by Sarah Rayne
‘We have to turn right into Gorsty Lane,’ said Nell, smiling. ‘I can’t see it – oh, there it is.’
Gorsty Lane was narrow and fringed by hedges and tall trees that interlinked their branches overhead, creating a green tunnel. With sunlight dappling the road it would be lovely here, and in a short time there would be a froth of white elderflower on the hedges and a haze of bluebells in the distant woodland. Oh Brad, thought Nell, why did you never bring me here? Didn’t you want to remember this place?
I remember, I remember, the house where I was born . . . The words of the old poem slid into her mind. Brad had not been born in Stilter House, but it had formed a large part of his childhood. Nell was starting to feel as if he was very close to her – not the Brad she had married and loved, but the child he had been.
They glimpsed a scattering of cottages, looking like dolls’ houses set down in fields, but Stilter House, when they reached it, was neither a cottage nor a dolls’ house. There was a weathered gate with the name tacked on – Beth scampered gleefully out to unlatch it and Nell drove through. As she waited for Beth to close the gate, she leaned forward, trying to see the house, but it was veiled by the rain and the trees. But on the left she could make out a high garden wall, the bricks mellow and crusted with moss and ivy. There was a latched door set into the wall halfway along and Nell stared at this and thought, What would I do, if that door swung open now, and a boy with tip-tilted eyes like Beth’s and a flop of soft brown hair walked out . . .?
I remember, I remember . . .
Beth got back into the car, smelling of fresh rain and clean hair, and Nell suddenly wanted to hug her because she was all that was left of Brad. But Beth hated what she called slop, so Nell drove forward trying to avoid the worst of the ruts. And there, through the rain, was Stilter House.
On a sunlit day, Brad’s childhood house would be friendly and welcoming, the grey stones and mullioned windows glowing with light and warmth. Seen through an April rainstorm it was dour and remote. The trees surrounding it were bowed over with rain and thin branches reached out goblin fingers to the windows. The rooms behind those windows would be dark, and the tapping of tree branches would sound like someone asking to be let in.
It was larger than Nell had expected – what was once termed a gentleman’s residence – and it stood in substantial grounds. Three-quarters of an acre, and if we site the house on the crest you will get a view over Pickering’s Meadows . . . And there will be no ghosts to trouble you . . .
Nell said cheerfully to Beth that this was much grander than she had expected – she had never known Dad had stayed in such a terrific place.
‘We’ll unload everything and set out the sleeping bags, then we’ll explore, shall we?’
They were going to stay in the house. Nell had thought this would make it easier and quicker to work through the contents, and Margery West had written that even though it had been empty for over a year it should be perfectly habitable. But seeing the house, Nell was not so sure if it was a good idea.
Margery had sent a set of keys and had arranged for the electricity to be switched on. Nell unlocked the front door and the mustiness of a long-empty house greeted her. She stood for a moment, feeling the house’s atmosphere engulf her. It was a quiet house, an elderly lady’s house. Great-Aunt Charlotte, thought Nell, I think you lived a gentle, slightly old-fashioned life here. You visited friends and they visited you, you dabbled in local gossip, you read books, and enjoyed music . . .
Music . . . A faint sound stirred deep within the house, not exactly music, but something that might once have been music. Nell glanced down at Beth, but Beth was looking about her with bright-eyed interest, and did not seem to have heard anything. Probably it had been the rain trickling through gutters.
The fresh rain scents were already filling up the hall, and the slight mustiness was dispersing. Rooms opened off the main hall on each side, and at the far end was a stairway with a carved banister, worn smooth by age. Had Brad slid gleefully down that, and been indulgently told not to in case he fell off?
Nell shook off the images, and said, ‘The kitchen will be at the back, I should think. Let’s take the box of food in and make ourselves a drink.’
The kitchen was a large, rather old-fashioned room, high ceilinged and stone floored. There was an oak table at the centre and a huge dresser against one wall. The dresser might fetch a very good price, thought Nell, eyeing it, and so might the gorgeous blue and white china set on it. It looked like Minton.
Thankfully there was a fairly modern gas cooker, together with a microwave and an electric kettle. Nell turned on the tap and the water ran rustily into the deep old stone sink, but then cleared. She let it run a while longer, then filled the kettle and switched it on. There was a fridge which she also switched on; it would take a while to get properly cold, but when she explored the rest of the kitchen, there was a narrow stone-floored larder with a marble slab where they could put the butter and milk for the time being.
She was setting out the provisions when she heard the music again, and this time it was certainly not rainwater. This was someone playing a piano – a piece of Mozart, Nell thought. Beth was nowhere to be seen; most likely she had been exploring the house and had found the piano. Nell listened for a moment, thinking Beth must have been practising diligently. Leaving the kettle to boil she went out into the hall, calling Beth’s name.
The music had stopped, but Beth called out from one of the rooms and Nell made her way down the shadowy hall, trying to see a light switch, but not finding one.
Beth was in a big room on the left of the hall. Rain rippled down the windows, bathing the room in a faintly greenish light as if it lay at the bottom of a deep lake. But even like this, it was a lovely room, high ceilinged and with deep bay windows. At the far end French windows overlooked a small terrace with mossy steps, and a jutting chimney breast was flanked by shelves stacked with books and what looked like music scores. Near the French windows was a low, dark, gleaming shape. Charlotte West’s piano – a baby grand – the piano that had been such a part of Brad’s summers.
Beth was perched on a music stool, beaming and Nell started to say, ‘So you found the piano—’ Then stopped, realizing that the piano’s lid was shut.
In the same moment, Beth said, ‘I was going to play something to surprise you, but it’s locked and I can’t find the key.’
There would be a perfectly logical explanation. Nell knew this. She had certainly heard piano music only minutes earlier, but it could have come from anywhere. A car could have been parked nearby – she had not yet worked out exactly where Stilter House was in relation to the bewilderment of lanes, but it was possible that one side of the house was closer to a road than she had realized. Or there could be a property nearby with a radio on and a window open. In this rain, though?
Still, it was important not to alarm Beth, who was already looking puzzled, so Nell said, ‘We’ll hunt for the key later and you can surprise me then.’
It was only when they were back in the kitchen that she discovered the kettle, switched on a good ten minutes earlier, was stone cold. Nell swore at it, then apologized to it – which made Beth giggle – and flicked several switches. Lights, cooker, even an iron. Nothing. Obviously Margery’s instructions had become lost or misunderstood.
‘OK,’ she said to Beth, ‘there are two things we can do. We can try to find a local pub or a b&b with a room—’
‘That’d be boring. I like it here, it’s Dad’s house.’
‘Or we can stay here and light candles.’
‘Could we? I’d like that’
‘Well, let’s find out if it’s practical,’ said Nell, opening cupboard doors. ‘Because if there aren’t candles or matches—’
‘We could drive back to the village and buy some.’
‘Yes, but . . . No, it’s all right, there’re candles and matches in this cupboard. So far so good.’ It was April, the middle of an English spring, the evenings w
ere light and even with the teeming rain it was not cold. What about cooking though? There appeared to be a gas supply, but was it connected?
‘We could send out for pizzas,’ said Beth hopefully, as Nell wrestled with the gas cooker. Beth loved sending out for pizzas which she considered a grown-up thing.
‘There’s no phone and the mobile signal isn’t working – I tried a few minutes ago.’
‘We could drive out for pizzas,’ said Beth, not to be daunted.
But the gas cooker worked. ‘It’s looking good,’ said Nell. ‘Let’s see if the gas fires work. It might be cold later.’
Two of the rooms had gas fires; one in a small sitting room overlooking the gardens, the other in the music room. They looked to be the same vintage as the cooker, but they both leapt reassuringly into life. Nell sat back on her knees in front of the piano, the gas fire leaping warmly, and smiled. ‘Two days of candlelight, then.’
‘Good.’
‘Let’s sort out the bedrooms now.’
The bedrooms were large and Beth wrinkled her nose at the furniture.
‘It’s pretty grim, isn’t it?’
‘People pay money for grimness these days. And some of it’s beautiful,’ said Nell, running her hands over a small bow-fronted bureau.
In a small room overlooking the back of the house were bookcases filled with children’s books. Beth instantly sat down to examine these, and Nell saw that the titles and authors were from the 1930s and 1940s. Enid Blyton’s school stories and some of the Greyfriars books. There were also some Elinor Brent-Dyer and Angela Brazil titles; Nell thought Brent-Dyer went back to the 1920s, and Angela Brazil was as far back as 1910. She would look more closely later, to see if there were any first editions. She paused, looking about her. Had this been Brad’s room when he stayed here? Had he gone to sleep reading one of those books about long-ago childhoods, and had he woken to that view over the lanes?
Leaving Beth among the jolly hockey sticks of Blyton’s and Brazil’s girl boarders, she investigated the other bedrooms. A large one at the side of the house had twin beds, and Nell thought she and Beth could sleep here. And by the time they had spread the sleeping bags on the beds, eaten a picnic lunch and explored Stilter House more fully, it began to feel friendlier. Nell made a start on the inventory, working through the rooms systematically.
It was annoying to find it was impossible to make a phone call, though. The mobile signal appeared to be out of range, and the landline was disconnected, of course. But there would be a phone box in the village or at the local pub, and Nell could phone Michael from there tomorrow. She was glad that at least she had left him a message earlier on, so he would know they had got here.
Edinburgh,
April 20—
Dear Emily,
A nice note this morning from Nell West to say they’re setting off for Stilter House on Monday. She will provide a list of anything she thinks is worth selling through the conventional antiques circuit, together with photographs and an estimate of the figures we can hope to achieve. She’s going to stay at Stilter for a couple of nights while she makes an inventory; it sounds as if she likes the idea of Beth seeing the house where Brad used to stay as a child.
She seems interested in the house’s history – she says all houses have a story to tell and she likes trying to find those stories – and she’s going to read the copies I sent her of those old letters and accounts Ralph West kept. She says if there are any receipts it might help date some of the contents and provide a provenance. I haven’t said anything about the blue and white Minton, because we both know the story of how that was supposed to have been acquired. Personally, I never believed it of Charlotte’s mother – she was far too ladylike to smuggle out an entire Minton dinner service during a Townswomen’s Guild tour of the china factory. There are thirty-two pieces, for goodness’ sake!
In answer to your question, no, I have not told Nell about Esmond. As you know, I was always firmly of the opinion that Charlotte imagined all of that.
I certainly do not think you should try cosmic surgery for your leg, whatever cosmic surgery may be. It sounds extremely suspicious. Have you thought of acupuncture? I believe the Chinese are very wise in these matters.
Fondest love,
Margery
Edinburgh,
April 20—
Dear Emily,
I like your suggestion that we make a small bequest to Beth. I’ll ask Nell to look for something in the house that can be kept until she’s older. And we might set up a small savings account for her with a portion of the house sale proceeds.
But I think you’re overreacting in saying Nell shouldn’t stay at the house after dark, and that Beth shouldn’t go to the house at all. But you were always given to dramatic behaviour – that’s not a criticism, dear, just a statement of fact. Nell and Beth will be perfectly all right.
Margery
THREE
Michael Flint had had a mixed weekend. It was the last few days of Hilary Term, with all the end of term activities enlivening Oriel College. Students wandered in and out to say goodbye, or include him in various farewell activities.
Owen Bracegirdle from the history faculty held a Sunday lunch buffet in his rooms, which had been intended to go on until a decorous mid-afternoon, but ended up lasting until six o’clock. Michael returned to his rooms to learn that Wilberforce had spent his own afternoon in pitched battle with the ginger tomcat belonging to Oriel’s chaplain, with whom he was currently conducting a territorial war. It was unfortunate that this latest battle had taken place in Oriel’s chapel, which, as the porter said, could not have been much more public, and it a Sunday, to boot.
‘And the yowls Wilberforce let out when we hauled him out, Dr Flint – well, you’d have thought he was being gutted for violin strings.’
‘I will gut him for violin strings if he does it again,’ said Michael wrathfully, and bundled the unrepentant Wilberforce into his rooms before seeking out the chaplain to apologize, during which he found himself agreeing to pay the vet’s bill for the ginger tom’s bitten ear.
On the crest of this incident, he wrote a new chapter of the current Wilberforce book, in which the fictional Wilberforce signed up for a Japanese martial arts class, the better to deal with the ever-inventive mice who plagued his life, but found himself in the wrong schoolroom learning Oriental flower-arranging by mistake. Michael emailed this to his editor, intending her to deal with it on Monday, and was slightly disconcerted to get an almost immediate reply saying she was currently in America, but would read the new chapter that evening in her hotel because Wilberforce would make a welcome diversion after schmoozing book buyers and reviewers.
After this he checked his voicemail and was pleased to hear Nell’s voice with a message timed just before ten that morning, telling him they were on the outskirts of Bakewell and they had had an uneventful journey, but the phone signal was getting a bit erratic, so she was sorry if she sounded crackly. She would try to phone again later.
Michael was just relenting so far towards Wilberforce as to give him a bowl of his favourite tuna chunks, when the phone rang. He hoped it would be Nell, but it turned out to be Henry Jessel from the silversmith’s shop adjoining Nell’s.
‘Michael, I’m glad to catch you in,’ said Henry. ‘I looked into Nell’s shop earlier – she left me a key and asked me to check answerphone messages fairly often, because she’s hoping to hear from those Japanese customers who might buy that Regency desk. They haven’t phoned, but there’s a message on the machine that I’m worried about, and I don’t know what to do. I tried to phone Nell, but her mobile’s inaccessible.’
‘She left a message earlier saying the signal was erratic,’ said Michael.
‘I dare say there’s acres upon acres up there that are out of reach of a signal. I emailed her as well, but I don’t know if she’s taken her laptop – or if she’d check emails anyway.’
‘I think she was taking it, but she might not check emai
ls until this evening, or even tomorrow,’ said Michael. ‘What’s the worrying phone message?’
‘I think you need to hear it,’ said Henry. ‘Is there any chance you could whizz over?’
‘Now?’
‘Well . . .’
Michael glanced at his watch. It was half past eight. ‘All right, but I’ll have to get a taxi,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sloshing vino at somebody’s lunch since midday. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.’
On the way to Quire Court he tried Nell’s mobile again, but it was still inaccessible. A nearby church clock was chiming nine as he crossed the court; Michael had never identified which church this was, but he always liked hearing it. He liked Quire Court as well, which was a small quadrangle near Brasenose College. He had the feeling that it was one of the corners where fragments of Oxford’s long and vivid history had collected, and that one day those fragments might overflow, in a glorious confused cascade of Norman invasions and Saxon settlements, and civil wars and dreaming poets and quarrelsome academics.
There was a notice on Nell’s shop saying that from Monday to Wednesday all customers should please go to Henry Jessel, at Silver Edges, next door. Michael, who had a key, let himself in, enjoying the familiar scents of old wood and beeswax, and the bowls of dried lavender which Nell always placed on the choicer tables or desks she was selling. At the moment there was a round cherrywood table and a set of chairs in the main window, as well as the Regency desk, earmarked for the Japanese customer.
As he went through to the office at the back of the shop Henry came bustling in, his elderly cherub face worried.
‘I saw you arrive and I’m so glad you’ve come, Michael, because I haven’t known what to do.’ He indicated the answerphone. ‘It’s a most peculiar message. The caller phoned twice, I think. The first time she didn’t speak – as if she hadn’t expected to get a recording and it disconcerted her. The second one is about fifteen minutes later.’
