by Iris Gower
Blind anger boiled in me. Tom had danced with Rosie, held her close . . . how could he? I didn’t wait to hear any more. I ran across the landing and into my bedroom and locked the door behind me. I crept into bed and pulled the blankets up over my face and let the tears flow.
SEVENTEEN
‘When are you going to do another exhibition for me, dear Riana?’ Mr Readings had become far friendlier since the last exhibition, when all but one of my paintings had sold. Now even that one had gone, and I was so pleased. It had been darker than usual, with blues and greens mixed and lots of velvety leaves with just a few purple irises to give a splash of colour.
Mr Readings seemed to read my mind. ‘The last painting of foliage was very good, my dear, but when you put just a touch of ghostliness into the work it sells like hot cakes. Take this one now –’ he pointed at my picture of the mansion on fire – ‘it could just be a blaze – very nice colour mix, well lit indeed against the dark skies – but that one solitary indistinct figure on the roof makes it so much more than just a house in flames . . . do you see what I mean?’
‘I do see what you mean,’ I said and meant it. I knew full well that my ghostly pictures had set a new trend of realism with just a touch of the unreal or ‘other world’ as Mr Readings liked to call it.
‘You’ve hit on something there, Riana. Don’t let it go, whatever you do. Somehow the inspiration you show when you paint the “other world” brings life to the work. The painting is so much finer for it. I can’t explain it any better than that. It’s as if someone else guides your hand.’ He shrugged. ‘But isn’t that the way with most creative people? The spirit moves, and we react to it.’
He laughed at his own joke, but to me it wasn’t a joke it was true. Just as Mr Readings said, it was as if someone guided my hand. Suddenly, I was afraid. What if the guiding hand went away? What if I couldn’t really paint?
‘Well, Riana, when can you have another exhibition ready?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Readings. When the spirit moves me, I suppose.’ I couldn’t help smiling, and he smiled back at me. He really was a very handsome man – humorous, too, now that I knew him better.
While in town I bought a new batch of paints, some canvases and a sketch pad. It all cost money, but these, I reminded myself, were the tools of my trade. I packed them away in my van, and then I went to find a nice cup of tea and somewhere to sit for a few minutes while I tried to make a list of things I wanted for the house.
The November sun, pale and wintry, was nevertheless warm through the bowed glass windows of the tea shop. The cloth on the table was pristine white, and my cup, saucer and teapot were painted with pretty delicate flowers.
I suddenly felt very alone.
Tom. I’d tried to put him out of my mind since the awful night when Rosie had accused him of fathering her baby. He’d protested his innocence, and the baby could just have inherited Rosie’s fine white skin and blue eyes, but her words at the baby’s birth had made me feel sick and hollow. I knew she was teasing, but a doubt niggled at my mind all the same.
The baby – Rosie had named him John – was still with us. He could hardly go to America to be brought up by a dark-skinned American family, not now. It didn’t seem appropriate, in any case. Rosie had bonded with the boy and seemed to love him with such motherliness it would be a shame to part them. Still, Mrs Ward still asserted that John should be adopted.
My stomach seemed to cramp with pain whenever I imagined Tom dancing with Rosie. He hadn’t denied that. She had probably been the worse for drink and lapping up the attention.
I finished my tea and asked for the bill, and then I stepped outside into the cold sunshine. My eyes were dazzled by the light, but I was aware of a tall figure blocking my way. ‘Tom?’
It was as if he’d been conjured up by my thoughts. My arm was held tightly, and I was led back inside the tea shop. I sank down into the chair I’d just vacated, and Tom sat opposite me.
‘Listen to me, Riana. I’ve never touched Rosie, I don’t know why she thinks it a joke to accuse me. Unlike the summer American Army Air Force party, when I spent most of the evening dancing with you, honey, I was only at the spring party for about an hour.’
‘You still danced with her,’ I said hotly.
‘I danced with many of the young ladies present, and then I left. Why should I lie?’ Tom challenged.
‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged in bewilderment. ‘Just tell me the truth, Tom. What really happened?’
‘I was on duty, so I only called in just to show my face. Then I patrolled the grounds until about ten fifteen, as usual.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘That’s all I can tell you, Riana. It was a long time ago.’
I knew there was no way I could be sure Tom was telling the truth. Carl Jenkins was dead; most of the other men had been sent back to America. ‘But the baby is white, no arguing with that,’ I said uneasily.
‘I think I was the first one to point that out,’ Tom said.
‘Could the baby be a sort of throwback to another generation?’ I think I was being hopeful.
Tom shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Carl Jenkins’s family are all African American, but it’s quite possible there was a white connection years ago. Anyway, the child could have Rosie’s genes.’
‘He could have white blood back along the line,’ I said. Carl’s name was Jenkins, a British name, after all. But that apart, I didn’t like to think of Rosie being in trouble. I bit my lip and looked at Tom. ‘What can we do to help her?’
Tom rubbed the gathering lines on his forehead. ‘I don’t rightly know.’
I rose from my chair. ‘Anyway, I have to get back home to Aberglasney. I have a lot to do! There’s another haunting party next week.’
Tom’s mouth twitched into a familiar smile. ‘Why not just ghost hunting?’ he asked.
‘I prefer ghost haunting. It’s more descriptive, somehow. Anyway, it brings the guests in, doesn’t it?’
‘No need to be defensive. I was only asking.’
For a moment we seemed to back on familiar ground, playfully baiting each other, smiling and being happy. I sat down again and asked for another pot of tea. For an hour or two we laughed and joked as we used to, while Tom held my hand and I felt a warm glow of happiness as all our differences seemed swept away. Tom had that magical quality that made me believe everything he said while I was with him. And then, suddenly, he became thoughtful. It was growing dark outside by now, and the magic seemed to vanish. The silence lengthened. and there seemed nothing left to say. ‘Well, I’d better get home,’ I said eventually.
He made no move to stop me.
‘See you, Tom.’ I made for the door, and as the bell clanked behind me I half expected Tom to come rushing out after me.
He didn’t.
I glanced back and saw that he was walking purposefully towards the centre of town. I wondered, worriedly, where he was going and what he was going to do so far from his barracks. Perhaps he had another lady friend somewhere in the village? Doubt blossomed, and then I told myself I was being silly, paranoid, totally unrealistic. If there had been any talk about Tom and a village girl I would have heard about it. Or would I?
I went to bed miserable and tearful that night and shut my ears to any sounds that the house was making around me.
EIGHTEEN
The colonel, as usual, was the first guest to arrive. And, as usual, he’d brought a huge amount of equipment with him. As he alighted from his taxi he looked up at the windows and waved. I stepped outside to greet him and glanced upwards, but I couldn’t see anything. ‘Who were you waving at Colonel?’ I asked, and he winked at me and tugged his little moustache.
‘Never you mind, young Riana, we all see something different in this house. I see the ghost of the old lady in Victorian dress.’ He rested his cases on the ground, gesturing to the driver to help him inside with them.
‘You mean Beatrice?’ I said in relief. ‘She’s no—’ I stopped speaking. I didn’t
have to let him know Beatrice was just a friend and not a ghost at all. She was old and a bit strange, but she was as solid as I was.
At dinner, later, when all my guests had arrived and were seated around the dining tables, Mrs Ward and Rosie served roast lamb and mint sauce. The whole thing seemed to have an air of familiarity about it, and strangely Rosie looked her usual comely self, exactly as she had been before she’d given birth to the baby.
The door blew open, and there was a sound of wailing and crying from upstairs. Everyone left the dinner and rushed out into the hall and up the stairs to see at close quarters the flickering lights. This had happened before; either I was losing my mind, or I was in some terrible nightmare.
Beatrice appeared briefly, but retreated as she saw the people rush towards her, cameras flashing.
The colonel spoke the exact same words he’d spoken before. ‘Did you see the Victorian lady? Anyone catch a picture of her? She’s called “Beatrice”, you know.’
Lights still flickered on the landing, and I found myself repeating exactly the same words I knew I’d used before. ‘Here on this landing, the five murdered maids are alleged to seek release from their chains of death.’ My voice was sepulchral, and everyone fell silent. I was going mad.
One lady screamed, the lights vanished, and young William spoke up bravely. ‘Search the rooms, everyone!’
‘Mr Bravage, all of you, please do search, and if you find anything rigged or to be a hoax I will refund your money.’ I felt I was reliving a terrible nightmare, but I had to speak in my defence. Nothing was rigged, I knew that.
I felt the same sense of fear and unease as I had the first time all this had happened. Or was this the first time it had happened, and I’d dreamed it before? I didn’t know anything any more.
When we walked back towards the stairs, I hesitated outside Beatrice’s room. I felt the same reluctance to invade her territory, but Mr Bravage shouted, ‘Go on then! Let’s see the lady ghost. Find out if she’s alive and kicking!’
I opened Beatrice’s door, but she wasn’t there. The room was empty. Relieved, I stepped back and let the other guests in, led by Mr Bravage. I’d had enough. I clearly remembered the rest of it: how Mr Bravage had ‘sensed a presence’ and then the colonel had smelled decay in the room, a smell I’d put down to Beatrice’s old lavender scent.
Later, as we sat down again to our meal, I still felt the same dreamlike quality pervading the room. People talked in loud excited voices. We seemed to move slowly through the same conversations. I drank a great deal of wine and went to bed and slept soundly, and in the morning – to my relief – my guests left, although not before telling me that Aberglasney was a real find and that I should charge more for the weekends. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before.
Tired beyond belief, I returned to bed and slept like a baby. When I woke again it was sunrise, and when I eventually left my room everything was back to normal, the clock was the right time, the date was correct, and I sat and drank coffee in the silent peace of the dining room and wondered how I’d dreamed such an odd dream.
But Rosie’s baby wasn’t a dream; he was stark reality, and his paternity was still a matter of doubt. I tried to shake off the feeling of despair when I considered that Tom might be the father of Rosie’s child.
As it happened, I didn’t see anything of Tom for the next few days, and so I concentrated on my painting. I squeezed out the last of my oils, twisting the tubes round a thin stick to force the thickening paint on to my palette. I put a thin wash of ochre on the canvas and then lightly sketched in the stairs and figures of my guests looking upward to where the lights flashed along the landing.
A sense of excitement gripped me. This must have been what my ‘dream’ or ‘vision’ or whatever it had been was all about: inspiration for a new painting! Almost without realizing it, I opened my new tubes of paint and worked in the wood of the staircase, adding highlights from the flickering lights above.
The colonel was there, and Mr Bravage, and the new young man who had joined us recently. I painted in the lady who had run screaming back down the stairs and then, with a sigh, put down my brushes. I needed a reviving coffee. I was in the frame of mind where I didn’t want to leave my work, but my back ached from standing before the easel and my mouth was too dry.
Mrs Ward was in the kitchen. Her face was long and gloomy. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Rosie,’ she said without stopping her task of drying up dishes. ‘She won’t talk to me, just hugs that little baby all day and sits and cries over it. I’m at the end of my tether, Miss Riana.’ She carefully hung the tea towel over the rail of the cooker and rewrapped her apron with deft, impatient fingers.
‘Would it help if Rosie stayed on with me for a while?’ The words were out before I’d even considered the implications of what I was offering. A crying baby, a young mother claiming that Tom was the father of her child . . . could I handle the complications of it all?
‘That would help, Miss Riana.’ The words came out with a rush of relief. ‘Perhaps Rosie will talk to you, you being young and all.’
I doubted it. Rosie was claiming that the man I was fond of had fathered her child. She knew it had hurt me, and I still wasn’t sure she was telling the truth, but now I’d made the offer for her to stay I would have to abide by it.
When Rosie came, bag and baggage, to live in the house with me, I stared long and hard at the baby in her arms. He was fair-skinned, but other than that he bore no resemblance to Tom. His hair was turning dark and curly, and his little nose was becoming a proper shape and was a little broad in the nostrils. I suddenly wanted to paint him. Little John with the five maids attending him. I brought my pencils and did some quick sketches while the baby was asleep. He opened his eyes and it was as though he was looking right through me. His eyes were the darkest brown.
I put Rosie to stay in my room because it was the biggest bedroom in the house, and she could put the baby in the cot I’d found in the attic. She would be comfortable there. ‘Don’t worry if you hear strange noises in the night,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘The old house creaks and groans, but it’s nothing to worry about.’
‘I don’t believe in all that ghost nonsense anyway,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve seen the people come and rush around looking for lights and things, and have any of them got any proof of anything? Not one picture, not one sighting, nothing.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then.’ I spoke a little sharply.
Rosie didn’t look at me. ‘I know it’s all put on for the guests, as you call them. All a trick to bring in the money. I don’t blame you, mind. I’d probably do the same if I owned this horrible old house.’
‘Well, if it’s so horrible, why do you want to live here?’ I felt my anger rising. Rosie could have plenty of doubts about ghosts, but she shouldn’t malign my dear old Aberglasney.
‘Anywhere is better than living with my mother, narrow minded prude,’ Rosie said.
I left her and went back to the kitchen where Mrs Ward was baking pies for supper. She looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Complaining already, is she?’
I shrugged. ‘She’s got the biggest and best bedroom in the house,’ I said tartly. ‘There’s nothing else I can do to make her welcome.’
‘Whatever you do it wouldn’t be enough.’ She glanced at me. ‘I never allowed her to have callers when she lived with me, and if I were you I wouldn’t allow any nonsense here.’
I looked at her in surprise. ‘But I thought Rosie was in love with Carl Jenkins?’
‘Oh, she was, for a time. That’s her way, apparently. One today and another one tomorrow.’
‘So do you think Tom is the father of her child, Mrs Ward?’
‘Not a chance.’ She snapped her lips tightly shut, and I knew I’d never get another word out of her on the subject.
That night I heard the usual noises on the landing: doors opening, lights flashing under the crack of the door of my unfamiliar bedroom. But, as usual, I ignored the n
oises and went to sleep.
The next day I worked on my painting while Rosie took the baby for a walk in the gardens. It was a sunny day in early spring and the light was good through my large studio windows.
I painted baby John and behind him ghostlike spirals of mist, depicting the five maids. There was almost no form to the figures, and yet the painting worked so well that I could see features and shapes in the mist bending over the child.
I sketched a lantern into the painting using my imagination, making a convincing orange-yellow glow shine through the lantern’s tiny glass windows. I stood back, wondering how on earth I’d managed to create such a magical painting. I’d gone to art school, worked hard to get my degree, but I’d never been one of the outstanding pupils, the stars-to-be, who the teacher had favoured and respected and pandered to if they were late with their essays. It was Aberglasney that had worked the spell: the atmosphere, the ghostliness, the stone and fabric of the old house. I loved it and felt that it loved me in return.
‘Stop being absurd!’ I said out loud. And then I heard it: the giggling, the muffled voices. One was a man’s voice, low and somehow coaxing. I froze. Was it true that Beatrice’s husband had seduced the young maids and then done away with them?
I realized then that the sounds were coming from the garden. I peered out through my open studio window and below me I could see the baby in the pram, a tiny white-faced creature covered with blankets. And there was Rosie, her pink knees akimbo and the bare backside of an unknown man exposed for all the world to see.
Hastily, I withdrew into my studio and shut the window as if I were the guilty one, not Rosie. I held my hand to my mouth, realizing at least that the man wasn’t Tom. I knew by the heavy boots Rosie’s lover had been wearing and by the rough cap on the mop of unruly hair. And then anger seized me. How dare she do it? Bring a man into my garden and let him . . . do things to her no decent man should be doing, and with the baby at her side! Wasn’t she in enough trouble?
