As Shadows Haunting

by Deryn Lake

  The distant sounds of musicians tuning up cut across their conversation.

  “Oh, God, the orchestra’s here. Hurry up, Lucy, do.”

  “I’m trying my best, Ma’am.”

  “Here let me,” said Susan, and seizing hold of the thick dark hair rapidly twisted it into a knot which she fastened on top of Sarah’s head, pulling another piece free to form a ringlet over one shoulder. “Now, Lucy, let’s get those feathers in quickly. Madam’s keeping still just for once.”

  “That’ll be through thoughts of the Prince of Wales,” the maid commented slyly but the two young ladies chose to ignore this remark.

  The ball was due to begin at nine o’clock and punctually as the great clock struck in the Saloon, Mr Fox and Lady Caroline, the Ladies Sarah and Susan, Ste and Charles, plus the Earl and Countess of Kildare, who were house guests, formed a receiving line in the entrance hall. Already there were the sounds of carriages and chairs coming up the elm drive and, it being safer for the conveyances to travel in convoy, those who had driven from London arrived together. Within half an hour all seventy guests had made their entrance and dancing began in the Gilt Room, those not wishing to cavort sitting down to cards or simply to converse.

  The magnificent chamber in which the ball was being held was, as its name implied, one of the most spectacular of its kind. Lined with panels decorated with the family devices, with dancing figures, with coronets and the initial H, it boasted Ionic pillars set at intervals along the walls, each adorned with a classical bust. The room had two entry doors, two fireplaces and three enormous windows, one of which was set in the turret which rose from the ground floor and housed the main front door. The overmantels above the fireplace bore painted medallions containing the heads of Charles I and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, and family legend had it that the room had originally been decorated for a festivity to celebrate their marriage.

  Whether that were true or false, the opulence of the surroundings was quite breathtaking, and seeing all the dancers stepping out Mr Fox again had a pang of regret that the Prince of Wales had not been on the guest list. But Sarah had almost forgotten George’s absence, almost but not quite, as she danced every dance with her partner for the evening, Captain Carlton, only stopping occasionally for a negus in the adjoining Tapestry Room where liquid refreshments, including tea, were being served.

  Meanwhile, the Duchess of Bedford, Lady Pembroke and the Duke of Marlborough had cut in at whist; Lady Albermarle and Lady Yarmouth, with two partners, were playing two pools at Quadrille; and Lord Bury, Lord Digby and Mr Dicky Bateman were intent upon cribbage. Others again wandered upon the balconies, taking the air and admiring the splendid way in which the rout had been organised. But by one o’clock in the morning all were ready for a cold collation and went down the Great Staircase to the tables already prepared in the Saloon and Dining Room. Sarah sat with her family, a mound of birthday gifts banked on a smaller table behind her, and thought she had never enjoyed herself quite so much.

  “A speech,” called someone gaily.

  “Hear, hear,” said somebody else, and the guests in the Dining Room crowded into the doorway to listen.

  “My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Sarah began, “I thank you all for coming to honour me on my fifteenth birthday and as I detest long speeches myself I intend to make mine brief. Therefore I shall very simply propose a toast to my delightful guests coupled with my splendid family. I drink to your health.”

  She raised her glass and everybody laughed and applauded, some concealed person saying quite audibly, “What a pity the Prince ain’t here to see her.”

  Fox himself proposed the toast to Sarah’s birthday and then the supper was ended with a dessert and ice.

  “More dancing, my Lady?” asked Captain Carlton attentively.

  “I think if I may, Sir, that I will just take the air alone for a moment or two. I’m flushed with the fun of it all.”

  He laughed aloud. “You have a quaint way of speaking, Lady Sarah.”

  “I expect I learned it in Ireland. When I was first taught to ride by an Irish groom he told me to ‘sit tight and feel the baste’s mouth’. No wonder I’ve grown up maddish.”

  “Maddish, but beautiful,” said Captain Carlton, and bowed.

  Sarah smiled, leaving the Saloon quietly so as not to disturb the party. Crossing a passageway beneath the dome of the central tower she went into the Entrance Hall and out through the small vestibule to the front door with its delicately moulded fanlight. Liveried flunkies sprang to attention as she appeared, but the girl merely nodded to them and went to stand on the marble steps, looking out to the drive and parkland.

  In front of her lay the square entrance court, lit to a gleaming white by the torches burning on the balconies above. Beyond it lay steps leading down to the carriage sweep and beyond that again were the Inigo Jones entrance portals, an iron fence the width of the house which stopped the cattle wandering onto the lawn, stretching between them. Sarah could just make out the man who operated the wicket gate, at that moment standing open lest any carriage should wish to leave, snoozing on his little portable seat. And then, almost against their will and somehow frighteningly slowly, her eyes were drawn to Night Walk which lay on the far side of the fence.

  Even before she had seen who stood there, the girl had experienced an ice-cold thrill of fear and so was not surprised to glimpse a figure, shadowy in the torchlight, its burnished hair glowing in the dimness.

  ‘Why does she stand so still?’ thought Sarah. ‘Why does she stand so damnably still?’

  She took a step forward, straining to see more clearly, and just for a second one of the torches above spluttered and flared so that everything was brilliantly illuminated. Sarah gazed at clear eyes, wide open almost as if in wonderment, the lips of a quizzical, smiling mouth parted in surprise.

  “Who are you?” she called. “What do you want?”

  The wicket keeper woke with a start. “Eh? What? Oh, it’s you, Lady Sarah!”

  “Huggins, go and tell that woman to come to me at once. She’s always loitering about the place and I won’t have it.”

  He jumped to his feet, running along the fence, but Sarah knew that the intruder had already gone, had vanished into a pool of darkness beyond the east portal.

  “She’s over there somewhere, I believe. Do try and find her, there’s a good fellow.”

  “Anything wrong, my Lady?”

  It was Captain Carlton standing right behind her. Sarah was suddenly filled with a great desire to tell him the whole story but decided against it, thinking she might spoil what was proving to be a truly perfect occasion.

  “No, nothing at all. I thought I saw a poacher but Huggins is sorting it out.”

  “Then shall we return to the ball?”

  “That sounds enchanting.”

  And Lady Sarah Lennox dropped one of her impeccable curtseys, took the arm of the gallant military man, and returned to the Gilt Room to enjoy what was left of the night.

  The last of the carriages went down the elm drive at five o’clock in the morning and it was only then that the Foxes, exhausted, elated and fit to drop, finally said goodnight and went to their bedrooms. And yet Sarah, tired though she was, still felt she would not sleep unless one question was answered. Going down by the East Staircase which connected with the Servants’ Hall, she went out through the side door and hurried round the house to where Huggins was finally closing the wicket and packing away his little folding chair. She rushed up to him impetuously, not caring that her behaviour was strange and extremely unmannerly.

  “Did you find her, Huggins? That woman I saw?”

  He scratched his head, looking at her curiously. “I searched and searched, my Lady, but there weren’t no one there. Strange, like.” He smiled, his rough outdoor face looking like a cheerful ham. “Sure it weren’t your imagination, my Lady?”

  “Of course not. Why do you say that?”

  “Because I never saw nobody.”

>   “That, my fine fellow, is because you were asleep,” answered Lady Sarah Lennox haughtily and, turning on her heel, she went back into the comfortable familiarity of Holland House.

  Chapter Three

  It started to rain during the night, at first very gently, a fine light spray which merely moistened the parched earth. But then in the hours before dawning the delicate veils of drizzle turned to a downpour and began to drench the street, all the refuse and litter sweeping along the gutters, blocking the choking drains with yet more garbage.

  Sometime between three and five, the fact that it was raining hard impinged itself on her consciousness and Sidonie woke, gazed at the alarm clock, said, “Oh God,” and buried her head beneath the bedclothes, not wanting to start what promised to be a long and stressful day. But sleep had gone, her mind already racing over all she had to do, her tensions beginning to mount as she lay in the darkness listening to the deluge and wondering why after a summer in which the words “Greenhouse effect” had become positively boring, the weather had to choose this day of all days to break.

  Ahead of her stretched the dreary and depressing prospect of moving house, listed amongst her six pet hates. The very sight of removal men armed with tea chests and newspaper was guaranteed to send shivers down Sidonie’s spine and yet, as if through some awful twist of fate, she had moved many times since she had left her childhood home.

  “But this one will be the last,” she muttered into the darkness. “Never again,” realising even as she spoke that she was being utterly ridiculous to hope for such a thing.

  Another glance at the clock showed that it was half past four, too late for rest, too early to rise, yet just to lie there thinking until the alarm went off at six seemed a grim idea. Very slowly, moving rather as if she were walking in her sleep, Sidonie got up and made her way through the darkness to the kitchen. There, eyes half-closed, she switched on the light and stared round. The kitchen stared back coldly, devoid of its trappings, the cupboards empty, only the kettle braving the empty space that had once been a crowded work top.

  Returning to the living room, Sidonie thought that it, too, seemed angry with her for betraying the flat by selling. Stripped of all her pictures and ornaments the room was bleak and bare, while the light bulb hanging down, its shade gone, did nothing to soften the effect.

  “Sorry,” she said aloud, “but the new people will be in by tonight.”

  And she herself, when the move was finally over and the last thing put in place, would be in such a splendid home that the agony of it all would have been justified. Sipping her tea, wishing she had had the nerve to make it something stronger, Sidonie thought back to her very first glimpse of the Garden Flat, Phillimore Gardens.

  She had never imagined in her rarest moments she would ever have had enough money to buy an apartment in Kensington — what her grandmother would have termed a “good” address — let alone one that was actually a maisonette, occupying both the ground and basement floors. But the result of a highly successful and exhausting concert tour of Japan, combined with a legacy from that very same grandmother, had boosted Sidonie’s bank balance sufficiently not only to consider such a thing but even to go and look.

  A cool spacious room leading onto the garden had greeted her eyes in the basement, and just for a moment she had visualised it furnished with her clavichord and two harpsichords, the little spinet tucked into a corner so that when she sat at it she would see nothing but the lawn and flowerbeds enclosed by a warm brick garden wall. Also on that basement floor had been an adjoining room, perfect for watching television, listening to recordings and generally relaxing.

  On the floor above there had been a dining room and kitchen, a superb bedroom above what was already designated to be the music room, and another small room for guests. But the selling point had been the fact that the garden would be entirely Sidonie’s, that none of the other flats had any claim to it.

  “I can’t meet the price,” she had told the estate agent. “Will the owner take £2,000 less?”

  “It’s a buyers’ market, Miss Brooks. He might.”

  And much to her amazement and pleasure the deal had been struck. The flat in Phillimore Gardens — maisonette seemed too precious a word somehow — had become hers, with only the dreaded move to live through before she took possession of it.

  At eight o’clock sharp, Sidonie long since ready, the pantechnicon arrived and after cups of tea and fags all round — “You don’t mind do you, luv?” — the loading began.

  “Careful with them pianos,” shouted the foreman. “They’re valuable.”

  “They’re not pianos actually, they’re early instruments. Two harpsichords, a clavichord and a spinet to be precise.”

  “You don’t look the type to play those.”

  “Oh,” Sidonie answered vaguely, not really wanting to get into a discussion as to what type would.

  By noon the first stage was all done, the entire contents of the flat in Highbury aboard the furniture van, the cat, the plants and Sidonie in her car.

  “Away you go, dear,” said the foreman cheerfully. “We’ll just have our spot of dinner then we’ll catch you up.”

  And so she was off through the traffic of London in the rain, plunging into the tunnel at Knightsbridge, down past Kensington Palace, then the High Street, turning right into Phillimore Gardens itself. Just for a moment after she had switched off the engine, Sidonie sat staring up at the house’s white facade, mentally dating it as Victorian and probably built at around the time of the Great Exhibition. Then, relishing every second, she put her key in the lock of the main front door and went into the hall.

  The door to the Garden Flat lay immediately opposite and getting out yet another key Sidonie opened it. In that microcosm of time as she stepped over the threshold into her new apartment she felt that fate was suddenly singing in her ears, that somewhere a comet was born. She was simultaneously excited and daunted as the place appraised and then consumed her. Rushing down the small flight of stairs to the basement, she unlocked the garden door and stepped out in the rain to a small terrace from which three steps led to the walled garden.

  A door in the far end of the wall gave access onto Holland Walk but for obvious reasons of security this was both heavily bolted and locked, and try as she would to push back the bolts, Sidonie found them stuck fast.

  ‘I’ll get that fixed,’ she thought, being somewhat obsessional about things that did not work.

  But, even in the downpour, the garden itself was charming. Sidonie imagined the terrace with her white iron furniture on it, bright geraniums in terracotta pots, two director’s chairs side by side beneath the apple tree.

  ‘Why two?’ she wondered silently, then screwed her face up. ‘Must be old habits dying hard.’

  But she would not let her thoughts go down that path, would not spoil the first few minutes in her new home by thinking about Nigel and the past. Instead she ran indoors as the deluge became even heavier and poured herself a glass of wine from a bottle she had brought with her.

  “To the Garden Flat!” she toasted and raised her glass to the empty spaces around her.

  By five o’clock those spaces had been filled, all the tea chests carried in and deposited in the middle of the living room floor, the plants put to stand in the bathroom until permanent places could be found for them.

  “Well, luv, that’s it,” said the foreman. “I reckon you’ll be happy here. You’ve got yourself a right cosy pad if you ask me.”

  “Very nice,” added Darryl, one of the crew.

  “Thank you,” said Sidonie and reached in her handbag for a suitable tip. “Have a drink on me.”

  “Oh ta, luv. You’ll be all right will you?”

  “Yes. I won’t unpack much now. I’ll probably have an early night.”

  “Very wise. Well, we’ll be off then.”

  “Thanks for everything. Goodbye.”

  With the men gone, the silence plunged inwards as Sidonie, following an
age-old piece of advice given by her mother, made the bed as her first priority. Then, feeling suddenly exhausted, she went to the kitchen, fed the cat, got some tea and toast and took the tray to her bedroom. Climbing into bed, she was too tired to eat, but she drank the tea, then closed her eyes. Almost at once a dream came, quite the most vivid she had ever had.

  Sidonie dreamt that she walked in the garden in the darkness and saw that the door in the far wall now stood open wide. Drawn compulsively to go through it, the dreamer found herself in Holland Walk, the long avenue separating Holland Park from the houses in Phillimore Gardens. Not knowing why, she made her way up the Walk towards Holland House, and it was then that a beam of moonlight pierced the dark sky, clearly illuminating the scene ahead of her.

  Sidonie realised to her astonishment that the great mansion had not been destroyed by an incendiary bomb during the war as she had thought. She gazed with admiration and a certain awe at a huge courtyard flanked on two sides by arcaded cloisters, airy balconies above them. Behind the third part of the court lay the main building, all towers and turrets and glinting mullioned windows. The Inigo Jones gateway no longer existed, the two portals set at some distance apart, an iron fence separating them one from the other.

  As Sidonie stared it seemed to her that every candle in the place was lit simultaneously, for all at once the house was ablaze with light. There was the sound of music and laughter coming from within. And at that the dreamer became afraid and turned to go. She wanted to run but found she could not. But worse was yet to come, for when she got back to the garden door Sidonie saw that it was closed once more. She started to bang on it with her fists, calling “Let me in.” And that was what she heard herself shout as she finally awoke.

  At first she had no idea where she was, staring at the high Victorian ceiling with its moulded rose and cornices, not recognising them. And then the memory of the move and the Garden Flat returned and Sidonie smiled wryly.