Her children went on amazing her, through an evening of gentle lamplight and firelight. The way Jane said with authority, ‘I’ll make the supper-drinks now.’ And later, shyly, ‘I’ve brought my new ghost-book. Will you read it to us, Mum? You read so well!’
Fancy her remembering, after all these years.
After the story, there was a good satisfied silence. Then Timothy said, airily, ‘This place is quite ghosty.’
‘How . . . what?’
Timothy laughed at having flurried her. ‘ ’S’all right, Mum. I only said quite ghosty. Just a little mystery, really.’
‘What, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Well, this was old Mr. Yaxley’s house, right? His rubbers by the door, his dirty dishes still on the table, right? And Miss Yaxley’s just inherited it, right?’
‘Right!’
‘So why is everything seven years out of date? As if nothing’s been touched in here for seven years?’
It shook her. Because she couldn’t think of any sensible explanation. ‘Oh, something legal, I expect. Legal and boring,’ she said at last.
Timothy laughed, and Jane laughed with him. ‘Poor old Mum,’ said Jane. ‘We won’t let it get you, Mummy! Promise!’
‘Yeah, promise,’ said Timothy, going back to reading his book on the hearthrug by the light of the fire, swinging his legs in pure contentment.
She consoled herself that they were both romantics, at least. Much more like her than Philip.
‘There’s a man at the back door,’ said Jane. ‘He says he’s come to do for us.’
Rose finished brushing her hair and slipped a big sweater on, over her jeans. Jane had brought her a cup of tea in bed and she’d taken it as an excuse to lie in, and listen to the sounds of the kitchen pump being cranked, the range being cleaned out, and a brisk row about how dangerous paraffin was unless you really knew what you were doing. The young master and the young mistress of the haunted castle were obviously hard at it, and she felt the urge to enjoy their efforts, while they lasted.
‘What does he mean – do for us?’
‘Dunno,’ said Jane. ‘I asked, and he just dropped his eyes and shuffled. I asked him in as well, but he wouldn’t come.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘He’s got muddy rubbers and hairy arms and he smells a bit, but not too bad. I think he looks like a dog, but quite a nice dog. He says he’s called Nathan Gotobed. Isn’t that a scream?’
‘Shhh,’ said Rose. When Jane got enthusiastic, her voice carried.
But she had to admit, when she’d flustered her way down the narrow steep dark stairs, that Mr. Gotobed did look exactly like a dog. A blunt-faced jowly sort of dog, with streaks of silver in his black hair, a farmer’s three-day growth of whiskers on his face, and his spectacles mended with black adhesive tape.
The sort of dog her children had always played with on the beach, and longed for at home, and never been allowed. She sighed. She had a feeling that if the kids had their way, she was going to hear a lot of the life and times of Nathan Gotobed. They sort of collected people who drove Philip mad.
‘Morning, missus,’ said Nathan Gotobed, touching his cap, his eyes everywhere but on her. ‘I’ve come to see to the um, you know.’
He jerked his huge stubby-fingered hand towards the brick hut at the bottom of the garden. ‘Always saw to it in old Sepp Yaxley’s day. Twice a week, though three times is better. That keep it nice and sweet.’
‘Yes, by all means,’ said Rose, her hand flying to her throat as if to choke herself lest she be tempted to mention the apparently unmentionable. ‘Three times a week will do nicely. Do you want paying for the erm . . .’ Words failed her.
‘That’s up to you. You can pay at the end of the week,’ said Mr. Gotobed, shuffling. ‘When you’re satisfied it’s nice and sweet. And where do you want it put?’
‘Er . . . where do you suggest?’ The Green part of Rose’s mind wrestled with the ecological implications.
‘Sepp always liked it dug into his potato patch. Gave him some luvly good taters. But you ain’t got a tater-patch no more.’ He surveyed the wreck of the kitchen garden with deep sorrow.
‘I think you’d better just take it Away,’ said Rose. ‘Yes, Away.’
‘Right. Away,’ said Mr. Gotobed. ‘There’s plenty as’ll be glad of it, mixed with a few ashes. So ashes’ll be all right then?’
‘Yes, ashes will be fine,’ said Rose. What else was there to say?
‘Just give the ashes a good stir with a stick, now and again. Keeps it sweet.’
He paused, as if to consider when to See to Things. ‘Best done After Dark,’ he added. ‘What the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve.’
‘Quite,’ said Rose.
‘Anything else you want seeing to? I only do Outsides, yer know,’ he added, very hastily.
Rose surveyed her Outsides – the tangled green jungle. She had the awful feeling that Philip would come roaring down to sort her out, within a week. And she would definitely be one-down if Philip saw her Outsides in this state. It seemed slightly mad to spend money on the garden when you might only stay a week, but, well, it was all slightly mad anyway.
‘Could you weed the gardens? But leave any nice plants. There seem to have been some roses . . .’
‘Aye. Sepp was a great man for his roses, in his day . . .’
Another profound sigh, which gave her the courage to say, ‘How long has Sepp . . . Mr. Yaxley . . . been . . .’
‘Gone? Seven year, this June.’ Yet another deep sigh.
‘His death must have been a great shock to you,’ said Rose, all sympathy.
‘Dead? Who said Dead? Sepp’s been gone this seven year. But I didn’t say Dead.’
And before she could ask more, he was lumbering down towards the brick shed that was the greater part of the Outsides. Where she did not feel inclined to follow.
She turned to see her children, apparently seriously ill with some disease that caused shining, almost tearful, eyes, bright red faces and lips pressed so close together that not even a knife could have separated them.
‘Sepp’s been Gone for seven years this June,’ said Timothy. ‘I didn’t say Dead, I said Gone.’ It was a perfect imitation of Mr. Gotobed, except his voice was hollower, deeper, scarier.
‘When are you having your Outsides seen to, Mummy?’ Jane’s impersonation was, if anything, even better.
Then they flew past her, straight to Mr. Gotobed, with the avidity of vultures coming in on a newly found kill.
She spent the morning doing housework; which she normally loathed. But it had to be spotless before Philip descended; Philip wouldn’t have listened to Darwin, Marx or Einstein if he had found the smallest speck of dust in their studies.
Besides, this wasn’t so much housework as archaeology; or playing the detective at least. She couldn’t do a thing without getting to know Sepp Yaxley. His suits still hung in her wardrobe. She held one against herself. He had been a big man; six foot two at least. And an old-fashioned man indeed, given to lace-up shiny black boots, braces, suspenders and shirts with detachable collars and collar-studs. His fretwork pipe-rack made him a smoker, and the large collection of charred pipes a heavy smoker of many years’ standing. And the vase of folded newspaper spills in the hearth made him a frugal man, not a waster of matches. She unfolded the spills, and found, with a slight shiver, the date June the second, 1981 . . .
In one thing, Miss Yaxley had certainly been wrong. Sepp had not been an untidy hopeless sort of man. The place was very dusty, yes, but apart from the plate and mug on the kitchen table, scrupulously tidy. He’d had no sense of arranging things to their best looking advantage, like a woman. But everything was in its grim, workmanlike place.
Which was what threw her, when she found in the bedroom that had been his (the only bedroom with a used bed and striped pyjamas under the pillow) a pocket-watch, a silver hunter, hung on a bedside stand shaped like a brass windmill.<
br />
If Sepp Yaxley had gone, he had gone without his watch. What kind of prudent frugal man leaves, and doesn’t take his silver watch? And why hadn’t Miss Yaxley taken the watch for safe-keeping? There must be thieves, even around here, and a cottage empty for seven years, with an open back door . . . It didn’t add up at all, especially as no thief had taken it.
The watch said ten to six. But, she told herself angrily, that meant nothing. A watch can run down any time. God, I’m getting as bad as the kids . . .
But she made up her mind to take the watch to Miss Yaxley at the first opportunity. It was wrong, leaving it lying around. Putting temptation in people’s way. She thought her kids were honest, if any kids were today, but even with the nicest kids . . . they were nosy little magpies, who mightn’t realise the value of it. Besides, it would give her the chance to ask Miss Yaxley questions. Questions needed asking.
Sepp’s home-made bookshelves gave her even more food for thought. All good solid old hardbacks, their spines much more faded than the rest of their covers. Paperbacks hadn’t existed for Sepp Yaxley. But Karl Marx was there, well thumbed. Next to the Bible. Next to bound copies of Old Moore’s Almanac and Nostradamus. Not an ignorant farmer; more some kind of rural sage. A book by Aleister Crowley, that she put back as if it was red-hot. Next to the Gardener’s Yearbook . . . Then she felt the need to get on. In case Philip came.
The other thing she noticed was how busy the path to the sea had become. All kinds of folk, but mainly the elderly, strolling in leisurely fashion, carrying such a strange variety of objects; shopping bags and spades, fishing tackle and a large red cabbage. At first she thought the sunshine must have brought them out. But since they returned in the other direction after a very short time, still bearing the same burdens, she formed the suspicion that the burdens were merely excuses, and that they had really come to inspect her and her family. Each, as they passed, had a word with Mr. Gotobed, hard at work in the garden.
‘Now then, Nathan! How are you gittin on?’
‘I’m all right, Tom.’
‘These’ll be the children, then?’
‘That’s right, these be the childer.’
What empty lives they must lead, she thought, shaking her duster out of the window, to make us into a great show! It also piqued her that no one noticed her. No eye was raised, even when she shook out the duster. No hand was waved in greeting. She would have liked to have waved back, given them a smile.
Having told her the previous night what good fun she was to be with, the children spent all the morning with Mr. Goto-bed.
‘Mr. Gotobed brought a great barrow-load of ashes,’ said Jane over lunch.
‘Aye, she be right sweet now, she be!’ said Timothy.
They both giggled.
‘But he wouldn’t go in that wash-house next door,’ said Timothy. ‘We tried to show him that yuck stuff in the boiler, but he wouldn’t go near it. He was scared to go in. He was sweating. He told us we must never go in there, little master and missus!’
‘Don’t be silly!’ said Rose uncomfortably.
‘All right. You try him. Try offering him five pounds to empty that stuff from the boiler!’
‘You mustn’t pester him, or make fun of him. It’s cruel!’ said Rose. ‘Besides, what if he didn’t come back? We’d be in a right mess then, wouldn’t we? D’you want to walk up to Miss Yaxley’s every time you want the toilet?’
That made them thoughtful; for a moment. Then Timothy said, ‘He’s dead scared of cats, too!’
‘How’d’you know that?’ Rose almost snapped. After a hard morning’s housework, it was too much that they were trying to scare her. She felt mildly betrayed.
‘A cat came. It sat on the wall. He threw clods of earth at it. Said that cats were nasty dirty creatures that laid on newborn babes and stole their breath away. Said folks would never prosper, that kept a cat.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Rose. Then ‘What sort of cat was it?’ Rose, all of them, were very fond of cats.
‘Just an old black-and-white thing. It’s all right, he didn’t hit it. It dodged. We never saw it again.’
Three
After lunch, Rose decided to tackle the sitting-room. It wasn’t an attractive room like the kitchen. It was north-facing, full of stiff cold Victorian furniture with the blue bloom of damp on it. A room, she thought, only fit for the minister to sit in, or funerals. But Philip would want to go in there . . .
She had just started with the ancient wooden carpet-sweeper when Jane came in, saying Mr. Gotobed wanted permission to lay the hedge. Rose looked out of the window at the jungly mass of hawthorn, and said he could, and the best of British luck. As she carried on with the squeaking carpet-sweeper, she heard the thuds of heavy hacking start outside. It sounded like a massacre, and for some reason she shuddered. Maybe it was just the cold and damp in the sitting-room . . . He was certainly putting his back into it.
As she was herself. A thick cold cloud of dust arose, seeping nastily into her throat, half-blinding her. Seven years’ dust . . .
It was while she was pushing furniture around that she found the book under the big armchair by the fireplace. It was quite unlike Sepp Yaxley’s other books. An old thin book bound in dull grey wrinkled leather that looked, she thought absurdly, a bit like dirty human skin. It seemed to have been sewn together by hand, with thin black twine. She opened it reluctantly. The pages were dirty and yellow, but firm and uncrumbling. They were covered with tiny hooked handwriting, not decipherable in this dim light. She had far too much to do . . . She left it on the arm of the chair, meaning to put it in the bookcase later.
Then Timothy dashed in, to say come and see how incredibly clever Mr. Gotobed was being. He was not only cutting down the hedge, he was weaving it into a kind of basket-work, half-cutting branches and twisting them over. Timothy’s eager look was, as ever, irresistible. Besides, she was sick of the cold and dust. Wiping her hands on her backside, she strolled out into the warm balmy afternoon air.
The first stretch of hedge had been reduced to a narrow five-foot-high barrier, as ingeniously woven as Tim had said. It made the garden look much bigger. Mr. Gotobed stood humbly panting and touching his cap, awaiting her approval and looking more like a dog than ever. It made her feel suddenly like the lady of the manor.
‘Lovely,’ she said. The wrinkled folds of his face split into a boyish grin, and she thought with a sudden tiny fear and sorrow that there was a hopeful schoolboy trapped, even inside the old leathery reptilian folds of Mr. Gotobed’s skin.
‘I’ll ha’ it all laid by tonight,’ he said. ‘That ain’t the right season for the work, really. That’s winter work, when theer’s nought else to do. But the ol’ hedge ’ll come again awright. That’s good to be hedgin’ again. In the old days, brother an’ me we could lay a hundred yards of hedge a day. But there in’t no call for them now, with them there cutters on tractors.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt your hands?’
‘Not if you’ve got the right tackle.’ He held up his hands. His huge stubby fingers stuck out of thick black ragged leather gauntlets. One hand held a glint-edged billhook of a shape so savage it made her shudder. It might have cut down a tax-collector in the Peasants’ Revolt.
‘Would you like a coffee? Or a cold drink?’ she said to the black weapons of massacre, afraid that her shudder might have given offence.
He said, ‘A cold drink would do nicely, missus.’ Then he caught himself and looked suddenly worried, as if he’d let himself be carried away too far by the general good humour. ‘If you ain’t got a beer,’ he added cautiously.
‘I haven’t got beer. We’ve got Coke?’ It seemed absurd to be offering someone out of the Peasants’ Revolt a Coke. But he beamed at her now.
‘Coke ’ll do fine, missus. I like a nice Coke.’
‘Come in, then, come in!’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘Straight from the can, or would you like a glass?’
No answer.
She turned, and found he was nowhere to be seen. Baffled, she went outside again. He was sitting in the boiling sun, on an old bench by the kitchen door.
‘Do come in! It’s cool in the kitchen! You could do with cooling off!’
‘No, missus, I’ll stop here. Sepp Yaxley allus let me sit here, when I was restin’!’ Behind his mended glasses, his face was stubborn, defiant, unknowable. Like a thick-skinned reptile’s again. But there was the slightest quaver of panic in his voice, and his hands were shaking, though that might have been just the exertion.
‘Oh, suit yourself,’ she said, a bit put out; and got the can of Coke and gave it to him. Watched those thick stubby fingers pull at the tab, and need three tries to do it. His hands really were trembling.
Oh, really, it was just age and exertion.
There seemed nothing else to say, so she went back to her dusting.
She left the mantelpiece till last. It was crammed with stuff. An American clock, that Tim had failed to get going. Several big bits of Staffordshire pottery, with whole arms and legs missing. Bundles of papers behind every one. An avalanche waiting to fall.
She started cautiously at the left-hand end. A miniature brass milk-churn with a lid. But, careful as she was, she nearly dropped it. It weighed a ton. The thin wire handle cut into her fingers. Must be full of lead . . .
She put it on the table and took the lid off and peered inside. It seemed full of pound coins; but oddly shiny new pound coins. Surely pound coins had come in less than seven years ago? She tipped them out. No, they weren’t pound coins. Too thin. A Queen’s head on them, but the wrong Queen . . . Victoria. She turned one of them over.
Dear God, they were sovereigns!
Sixty-four gold sovereigns. By the time she had finished counting them, her own hands were trembling. She had nearly ten thousand pounds under her fingers.
Astonishment turned into sudden fury. Leaving such money in a house let to visitors! Where there were children . . . it was criminal. Accusations of theft could start at any moment! A silver watch was bad enough, but this . . . !
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