s head knocker. The wind billowed Charley’s jacket.
‘How long has the house been empty?’ Charley asked.
‘Only about nine months. Miss Delvine passed away at the end of last summer,’ Mr Budley said.
‘Here?’ said Charley. ‘In the house?’
‘Oh no, I don’t believe so.’
‘I always think it’s a bit creepy when someone’s actually died in a house,’ Charley said.
‘You know who she was, of course?’
‘No.’
‘Nancy Delvine.’ He said the name in a reverential hush.
Charley repeated it blankly and glanced at Tom. He shrugged.
‘The couturier,’ Mr Budley said, making them feel for a moment they’d let him down. ‘She was very famous in the forties.’ He leaned towards them and lowered his voice. ‘She made for royalty.’ He allowed them time for this to sink in before pointing to a brass plaque above the door with a crude etching of a sun. ‘The original fire insurance plaque from 1711. Steeped in history, this house.’ He placed the key in the lock and turned it as if he were opening a pearl oyster.
The tiny entrance hall was strangely silent and smelled like a church. There were closed doors with iron latches to their right and left, a narrow staircase ahead, a dark passageway to the right of it. A winged bust stood on the hall table under a pockmarked mirror.
Mr Budley pressed a light switch. There was a sharp metallic click. Nothing happened. The grimy lampshade was fixed to the low-beamed ceiling above Charley’s head. She could have changed the bulb without standing on tiptoe.
‘The mains power,’ Mr Budley said. ‘It keeps tripping. The box is in the cellar. We might as well start there.’
They walked along the passageway, Tom’s metal-capped shoes echoing on the bare boards. The walls, panelled in oak, were badly in need of a polish and seemed to press in on them. Dozens of picture hooks and nails stuck out of the panelling. Mr Budley stopped beside a door and noticed Charley’s expression.
‘Valuable paintings. Couldn’t be left in an empty house — the insurance.’ He opened the door. Thick pipes ran above it. ‘It’s steep,’ he warned, switching on a tiny torch.
Charley felt a draught that smelled of coal and damp as she followed him down the wooden staircase into pitch darkness. He shone the beam of his torch on a dusty electricity meter, then on a metal box with a large handle and a row of ancient ceramic fuses. There was a crackle and a flash of sparks, then a weak light filled the room.
C
harley shrieked and clutched Tom. A group of bald, naked shop window mannequins on pedestals stared at them.
‘Miss Delvine did some of her work here in the house.’
‘God, they gave me a fright!’ Charley looked warily around the rest of the cellar. The floor was brick, and uneven. There was a wine rack, a wooden wheelchair and a cast-iron safe. Beyond an opening in the far wall was pitch darkness.
Tom turned to the mannequins. ‘All right class, sit down.’
Charley giggled uneasily. The mannequins gazed stonily.
‘This lever—’ Mr Budley pointed. ‘There’s a built-in voltage trip. For some reason the circuit keeps overloading.’
‘Seems pretty primitive,’ Tom said.
‘Needs rewiring.’
The first floor landing was lit by two candle bulbs in a gilded sconce on the wall. A pot stand with a dead plant sat in a narrow recess. The floor was on a slant, as was a window with tatty chintz curtains overlooking the rear garden. With the timber beams and low ceiling it felt like being on an old ship.
‘Has anyone done a survey?’ Tom asked.
‘No. Not yet,’ said Mr Budley, ‘but there’s no problem. Houses like this might tilt a bit but they’re solid as rocks. I’d rather be in a house like this when the bomb drops than in any of the modern ones on our books.’
The master bedroom reminded Charley of a country house hotel they had once stayed in. It had beamed plaster walls and a huge carved oak bed with a grimy counterpane the colour of parchment. There was a maple wardrobe, a matching dressing table with a silver hairbrush and a comb and crystal bottles caked in dust. The room smelled strongly of rotting fabric and more faintly of musky perfume.
‘East,’ Mr Budley said. ‘This room gets the morning sun.’
‘Good size,’ Charley said. ‘Plenty of space to build in some fitted cupboards. It’s got a nice feel to it, this room.’ She stared out of the leaded-light window. The view across the lake was stunning.
‘Is the furniture going?’ Tom said.
