Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Was there anything else?’ asked Mrs. Forster.

  ‘The key to the attic,’ I said. ‘Do you know where it is?’

  Mrs. Forster pulled a large bunch of keys round from behind her back. ‘They’re all labelled,’ she said. ‘Mr. Jonson put labels on them before he went away.’ She sobbed. ‘He knew, you see. He knew he wasn’t coming back. It was suicide.’

  I didn’t know Mrs. Forster well enough to hug her, and couldn’t really manage it holding Mary, but I rubbed her upper arm and gave her a sad smile.

  ‘He was fit and well, was he?’ I asked.

  ‘Perfectly,’ she said, when she had recovered a little. ‘Not a health problem at all. Not until he left. He shouldn’t have left. It was just, he’d taken it into his head to see the wildlife of the Arctic.’

  ‘Was he a kind man?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Very kind,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘I never had a hard word out of him. Apart from on the subject of religion. He was very definite about that.’

  It didn’t seem the right time to press for details.

  ‘Such a gentleman,’ said Mrs. Forster, ‘if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, awkwardly. That she had to ask him if he knew must suggest that he wasn’t a gentleman.

  I gave Mrs. Forster’s arm one more squeeze and turned for the stairs.

  ‘Such a dear little thing,’ she said, touching Mary’s hair. ‘I hope she’s happy here.’

  ‘We have a son, too,’ I said. ‘Jack. He’s six.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘Then the house will be safe for a long time.’

  ‘We’ll pop in before we leave,’ said Peter.

  ‘I think I may finish early today,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘It’s been a bit of a shock, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘I always leave the keys hanging on the brass hook in the kitchen,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘You can’t miss them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter.

  We didn’t say a word until we were out the front door. Midday beneath the tree cover seemed darker than the brightly illuminated hall.

  ‘Put your foot in it there, didn’t you?’ said Peter.

  ‘A hundred and four,’ I said.

  We started around the house. Because we now knew there was a path, we found our way quite easily, although it took us on a slightly winding route through the woods.

  The garden was in full sunlight, and reminded me that it was still a gorgeous early summer day.

  ‘What’s the thing?’ I asked.

  ‘This,’ said Peter, and pointed to a stone carving of a phoenix above the doors at the back of the house. It was brightly painted, red feathers, yellow eyes with black pupils, and was rising from a heap of ashes, which were grey. ‘I remember it from when I was little. I think I used to have nightmares about it. It used to chase me. It was burning hot.’

  ‘You might have seen another one, somewhere else.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Peter. ‘But that one wouldn’t’ve had my name written across the bottom of it.’

  He pointed out the old-fashioned lettering, weaving in and out of the flames around the phoenix’s feet.

  ‘Could you read?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘But I remember someone telling me.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘An old man,’ he said. ‘A very old man.’

  Mary was waking up. I knew I would have to feed her again, so we made our way over the twenty or so paces to a bench covered in green lichen. Ivy was growing up all four of its legs. It faced towards the house, and gave us a chance to sit back and assess the place.

  ‘We’d be fools not to,’ said Peter. ‘I mean, look at it. It’s unbelievable.’

  The patterning of the black wood and white plaster up the rear of the house included shapes like the diamonds and clubs in a pack of cards. The roof, which wasn’t thatched but tiled with wooden tiles, looked just as well preserved as the rest.

  ‘Maybe that’s my problem,’ I said. ‘I still can’t really believe it. But, yes, before you ask again – I do want to live here.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Peter asked.

  I looked around the walled garden. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever been or seen.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  Chapter 4.

  I drove on the way home, and Peter called the solicitors when we hit the motorway.

  He spoke to them for a while, explaining that we wouldn’t be returning the keys that afternoon. Then his voice started to rise. It almost seemed as if they were trying to persuade him – us – not to take the house.

  ‘But we’d like to move in as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘During the summer holidays.’

  He listened.

  ‘Middle of June would be fine.’

  Then he listened some more.

  ‘No, we’ve met her already. She can stay on, just as before. And the gardener, and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. You don’t have to worry about that.’

  He listened for even longer.

  ‘I know it’s historic. I know it’s a big responsibility. But it is my family home, isn’t it? Now, is there anything we need to do?’

  When he finally finished, he clicked the phone shut and said, ‘I think Mr. Gibbon secretly wants it for himself.’

  ‘But we’re okay, aren’t we?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ he said, and put his hand on top of mine, on top of the gear-stick.

  Returning to our little maisonette in Tulse Hill was a very strange experience. In some ways, it felt even less real than the Elizabethan mansion. Did we really live here? – in this tiny little box that would fit a dozen times inside the entrance hall of the house down in West Sussex? It was hard to believe it, although we’d moved here over six years ago – just before Jack was born.

  And now, we were going to be leaving. Everything seemed to be working out for the best.

  Since Peter’s affair, I’d wanted us to move – it just didn’t seem likely we’d get the chance. The woman he’d started seeing lived only about a mile away. That was one of the reasons the two of them had been able to meet up without me finding out. Her name was Jennifer Leyton, and she owned – get this – a carpet-cleaning business. At first, she called Peter to help sort out her cash flow, then – I later learned – she called Peter to chat, then to invite him round to her flat and finally to say she had fallen in love with him. All of this was on his mobile phone, of course – his second, secret mobile phone.

  I found out about them because of the foxes on our street. One night they ripped open a bag of rubbish that we hadn’t been able to fit inside the wheelie. The next day, whilst rebagging burnt toast and gone-hard baked beans, I spotted an envelope from a phone company we didn’t use. Peter’s was the name in the clear window. The address was for a post box. As it had been opened already, I felt fine about looking inside. The bill showed that Peter had only used that account to call one number, but that he’d called it every day for the past month.

  I’m not stupid. I knew what it meant – knew even before I dialled the number and heard her say, ‘Hello, Carpet Superheroes.’

  I didn’t scream at her. I just put the phone down. I didn’t call Peter. I waited until that evening, waited until Jack was in bed. Then I told him I knew.

  I’ve never seen him so upset. Not even when his parents died. I think he thought I was going to leave him and take Jack. (Mary hadn’t been born or even conceived then). But I’m tougher than that. I asked him about the bill. He said he had brought it home by mistake, and then tried to get rid of it, badly.

  ‘I think I wanted to get caught,’ he said. This made me angrier.

  ‘Do you love her?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But – ’

  Things had been difficult since Jack was born. Sex had been difficult. Staying awake had been difficult. Not sniping
at each other had been difficult. It wasn’t an excuse but I suppose it was a reason.

  ‘Tell me you love me,’ I said. ‘Look at me when you say it – really look at me.’

  He did look, and he did love me – that’s what I saw in his eyes.

  I told him straight, he’d had his silly fling, nothing could be done about it, but if he promised he would never see her again, and this would never happen again, I would give him a second chance. It’s old fashioned, I know, but that’s how I am.

  ‘One second chance,’ I said. ‘I’m not the doormat type.’

  I made him call her straight away, on the secret mobile, then – when he’d finished – plopped the handset in a glass of water, and that was the end of her.

  The morning after our first visit to the house, Peter spoke to the solicitors again, and they confirmed there was nothing to stand in our way. We could move whenever we were ready – tomorrow, if we felt like it.

  ‘We’ll let you know,’ said Peter.

  And now I started to get properly excited. It was amazing. We were heading towards a completely new life, in a good way. Most people never get that chance – to start again. Of course, I knew we’d be taking a whole heap of our old problems with us. But it looked as if worrying about our son and daughter sharing a bedroom was going to be a thing of the past.

  I had a sudden panic, and went online to check that there was a decent school nearby for Jack and later on for Mary. I needn’t have worried – the local primary got top marks for everything, and the nearest secondary was clearly a step up from anything Lambeth had to offer.

  After this, I couldn’t really think of any more obstacles to us moving. I would miss London, but it wasn’t as if I’d been able to make much use of it since Mary had been born. I liked the idea of my children growing up in the country. I’d been a country girl myself. They could run around outside, climb trees, walk on frosty grass, and I wouldn’t have to spend all my time worrying about dog poo, broken glass, and syringes. Or about Carpet Superheroes.

  Chapter 5.

  Moving house was the usual nightmare.

  I had visions of us arriving to find Mrs. Forster standing there behind locked iron gates, not even allowing us pikeys onto the grounds.

  I also had visions of the removal men making off with all our worldly possessions, or smashing my grandmother’s china teapot, or losing one of Jack’s most heavily-armed Transformers.

  In the end, the worst they did was put a long scrape down the paint on the stairway, from one of the corners of Jack’s bed.

  With nothing in it, the maisonette suddenly looked quite spacious. Light and airy, which was what people wanted.

  After deciding to move, we’d had three lots of estate agents round to give us a valuation and to tell us what we’d get as rent. Together, Peter and me decided to keep the maisonette and let it out, rather than sell it. That way, we could always move back if things didn’t work out. After engaging the least sleazy estate agent, we found their promises of a quick let to be true. We had viewing after viewing, all in one afternoon. Light and airy did it for several of the couples we met. Our new tenants – we were landlords! – were going to be moving in two hours after we moved out.

  On a Saturday morning in mid-June, I stood in our front room, holding Mary, and thought about our new-old house. That couldn’t be called light and airy, could it?

  I’m quite a sentimental person, deep down, and I would have liked to have taken a little longer to look around our first proper home – to store up my memories: the bathroom, where Jack screamed like a banshee the first time I tried to co-bathe with him; the bedroom, where Mary was born on the floor beside the bed. (I could still make out a slight stain on the pale carpet, though Peter swore it was just my imagination.) But there was a toot-toot from the removals van, and we had to be off.

  ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’ said Jack, standing on the pavement with his dad.

  He was buzzing. As soon as we’d told him we were moving to an old house, he’d started to talk about ghosts. He was at that stage. He loved anything spooky or weird. Not that he got properly scared. We’d been quite protective, and so Jack had never really had his bravery tested. Still, he seemed to think he’d be fighting an army of wailing apparitions from the moment we arrived at our new home. I was worried he’d work himself into such a frenzy that he wouldn’t be able to sleep – or not unless he came into bed with us. And, to be quite honest, I didn’t want his ghost-obsession to rub off on me. I’ve always found old places a bit disconcerting. They often give me that being-watched feeling.

  ‘Will it be a headless man with his head under his arm?’ Jack asked, when we got in the car. ‘Or a nun who floats over the ground?’

  ‘Who knows,’ said Peter, who tended to encourage these sorts of ideas – he said it was good for Jack’s imagination. ‘It’s a very, very old house.’

  ‘But I’m sure all the ghosts there are very friendly ghosts,’ I said.

  Peter started the engine.

  ‘Even the ones without heads?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Especially the ones without heads,’ I said, as we drove away from our old life.

  It rained all the way down but the sun finally came out just as we were passing through the village near the house. Almost immediately, though, we were into the lane and beneath the shade of the tall trees. I thought about having to drive miles and miles every time we ran out of bread or milk. But maybe I could buy flour and yeast and do lots more baking. And perhaps there would be a farm with cows nearby. Jack would love that. (He’d probably hate the fresh bread. Cheese straws were his favourite food.)

  Even though we were expecting it, the house appeared just as suddenly as before – almost as if had crept ten metres nearer to the gate.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jack, as we scrunched to a stop. He’s quite a hard lad to impress, and I’d have been really disappointed if he’d thought the house was nothing special. ‘Creamy!’ he said, to show just how amazed he was. Creamy was one of our family words for the best things of all – Jack used to stir his ice cream round and round with his spoon until it went soft and creamy. We didn’t use it very often. A trip to Pizza Express, for example, was creamy – but not much short of that.

  Mary was asleep.

  The removals men, all three of them, stood beside their van, staring up at the black and white frontage. Then they looked at us, and our battered P-reg Ford Fiesta. They were probably trying to work out what sort of tip they could expect.

  ‘Moving up in the world,’ said the gaffer, a man who, as far as I could see, was entirely pink – all except the pupils of his eyes.

  ‘If you get started,’ I said, ‘we’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ he said.

  Peter used the brass Yale key to open the door. He shouted for Mrs. Forster but she didn’t appear. The smell of wood polish was so overpowering it was hard to know if she’d already been and gone or was still to come.

  Mary needed feeding, so I asked Peter to deal with the teas. I carried her little body through into the downstairs sitting room, and sat on one of the vast sofas. It took me a while to get comfortable, the thing was so lumpy. Then I sat there as Mary suckled, looking out the window and trying not to feel like some weird kind of burglar.

  ‘This is your new home,’ I said to Mary who replied with some gentle slurping noises.

  Jack, I could hear, had already taken off his shoes and started setting records for long-distance sliding in the hall – and was already being told off for it.

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a look round?’ his father said.

  ‘Whoooo-whoooo!’ said Jack, being a ghost.

  The floorboards directly above my head started to creak as Jack looked around the upstairs sitting room.

  Peter brought in two mugs of tea. They were our cosy-time mugs, one read ‘World’s Best Mum’ and the other ‘Live Long and Prosper’. That morning, last thing, I’d wrapped them in newspaper and stowed them in a
cardboard box beside the fridge – the box with MOST IMPORTANT BOX scrawled on the lid. Strangers had already moved into our London kitchen. They were maybe having a cup of tea or coffee there right now. And we were off and away in our new lives. It was funny seeing the mugs sitting on the antique side tables, but they made me feel more at home.

  ‘I’m shattered already,’ Peter said.

  ‘Just imagine if you were moving out of here,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why the aristocracy’s so messed up,’ he said. ‘They get stuck in places like this. Ancestral piles.’ He gave a wince and pretended to shift his bottom.

  ‘We won’t get stuck,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no. If we don’t like it, we’ll be out in three months.’

  I could feel that Mary was finished. I sat her up and began to burp her. She took one look round the room and began to giggle uncontrollably.

  Peter and I couldn’t help joining in. When she goes for it, Mary has a really dirty laugh, just like that baby on YouTube.

  The pink gaffer came in carrying a digital camera.

  As part of the service, his company did change of address cards with a photo of you in your new home.

  ‘Shall I do it now while you’re all happy?’ he asked. He’d obviously worked with little babies before.

  ‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Peter, can you go and fetch Jack?’

  He knocked back the last of his tea then set off.

  When he wasn’t back in five minutes, I began to worry. I’d already heard him calling out to Jack, telling him that now wasn’t the time to be playing hide and seek.

  ‘Can you go and help?’ I asked.

  The gaffer went off, too.

  Peter’s shouts became more anxious.

  He came down to see me.

  ‘He’s not got up into the attic?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s still locked.’

  ‘What about the cellar?’

  ‘Is there a cellar?’

  ‘There must be.’

  Peter went to find out.

  A couple of minutes later, the gaffer ran into the room. ‘I can hear him,’ he said, out of breath and even pinker. ‘But I can’t see where he is.’