by Rayne, Sarah
This was becoming odder and odder. The little door in a corner of the hall—the door to the cellar that was hardly ever opened—was propped wide by a chair. It was not the main lights that were on, but the two table lamps. In the dim glow from them she could see that the door leading through to the kitchen was propped open by another chair. Shona stayed where she was and waited to see what happened.
What happened was that Mother, wearing her gardening things, came in from the kitchen—she must have been outside because there was a spattering of rain across her shoulders—Shona could see the little drops in the lamplight. She was trundling a large wheel-barrow piled with bricks—the bricks and the barrow were leaving a trail of dust all over the nice oak floor—Edna Cheesewright was not going to like that when she came in on Wednesday!—but Mother did not seem to care about the brick dust or even notice it. She stopped just inside the propped-open door, and a man came up from the cellar below. At first Shona shrank back in panic because it was a burglar after all—it was certainly a stranger—and then she saw with a shock that the man was wearing Grandfather’s old tweed jacket and the chewed-up hat he kept for bad weather. Mother always said the jacket and the hat were a disgrace and Father should think shame to be seen in them and she would put them on a bonfire one of these days.
It was Grandfather, it really was, but his eyes were like little black pits and his expression was so dour and grim that Shona began to be frightened in a different way. It was as if something else had put on the old jacket and the battered hat and was pretending to be her grandfather, like when the wolf dressed up in frilly nightclothes and lay in wait for Red Riding Hood. Would Grandfather suddenly snarl and pounce and slaver, as the wolf had done in the woodland cottage?
But he seemed intent on helping her mother get the wheelbarrow with its heap of bricks down the steps inside the door. Shona could not see them but she could hear the wheelbarrow bumping and scraping as it went down. She heard her mother say, ‘The last load, I think,’ and her grandfather reply, ‘Yes, we’ve enough now, but it’s taken longer than I expected.’
What had taken longer than expected? What was this about? Greatly daring, Shona crept down the stairs, and crossed the hall.
A dull light came up from the cellar and, as she peeped down, Shona saw they had lit the storm-lanterns that were kept for power cuts. There were three lanterns, set on the floor, and in their light she could see the mound of old bricks in one corner—masses and masses of bricks, all lying higgledy-piggledy. There was a tub of something grey and sloshily wet nearby, and a little clutter of gardening things: a trowel and a small spade. The person who was so scarily unlike her grandfather but who still had his face was moving about. He was lit from below by the storm-lanterns—perhaps it was just the light that was making him look so strange. Shona hoped so.
He bent down and lifted something that had been lying in a corner. Shona saw it was a woman of about twenty-five with long brown hair. Her face was a mottled blue-grey and Shona had a feeling she ought to know who she was, but although she looked very hard, she did not recognize her at all. Whoever she was, she was so still Shona thought she must be dead. It was how dead people looked in comics—she had seen them at school. This was very bad indeed. Shona would not have picked up a horrid dead body in her arms, but her grandfather did not seem to care. He did not look scary now, he looked as if he might be trying not to cry and he stood quite still for a moment, holding the woman in his arms. Shona felt a sudden surge of loathing for the brown-haired woman because her grandfather and mother were both looking down at the horrid dead face with such immense love. They had never looked at Shona like that, not ever! She thought nobody had ever looked at her like that in her whole life. Her mother always had lots of things to do in the house and garden, and her grandfather was only ever disapproving, telling her to be quiet, or to do her homework, and wanting to know why she could not occupy her time with boring old embroidery and pressing wildflowers. Remembering that, Shona found herself hating the brown-haired woman who made Grandfather’s face go all soft and silly, and Mother’s eyes fill with tears.
Grandfather put the woman in a little recess at the back of the cellar. It was the tiniest space imaginable and there was not room to lay her down on the ground so he propped her against the wall and the black pipes immediately behind it. Twice she flopped forward, falling onto his chest, and Shona saw her mother shudder. But at the third attempt the woman stayed upright, wedged between the thick pipes, her head lolling forward. Grandfather glanced at Shona’s mother, then leaned forward and cupped the dead face in his hands, and kissed the forehead. After a moment, her mother stepped forward and did the same. This was disgusting. Shona felt sick to see them kissing this woman, sick with jealousy.
Grandfather squared his shoulders as if he had to take on an immensely heavy burden, and began to build up the bricks to hide the woman. His face had the scary expression again, as if the wolf might be about to throw off the disguise and leap forward.
Her mother did not seem to see this. She helped him lay the bricks and put on the wet cement. Once Grandfather said, half to himself, ‘Such wickedness, Margaret,’ and Mother let out a half sob, and then said, ‘The wickedness was never meant, Father. You do know that.’
‘Of course I know.’ His hands, a bit twisted with arthritis, reached out to hers and enclosed them for a moment.
‘I can hardly believe you’re doing this for me.’
‘I look to my own,’ he said gruffly.
‘But the risk. If it’s ever discovered—’
‘It won’t be discovered,’ he said. ‘We’ll do what has to be done, and then it’ll never be spoken of. The wall will look like part of the cellar. No one else need ever know.’
‘No one must ever know,’ said Mother. ‘Never.’
Neither of them said anything after this, and for a long time the only sound was the wet slapping of the cement and the scraping of the bricks, and the laboured breathing as Shona’s grandfather worked.
Shona watched, seeing they were building the wall all the way up to the ceiling, seeing that this woman was going to be so well hidden no one would ever guess she was there—as Grandfather said, the wall would just look like part of the cellar. It would be horrid behind the wall: the water pipes would clank and hiss to themselves in the dark, and spiders and black beetles would come out when it was quiet and scuttle over the woman’s feet.
It seemed to take for ever to lay the bricks in neat rows and cement them into place, but eventually they reached the ceiling. Shona watched for a bit longer, then went quietly back to bed. She could not sleep and lay awake for a long time, going over and over what she had seen. Who had she been, that woman, and why were Mother and Grandfather hiding her body?
The really strange thing was that when Shona woke up next morning, it all seemed so unreal she was not entirely certain it had actually happened. Her mother and grandfather could surely not have put an unknown lady behind a wall and left her there in the dark. The more Shona thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed. It must have been another nightmare; she would forget it and look forward to her birthday.
But she did not forget completely. She dreamed about it, often for four or five nights in a row. Sometimes she dreamed she was in the cellar on her own, listening to her grandfather walking about the house, humming his songs as he went. For some reason this was very frightening indeed, because she knew her grandfather must not find her. But, just as his shadow appeared on the stairs, huge and terrifying in the darkness, she woke up. She was always sticky with sweat and gasping after these dreams, and once she had to get out of bed to be sick, doing it in the basin on the old-fashioned washstand because she dare not let anyone hear her going to the bathroom at the end of the corridor.
On the mornings after the dream came, her mother sometimes said at breakfast that Shona looked pale and asked if she felt all right. Shona always said she felt quite all right, thank you. Once or twice she wondered whether to tell her
mother about the dream and see what she said, but she never did.
It seemed that after all there was not to be a ninth birthday party. Her mother thought it would cause too much disruption; it would mean a lot of work, she said, and Shona’s grandfather did not really like being disturbed. Better if they just had a little celebration by themselves. Shona could have her presents and she would ask Mona Cheesewright to bake a special cake with candles. There was not much point in arguing so Shona did not bother. One day she would find a way of getting all the things her mother and grandfather were not letting her have now.
Life at Grith was somehow different after her ninth birthday; it was quieter and Grandfather hardly ever hummed little songs to himself as he went about. He spent a lot of time shut in his study, although Shona did not think he actually studied anything there. Mother sat staring into space for hours, not saying anything and not seeming to be aware of what was around her. Quite often in the evenings she said in a rather unfamiliar voice that she would take a little nip of sherry; it was good for the digestion, sherry. When she came up to kiss Shona goodnight, the kiss smelt quite strongly of sherry. Some nights she did not come up at all and Shona knew there had been several quite big nips of sherry and maybe of whisky as well, and that her mother had fallen asleep in her chair and forgotten about the goodnight kiss.
When Shona and her mother went away for their usual little holiday at Shona’s half term which Grandfather liked them to do each autumn on account of it giving them a rest from each other, the walks they normally took together along Robin Hood’s Bay did not happen. After lunch Mother always said she was tired, but Shona knew it was because she had drunk too much of the whisky she had hidden in her suitcase. Shona did not miss the walks very much, but it was just one more thing that was different about her life.
The other thing that seemed different was that her mother said she must remember never to go through the door behind the hall screen. ‘You can go anywhere else in the house,’ she said, ‘but not down there.’
When Shona asked why not, her mother said, ‘Because it’s dangerous. It goes down into the foundations of the house.’
Her grandfather added something about damp seeping in from the moor. ‘Moil Moor sometimes overflows a bit after heavy rain. It’s likely that the cellar occasionally gets flooded.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Shona.
Grandfather put a carved screen across the cellar door, which he said was a rood screen and had come from a church. It partly hid the door so that it was not very noticeable, except that Shona always noticed it because of the dream and because of having a vague memory that there was something very bad and very frightening on the other side of the door. When they ate Sunday dinner in the hall, which her grandfather liked to do on account of it being a tradition at Grith, her eyes kept going to the screen. There were secrets behind that door. Over the years, secrets came to taste of roast beef and the thick gravy her mother always made on Sundays.
CHAPTER NINE
GRANDFATHER DIED JUST before Shona’s thirteenth birthday.
He had been ill for several weeks, and had sent for a distant cousin to come to Grith House to help nurse him. Her name was Elspeth Ross and Mother told Shona that Elspeth would most probably be living with them at Grith House. It was what Shona’s grandfather wanted, said her mother; he had said they must look to their own.
‘I look to my own.’ That was what the figure in the dream had said—what he still said when the dream came. ‘I look to my own… We’ll do what has to be done… No one else need ever know.’
Shona had never heard of Cousin Elspeth, who was a slab-faced female a few years older than her mother. She wore granite-coloured jumpers and tweed skirts and clumpy shoes. Shona, who was noticing things like clothes more and more, could not imagine where Elspeth found such things or how she could bring herself to wear them. When she said this to Anna, she had the impression that Anna tossed her head and said, Oh, you saw all kinds of frumps in the Ross family, hadn’t Shona realized that by now? This again seemed to indicate that Anna knew, or had known, some of the family.
Mother said Elspeth had fallen on hard times, poor soul, but Shona was not sure if she had got this right, because a lot of things seemed to get done to Grith after her arrival. One of these was the fitting of new locks on all the doors and some of the windows. Cousin Elspeth told Shona she liked to be secure in any house where she lived. You could not be too careful, she said, in fact she always locked her bedroom door at night. It was a good thing to do and Shona should remember it and lock her own door.
Grandfather died at the height of that summer which was a particularly humid one. A lot of people were away on holiday and the wearing of black was stickily uncomfortable. When they drove past Moil Moor on the way to the funeral, the undertaker had to close all the car windows because Moil always smelt bad in the hot weather. The church smelt of clogged-up drains and the vicar did not seem to have washed his cassock for about a year because when he came to talk to them after the service, he smelt of clogged-up drains as well.
A few people were invited to Grith for a glass of sherry and ham sandwiches afterwards. Edna Cheesewright had baked the ham and Cousin Elspeth had supervised it even though Edna had been baking hams for years and did not need telling how you rubbed brown sugar onto the outside and studded it with cloves. Mona had made plain scones and there were wedges of veal and ham pie.
All the mourners were polite and soft-voiced and said what a sad day it was, but Shona noticed most of them kept sneaking furtive looks round the big drawing room which had been opened up for the occasion. People did not often get asked to Grith and she thought most of them were only there from curiosity.
Shona’s mother sat down and cried when everyone had gone, and said it was too much for a body to bear—all those folk coming to gloat. People could be very cruel and very critical, Shona must always remember that.
Shona was about to ask why people should gloat or be critical, when Elspeth came bustling in and said it would not help anyone if Margaret wilted and drooped all over the house. Life went on, said Elspeth briskly, and Mother sat up a bit straighter and said Elspeth was perfectly right, and she would have a small drop of whisky to put new heart into her, never mind it being four o’clock in the afternoon. After the small drop, she said it was all very sad, but they had to remember Grith House was now theirs, and they were lucky to have such a lovely home. When they got used to not missing Father so much, said Margaret Seymour taking a second small drop of whisky, things would be just as they had been before.
Shona did not much miss her grandfather who had been strict and old-fashioned, and things were not in the least as they had always been. One of things that was different, was having Elspeth here. She seemed to have fallen into place at Grith, but it was a rather odd place, midway between a guest and a housekeeper. Mother said Elspeth was useful in helping to run the house—Shona did not realize what a lot of work there was in a house this size—but Shona could not see there was all that much to do with just the three of them. Hardly anyone ever came to Grith; her grandfather had not much liked visitors—‘Poking and prying into folk’s private business,’ he always said—and her mother had never seemed to like them either.
Elspeth undertook some of the cooking, which these days seemed to be too much for Shona’s mother, and oversaw the Cheesewrights when they did the cleaning. Edna Cheesewright said that Miss Ross was downright rude at times: she and Mona were not skivvies to be spoken to like that and they only came to Grith to oblige. Shona’s mother promised Elspeth would not be so outspoken in the future, but Edna said they were hurt in their feelings and might have to consider their position. They were neither of them as young as they had been. Shona heard Mona say afterwards that happen Mrs Seymour would be selling the rickety old house now Mr Ross had died—a shocking condition it was in, wasn’t it? But likely it would fetch a good price and then Mrs Seymour could get a neat little bungalow, said Mona. You could go further and
fare worse than a neat little bungalow.
Shona was beginning to have some sympathy with what her grandfather had said about people poking and prying, because Elspeth poked and pried a lot and most of it was into what Shona did. She was often the one who took Shona to and from school: she had learned to drive the old station wagon and was always outside the school gates on the dot of half past three.
Outside school hours she watched Shona a good deal, which was annoying. If Shona went for a walk to the village, like as not she would hear Elspeth’s loud voice hailing her cheerily—Elspeth was always cheery, Mother said it was as good as a tonic having her in the house—but Shona found it very wearing at times. There was always a good reason for her to be following Shona: Elspeth had just discovered they were out of butter, or scouring powder, or black sewing thread, and she had said to Margaret she would just nip along to the village to get some. Or she had found it stuffy in the house, and had just nipped out to get a breath of air. She was always just nipping somewhere and most of the nipping seemed to take her in the same direction as Shona. She was a frumpy old nuisance and if Shona had been able to think of a way of getting rid of her without getting caught and punished, she would have done it.
The old dream about the cellar came back occasionally, which Shona hated, but it was her first year of being a teenager and there were more important things to think about than stupid childish nightmares. You were almost grown up when you were a teenager—everybody at school said so—and Shona hoped things at Grith would change at last, and she would be allowed to go out and do the things other girls did: youth clubs and parties with cider to drink, and giggly shopping trips into the nearest town with a group of girls.
