Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Yours are better,’ I said, which seemed to cheer him up.

  It was his bedtime. What with his adventure in the priest’s hole, he’d had an exhausting day. Some questions were better left until the morning.

  When Jack wasn’t looking, I gave Peter our secret wink – which he understood.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said, and led Jack upstairs to get ready for bed.

  Mary was quite perky. I laid her on one of the sofas in the downstairs living room, on top of a blanket, and she kicked and gurgled very happily.

  After the boys had gone upstairs, I was able to have a good look through the inventory. Once I had it in front of me, I realized that I was looking for something in particular: the identity of the beautiful young woman in the portrait. The inventory dealt with each room separately, and as all the other pictures in the dining room were of men, it wasn’t hard to find out who she was. This is what the entry for that painting said:

  Full-length portrait of Lady Elizabeth Jonson (1562-15??), dated 1585, once attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, now thought to be by a follower (Isaac Oliver?) with, perhaps, the face and hands done by the master himself. 50 1/8” x 31 ¼”

  When I next looked at her, I saw that Mary had fallen asleep – so I carried the inventory through into the dining room.

  ‘Hello, Elizabeth,’ I said, looking up into her strong-nosed face.

  I half expected her golden brown eyes to move or disappear, as they do in very corny horror movies when the villain is looking out from behind a painting. They didn’t move, but they did do that thing of seeming to follow you around the room. I felt a little awkward. There was something I wanted to say as well as hello. ‘I hope you don’t mind us moving in to your lovely house. We will try to take good care of it.’

  Just then, there was a screaming from the drawing room. When I ran through, I found Mary had been a little sick on herself – in her eyes. She was fine, really. It happened quite often. The posse had all gone on her neck, and she didn’t even need a new bodysuit. I carried her into the kitchen and cleaned her up.

  Peter, who was able to tell which of our children’s cries were trivial and which meant something, appeared at the top of the stairs and shouted, ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I called back.

  ‘Jack’s ready for you to come and say goodnight.’

  I handed Mary to Peter, halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Pukely-puke,’ I said.

  ‘Great,’ said Peter.

  Sitting up in bed, Jack was very tired but also very excited. I told him to lie down and he did.

  Jack always tries to delay going to sleep by starting a very involved conversation. I call it Question Time.

  ‘Will I see a ghost?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Do you want to see a ghost?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not unless it is a friendly ghost.’

  ‘I’m sure all the ghosts in this house are friendly.’

  I realized I’d already said this to him once. If you repeat things to children, they know it’s something you’re worried about.

  ‘How do you know?’

  I couldn’t give him an answer straight away. ‘Well, it’s just an instinct. The place feels friendly. It’s not some spooky old castle, is it? It’s our new home.’

  Saying it, I really did believe it

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Jack.

  He was fighting hard to stay awake, but his eyelids were flickering and the whites were appearing behind them. I sang him Rockabye Baby, which he still likes.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ I said, and kissed his forehead.

  When I was sure he’d gone off, I rejoined Peter downstairs in the living room.

  ‘Okay?’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just worried about ghosts.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Peter.

  I checked to see if he was serious.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you never know.’

  We sat for a moment in exhausted silence.

  ‘You got the energy?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, the cellar,’ I said, remembering his whispered words of the afternoon. ‘Yes, I think so. As long as we go to bed straight afterwards.’

  I forced myself off the sofa. Peter, carrying Mary, led the way into the hall.

  The door to the cellar wasn’t concealed like that to the priest’s hole, but it was another very neat piece of carpentry. I turned the iron door handle and saw a couple of steps heading down into pitch black.

  ‘Light switch is to the right,’ Peter said.

  I stepped back. I was worried about spiders’ webs.

  ‘You do it,’ I said.

  With Mary on his shoulder, Peter reached around, fumbled for a moment, and then flicked it on.

  The steps, as I now saw them, went down a long way, walls on either side. Later, when I counted, I found there were thirteen of them.

  I started to descend then stopped.

  ‘What is it exactly that I’m going to see?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t want to explain,’ Peter said.

  After a deep breath, I continued down. The place smelt very strongly of earth, of being underground. The walls were plaster that looked freshly whitewashed. In a few places there were pencil drawings. Although I didn’t look at them closely they looked like rough architectural plans of buildings.

  The floor of the cellar, when we reached it, was made of smooth grey flagstones. This wasn’t the first thing you noticed, though – that was the doors. We were in the middle of a square-ish room, and in the middle of each wall was a door.

  ‘What’s behind them?’ I asked.

  ‘Three of them are locked,’ said Peter. ‘But not this one.’

  He indicated the one directly in front of the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Go on, open it,’ he said, after I had hesitated for a few moments.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to know what’s behind it.’

  ‘Nothing scary. Just something very weird.’

  The door looked extremely old. It was made of dark brown wood and the handle was twisted iron. I glanced round at the three other doors. Each of them was unique, completely unlike the others.

  ‘You’re not playing games, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Just open it,’ said Peter. ‘Mary’s getting cold.’

  It was very chilly down there – as if it were icy winter outside, not summer.

  I turned the handle and tried to push open the door.

  ‘Other way,’ said Peter, so I pulled it towards me, stepping back.

  What I saw took a moment to understand. At first, I thought I was looking at a painting of lightning. Then I realized that the zaggy white diagonals were forked roots and that the black background wasn’t the sky but rich, dark, tightly packed earth.

  ‘It’s – what?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a room,’ he said. ‘It’s just underground.’

  I touched the black earth. It was moist and the texture of it was like the most expensive compost.

  ‘Very weird,’ I said, turning to look at Peter.

  Almost immediately, something touched the back of my head. It felt like the light stroke of a child’s finger. But I could also feel a featheriness to it.

  Quickly, I lurched forwards, turned round and saw what I’d been expecting to see – one of the roots, without the door there to hold it in place, had flopped out of the earth. It was still quivering with the energy of my twist away. The main part of the root was a ghostly white. The smaller side-roots coming out of it, fringed with something like old lady hair, were nicotine yellow. Even though I wasn’t really afraid of it, I didn’t want to touch it to put it back in place – into the long groove in the earth it had fallen out of. But for some reason, I did want it to be put back just as it had been. I didn’t want us to have moved anything around.

  One of the reasons I love Peter is that he understands me even when I don’t understand myself. First, he put Mary in my arms, then he r
eplaced the long root – pushing it in all the way to the tip – and, lastly, he closed the door. It made a sound I’d never heard before – a low whistle as the air behind it, with nowhere else to go, came out through the keyhole.

  ‘Do you want to try the other doors?’ Peter asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, a little breathless. ‘Not right now.’

  I started back up the staircase, and was about halfway up when a small, high voice asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  It was an eerie moment before I realized that it was Jack, standing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘We just went down to check on something,’ I said. ‘Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’

  Then I realized that this was exactly the sort of thing you shouldn’t say to a boy of six.

  ‘Was it a ghost?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, reaching the top of the stairs. ‘Can you let us through?’

  ‘What if I shut you in?’ Jack asked. His hand was braced against the door.

  ‘Then you wouldn’t get a new bike,’ said Peter from behind me.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do,’ I said. Preferring to concentrate Jack’s mind on the idea of being good rather than torment him with images of lost-forever treats.

  Jack stepped back to let us pass. Peter switched off the light with a loud click, closed the door and then turned towards Jack. ‘The cellar is completely off-limits. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘But what’s down there?’

  ‘I will show you another time,’ said Peter. ‘We will go down together, but you must promise not to go down on your own.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Jack, so quickly that it was hard to believe him.

  I could tell that Peter was thinking of making Jack repeat his promise. Then he changed his mind, and decided to trust him.

  ‘How about a glass of hot milk?’ I asked.

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Peter.

  ‘Hot chocolate,’ chanted Jack. ‘Hot chocolate!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s still packed up in one of the boxes. I don’t want to search for it now.’

  Jack looked disappointed, but didn’t protest. He was glad we were letting him stay up.

  We all went into the kitchen. I put Mary in the relaxer chair, fetched some milk from the larder and started to pour it out into a large saucepan.

  ‘You, too?’ I asked Peter.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said.

  I let the whole bottle flow out, then turned on the gas.

  Of course, going into the larder had reminded me of the eggs and their sell-by date. It wouldn’t be wise to say anything to Peter whilst Jack was there to hear.

  At the far end of the larder was a long shelf of condiments – I’d seen it earlier, and again whilst getting the milk. I thought it might be worth checking to see if there was any chocolate or cocoa powder. There were at least a hundred different jars and pots. Some of them were for brands I’d never seen before – probably the sort of thing you get in hampers from Fortnum & Mason. From what I could tell, Michael Francis had been especially keen on honey and powdered English mustard.

  I was about to give up when, behind a glass jar full of demerara sugar, I saw the right kind of label – brown, cosy-looking. It was a tin of old-fashioned cocoa powder, made by Bourneville. I picked it up, and the sugar, and carried them triumphantly through into the kitchen.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ I said.

  ‘Great,’ said Jack.

  I put the tin and the jar down, then fetched a wooden spoon. I was already getting the hang of what lurked in which drawer. It was only when I was about to scoop the cocoa out into the bubbling milk that I noticed the jar had a price label on the side: 4d, it said. I couldn't remember exactly when the currency had gone decimal, but I knew it was years before I’d started to use money, and I was almost thirty-six.

  Cocoa powder doesn’t go off, I thought. Maybe Michael Francis bought new stuff and just kept it in this old tin.

  The strange thing was, the tin didn’t look old at all – brightly shiny on the top, it might have been bought yesterday.

  Rather than disappoint Jack, I decided to go ahead and make the hot chocolate. But I would taste it myself before I gave it to anyone else.

  As it turned out, the rich sweet drink was utterly delicious – much tastier than the light brown stuff we usually bought.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Jack, after his first sip. He was enjoying being up past his bedtime, and I could tell he was trying to stretch it out as long as possible.

  ‘Delicious,’ said Peter. Then he turned to Jack. ‘Well, what do you think of it so far?’

  ‘Rubbish!’ shouted Jack.

  It was one of our family jokes, borrowed from Morecambe & Wise.

  All three of us laughed, with top lips stained dark brown. Mary, asleep, tossed her head from side to side.

  Later, when Jack was safely back in bed, I sat talking to Peter and feeding Mary at the same time. We were up in our room – Peter, looking out the window into the black of the woods, and me, propped up in bed with four plump pillows. The linen didn’t smell at all musty, which was surprising given how long it had lain unused.

  Our bed, a four-poster, was so vast and ornate that I felt I should be delivering lines from Shakespeare, rather than asking Peter if he could remember where Jack’s football was.

  Peter undressed, put on his stripey pyjamas, turned off the overhead light and joined me in the four-poster. The room was quite dark. Both of the bedside tables had a lamp, but only Peter’s was on. The shade on it was thick, and most of the light went downwards.

  Even though Peter had put up the travel cot, I easily persuaded him to let Mary come into our bed. She had slept quite a lot during the day, but still seemed very tired. I hoped we were going to have a good night. Mary might even sleep through. If she woke up, I could feed her easily enough by just turning towards her.

  I knew I could drop off in moments, but I needed to tell Peter about the out-of-date eggs and the ancient cocoa powder first.

  ‘It tasted fine to me,’ he said, after I’d explained.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure the eggs would have been fine, too. That one didn’t smell.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use them?’

  ‘You’re not meant to, are you?’

  ‘Sell-by dates are a load of rubbish,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘But the cocoa was probably older than me.’

  ‘You’re not that old.’

  He wasn’t taking it seriously. I knew he wanted to get to sleep.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’re going shopping tomorrow.’

  He was right. Even though it was a Sunday, we planned to drive to the nearest big supermarket and stock up on everything we’d discovered we needed.

  I snuggled down with Mary beside me.

  Although I was shattered, it took me a long time to get to sleep – because the house was so quiet. I couldn’t remember going to bed anywhere where I couldn’t hear traffic or airplanes coming in to land. I was lying there, waiting for something to make a noise. But we were a long way away from any roads, and between the nearest house and us was a thick cloak of woods.

  It would be exaggerating to say ‘I felt the dark gathering in around us’, or anything spooky like that. But I was very aware we didn’t have any upstairs or downstairs or left and right neighbours. We could make as much noise as we wanted, scream our heads off, and no one would ever complain. The downside of this, though, was that if anything bad happened, we would have to deal with it all by ourselves. There was nobody to borrow a cup of sugar from, or to call 999 if they saw smoke coming from a window.

  After a while, I realized that I could pick out the ticking of Peter’s wristwatch, on his side of the bed. It was a high, needy sound. I don’t think I’d ever realized that his watch ticked before – and I was the one who’d bought it for him, as a thirty-third birthday present.

  In London, I had often dro
pped off to the sound of police sirens. I missed them, now. Although they meant bad things happening, somewhere, they also meant someone going to try and sort them out.

  The house itself wasn’t completely silent. There were creakings and crackings from the wood. And the bed made the odd settling noise. But, in the gaps, the silence was enough for me to hear the blood in my head.

  I ruffled my hair against the pillow, trying to get rid of the idea of my own heart. Knowing it was there, beating away, and had been since before I was born – that always made me feel panicky.

  All of these thoughts must have ended up exhausting me. Peter started snoring, and to the see-saw of that, I fell asleep.

  Chapter 7.

  Mary woke up for a comfort feed at one a.m. and then again at three thirty. The second time, she wouldn’t go straight back down. Something seemed to have upset her and she was wailing pitifully. Peter could sleep through an atomic bomb, but I didn’t want her to disturb Jack, so I picked up the changing bag and carried her downstairs.

  ‘It’s all right, little Boo,’ I said, as I’d said so many times before, to Jack and to her. ‘It’s all all right.’

  As we went down the wooden steps, I could smell the ripe fruity smell of a poo. The easiest place to change her was a table. I thought I might as well use the one in the dining room. It would give me another chance to get to know Elizabeth Jonson, after our interrupted conversation.

  There were two light switches beside the door. One of them did the overhead lights, the other made the lights above the paintings come on. I flicked both, then got the changing mat out of the bag and unrolled it on the table. Mary, distracted by having something to look at, wasn’t wailing quite so much. I undid the zip on her sleepbag and then the poppers on her bodysuit. We’d used both of these night-clothes for Jack, and repeated washing had made them very soft and cosy. Mary looked so small without anything on, her little arms only just starting to get some strength – unlike her little mouth, which could suck like mad.

  I pulled back the tabs on her nappy and had a peek inside. It was a big one, and wet. My expert eye decided that I needed six wet-wipes. This was a little game I played with myself, to keep changing amusing. I needed something – Mary often had to be done seven or eight times a day.