Untimely Graves

by Marjorie Eccles

  She knew that her parents knew perfectly well that, exam results apart, there was something else wrong, too. She was almost certain Daphne suspected some sort of broken love affair, and thought that was why she was moping around like a lovesick cow, though Cleo had never told them about Toby, wanting to keep him to herself for as long as she could. But her mother was wrong. Splitting up with Toby had hurt like an abscessed tooth, of course it had, but several months later, she knew the condition wasn’t terminal. It was just that losing him had left her feeling so empty, hollow with unsatisfied longings for … she didn’t know what. Well, she could always write.

  She wasn’t due to start with Maid to Order until Monday, so she went out and spent the morning once more looking for somewhere to live — a flat, or a bed-sit, anything. By now she wasn’t all that fussy as long as it afforded her some privacy. Not that she was anti-social, but if she was going to be serious about writing, she needed her own space.

  Near Birmingham, or Coventry, there was plenty of student-type accommodation available near the universities, but that absolutely wasn’t what Cleo was looking for. She felt very definitely that she’d left that scene behind, to get involved in it again, however peripherally, would be a markedly backward step. But she found nothing else she could remotely afford, and after a depressing sandwich in a pizza bar (she should have stuck to the pizza) she wandered down to the agency, to give in her notice to her father, so to speak. He hadn’t heard about her alternative proposals for employment yet.

  He wasn’t as rude about her qualifications for the job as Daphne had been, but he wasn’t thrilled with the idea, even when she pointed out that there was nothing for her to do at the agency, now that Muriel was back.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I wish she’d made up her bloomin’ mind to stay away. It was good of her to think I’d be needing her, but I’m not mad about having Hermione around the place.’

  Who would be? The little dog had been spoiled to death before her major op, and was worse now, enjoying the rewards of being an invalid without any of the disadvantages. Cleo had noticed her trotting around the back yard on her short legs without a care in the world, not to mention chasing the butcher’s cat from next door, but she was canny enough not to push her luck by letting Muriel see her doing this. She even stayed curled in the little basket at Muriel’s feet when anyone came in, gazing at them with soulful eyes rather than snapping as was her wont, when there was nothing she enjoyed more than seeing people shrink back in fear of her sharp little teeth. She’d been tyrannising her mistress for years. Muriel had always sworn that her previous bad temper was due to the poor little thing having had hot flushes for years, and how could anyone prove she hadn’t? True or not, the dog obviously knew she was on to a good thing now. Minced fillet steak and Choccie Chews. Warm milk to drink. Hottie bottles in her basket. Hermione had obviously become power drunk, with every intention of spinning this out indefinitely.

  ‘I wish I could give you some real work here,’ George said, ‘but you know how it is.’ There was barely enough work for Muriel, never mind Cleo into the bargain. ‘You’ve done well,’ he added, and she felt a certain amount of pride, despite herself.

  Muriel, it had to be said, though well-intentioned, and capable in her own way, was a muddler, and the office was in better order than when Cleo started. Maybe she could have made a good secretary after all. Perish the thought.

  It didn’t take her long to turn over everything back to Muriel, and before she left, she assured her father she’d done this – including the Sara Ruby case. She’d wondered at first if the woman who’d drowned could have been Sara Ruby, but the dead woman had been several inches too tall and many years too old. How terrible such a death was, thought Cleo, haunted by a sadness she couldn’t explain whenever she thought about her, the fact that no one yet had claimed to have known her. How lonely.

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, Dad,’ she told George when she was ready to leave. ‘It’s just that I have to earn some money, I can’t go on living with you and Mum indefinitely.’

  ‘Why not? It’s your home, and always will be,’ he said, but he was just being kind. Strained politeness had ruled at 26 Ellwood Street for the last few weeks, but they all knew that it was only a matter of time before Cleo and Daphne began to have some very real differences of opinion. Her mother, thought Cleo, expected too much. They got on fine, when they were apart. It was living together they couldn’t stand.

  ‘All right,’ George said suddenly, with the air of a man coming to a decision. ‘I might as well tell you now. I wasn’t going to mention it until your mum and I had given it a bit more thought. But we’ve already decided, really. Phoebe’s house has just come vacant.’

  ‘The Honeybuns are leaving?’ Cleo could never remember their real name, a lovey-dovey married couple, Americans who’d come to live in her great-aunt’s house after she died. The one time she’d met Mrs H she’d thought her a silly, wilting sort of creature who looked as if she wouldn’t say boo to a goose. What was her name? Oh yes, Angela. Mr Honeybun had called her Angel.

  ‘They’ve already gone. Back to America. The people at the place he worked for over there suddenly decided they wanted him back, urgently, and the college agreed to let him go. I don’t know the details.’

  Cleo remembered that Brad – Hunnicliffe, that was it – had been over here on some sort of exchange. Teaching science or something at Lavenstock College. When Daphne, working in the Bursar’s office, had heard that he and his wife were seeking accommodation, it had seemed to her that Phoebe’s house, which was standing empty after her death, though still furnished, could be of some use to someone, rather than standing idle … not to mention bringing in some cash.

  ‘You might just as well stay in the house until we get another tenant – or for as long as you like as far as I’m concerned, Cleo,’ George said now.

  Cleo could hardly speak, unable to believe that her luck could change so dramatically. Phoebe’s lovely little house! Not lovely in the sense that most people would regard as such, but lovely to her because it had been dear and familiar all her life, just as Phoebe had been.

  Phoebe had been George’s aunt. She had married just before the war. Hardly had the wedding bells ceased to ring, however, than war had been declared and Jack, her young husband, had been called up into the Navy, where he’d gone down with his ship almost as soon as he’d finished training. Poor Phoebe. She and her Jack had had so little time together, but at least he’d never known that she’d lost the baby she was expecting. After that, she’d just gone back to work, never remarried, and lived alone, until she was eighty-four, in the house she’d come to as a bride. In many ways she’d had a sad life, but a busy, and in the end, Cleo thought, a contented one. When she died, she left the house and contents to George. He’d had some idea of tarting it up, like some of the neighbouring houses, before selling it, but Phoebe, quiet, determined, austere little Phoebe, had been very special to him, and to all the family, and he hadn’t yet been able to bring himself to get rid of all her furniture and belongings. However, as Daphne pointed out, it wasn’t very sensible to leave the place unlived in, and so he’d agreed to rent it to the Hunnicliffes as temporary furnished accommodation.

  It was the end one of a row of pint-sized artisan-type dwellings, as the house agents referred to them, meaning two up and one down, with a kitchen tacked on and bathroom made from the tiny second bedroom. Now wedged in between blocks of council flats on the one hand and fairly swanky properties on the other … but nothing was perfect, Cleo told herself. It was here, in Lavenstock, not far from either the library or a bus route. You could walk into the town centre easily if you were so minded. Everything she needed, really. But …

  ‘You’ll have to pay me rent,’ George said sternly, and Cleo nodded happily, seeing this face-saving gesture for what it was, knowing he wouldn’t overcharge. ‘So I hope this cleaning job pays well. Otherwise you’ll have to get a proper one, won’t you?’


  ‘That’s blackmail!’

  ‘I know.’ He grinned.

  He was a good egg, really. Her mum, too. They must have been cooking this thing up for some time.

  Filled with a new energy, she couldn’t wait, and walked on air up to her new abode, stopping only to get in a few essential supplies at Sainsbury’s. Brandishing the keys like a trophy, she unlocked the front door.

  She felt a little choked as she stepped in, and stood blinking for a moment. She’d never been inside the place since Phoebe had died, and the sight of all her familiar things brought her vividly back to mind: the embroidered cushions, her footstool, the crocheted duchess set on the sideboard. There also Cleo saw evidence of the quiet continuance of her modest life in the collection of knick-knacks, valueless to anyone else, but which had meant so much to Phoebe, as well as the clock presented to her father on his retirement and, in pride of place, her wedding photograph.

  Going into her aunt’s house had always seemed like entering a time warp, and seemed even more so, now that she was no longer here, part of it. Phoebe had lived in this little house for well over sixty years, and practically everything in it was exactly as it was when she and Jack had set up home when they were first married. She’d never seen the need for much modernisation.

  The front room was all geometric shapes, fashionable at the time, the fireplace a perfect semicircle of fawn and eau-de-nil Art Deco tiling, without a mantelpiece, set against what Phoebe had called ‘a nice biscuit-coloured wallpaper’. The square dining suite was in limed oak. A matching step-sided china cabinet stood in one alcove, in the other a square-columned standard lamp, complete with its original parchment shade painted with flying ducks. Three more flew diagonally across one wall.

  But people went in for this sort of thing nowadays, paid a lot of money for it, and the Honeybuns had probably been charmed, seen the whole thing as a genuine period piece, which is just what it was. Cleo looked at the only picture in the room, placed high on the wall, a curious depiction of Spaniards apparently about to do the tango, made from coloured silver paper mounted on black velvet, occupying the wall over the sideboard. The mirror over the fireplace had peach-coloured glass insets either side. Good Lord, she might well be living in an Aladdin’s cave! Every time she sat down on the fawn uncut moquette three-piece suite with its curved-to-the-floor padded arms, she’d be terrified of spilling her coffee on it.

  Talking of which … she went to make herself a coffee, as a sort of rite of ownership, to carry around while she inspected the entire place and thought how she might adjust it, without disrespect to Phoebe, to her own more chaotic living requirements.

  The kettle boiled, and as she reached for a mug, she noticed with shocked disapproval that Angel Honeybun had been using Phoebe’s good, Greek key-patterned tea service for every day. Her aunt must be turning in her grave. Not that it was Crown Derby, but Phoebe had treasured it. Cleo was furious when she saw a small chip on one of the cups – though she told herself you had to be prepared for worse than that when you rented a furnished house to anyone. There and then, she returned the cups and saucers prissily to the china cabinet in the front room where they’d always lived, and as she did so, she noticed something else. The Clarice Cliff candlestick was missing.

  She stared at the place where it had stood for as long as she could remember. Perhaps Angel had broken it, perhaps George had taken it home for safe keeping. But Daphne wouldn’t have given it house room, she’d been united in loathing it with Phoebe, who’d said often enough she’d have thrown it out years ago, had it not been given to her as a wedding present in 1939. Cleo could understand anybody who went in for Greek key-patterned china hating it; she was hardly enamoured herself. The chunky, two-branched pottery candlestick was OK if you admired angular, geometric affairs, decorated splashily in orangey-red, dark blue and bilious shades of green, outlined in black. But Cleo knew that anything with the Clarice Cliff name attached to it fetched high prices these days. Why was a mystery to her, but Daphne said they did. She’d seen something almost identical to this candlestick on the Antiques Road Show.

  She poked around a bit more, went upstairs, where drawers and wardrobe were empty. The large cupboard built into the fireplace alcove was locked and her keys downstairs, but it could wait, she certainly wouldn’t need more space. She went back to the kitchen to finish making her coffee, stood on a stool to take a better look in the top cupboards and there, behind a tall jug, was the candlestick. Slightly offended to find even such an object so relegated, she picked it up to return it to its rightful place, wondering if Phoebe’s spirit wasn’t hanging around there somewhere, already insinuating itself into her in an effort to make her great-niece as fussy as she herself had always been about that sort of thing, like people get, living alone. But as Cleo reached to put the candlestick back into the cabinet, she hesitated. Something was telling her – just what it was she didn’t know, she was no expert on those things – that all was not quite right about it. The shape? The design? It looked just the same. Had it, perhaps, like the china cup, acquired a chip? She turned it over.

  The ‘Rudyard’ pattern, a number, and the designer’s name and mark. She’d have to show it to her mother to know whether there was anything wrong there, but what if there were? If it turned out to be a copy? Wasn’t there some subtle difference between the legality of copying something, and making a deliberate fake? Why should anyone worry, anyway, if you couldn’t tell either from the real thing? Apart, of course, from the differences in price. She looked at the candlestick before putting it back. That was it, she thought, the colours looked just too new.

  Well, well, who would’ve thought it? Not such an angel, after all, little Mrs Honeybun. Had she broken the original, and been scared to own up?

  Or what?

  Cleo wondered briefly if anything else had been substituted, but Phoebe had never been one for amassing possessions, valuable or otherwise. She’d left the house and contents, family photographs and Jack’s gold watch to George, and all the money she had in the bank – a surprising amount, but she’d worked all her life and always been thrifty – to a children’s charity. She’d willed her engagement ring and a cameo that had belonged to her mother to Daphne, a turquoise ring and all the books she had to Cleo, and a string of cultured pearls to Jenna. And that was it, as far as Cleo knew.

  5

  Dorrie normally did her own cooking, but tonight Mrs Totty, as a gesture of goodwill or in deference to Sam’s needs, had left a substantial and savoury casserole for supper. When they’d finished – though Dorrie had eaten no more than a spoonful, leaving Sam to demolish the rest – he decided to broach the subject of the school’s offer for the house once more. He’d brought in a bottle of wine, she’d had two glasses and he thought she might be prepared to talk about it. But she wasn’t.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about it, Sam, I don’t need the money, I’ve more than enough to live on and I’m quite happy here, so why should I let them bully me into selling my home? Just because the school’s suddenly decided they need to build a big new science block?’ Seated in the depths of the big armchair, she managed to look small and defenceless, but stubborn, and more owlish than ever, taking refuge behind the huge specs which hid her eyes.

  ‘So it’s a new science block, is it? That’s why they need to resite the entrance? Not simply to spare the school from the horrid sight of the estate?’

  ‘You’ve been listening to Eileen, and she’s prejudiced!’ Dorrie’s lips twitched, though, and she added slyly, ‘Though naturally, new buildings would effectively do that, wouldn’t they?’

  Nobody could seriously believe that was the prime reason, snobbery didn’t extend so far, even for institutions with a far more exalted reputation than Lavenstock College, Sam told himself. Or could they? For years, Lavenstock had teetered a little nervously between being a minor public school with a good reputation and being a rather better one; then the installation of the present Headmaster had brought academic
successes and achievements which sent it soaring up the scholastic league tables. Improved science facilities were likely to be even more of an inducement to well-off people to send their sons to the school, though the extent of both the wealth and the snobbery of such parents was almost certainly exaggerated.

  The evening was chilly and Sam had made up a fire in the morning room. Resin hissed and boiled from the big log set on its glowing embers and Dorrie poked at it, sending sparks flying up the chimney. Several flew the other way, on to the hearthrug, and one began to smoulder. Casually, she stamped it out, but not before it had made yet another scorch mark to join the dozens of others already there, leaving behind a smell of singed wool. ‘It’s not convenient, they say, to have the new buildings over on this side, so far away from the others, right across the other side of the playing fields from the main school. It would also mean laying new services and everything – by which I suppose they mean drains and electricity. It’s easier to put in a new drive, this side. Well, they’ve already got the other three houses around me. Why don’t they pull them down and leave mine alone?’

  ‘Could it be because this one is bang in the middle? Which effectively stymies any chance of a new entrance?’

  ‘Maybe it could,’ said Dorrie, with another guileless smile. She reached out and twisted the knob on the old-fashioned radio by her chair until she found a concert on Radio 3. ‘All right?’ she asked, as the first notes of the Dvorak cello concerto flooded into the room, offering him the choice of a Murraymint to suck, or a piece of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. Sam said yes to the music and declined the sweets, seeing both actions as signalling Dorrie’s wish not to continue the conversation, but as he stretched his legs to the fire and let the tide of music sweep over him, and Dorrie snuggled into the warmth of her comfortable, sagging old chair like a sleepy tabby, he thought yet again about what Mrs Totty had said. Could it really be that Dorrie had always hated this house? She’d lived here all her life, alone in it for at least twenty years since her father, his grandfather, had died. Loyalty, or perhaps subservience, to that terrible old man had kept her living here while he was still alive, but she’d had no reason to stay afterwards. It couldn’t simply be that garden which was keeping her, he told himself. But he was afraid that it might be. She had always formed odd, unaccountable attachments to places, as well as people.