by Toby Litt
I cradled Mary gently on my shoulder, stroking her back and telling her everything was all right. If she kept on crying, it meant I couldn’t try knocking on the door again – which I was going to, even though Peter wasn’t with me anymore.
It had been sunny on the road but the air around the house was very cold. The tall trees put it in a deep wind-shadow. The place had the still, secluded atmosphere of a pond waiting for its surface to be broken. Nowhere in London ever felt like this, and nothing in my life did, either.
I turned to go back to the car, and just then the front door cracked open.
‘That was quick,’ I said. But when I turned round, I didn’t see Peter.
The door was ajar by only an inch or so, a long line of darkness down its right-hand side.
‘Yes,’ said a female voice.
‘We’ve come to see the house,’ I said.
‘Well, you can’t see the house,’ said the voice.
‘Yes, we can,’ I said. ‘We’re the new owners.’
The door slammed shut. I heard a chain rattle and tap against the wood. The door opened wide.
‘Hello,’ said a woman of around fifty-five, stepping out into the dim light. ‘I’m Mrs. Forster. I do the housekeeping. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘We’ve come straight from the solicitors,’ I said.
Mrs. Forster stepped closer. ‘And who is this little darling?’
‘Mary,’ I said.
‘And how old?’
‘Thirteen weeks,’ I said. ‘And a half.’
‘Oh, so young. What a sweetie.’
It’s hard not to be disarmed when people are nice about your children. Mrs. Forster had short, wavy brown hair that managed to shine even without sunlight to strike it. She was wearing what I’d call country clothes – a green cardigan over a cream shirt, tweedy skirt, green stockings and slippers.
‘I heard you knock the first time – I have very good hearing. But I was quite a long way away. Are you on your own?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘My husband is looking for another way in.’
‘Oh, he won’t find one,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘The house is quite secure.’
‘There’s no back door, then?’
‘There are several other doors but none of them are used.’
Mrs. Forster was trying to intimidate me, by speaking very properly.
‘He’ll come back,’ I said. ‘Once he’s gone the whole way round.’
‘Oh, no. He can’t do that. There’s a path one way but the woods come right up to the wall on the other side.’
Mrs. Forster pointed towards the trees behind the garages. They were certainly dense.
‘We’ll go through the house,’ she said, ‘and try to catch him in the garden.’
I was reluctant to cross the threshold without Peter beside me. Not that I’m particularly superstitious. I’m not funny about ladders or broken mirrors or black cats. But, if this was going to be our new home, I wanted to enter it together. I was slightly annoyed that Jack wasn’t there, too. We did almost everything as a whole family.
‘Follow me,’ said Mrs. Forster, and went into the dark hallway.
After a moment more of hesitation, I obeyed – entering that strangest of places for the very first time.
My first impressions weren’t unpleasant. The hall was vast, with a double staircase zigzagging up at the far end. It smelt powerfully of wood and wood polish. The walls were done in tight, oblong panels, right up to the high ceiling where there hung, yes, a real chandelier. Not a crystal one. It, too, was made of wood.
Mrs. Forster switched on the lights and I was dazzled. Everything shone back at me. Jack would love this, sliding around in socks on the parquet. And I would spend my life expecting to fall over and crack a hip. Mrs. Forster certainly knew how to polish.
‘I don’t waste the electricity when I’m just by myself,’ she said. ‘This way.’
There were two wooden doors directly in front of us. They went underneath the stairways, which zagged out and then back in again to meet in the middle. Mrs. Forster turned the gleaming brass handle on the left-hand door and passed through. Over her shoulders, I could see daylight. It took us a little while to reach it, though. First there was a longish hallway, also wood-paneled, and with paintings in the dark on either side. Then there was a small cloakroom. Beyond that was a huge sitting room. I only had time to take in a very large and ornate fireplace to my right and, to my left, a grand piano. Heavy tapestry curtains hid the far wall – a bit moth-eaten, perhaps. There were some holes where beams of light shone through. Mrs. Forster was about to pull them back when a furious rattling started behind them.
‘That must be him,’ said Mrs. Forster, completely unfazed. I couldn’t say the same for myself.
She pushed aside the left-hand curtain. As it started to catch the light, I saw that it was a tapestry inlaid with golden thread. I recognized from the crab, the scorpion and the pair of little boys that it must be the signs of the zodiac.
Peter’s face moved back from the window, but not before I’d seen his mouth give a little gasp of surprise, or perhaps fear.
Mrs. Forster had now moved this curtain as far as it could go, and was walking across to push the other.
I carried Mary towards the brighter light. Beyond the glass was a beautiful walled garden with an ornamental fountain in the middle and rosebushes around the far edges. This was the moment I decided we should definitely move in.
‘Look,’ I said to Mary, and turned her round to see. ‘Daddy.’
He came up close to the glass and made a funny face at Mary, then caught sight of Mrs. Forster beside me.
‘Hello,’ he shouted.
‘Come in the front way,’ I shouted, pointing with my finger.
As Peter walked away from the window, I saw that the elbows of his best suit were bright green and the soles of his best shoes were spattered with mud.
We went back through the house to meet him. It took him longer than I expected for him to arrive – but, finally, there he was.
‘This is Mrs. Forster,’ I said, as he came into view. ‘The housekeeper.’
‘Not really,’ she started to say. ‘I live in the village – ’
But Peter had stepped into the house and, without meaning to, had made two muddy footprints on the spotless floor.
Mrs. Forster looked down in dismay.
‘Never mind,’ she said.
Peter apologized, and took off his shoes. The two footprints he left behind were very clear – like footprints in a cartoon.
‘Would you like me to show you around?’
‘Yes,’ said Peter, at the same moment as I said, ‘No.’ It wasn’t that I disliked Mrs. Forster, or found her creepy, it was just that I thought it would be fun exploring the house, rather than being given a guided tour.
Peter looked at me, then said, ‘I think we’ll find our own way round.’
‘It is quite big,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘And there’s lots of nooks and crannies you’d never find without someone pointing them out.’
‘Next time,’ said Peter. ‘Do you come every week?’
‘I come every day of the week. You wouldn’t believe the amount of work there is.’
‘Well, it looks spotless,’ said Peter.
Mrs. Forster couldn’t help but glance at the muddy footprints.
‘When are you thinking of moving in?’ said Mrs. Forster.
‘We’re not sure that we will,’ I said.
‘What?’ Mrs. Forster said. ‘And leave this place empty? You can’t do that. It’s such a beautiful house. And such a good home for a family. There’s the countryside…’ She seemed baffled we were even considering living elsewhere.
‘We probably will,’ said Peter, not wanting to upset her.
‘Let’s have a look around first,’ I said. ‘Come on – I’ll show you the living room.’
Peter smiled at Mrs. Forster then followed me through the left-hand door beneath the s
tairs. Once we were out of earshot, he said, ‘Why didn’t you want the old dear to show us around? She can probably tell us a load of the history.’
I explained about wanting us to explore, together, and Peter seemed to understand. The more nice things we did together, the better.
He stood in the middle of the room, which was about as big as a tennis court. ‘Can you imagine us living here?’ he asked.
I looked around. ‘We’ll have to get some Irish wolfhounds,’ I said. ‘And, when we’ve finished feasting on mutton, we can throw them the bones over our shoulders.’
‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ said Peter. ‘No, really. I have.’
‘It’s such a big fireplace,’ I said.
We went over to look at it. Mary was dozing on my shoulder. There was a large coat of arms front and centre. It contained lions, gryffins, dragons and stars, all intricately carved in bright stone.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t imagine us living here. I think it would change us. Not straight away. To begin with, we’d probably camp out like intruders. But, if we ever got used to it, we’d be very different people.’
Peter took a last look around. ‘That we would.’
A whooshing sound suddenly came from directly above our heads. It took me a moment to realize that it was Mrs. Forster doing the hoovering.
Off to the left of the sitting room was a study with a big desk, a Windsor chair and several filing cabinets that I guessed were full of Michael Francis Jonson’s papers. One wall was covered with trophy heads of animals: deers, wild boar, even a zebra; the other was dominated by a large map of the house and grounds.
‘We’re going to take it, though,’ said Peter. ‘Aren’t we?’
I didn’t reply, but walked back across the living room and through the opposite doorway. This was the library. It didn’t contain any paperbacks, that’s for certain.
‘These must be worth something,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll have to have everything valued.’
‘But the solicitors said we can’t sell anything from inside the house.’
‘If we’re going to afford to do anything to the place, we’ll have to find a way round that. Where else is the money going to come from?’
It was true. Since buying our house, we’d been able to keep up the mortgage payments but hadn’t been able to take anything off the balance. If we sold it, we’d be left with only a few thousand pounds cash.
Back in the hallway, we found another couple of doors opposite one another. The first (on the left as you came through the front door) led to a kitchen and a small dining room. The other went directly into a more formal dining room, with another large fireplace and plenty of painted portraits.
‘You must be related to some of these,’ I said.
‘All of them, probably.’
Most of those upon the walls were men. But there was a very striking woman with red-golden hair above the mantelpiece. I was drawn to go and look at her more closely. In the bottom corner of the canvas was a date, 1585. Her pose was rather stiff, and her clothes looked very ceremonial, but her face was full of life, full of passion. Her long slender fingers held a small leather-covered book – a red silk ribbon dangling down from between the pages.
‘I wonder who she is,’ I said.
‘A Jonson,’ said Peter. ‘She has the Jonson nose.’
I looked, and it was true. Peter has what most people would call a Roman nose. It’s not something you can miss. I always found it attractive, and thought it showed strength of character.
Looking up at the young woman, in all her spangly glory, I felt terribly frumpy. Not that I thought she’d looked like that in real life. I didn’t have a portrait painter to flatter me, and iron out all the little imperfections. Jack would have told you that I was perfect, but then your children have to, don’t they? I felt like I was starting to get back to my old self, physically, after having Mary. I’m quite petite, and I prefer to have my dark hair short and out of the way. My eyes are probably my best feature – chestnut brown. Not that I’m vain about them. I wish my legs were slightly longer, and my upper arms a little firmer. Overall, though, I haven’t done too badly in the genetic lottery.
‘Upstairs?’ I said.
We could leave all this for later.
‘Upstairs,’ said Peter.
And already I was starting to think about how soon that later might be.
Chapter 3.
The two zigzag staircases brought you out on the same long landing. Directly beyond this was where Mrs. Forster was hoovering – a vast sitting room just as intimidating as the one downstairs. We didn’t go in, just hovered in the doorway.
‘That can be the playroom,’ said Peter, which made me laugh.
Mrs. Forster looked up and tried to smile. It didn’t really work, coming out as more of a grimace. She had turned against us when we’d decided not to take the guided tour.
Along to the right was a large bedroom with a four-poster bed.
‘Imagine it,’ I said.
Mary was now fast asleep, so I laid her down in the middle of the counterpane. She looked so incredibly small and vulnerable, even though I knew she hadn’t started to roll yet, and so couldn’t possibly make it to the edge.
Through a door on the left-hand wall was a bathroom and off that another what I suppose you’d call parlour. I don’t know what they’d used it for when the house was built, but it looked as though Michael Francis Jonson more recently had it as his dressing room. There were two large wooden wardrobes and a chest of drawers. Peter opened them up, expecting to find them full of clothes. But they were totally empty. That was something to ask Mrs. Forster about, before we went.
‘This could do for Jack’s bedroom. And Mary’s, when she moves out of ours.’
That wouldn’t be for another three months, at least. For now, she slept in a cot at the foot of our very modest double bed in our very modest magnolia-painted bedroom. To tell the truth, I really didn’t want to let go of her. Not because I feared cot death or anything like that, although I did think of it every evening as I did up the poppers on her babygrow, but because we were definitely stopping at two children, and when she moved out of our room, she’d stop being a real baby and start being a little girl. I wanted to postpone that change, just a while. I’d loved having babies so much.
Anxious, I went back into the master bedroom, where Mary slept blissfully on.
‘She likes it here, anyway,’ said Peter.
‘Do you?’ I asked.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘We haven’t found any dark secrets yet, have we? Hold on.’
He disappeared back into the bathroom. I heard him turn the taps on in the sink and then the bathtub. Then the toilet flushed.
‘All seems to be in working order,’ he said when he came out.
‘As if that would make a difference,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Good plumbing is very important.’
‘Now for the West Wing,’ I said.
Here was another bedroom, not quite so grand and perhaps a little more cosy. There was another small bathroom and a room that was completely empty. Like the hallway downstairs, and like most of the other rooms, it was brightly wood-paneled.
The only unusual thing about it was a spiral staircase in the far corner, leading up to a door in the roof.
‘Attic, I suppose,’ said Peter. ‘Want me to go and take a look?’
‘You mean you want to take a look,’ I said. ‘Go on, then.’
He climbed up and around, but when he reached the top he discovered the door was locked. Something else to ask Mrs. Forster.
When Peter rejoined me, I asked him, ‘Have we made a decision yet?’
Just then, the Hoover was switched off.
‘Let’s go into the garden,’ he said. ‘I want you to see it from there.’
We walked out onto the landing.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Does it look as if it’s about to fall down.’
‘Not at all. That’s the stran
ge thing. It looks practically new.’
Finally, Peter had put his finger on it – the thing that had been troubling me all along. I knew this was a very old house, dating way back to Tudor times, but somehow it didn’t feel old. And this despite having all the props familiar from TV dramas about Henry the Eighth and his poor, ill-fated wives – all the props except the suit of armour.
‘Mmmm,’ I said, which is what I say when I feel Peter has said it all. This doesn’t happen more than once or twice a month.
We were just at the top of the stairs when Mrs. Forster came out of the upstairs sitting room, carrying a large cream-coloured Hoover of the sort I remembered my mother using. It looked more ancient than the carpet it had been cleaning – though still in very good condition.
‘I’m going to start on the candlesticks now,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘I usually gather them together in the kitchen. Will that be acceptable to you? There’s food in, if you were thinking of lunch.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll be heading back, after we’ve had a look round the garden. I do have a couple of questions, though.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Forster.
‘Mr. Jonson’s clothes,’ I said. ‘Where are they all?’
‘He took them with him when he went,’ said Mrs. Forster.
‘Where did he go?’
‘To the North Pole,’ she said. ‘Although he didn’t make it. He died in Lapland.’
‘But there’s nothing left,’ said Peter. ‘Not even a sock.’
‘No. He took every last scrap. It was very peculiar. As if he’d ever need spats in the Arctic Circle. Galoshes, maybe.’
This made me laugh a lot, although Mrs. Forster hadn’t meant it as a joke. She was clearly upset at thinking of her old master.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘You never met Mr. Jonson?’ asked Mrs. Forster.
‘Perhaps,’ said Peter. ‘When I was very small. I can’t really remember it. I think I may have come here once before.’
‘What?’ I said, a little angry. ‘You never mentioned that.’
‘I didn’t think I had,’ he replied. ‘But there’s something in the garden. I’ll show you.’
