Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  Gently, I wiped her clean, pressing the dirty wipes into the old nappy. Mary had gone quiet. Her roving eyes had focussed on a point to her right. A quick glance confirmed what I’d thought. She was looking towards Elizabeth Jonson. This wasn’t surprising – with her red-golden hair and fantastic outfit, Elizabeth was the brightest and sparkliest creature in the room.

  Mary’s bottom was a bit sore, so I rubbed healy cream into it and then put on the new nappy. Before I put her back in her night-clothes, I sat down for a cuddle. Even though you’re exhausted to the point of tears, these are some of the best moments – when you have your baby all to yourself, and the rest of the world is asleep. I smelled her downy head, the sweetest smell of a tiny person, milky but with a little edge to it. I knew from Jack that she wouldn’t be this way very long, and I wanted to indulge myself in it so that I had lots of good memories.

  To hold Mary close, I’d turned her away from Elizabeth. Mary didn’t like this. Almost immediately, she started to make grumbly noises. So, I stood up and carried her over to the foot of the painting. We both looked up at it, shining golden in its light.

  ‘What do you make of her?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’

  Then I turned to Elizabeth and, almost without thinking of it, as if she were a friend of a friend, asked her, ‘Do you have children?’

  Of course, there was no reply. Things didn’t work like that, in this house. But as I looked more closely at her face, I saw a definite sadness there. She was only young when this painting was done. There had been years afterwards, in which she could have had a family. Perhaps she was a direct ancestor of Peter. That would be weird.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ I said.

  The next thing I thought was how difficult it must have been, having a baby before wipes, disposable nappies, Sudocrem and Calpol. They had servants, of course, those that were rich enough. But infant mortality was so high. From school, I remembered Henry VIII’s desperate attempts to have children, and the early deaths of so many of those he did have. And then there was Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. I knew a bit about her from the recent films. What an awful life!

  These thoughts made me want to snuggle up in bed with my arms around Mary. One-handed, I packed up the changing bag. Then I carried it and Mary towards the door.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said to Elizabeth, before I switched off the lights.

  The nappy bag full of stink, I dumped by the front door. I could deal with it in the morning. All this, I was sure, was quite a long way from how old Michael Francis used to live. A snifter of brandy in the library and then an early night. Or maybe not.

  In the middle of the hall, nothing but dark around me, I stopped for a moment, just to see how the whole house felt. Was it spooky? Did I think a restless ghost haunted it?

  No.

  How wrong can you be?

  Chapter 8.

  We were woken very early on Sunday morning by the sound of a sharp rap-rap-rap.

  At first, we had no idea what it was. I said it might be something to do with the plumbing. Peter said it was a neighbour doing some hammering.

  The rapping started and stopped, started and stopped.

  In our old flat, we’d had a doorbell. Perhaps that was why it took us a few minutes to realize that it might be the gryffin-shaped knocker on the front door.

  Peter managed to get downstairs before the racket woke Jack.

  He returned about five minutes later.

  ‘It’s a priest,’ he said. ‘No, let me rephrase that. It’s our priest. He’s called Father Giuseppe Trovato. It seems that we have a chapel in our garden. A private chapel.’

  ‘What?’ I said. Not that I didn’t believe him. We now owned several hundred acres, and hadn’t done anything to explore them. We hadn’t even looked at a plan of the grounds.

  ‘Michael Francis Jonson always had a private mass said, at this time.’

  ‘Every week?’ I asked.

  ‘Every Sunday. Without fail. Before the priest goes off to his regular. So, he’s going to hurry us through today.’

  ‘But I’ve never been to mass.’

  Peter was already getting his clothes on.

  ‘I asked him if he’d come back later.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Basically, he knows. He knows that we can only inherit this house if we’re practicing Catholics. And this is how we practice – attending Sunday Mass.’

  It all seemed a bit mad to me. But I remembered what the solicitor had said. We didn’t seem to have any choice.

  ‘All my smart clothes are still in the suitcases.’

  ‘Just put anything on,’ said Peter. ‘We can dress up next week.’

  He pulled a sweater with a shirt inside it over his head.

  ‘I’ll get Jack. Mary can go as she is. You can carry her.’

  About five minutes later, we were ready. Jack was not best pleased.

  ‘We’re going to see a special chapel,’ I said.

  My son had certainly never been woken up early for architecture appreciation before.

  Father Trovato was waiting for us in the front porch.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. I hadn’t had much time to picture him. For the first moment, I thought Father Trovato was a man dressed up as a priest rather than an actual real-life priest. When you separated him from his costume, he looked a bit like a smaller version of Pavarotti, complete with the dyed black combed over hair.

  ‘Mrs. Jonson,’ he greeted me. ‘It is very nice to meet you, at last. And these are your beautiful children?’ Despite his name, he didn’t sound very Italian.

  ‘Jack, six, and Mary, three months, Father,’ said Peter. He was obviously more used to speaking to priests than I was – though a little out of practice. I felt as if I were meeting a member of the Royal Family. I didn’t really respect his position all that much, but I was still overawed.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Father Trovato. Then he asked, ‘You really don’t know where the chapel is?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Father.’

  ‘Then you can follow me.’

  He had parked his car, a very old, very small orangey-red Fiat, right up against the front door. When I looked in the back, as I squeezed past, I saw that it was full of cardboard boxes some of which were open. Inside the boxes were pictures of smiling black faces. I didn’t have time to see any more. But I thought they must be pamphlets about good works in Africa. The Catholic Church is all about converting the heathen, isn’t it? I wondered whether that was how Father Trovato saw us.

  The round black figure led us down the path around the house that Peter and then Peter and me had taken on our first visit.

  ‘It was extremely sad about your great uncle,’ he said to Peter. ‘He was a very fine man. Very devout. Very principled.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘I didn’t know him very well. Hardly at all.’

  ‘And now…’ said Father Trovato, and he gestured around him. And now, he meant, you have all this. If you behave.

  The path continued straight for about fifteen feet, then came to a fork. I hadn’t really noticed it before. I’d known I had to bear left to find the garden. Father Trovato took the right-hand path, and we followed him down a slight incline.

  I suppose we must have gone another ten yards when Father Trovato said, ‘It is a very unusual chapel. For many years, in times of persecution, it had to be completely secret.’

  We looked around.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Jack. ‘I don’t think it’s here at all.’

  ‘It is here,’ said Father Trovato, and pointed to his feet.

  He was standing on a pair of wooden doors.

  ‘In previous times, the path didn’t lead straight here, of course. And the entrance was hidden under a pile of timber.’

  He produced a large keychain from his pocket. I was surprised when he selected one of the largest keys and handed it to Jack. ‘Why don’t you open it?’ he said.

  Jack liked this idea a lot.r />
  He got down on hands and knees, and began to jiggle the key into the keyhole.

  Father Trovato said, as an aside, ‘If I can avoid bending down, I do.’ I could see he wasn’t a man for rolling around on the floor. ‘It turns to the right,’ the priest said.

  ‘I can do it by my own,’ said Jack, as the key scraped around clockwise.

  ‘Bravo,’ said Father Trovato, when the job was done. ‘And now, we enter. Please, as we do so, take some water from the bowl on the right and make the sign of the cross.’ He demonstrated.

  ‘Well,…’ said Peter.

  Father Trovato faced us squarely, very squarely. ‘I know everything,’ he said. ‘Peter, you used to a practice the faith a long time ago. But your wife and children, they don’t know anything. So, I am going to teach them. That isn’t a problem, is it?’

  Peter hesitated before saying, ‘No. I don’t think so.’ He turned to look at me. Perhaps he was expecting me to say what a load of nonsense I thought religion was. I wonder what would have happened, if I’d said that. The terms of our inheritance were clear enough. We all had to be practicing Catholics – not just Peter, but me and the kids, too. I hadn’t given much thought to what this would mean. Perhaps I had hoped it just meant we had to say we were Catholic, if anybody asked.

  ‘It isn’t a problem?’ Father Trovato asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said. I suppose this was true. I had no desire to find God, or anything like that. I was curious, though – curious about what Peter had once been like, and curious about what Father Trovato had to teach us.

  ‘All right,’ said the priest. ‘If you could open the doors. Please be careful. The drop is rather steep.’

  Chapter 9.

  The underground space was deeper than I’d expected, and bigger. It was all properly laid out, with an aisle, pews, an altar, everything. Of course there were no windows. But the place was brightly lit. It smelt a little earthy.

  The chapel looked to me like the same person had built it as had the hall of the house. Or, at least, following orders from the same person. Almost everything that I could see was made of wood – although it was much less shiny than the stuff Mrs. Forster got her yellow duster on. There were four rows of pews, leading up to an altar with a table. Hanging up behind that was a crucifix, which looked like it was carved from ivory.

  We sat in the front row of the pews. To put ourselves anywhere else would have been silly.

  I felt quite embarrassed, as if we were on a beach, and a Punch and Judy show was about to happen just for us, no one else in view.

  Father Trovato had gone to a cabinet off to the side, and produced from it a bottle of wine and a white paper packet. He also brought out a brass cup with some fake-looking jewels on it, which I guessed were probably real.

  Before he began the formal part of the service, Father Trovato explained that only Peter could receive the sacraments. Until Jack and I had been received into the church, we weren’t allowed to.

  ‘Everything will be taken care of,’ he said.

  The whole thing didn’t take that long. Father Trovato didn’t rush through it – that would have been rude to God – but he had obviously done the whole thing so many times that he knew where you could cut a few corners. For me, the best bit came when he asked Peter to go off with him so that he could hear Peter’s confession.

  ‘Don’t forget about Mother’s Day,’ I whispered to Peter – the year before, he’d failed to take me out to dinner, or even buy me a present or a card.

  I was glad when they returned after only a few minutes. If Peter had still been seeing Carpet Superheroes woman, and he was being honest, it would surely have taken longer than that. So, I’d learned something today. Maybe there were a few little advantages to being Catholic.

  At the correct point, Peter went up and had the wine and the bread. Jack was intrigued by this, and wondered why he couldn’t have any. Mary chose this moment to start doing her hungry whining. I decided to risk Father Trovato’s annoyance, and started to breastfeed Mary there and then. If he minded, he didn’t say. I gave her just enough to keep her quiet. When the service stopped, I did, too.

  Father Trovato made the sign of the cross over us. He told us to go in peace. Then Peter got up and led us out into the light of morning.

  After a few minutes tidying up, Father Trovato followed us. He turned out the lights then he locked the doors in the earth.

  ‘You may keep the key, now,’ he said to Peter. ‘It is your place. For you to visit, if you need to gain strength.’

  ‘I’ll be back after breakfast, then,’ said Peter. ‘I need all the strength I can get, with this lot.’

  Father Trovato pretended to be amused, but I could tell he had been trying to make a serious point. I couldn’t guess why he thought Peter would feel the need for strength. Father Trovato handed over the key, which was actually a bunch of keys.

  ‘This one,’ he said, holding up an ornate iron L-shape. ‘I don’t know what the other ones are for.’

  When we got back to the house, Peter invited Father Trovato in for a cup of coffee.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said the priest. ‘I must get to my other church.’

  ‘Another time,’ said Peter.

  Father Trovato hesitated. ‘I will see you next week.’ He turned to me. ‘We can discuss when to begin your instruction, Mrs. Jonson,’ He ruffled Jack’s hair – something Jack usually hates. ‘And yours, too.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jack. I was surprised. He seemed to like the priest. I think because he reminded him of something out of a fairy tale. Or Obi Wan-Kenobi.

  Inside the house, the shoom of a Hoover started up.

  Peter looked startled. ‘Not today as well,’ he said. ‘It’s bloody Sunday.’

  Father Trovato gave him a look. Already something to be covered in their confession-session next week. Then he said, ‘Mrs. Forster likes to spend as much time cleaning as she can.’ It seemed an odd thing to say – and the way he said it made me suspect that he and Mrs. Forster didn’t get on very well.

  Before I’d had a chance to ask a question that might tell me more, Father Trovato was walking towards his beaten-up Fiat.

  ‘God be with you,’ he said, turning round to smile. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw him glance at the house with something like fear. The way I understood it, he’d been wishing that God be with us inside the house.

  ‘That wasn’t too bad,’ I said to Peter, when the Fiat had disappeared from sight.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Peter. He was thoughtful.

  ‘I thought it was fun,’ said Jack. Children are so weird. You can take them to Disneyland and, on the wrong day, it’ll be the dullest thing ever. And then, you make them get up early and go to Mass, and they can’t get enough.

  ‘Well,’ said Peter. ‘We can do it all again next week.’

  ‘And what did you confess?’ I asked, flirtatiously.

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said. ‘I’m meant to be a man of mystery, aren’t I?’

  We stood for a moment, listening to the hoovering.

  ‘I think we’re going to have to sort this out, once and for all,’ said Peter. ‘I’m not having my weekends ruined by her and her racket.’

  ‘Let’s go and have breakfast,’ I said to Jack.

  We went inside, us into the kitchen and Peter upstairs to find Mrs. Forster.

  I had just finished dishing out Jack’s cornflakes when Mrs. Forster came in with the cleaning materials.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs. Forster,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she said, putting the bucket away. ‘It’s awful.’

  Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She pulled her pinnie off over her head and folded it angrily.

  ‘Your husband, Mrs. Jonson – your husband can be a very cruel man.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said, but she didn’t reply. Not immediately. When she had put her coat on and buttoned it up, she said, �
�Some people just don’t know what they’re doing.’ After which, she burst into tears again, rushed through the hall and out of the house.

  Peter, who I think had been avoiding her, came into the kitchen a few minutes later.

  ‘Handled that well,’ I said.

  ‘I was very gentle,’ he replied, helping himself to muesli. ‘I really was.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just that I thought that, for the moment, she didn’t have to come on Saturdays or Sundays. And that we would see in a month’s time whether the house needed more cleaning. I’m sure it won’t.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘At first she insisted that it needed every moment she could give it.’ He sat down with a full bowl but didn’t start eating.

  ‘And then?’ I asked.

  ‘Then she started to beg me.’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘She said, “Please let me come. I’ll be very quiet. I’ll just polish. You won’t even know that I’m here. Please, Mr. Jonson.”’

  ‘Please, please, please!’ mimicked Jack.

  ‘Was that when she started crying?’

  ‘No, she started weeping as soon as I mentioned we didn’t want her cleaning all day long, seven days a week.’

  ‘Please!’ cried Jack. ‘Please! Please!’

  ‘Stop that now,’ I said. ‘The woman’s obviously upset about something more than the cleaning. Perhaps it’s the money. Do you think she’s in debt.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Peter said. ‘The last thing was, she offered to come in for nothing.’

  I couldn’t believe this. Why would she want to work so hard, and not get paid?

  ‘She agreed, though – in the end?’

  ‘She had to. I told her that if she didn’t, we would give her her notice and advertise for another housekeeper.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That was the being cruel bit.’

  ‘You don’t want her here any more than I do.’

  ‘But I don’t want to spend my life polishing this place to a shine, either.’