‘It’ll be hard come winter,’ Mrs Beadle said darkly.
‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s a tough old house, always was,’ said Juliet, trying to sound jaunty, as the sound of the children’s voices grew a little louder. It was them, really, she wanted to get to, to comfort. ‘Reverend Myrtle built it to last. What does it say above the lintel? “Thine heart is warm, when home th’art drawn”.’
Ev used to say it so ‘th’art’ sounded like ‘fart’. They hadn’t been able to walk through the front door without dissolving into hysterics. Oh that summer – when he’d eaten so many blackberries he’d been sick, when Grandi drove them to the beach – what beach was it? And they found a mermaid’s purse and a sea urchin. That was the summer of playing rummy, and Grandi getting crosser and crosser with the two of them, and with Juliet especially. ‘Stop taking it all for granted,’ she’d screamed at her, once. ‘You never ask me about any of it. You don’t care, you little beasts. You don’t know.’
Juliet stepped out into the large entrance hall and stared up the wide staircase at the light well above, her hand resting lightly on the carved little squirrel newel post.
The week after the painting was destroyed, Ned died of the flu. Thousands were dying of it, all over the country, the world. They laid him out in the Dovecote and there he remained until the day of his funeral, when his coffin was carried out of his studio, into this very circular hallway, flooded with light from the round light well at the top of the house.
His widow, Lydia, had stood apart from the others, head to toe in black, black veil over her face, turning slightly away from the procession, as though she could not bear to look, and as the coffin reached the front door she had swivelled around, snatching her veil away from her face.
‘Ned!’ she had called, falling back against the curved wall of the hallway. ‘It was all I had left of them. All that remained of them. Why did you burn them? Damn you, Ned. Damn you!’
Grandi said the pallbearers were so appalled one or two had turned, the others remaining in place, and the coffin fell from their grip and with a thud, the thud of the man inside, it crashed on to the black-and-white-tiled floor, cracking two tiles, one of each colour. One of the pallbearers had refused to carry on with the burial of a man who’d been damned by his own wife, and so there were only three of them, unlucky, uneven.
The tiles where the coffin fell were still cracked, the lines soft, brown-edged, worn with years. Juliet looked down at them. Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Figures from the past, family members, lost spirits, jostling to tell their stories.
Mrs Beadle leaned on her mop. ‘D’you know anyone here, these days?’
‘Well. Frederic? But I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘Him who’s got the antiques shop on the high street? You met George?’
‘Who’s George?’
‘You haven’t met George then,’ said Mrs Beadle grimly. ‘What about the Farmers’ Union? You know any of that lot? Naughty lads and lasses, they can get up to all sorts.’
‘I’m not a farmer.’
‘I don’t think they care, dear. Mind you, they’re banned from the Crown after what happened Guy Fawkes night. There was no call for it, no call at all, and that German fella ought to have sued.’
‘What happened on Guy Fawkes night?’ asked Juliet, horrified. ‘What German?’
‘It’s not for me to say, if you haven’t heard. Who else, then?’
‘There’s a few old faces I know, I’m sure. Look – oh, Brenda, at the newsagent’s—’
‘Dead.’
‘Gosh. I’m sorry. And Gordon the butcher?’
‘In prison.’ Mrs Beadle tapped her nose, significantly. ‘No butcher there anyway. It’s a charity shop now.’
‘Oh – oh dear.’
‘They do lovely cards and wrapping paper, very good value . . . You knew the vicar’s gone? . . . Had a nervous breakdown.’
‘Lovely Leonard? Oh, he was so kind. What a shame, I hope he’s OK.’
‘Lionel, you mean? Not him. We’ve had two since then. Now we share the vicar with six other parishes.’
‘Six?’ said Juliet. ‘How on earth does that work?’
‘Listen, my lovey,’ said Mrs Beadle with relish. ‘Times are different. You can’t come back and expect it to be the same. It’s not what it was when your grandmother was alive. That’s all a long time ago now.’
‘Yes,’ said Juliet. She stared at the cracked floor. ‘A long time ago.’
Mrs Beadle’s voice softened. ‘There’s still people who’ll remember you. Lovely little thing you was, running about the garden all hours of the day with Honor’s boy . . .’ She nodded at her. ‘That’s someone you know! Mrs Adair.’
‘Honor? Ev’s mum? I haven’t seen her for years.’
‘Well, she’ll be ever so glad you’re back. She must miss him something chronic.’
‘Ev, you mean? Where is he, these days?’
Mrs Beadle shrugged. ‘I’d have thought you’d know that better than me.’
Juliet blushed. ‘We’re not really in touch. I’ll ring her though. Be lovely to see her again.’
‘Well, there you go. Oh, your gran ud be pleased to know you was back here. The way she used to talk about you! Your poor old dad, never got a look-in, he did.’ There was an awkward silence as Mrs Beadle, wondering if she had been tactless, swerved away on to a different topic. ‘And what are you going to do down here all day?’
‘I-I’m not sure. I lost my job in May. I need to find something in a couple of months. In the meantime I’ll make sure the children are settled . . . do the house up, all of that.’
‘You make it sound like it’ll only take a week or two,’ said Mrs Beadle, darkly. ‘Forgive a nosy old woman but it’s a lot you’ve taken on. And what about your dad? Ain’t he coming over to help you?’
‘Some time soon,’ said Juliet. She couldn’t help glancing round as she talked, staring at everything. It was all so very unchanged. She was back. ‘Mum’s having an operation on her knee next week so they’ll visit when she’s recuperated.’
A sudden shriek came from upstairs. ‘Oh my god!’ Running feet, appearing at the top of the stairs. ‘Urgh! A mouse! This is disgusting!’
‘I like mice!’ came Isla’s little voice behind her big sister’s. ‘Don’t hurt it, Bea! Leave him alone! Or her! She might have a nest of baby mice . . . Stop it!’
‘Mumma!’ Sandy’s trundling step, thundering on the ceiling above. ‘My want Mumma!’
‘Mum.’ Bea was standing at the top of the stairs, arms folded, glowering. ‘We saw a mouse.’
‘Well . . .’ Juliet twisted her fingers together anxiously, as though the existence of the mouse was entirely down to her.
‘I’m not sleeping somewhere there’s mice. OK?’
Next to her, Mrs Beadle began to chuckle, and then laugh, her large body shaking. ‘Oh, you are funny. Bea, is it?’
‘What?’ said Bea, turning to her furiously. A spot of red burned on each cheek.
‘Bea,’ Juliet said sharply, ‘don’t be so rude. Apologise.’
‘Sorry,’ said Bea, flushing a deeper scarlet.
‘I’ll get on,’ said Mrs Beadle. She looked up at the children. ‘Listen to an old woman, all right? Country mice ain’t the same as town mice. Country mice won’t give you any trouble. They’ve come in from the cornfields over there. There’ll be a heap more of them come September. They’re nice things.’ She turned to Juliet, who was heaving a bag across the hall, as the children melted sullenly into the sitting room. ‘When’s your husband coming down?’
‘We’re separated.’ Juliet found she couldn’t meet Mrs Beadle’s eye. ‘That’s partly why, when the Walkers sold up, I found I could move back here.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry, my dear.’ Mrs Beadle put one large hand on Juliet’s arm, and the dry warmth of it, the kindness of her voice, was almost too much. She took her hand away and then said, as an afterthought, ‘They didn’t
sell up, though.’
‘Yes, they sold the house a couple of months ago.’
‘No. Renting, they was.’
Juliet shrugged – as if it mattered – then she frowned, realising the significance of what had been said. ‘What?’
‘They didn’t own it. I know they didn’t cos they told me. They were given notice to leave.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, yes. She told me in the High Street, Mrs Walker did. She said it were like someone was watching them. Stepping in just in time to tell them to move. Cos they couldn’t cope with this place any more. The garden, and the damp . . . She said it was a relief to hand the old place back again. Oh, they’re in a nice bungalow somewhere. They’ve left their address, I’ll look it out for you, post and that.’
Juliet said again: ‘What? But – it was sold after Grandi died. Not rented. Who’d have rented it to them?’
‘You own the house now, don’t you?’
‘Yes. It was left to me.’ A prickling sensation was running slowly down Juliet’s back. ‘I have the deeds. I just – I wonder who owned the house, then. Who’s given it to . . . to me.’
‘None of my business, I suppose, my dear.’
There was a cry from the sitting room. ‘Mum! What are these things on the mantelpiece?’
‘What?’
Bea appeared in the doorway. ‘Dolls! They’re dolls like in the doll’s house.’
‘I saw them,’ said Mrs Beadle. ‘Wondered who’d left them behind.’
Juliet went into the sitting room. There, on top of the great hearth, were two dolls. They were tied together with a piece of string. Ordinary kitchen string. There was a small piece of paper wrapped around them, like a shield.
‘The doll’s house . . .’ she whispered, and she was afraid now, and didn’t know why. ‘That’s Liddy. That’s Ned.’
‘Who?’
‘He made them for her. I’ve got the children, but I haven’t seen these two for years . . .’
Doll-Liddy’s elaborate hair, coiled up on her head, was worn to the colour of sycamore wood once more. The clothes that Juliet had lovingly stroked as a child were almost perfect: exquisite tiny lawn cotton blouse and green velvet skirt, the tiny cameo brooch, the mobile arms and legs that swung so freely, the head with tiny chips of blue glass for eyes. Doll-Ned, with a small painted pointed beard, a paintbrush in one hand (the wooden-pointed brushhead of which had long ago snapped off), had fared less well – his clothes were worn, the black suit motheaten, threadbare.
A noise behind her made Juliet jump half out of her skin; she dropped the figures on the floor.
‘What’s that?’ said Bea, behind her. She picked up the wooden figures, and stared at them.
‘They’re from the doll’s house,’ said Juliet. She turned the note over.
Dearest Juliet
I give you this glorious house. Look around you.
Know that in living here you continue a line of women going back to my own grandmother Helena whose father built the house. The Reverend David Myrtle was his name.
He caused the new vicarage to be built on the site of the old manor house. His daughter Helena grew up here. She had three children, Rupert, Lydia (my mother), and Mary. I have told you of Liddy’s terrible childhood after Helena died of smallpox. Ned Horner bought the house back for his Liddy and they raised their family there. I was born six months after my father died. Liddy and I grew up here alone – only we were not alone! There are fairies at the bottom of the garden, Juliet. They play at night, when they think I am sleeping.
Enclosed is a little booklet that I have written these last months to stave off winter boredom. You may think of as a how-to guide. It takes you over, this house. She still has secrets to give up, of that I am sure.
You are a very wonderful girl and I loved you. Know that. Find your own way in life, darling. It is there if you look hard enough.
Your loving grandmother
Stella Horner
And underneath, written in rapid, cramped handwriting:
I am not mad, Juliet dearest, though I was made on a mad night and they want to drive me mad. I will tell you what I think: I think they lied to me. I do not think the painting is gone. I think the boy stole it. I think it is somewhere in the house.
‘What does she mean?’ Bea was reading over her shoulder. ‘What painting? What boy?’
Juliet moved away, as though wanting to keep a school secret. ‘Don’t know.’
Propped up behind the figures was an old lined school exercise book, filled with her grandmother’s densely written hand. With a growing feeling of unease, Juliet flicked through it:
March . . . Are all the spring bulbs planted, Juliet? . . . July . . . Lavender oil can be used on sunburn . . . lift the dahlias. Pick the apples. Plant hardy annuals. Clear out the Birdsnest.
She put it down, overwhelmed. Suddenly, she could hear her. See her, standing in the doorway, fists on hips, legs akimbo, tall, slim, the hooked nose and wide dark eyes, the smooth bobbed hair that never seemed out of place. ‘Welcome home, darling,’ she was saying. ‘Welcome—’
The spirits, the ghosts, fairies, whatever they were, seemed louder than ever now, their presence pushing against some boundary between the past and present. Juliet folded up the note, and the exercise book, which felt heavy with the ink of her grandmother’s instructions, and slid them both into her jeans pocket. In the doorway, Isla watched, arms folded.
‘Isla,’ Juliet said, going over and putting her arm round her. ‘Come here, darling.’
‘I want Dad,’ she said, very softly.
Juliet closed her eyes for a moment, and then she dropped a kiss on her soft silver-blonde head. ‘I know, darling. Dad’s in London. This is our house now.’
She crouched down on the ground. I am in charge now. No hiding from anything. She put her arms round Isla, and pulled Sandy on to her lap. She gestured to Bea, who sat down on the floor, stroking her brother’s head. ‘This is Liddy,’ she said, taking the dolls from her. ‘That’s Ned.’
‘Was he the painter?’ said Isla, taking her thumb from her mouth.
‘Yes. Grandi used to tell me about him and Liddy, when I couldn’t sleep.’ Juliet stared at the carving of Ned’s face, his stiff paintbrush, the seam of wood grain that ran almost along the ridge of his nose. ‘I haven’t thought about them for years, not like that.’ Now, she only thought of Ned as a painter, she realised. Not his story as her great-grandfather. ‘I knew about them once. Liddy, her sister, Mary, how they came to live in the house.’
The front door slammed shut, in the sudden breeze, and Sandy and Bea jumped. Isla was still, though.
‘He lived here, then?’
‘Yes. They both did. For years and years and it was wonderful. Until – well, I’m not sure.’ Juliet stood up, holding the younger children’s hands. ‘Let’s go and unpack the car, and make some tea.’
‘What happened to them in the end?’
Juliet glanced at the figures again, and out at the garden. ‘I don’t really know, you see. That, she never told me.’
Chapter Eight
Highgate, May 1891
‘Would you care for some tea, miss?’
‘Oh hush – hush, please, for a moment, dear Hannah! Just a moment—’
Miss Mary Helena Dysart, fourteen years old and, when seen from the back, possessed of an elegant figure and a neatly turned ankle, was peering on tiptoe around the heavy blue-and-gold-brocade curtains hanging at the french windows of the drawing room of St Michael’s House, Highgate. Her burnished-brown ringlets, which unlike her sister’s never needed to be twisted into agonising rags, fell over each shoulder, catching the light; as she bent forward, her tiny frame twining towards the open door and the garden beyond, her whole body seemed to thrum with tension. Hannah, their beloved maid, waited patiently in the doorway.
Beyond the french windows was a small path leading in a straight line to a neat garden edged with scented box. The first roses, delicate
lemon and blush pink, ran riot along the back wall, threatening to overwhelm the formal lines of the garden, to the consternation of Crabtree the gardener. Mr Dysart took on dreadfully if he found a sprig of box growing out of the low bushes, which must be trimmed twice a week in the summer months. Mr Dysart liked everything just so. ‘A garden is to be tamed,’ he used to say, waggling his silver scissors at Crabtree. ‘We are masters of the earth and sky, Crabtree. Remember that.’
And yet behind the rose-covered wall death ruled supreme, for less than ten yards from the garden was the Highgate Cemetery, built some fifty years previously and still the most fashionable location in London in which to be buried. From the bedrooms at the back of the house and Mary’s brother Pertwee’s room in particular one could see the whole expanse of the cemetery spread out below – the catacombs sunk into the hill, the Egyptian Avenue with its great stone-carved gates and columns, the meandering rows of tombs, and the headstones poking up like grey teeth out of the dark earth. At all times of day they could hear the shuffling processions and the muffled sobs as the coffins, all too often too small, were lowered into the ground.
The Dysart girls often hid from their nanny, Nurse Bryant, in Pertwee’s bedroom, The Rookery – for though to start with Rupert was often caned by her and shut up in the dark for his troubles, lately she did not seem to concern herself to the same degree with him. Rupert, always known to the girls as Pertwee, was eighteen now, and a student at the Royal Academy. He was beyond her power; he was free to come and go. From his bedroom his sisters, however, could and did still watch the funerals and mark out of ten the opulence of each once.
Their mother, Helena, had been buried in the cemetery, in a lead-lined coffin because of the smallpox that killed her. At first, they had been required to go every Sunday to visit her grave. Lately, they hardly went at all, and Mary was not even sure now she could recall where precisely her mother lay. Father used to tell them, they were lucky Mother was buried there, in a proper place, rather than one of the hideous graveyards in Soho or St Pancras, where the stink was unbearable and bodysnatchers still lurked, waiting to carry corpses away and carve them into pieces. Her grave was a small slab of marble, just her name and her dates. Next to the carved hourglasses or the broken columns it made her seem so . . . unimportant. And she had not been, not to them.
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