Letters from Lighthouse Cottage

by McNamara, Ali

  ‘That’s right, I am,’ Charlie says before I can continue. But there’s no mockery in his voice this time as he gazes down into the murky moat water. ‘Very jealous… Now, about this door.’

  As if nothing has happened, Charlie immediately heads back across the bridge towards the large wooden door, leaving me slightly bemused.

  Charlie isn’t jealous of Danny and me, is he? No, surely not. He’s only teasing me again. But he hadn’t sounded like he was teasing… Maybe he’d said he was jealous because I don’t see him quite as often since I’ve been dating Danny. Yes, that must be what he meant.

  Happy with my explanation, I follow Charlie. I find him and Wilson examining the door in great detail. While Wilson sniffs, Charlie feels all around the large and very intricate carved wooden door frame. When he finds nothing, he turns his attention to a couple of old stone plant pots that, by the look of the wilted plants inside, had once held geraniums. He lifts them up individually, and then replaces them with a shake of his head before turning to find me watching him.

  ‘Look under that gargoyle thing,’ he instructs, pointing to one of two grim-looking gargoyles guarding the entrance of the house.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For a key, you numpty. What do you think I’m looking for?’

  ‘Who would be stupid enough to leave a key to a big house like this underneath a— Oh,’ I say as I tilt one of the grumpy-looking stone figures up. ‘There is a key!’

  ‘Told ya!’ Charlie says triumphantly. ‘Now let’s try it in one of the doors.’

  I take the large iron key over to Charlie and we try it in one of the locks. To my complete amazement it fits, and as we turn the key we hear the satisfying click of the mechanism unlocking.

  ‘After you,’ he says, holding out his arm.

  I look at him suspiciously. ‘Do you think I’m scared or something?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Charlie insists. ‘But I might be! It’s a big old house – it could have the odd ghost or two floating around.’

  Scornfully I shake my head at him. ‘Come on, scaredy-cat. I’ll lead the way.’ But it turns out it’s Wilson that leads the way, as he bounds through the door in front of both of us.

  As Charlie and I follow him into the gloomy, musty-smelling house, I jump as Charlie closes the door behind us.

  ‘Not scared, eh?’ he whispers, grinning at me.

  The hallway we now find ourselves in is extremely wide, with an intricate dark mahogany panelled floor. There’s a magnificent crystal chandelier above us, which would have sparkled and shone when it was required to provide light for grand balls and social occasions, but now it hangs rather gloomily from a dirty cream ceiling with elaborate plaster mouldings around the edge.

  At either side of the hall two ornate wooden staircases glide gracefully up to the floor above, where we can see an open landing leading off to a number of upstairs rooms.

  ‘Impressive,’ Charlie says, as I gaze in awe at the staircase.

  ‘Isn’t it just? Imagine all the ladies who would have floated gracefully down those stairs wearing their beautiful long dresses, looking for their perfect suitor at the bottom.’

  ‘Does my Gracie have a bit of a romantic streak in her?’ Charlie asks, grinning.

  ‘It would seem so,’ I reply dreamily, still staring up at the staircase.

  ‘So what’s in the rest of the house?’ he asks, walking over to one of the many wooden doors that lead off the splendid hallway.

  We spend the next twenty minutes or so wandering around the house exploring. It would seem that the previous owners hadn’t changed too much of the original features. But in amongst the Tudor architecture, I spot touches of Georgian, and quite a lot of Victorian I realise as we look around. I’d obviously learnt more than I thought from my parents.

  As we wander through some of the upstairs bedrooms, even though they’re devoid of all their furniture, I can still get a sense of what it might have been like to live here as one of the ladies of the manor. I’m particularly taken by one of the bedrooms which has been decorated in a gorgeous shade of Wedgwood blue, and it’s as I spin around to try and take in the full effect of the flocked blue-and-gold pattern that I spy it sitting in an empty alcove.

  ‘Hey, Charlie!’ I call, peering inside the box. ‘Come and look at this!’

  Charlie appears at once in the doorway.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks, coming over to look.

  ‘Paintings,’ I tell him, gently tipping each frame forward so I can see the next. ‘Good ones too, by the look of it.’

  We look together at the abandoned paintings; there’s one of some fruit and a jug of wine, a couple of landscapes, and a few portraits. One in particular jumps out at me, so I lift it from the box. It’s a small gilt-framed portrait of a sandy-haired young woman sitting at a desk; in one hand she holds a quill pen, and in the other a letter.

  ‘Why have you pulled that one out?’ Charlie asks, looking at the painting.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply, still looking at the picture. There’s something about it I can’t put my finger on, something familiar. Is it the fact the woman is holding a letter – something I’d recently become very interested in? No, it couldn’t be that; my typed letters are nothing like the handwritten one in the painting. So what is it? I shake my head. ‘Maybe I just liked it,’ I reply to Charlie’s question.

  ‘Weird, these pictures being up here though. I thought you said the place was cleared out. Everywhere else we’ve been has been completely empty.’

  ‘I expect the box was left behind accidentally. There’s often so much stuff, it’s easy to think you have everything.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Charlie shrugs. ‘What should we do with it?’

  ‘Well we can’t exactly hand it in – people will know we’ve been in here. Perhaps we should just leave it where we found it,’ I say, putting the painting of the woman back in the box.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Charlie says, and we push the box back into the alcove together. ‘So, what do you think?’ Charlie asks after we’ve left the bedroom and are heading down the stairs together.

  ‘About?’

  ‘Holding your party here, of course! That’s what we originally broke in for.’

  ‘We didn’t break in,’ I correct. ‘There was a key, remember?’

  ‘OK, let ourselves in then, if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘It does, yes. I’m not sure if this is the right place, Charlie. It’s a bit grand.’

  ‘Too grand for the likes of Danny, eh?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’ We’ve reached the bottom of the stairs now. ‘I meant how can we hold it here? Who would we need to ask to get permission?’

  Charlie tuts and shakes his head. ‘This is what I meant earlier on the beach. You need to live a little, Gracie.’

  ‘I don’t know what you… Oh,’ I say as Charlie’s meaning dawns on me. ‘You mean we just use it anyway, without asking anyone?’

  Charlie nods.

  ‘I’m not too sure about that…’

  ‘Come on, Gracie, it’s not like you’re going to host an acid house party. It’s only a birthday party for your boyfriend. But of course, if you don’t want to do it, if you’re scared…’

  ‘Yes, of course I want to, and of course I’m not!’ I answer at once. The more I think about it, the more I realise the house would be perfect. We could hold the party in the large room that I’m pretty sure must have been used as a ballroom at some stage. ‘I’m sure Danny would love to have a party here, it’s just —’

  ‘No buts, Gracie!’ Charlie insists. ‘We’ll organise the best party Sandybridge has ever seen, then we’ll be the cool kids for a change, instead of a couple of hangers on.’

  I look at Charlie’s eager face. He’s very keen to do this.

  ‘OK, you’re on! Let’s do it! Let’s organise the best party ever!’

  Dear Grace,

  Tonight at the party you will argue with your best friend.
<
br />   Don’t go after him. It’s for the best, I promise.

  Love, Me x

  Ten

  ‘How do you think it’s going?’ I ask Charlie as we stand at the side of the room.

  I feel a bit like Kevin Bacon in the movie Footloose as we watch people milling about in the middle of a hall festooned with balloons, and a Happy Birthday banner. In Footloose, Kevin’s character organises a secret dance for his classmates, and before he starts the cool dancing, everyone is just hanging around looking awkward – which is pretty much what we’re all doing right now.

  In conjunction with Danny’s mates and a few of the girls from school, I’d tried to organise the best party I could manage on our limited budget, in a venue we weren’t really supposed to be in. OK, we definitely weren’t supposed to be in.

  I’d provided the banner and all the balloons, which Charlie and I had painstakingly stood in the hall and blown up earlier on this afternoon, and we’d requested all the guests bring some food and drink.

  This had surprisingly worked very well, in that nearly everyone who came through the door had brought something. But not quite so well in terms of variety: we now had two tables laden with more crisps than Sainsbury’s, four Viennettas that were melting pretty fast in the warm room, a frozen Black Forest gateau that wasn’t thawing fast enough, and a pineapple-and-cheese hedgehog.

  There wasn’t a lot of variety on the drinks table either. There was more Coke than the pub in Sandybridge could probably get through in a week; a number of bottles of Hooch – which were disappearing rapidly; a bottle of vodka – no doubt ‘borrowed’ from a parent’s booze cabinet – but luckily quite a lot of tins of lager and bottles of beer, which seemed to be very popular with the boys.

  Charlie had borrowed his brother’s boombox (I’m pretty sure without his knowledge) and we were blasting out tunes from the variety of cassettes and mix tapes that people had brought along.

  ‘I think it’s going as expected,’ Charlie replies diplomatically as he looks out into the room. He turns to me. ‘Cheer up, Gracie. Everyone looks like they’re having fun. How about you join in?’

  ‘I just want it to go well for Danny,’ I tell him.

  ‘Danny looks like he’s enjoying himself,’ Charlie says, looking over to where Danny is currently trying to down a can of lager in one, while his mates cheer him on. ‘If anything, maybe a little too much,’ he murmurs. ‘Has he thanked you yet for doing this for him?’

  ‘Not yet, but I know he’s pleased.’

  ‘Hmm…’ Charlie says. ‘I think he should be thanking both of us – profusely. Blowing up all these balloons earlier nearly killed me.’

  ‘Aw, has the poor baby not got much puff?’ I say, ruffling Charlie’s hair, which he hates me doing.

  ‘Not any more,’ he says, ducking away from my hand. ‘Just as well I don’t smoke, eh, like most of these others. Or I’d have probably keeled over after having my lungs abused by a thousand balloons.’

  All evening a number of our ‘guests’ have been disappearing outside, I assume to get their much-needed nicotine fix. At least, I hope that’s all they’re smoking. But at the moment most people are inside; some of the girls have put on a Madonna tape, and are currently bopping around to ‘True Blue’, while the boys stand scornfully watching them, all except Tony Prentice, who is giving his all to Queen Madge with the girls.

  I wish I was as cool as them, I think as I watch the girls gyrating around confidently on the dance floor in their short skirts and high heels, their perfect long hair being tossed like a Timotei advert over their shoulders while they laugh in a carefree manner.

  I’m wearing what I thought was a fairly glamorous red-and-white dress. The top part is very fitted with long sleeves, and the bottom is a rah-rah-style skirt made up of many tiers of billowy red polka-dot fabric. Princess Diana was dressed in something similar on the news the other night, and I thought it was the height of sophistication when I left my house. But now, compared to the other girls, I feel a bit frumpy.

  I spy Danny looking around the room, and I hope he’s looking for me. At least that’s something I have that the other girls don’t – I’m going out with the coolest boy in the school.

  Danny waves when he spots me and, to my delight, makes his way across the dance floor through the gang of girls, who all gyrate extra hard when he passes.

  ‘My Gracie!’ he says, dropping his arm casually over my shoulder as he arrives by my side. ‘How’s it going, sexy?’

  Danny has never called me this before, and I’m not sure whether to like it or not. I’ve never thought of myself as sexy – awkward, self-conscious, a bit tubby maybe, but definitely not sexy.

  ‘I’m very well,’ I tell him. ‘Are you enjoying your party?’

  ‘Yeah! It’s stupendous, and it’s all thanks to my lovely Gracie.’

  ‘I can’t take all the credit,’ I tell him, wriggling a little under his arm, which seems to be getting heavier by the second. ‘Charlie helped me.’

  ‘Ah, Charlie, good fella.’ Danny swings me around, his hand still gripping my shoulder, to pat Charlie on the back. ‘You’re a good friend to Gracie, aren’t you?’

  Danny’s words are starting to slur.

  ‘I try,’ Charlie says brusquely.

  ‘You do more than that, fella. Gracie here talks about you all the time. If it weren’t for the fact you’re gay… I’d be quite worried.’ Danny lets out a huge guffaw, as though what he’s just said is hilarious.

  Charlie, his face flushed, glares at me.

  ‘I’m not gay,’ he quietly informs Danny. ‘What have you been saying, Grace?’ he asks, looking at me with a hurt expression.

  ‘Nothing, I promise.’

  ‘Come on, Charlie boy,’ Danny says, putting his other arm around Charlie’s shoulder now. ‘We’re all friends here, you don’t need to be shy about coming out.’

  ‘I’m not gay,’ Charlie insists again, his face getting redder, this time with anger rather than embarrassment. He wriggles free from Danny’s grip. ‘I’m not sure why you would think that, or what Grace has been telling you to keep you happy.’

  Charlie never calls me Grace. He must be very angry.

  I shake my head at him. ‘I haven’t said anything, Charlie, honest.’

  ‘Grace is my friend, my best friend, but that doesn’t make me gay just because we’re not anything else.’ Charlie gives Danny a disdainful look. ‘And if you can’t handle that fact, then that’s your problem, Danny, not mine.’

  I watch Charlie storm away across the mahogany floor, pushing through the crowd of dancing girls.

  I try to follow him, but Danny grabs my hand.

  ‘Leave him, Gracie,’ he says. ‘He’s probably tetchy because he hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. It’s clear he’s batting for the other side, though. Everyone knows it.’

  ‘But…’ My eyes scan the dance floor in search of Charlie but it’s getting more crowded by the moment and I can’t see him. ‘Charlie isn’t gay,’ I tell Danny. ‘At least, I think he isn’t…’ I’m ashamed to admit even I have to think about it for a moment. Charlie’s different to the other boys I know, there’s no doubting that, but different doesn’t make him gay. ‘No,’ I insist. ‘Charlie likes girls, I’m sure of it. And even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter to me, he’s my friend.’

  ‘Really?’ Danny asks.

  ‘Are you suggesting I shouldn’t be friends with him if he’s gay?’ I ask, pulling away from him.

  ‘No! I’m not a gay basher!’ Danny looks quite hurt at the suggestion. ‘I only meant… you two seem so close, it’s hard to believe you’re just friends.’

  ‘Not jealous are you, Danny?’ I ask, smiling at him, my momentary anger fading fast.

  ‘Me? No, course not. It’s a bit weird though, isn’t it? A boy and a girl being friends and nothing else.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Anyway, Charlie doesn’t think about me like that. We’re mates, same as you and your friends are mat
es.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Gracie, you’re a pretty girl. If he really isn’t gay then course Charlie thinks about you like that.’

  I blush at Danny’s words. That’s the second compliment he’s paid me tonight. But I’m not pretty, the other girls are pretty, the ones that wear high-heeled shoes and make-up to school, the ones that shop at Miss Selfridge. They’re the pretty ones. I’m just Grace.

  ‘Not Charlie. I’ve told you: we’re just friends.’

  ‘So he doesn’t do this then?’ Danny asks, leaning into me and kissing me on the neck.

  ‘Definitely not,’ I tell him, shivering with pleasure.

  ‘Or this?’ he asks, kissing me fully on the lips now.

  Speechlessly I shake my head as he pulls away to await my verdict.

  ‘Good, cos I wanna be the only one doing that to you. Shall we go somewhere quieter?’ Danny asks suddenly, to my surprise.

  ‘But this is your party,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t you want to stay?’

  ‘No, I mean somewhere quieter here in the house.’

  ‘Oh… yes, all right then.’

  Danny escorts me out of the party and into the main hall. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any furniture up there any more?’ he asks, looking up the stairs.

  ‘Er… no, I don’t think so.’ I know Danny likes history, but it never occurred to me he’d be interested in furniture. I look around and wonder where Charlie has gone. I should really go find him and check he’s OK.

  ‘Right… what about through here?’ Danny asks, grabbing my hand and pulling me down the corridor.

  ‘The servants’ quarters are downstairs,’ I reply, still looking behind me for signs of Charlie. ‘Why do you want to go down there? There’s nothing to see. The ballroom, where your party’s being held, is the most fascinating room if you’re interested in the history of the house.’

  Danny pulls me down some worn stone stairs that, unlike their sumptuous upstairs counterparts, are uncarpeted, and we arrive in a long corridor that would have once bustled with the below-stairs staff. Danny pushes open one of the doors, and after he’s felt around on the wall he pulls on an old Bakelite light switch, which most of the rooms still have. Suddenly a kitchen is flooded with harsh fluorescent light. I blink for a couple of seconds, my eyes used to the dim light in the hallway, then I look around as my eyes get used to the light.