‘Just like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,’ said Jane, mocking Rose’s old-fashioned stories.
‘Sleeping Beauty’s got big feet,’ said Timothy, pointing to a huge pair of black rubbers sheltering under the porch.
Rose eyed the rubbers nervously. They were smeared with clay; someone had got muddy fingers taking them off, and wiped those fingers clean across the black rubber near the top. The heels were well-worn on the outsides, which should make the owner an optimist; but an optimist without the money to buy a new pair. Big feet indeed; and big feet made a big man. A big old man suddenly appearing and telling her off for trespassing, as if she were a child . . .
‘I think we’d better go . . .’
‘No, no,’ said Timothy, cunningly vanishing round the corner of the house and out of her power. She had to follow him, to get a grip on things. But he’d found something else. Vast thin plants towering above the general weeds, with bunches of yellow flowers at the top.
‘Cabbages run wild,’ he said.
‘Mind they don’t bite you,’ said Jane.
But now Rose could see, under the burgeoning weeds, gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, the outline of a whole wrecked kitchen garden. And another brick building at the bottom of that garden.
‘A little house,’ said Jane. ‘This one’s mine.’
‘ ’S’not,’ said Timothy on principle. They ran to it side by side, elbowing each other all the way. Wrestled to open one of the two doors. The building was a single-storey job, not much bigger than a hut. But it had the same sagging pantiles, and even a little brick chimney.
The first door nearly came off its hinges, as Rose got there. Over the children’s heads, inside, she could see whitewashed walls, and loose flakes of whitewash spinning on the end of cobwebs. And a broad unpainted box stretching from wall to wall, with an oval hole in the middle of it.
‘What is it?’ asked Timothy. ‘There’s a big bucket under the hole. Doesn’t half niff.’
‘It’s the bathroom,’ said Rose, feeling for once more knowing than her children.
‘Bathroom?’ said Jane, shocked. ‘You mean even in the middle of the night?’
‘There’s probably a new proper one, inside the house,’ said Timothy in his lordly way.
‘I doubt it,’ said Rose smugly. Not a chance of main drainage out here, and there was no sign of a septic tank. But she noticed, on the back of the outhouse door, a large rusty nail; and on the nail, large roughly-torn pieces of newspaper.
‘Is that to read?’ asked Jane.
‘To wipe your bottom on,’ said Rose a trifle savagely. Spoilt little brats. That’d show them. Though, to be truthful, she’d never used newspaper in her life . . .
But far from being put off, the children were utterly fascinated. Timothy took the bundle of newspaper off the nail. It was very brown, and began to crumble between his fingers.
‘This outhouse was last used on the fourth of June, 1981. Daily Mail. MCC weren’t doing very well.’
‘Bighead,’ said Jane. ‘What’s next door?’
‘Probably the wash-house,’ said Rose, as she was rocked by the scramble to get past her.
It was the wash-house. With a huge iron boiler set in brick, over a tiny grate filled with white ashes.
‘They boiled all their clothes in here,’ said Rose, lifting the lid and peering down into the boiler.
‘Yuk,’ said the children together, holding their noses. ‘That’s not clothes.’
The boiler was full of black liquid, giving off a very putrid smell.
‘That’s not clothes,’ said Timothy. ‘That’s supper!’
‘Probably hasn’t been used for a hundred years,’ said Rose with an attempt at lightness over a horrible desire to retch, as she slammed back the lid.
‘No, Mum, no,’ said Timothy, bending to the grate with the pile of white ash. He extracted another triangle of brown newspaper, charred at the edges. ‘June the first, 1981.’
For some reason, that threw Rose pretty badly. ‘C’mon, let’s go. It’s nearly lunchtime. And we’ve got to find the car yet.’
‘Aw, Mum, no!’ they chorused. Timothy added, ‘This is the best thing we’ve done this holiday!’
‘Better than that rotten crazy-golf at Cromer!’
‘Better than Indiana Jones!’
‘Even better than East-Enders!’ From Jane, that was praise indeed.
For the rest of her life, Rose was to blame herself. But at the time, it was two against one. And if they chose, they could make her life heaven or hell. In her rebellion against Philip, she needed allies.
They peered through the dusty kitchen window, shading their eyes with their hands.
‘No faucets,’ said Timothy. ‘Just a sort of village-pump thing. D’you think you have to pump the water up?’
‘ ’Spect so,’ said Jane. ‘Somebody’s left the washing-up!’
Dimly, on the big kitchen table, Rose could see a mug; and a plate, with the knife and fork and some furry things still on it.
‘I wonder . . .’ said Timothy. And the next second he was trying the kitchen door, with its two long panes of pebbled glass, and blistered maroon paint. To Rose’s horror, it swung open with a screech and Timothy vanished inside.
‘Tim, no!’
But he was in the kitchen already, grimacing at her through the dusty window, putting his thumbs in his ears and wiggling his fingers. She dashed in after him, to restore order, with Jane hard on her heels.
He pointed triumphantly to a dog-eared calendar from a Norwich seed-firm that hung by the sink, and said in deep booming sinister tones, ‘June the eighth, 1981.’
Rose looked; every date til then had been crossed out, with a blue Biro cross.
‘And,’ added Timothy, ‘he had bacon and egg for breakfast, and didn’t finish it.’
One look at the furry things on the plate nearly finished Rose.
But the next second she heard his feet thundering up the stairs.
By the time she finally got them back outside and on to the path, it was past two o’clock. And the mist was still down, and they were no nearer the car. Rose had the mildly desperate conviction that the day was going totally out of control. She had meant to take them round Holkham Hall. Or out to Blakeney Point to watch the birds.
But instead they had looked under made-up beds and found blue-flowered chamber-pots.
‘Potties for grannies!’
They had got into everything, except the old locked cupboard in the wall of the sitting-room, by the fireplace.
Timothy had opened the cases of all the old clocks, and got them ticking, if only for a minute. They had found a rusty corkscrew and a rusty can-opener with a bull’s-head on it, and wanted to know how they worked. She had never known them so fascinated, so absorbed, so gentle . . . education, she thought, practical history. They wouldn’t let them use can-openers at Holkham Hall . . .
And she herself had seldom felt so delighted, so safe.
‘It’s like Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ she murmured to herself; but not softly enough.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mummy, cut the Goldilocks crap,’ said Jane.
‘Don’t use that word,’ said Rose. But gently. For she was totally in love with the sloping ceilings of the bedrooms, the old wallpaper with sprigs of flowers; with the old range in the kitchen, sorely in need of steel wool on the bright parts, and cleanser on the black. It was just like her own granny’s. So real. So unlike plastic Ionic columns and computers and car phones and plane reservations for Salzburg.
Now, as she carefully closed the gate, the sun broke through the mist, for the first time that day. The low-roofed cottage seemed to smile at her, its reds terribly old and red and its greens so luscious-fresh she felt like eating them.
And at that very moment, Timothy said, ‘Hey, Mum, can we stay there? Live there for a bit? We’re only pissing about on this holiday. We’re not going anywhere, really.’
It c
ut her to the quick; half-destroyed her will, that they should guess so much. Why do we pretend our children don’t notice things, she asked herself, hopelessly. Why do we comfort ourselves by pretending they’re stupid?
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said feebly. ‘No hot water. No proper john. Nowhere within miles to park the car . . .’
‘Wouldn’t be any harder than camping,’ said Timothy, in his wheedling voice. That made her feel guilty, too. For years the kids had asked to go camping. But Philip said he liked comfort on his vacation, and needed to know what sort of people he was going to meet . . .
‘No electricity . . .’
‘Aw, c’mon, Mum! You’re worse than Dad.’
Timothy could not have said a deadlier thing. She looked at their two expectant cherubic hopeful faces. If they didn’t get their own way, the rest of this vacation would be a desert. There were a million ways they could stick pins in her.
And they were such fun, when they chose to be good. Such good company.
‘How would we get the cases from the car?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Jane. ‘On my own.’ Her face was set; she really meant it.
‘And what about the john in the middle of the night?’
‘We could use the potties for grannies . . .’
‘I’ll take her down the garden,’ said Timothy hastily, before Jane wrecked the scheme. ‘I’ve got my torch.’
Then they both chorused, ‘Oh, c’mon, Mum!’
Why not? said a voice inside her. The house, for all its years of standing empty, was as dry as a bone. There was dust and rust, but nothing dangerous. This was England . . . And if the kids got fed up in a couple of days, it would be their own fault. And it wouldn’t cost all that much . . .
She took a deep breath and said, ‘We’ll go and see.’
‘Aw, Mum!’ They hugged her with shining faces, as they had not done for years.
Two
Quarter of a mile up the path, they came to the village of Wallney. Not much of a village; four big farmhouses, a couple of rows of flint-and-brick cottages, pub, sub-post office and an old-fashioned red phone-box. But enough to half-restore Rose’s sanity. The owner of the house wouldn’t want to let it just for a week, or even a fortnight. This was no holiday cottage. The thought brought relief.
But there was the Beach House, one of the four farmhouses. Well kept, but not a working farm. Weeds grew in front of the barn doors. Rose walked up the well-kept front garden, and knocked on the door of the little glass porch. Too late, she realised the front door was never used. The porch was full of potted plants, several big ones right in front of the door itself.
An inner door opened, and a grey-haired woman in spectacles appeared. Respectable-dowdy, with sharp blue eyes and a very stubborn mouth. She gestured angrily, indicating some other entrance that should be used. It put poor Rose one-down from the start. She blundered for a long time round the barns and farmyard, trying to find a way through, until finally the woman opened a door in a six-foot wall, and looked at her as if she was an idiot.
‘We’ve come,’ faltered Rose, ‘about renting the house. Only for a week or a fortnight . . .’ She was almost ready to take to her heels and run. Only the small eager figures on each side of her kept her steady.
‘Oh, come in,’ said the woman impatiently, and led the way with vigorous but erratic steps, as if she had arthritis but was trying to trample it underfoot by sheer will-power.
The kitchen they were led into was uncannily like the one they had just left, except it was shining and alive. There was a glowing coal fire, which cheered Rose up, even in the middle of July. A grandfather clock ticked soothingly. There was a bundle of knitting in a chair, and a tray laid for tea, with a glass sugar-basin. Various chairs were occupied by various teddy-bears, one wearing full-size spectacles.
And straightaway, Rose was under a spell. This indeed was her granny’s kitchen come again. She felt very small, but very safe.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ said the woman impatiently.
They sat, careful not to inconvenience the teddy-bears.
‘We’re interested in the house up the path, Mrs . . .’
‘Miss,’ said the woman decisively, as if that disposed of marriage for good and all. ‘Miss Yaxley. Were you thinking of renting or buying? Renting is thirty pounds a week; buying is fifteen thousand freehold, including the furniture thrown in.’
Rose gasped at such bluntness. And such cheapness. Why, she had more than fifteen thousand pounds of her own money. She had a sudden wild vision of herself sitting in the cottage, writing to invite Philip up for the weekend. On to her own patch. Where he would be a little diffident, and do as he was told. The prospect was alarmingly attractive. In order to head her imaginary letter to Philip correctly, she said, ‘What’s the house called?’
‘Beach Cottage. Belonged to my brother. Just inherited it under his will. I’ve got no use for it. Takes me all my time to keep this place going, at my time of life. Much too much for me. Much too much.’
‘We thought we’d like to try it for a week . . .’ faltered Rose. ‘To see if the children like it. Then perhaps . . .’
She was sure this woman would sweep away her nonsense with a flood of biting common sense. But Miss Yaxley seemed to be very much of two minds. She turned aside, and rubbed at a tiny spot on the chrome teapot, as if it was annoying her intensely.
‘It’s no place for children,’ she said in a low voice. ‘My brother was an old man . . .’
‘I think it’s brill,’ said Timothy, turning on his most charming smile like a searchlight. He had a swift eye for adult indecision. But Rose thought for once Timothy had overreached himself. Miss Yaxley gave him a grim look, as if to say children should be seen but not heard. She seemed to come to a decision and Rose was sure the answer would be no.
So she was all the more amazed when Miss Yaxley said, ‘Very well. I don’t suppose a week can do any harm.’ She was still vigorously rubbing away at the spot on the teapot, which showed no sign of moving. Then she said, rather grudgingly but also rather guiltily, ‘I’ll only charge twenty pounds for the first week. You’ll have to clean the place up. Men live in such a muddle. They’re hopeless. But I’d like the rent in advance. Weekly in advance.’
There was more thissing and thatting, but in the end Miss Yaxley drove them back to the windmill herself in her battered Morris Minor with the dry bird-droppings turning into rust-stains on the bonnet. Rose thought that, having made her mind up, Miss Yaxley was not only keen to get them into the cottage, but also curiously keen to get rid of them.
They were done and settled in by nine. The children had truly amazed her. They’d worked like little Trojans. Rose was astonished that children could work so hard. Still, the whole thing had been their idea.
Timothy, who was practical like Philip, had discovered a drum of paraffin in a lean-to, filled the oil-lamps and got them going. He used more paraffin, in a careful calculating way that brought her out in a cold sweat, to get the fire in the kitchen range going. He had also got the water-pump over the sink to work. At first it had only made disgusting wheezing sounds, but Tim had poured water down it from a butt in the garden, calling it ‘priming the pump’ very professionally. At first it had pumped evil rusty red stuff, but now it ran clear, though Rose had visions of outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and hurried dashes to the hospital in Norwich, and how would you ever get an ambulance up that path but if you boiled all the water . . . Now he was winding up all the clocks and really getting them ticking.
And Jane had sweated up the path many times with the luggage and then gone with a huge list of groceries to the sub-post office, and staggered back again, still without complaint, and even thought to buy all available hot-water bottles. And boiled huge black kettles, and shoved all the hot-water bottles into the beds, which did seem quite clean, thank God, only awfully dusty and sneeze-making. Now she used the black kettle again to make tea, and se
ttled down to drink hers.
‘We’re a nine-days’ wonder in the village,’ she announced. ‘Everybody staring at me and yak, yak, yak behind their hands. The woman in the shop asked me how long we were staying, and when I said only a week to start with she said, “Just as well, my booty, just as well.” What on earth do you think she meant by that?’
‘Cholera,’ said Rose, in a mock-hollow voice. ‘Typhoid, dysentery. Double pneumonia from damp beds.’ She was hovering uncertainly between hilarity and hysteria.
They stared at her, amazed. Then Jane said, ‘Mummy made a joke.’
And Timothy said, ‘You’re quite good fun, really, Mum.’
And Rose could’ve wept.
She walked up to the phone-box through the dusk. Timidly cancelled their reservation at the hotel that had been expecting them since six o’clock. Feeling very guilty, though the girl on the desk couldn’t have cared less. These were hotels that Philip’s secretary had booked for them, because they belonged to a branch of Philip’s firm, and he got a good discount. They were comfortable but all the same inside, and boring, with fat salespeople filling the TV lounge after dinner, snoozing over quiz shows. Whereas she was mistress of Beach Cottage . . .
Then she rang Philip, her head whirling with excuses and defences. And got the answering-machine. When his clear commanding voice said, ‘Please speak after the tone,’ she gabbled the address of the cottage, said, ‘Explain later,’ and fled.
The mist was returning over the salt-marshes as she walked back. Not dense, but ghosting everything, as Rose put it to herself. Making slightly and delightfully menacing shapes that turned out to be only a stunted tree, or a can of farm chemicals left on a gatepost. She felt absurdly young for thirty-eight, in a way that amazed her; she felt like kicking up her heels in spite of her tiredness. The distant glow from the windows of Beach Cottage was very welcoming, and the smoke from the chimney. This is how I felt when I was eighteen, she thought in delight. And one of a goodly company. Oh, Philip, Philip, what have you been doing to me?
Spectral Shadows Page 22
