Kingsholt

by Susan Holliday

  Later that evening, when they were eating in the kitchen, Chloe told her mother how she had met Nimbus and what he had said. Mum dismissed the accusation with a laugh. ‘Of course Uncle George didn’t kill Rosie. It was an accident. She ran out when he was felling the tree. It’s grief speaking, my dear. No parent can get over the death of a child.’

  Aidan leaned towards Chloe. ‘Keep away from Nimbus,’ he said in his deep, even voice. ‘He’s a bitter man, especially these days. He has a new partner but it hasn’t worked out. As you’re beginning to understand, there’s more to Kingsholt than meets the eye. Terrible things once happened in this valley and history always has its echoes. It’s those echoes we must fight if we are ever going to bring peace to this place again. Mind you, there are good corners. The little cottage where Leela and Tyler live has always been untouched by any darkness and let’s pray Leela will keep it that way.’

  Chloe left her omelette piled on one side of her dish. She slipped through the kitchen door and ran up two floors to her room. Lying on the bed, she looked up at the torn wall paper. Small bits flapped from the ceiling like brown moths. Sunlight smeared the dusty window that overlooked the valley and hills at the front of the house. If she did up her bedroom she would feel better. Or would she? Perhaps she should write to Sam again, at least he lived in a normal world. She looked round for a biro and scraps of paper and scrawled hurriedly. But she hadn’t written to him for ages and it wasn’t good enough so she screwed up the letter and threw it on the floor. She would try again later.

  Still feeling unsettled, she ran downstairs, found some stale bread in the kitchen and went up to the hospital cage where Aidan looked after the wounded animals and birds.

  ‘At least everyone can see what’s the matter with you,’ she told them, stuffing the bread through the wire. A rook hopped over to grab the largest crust and she was so absorbed watching the scared smaller birds peck and run, that she was unaware of anyone approaching.

  ‘There’s many a bird with a broken wing,’ said a voice behind her. Chloe jumped and wheeled round to face Nimbus.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Walking. I often walk in the evening.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you round here before,’ she said.

  Nimbus nodded. ‘I’ve kept myself to myself but from now on things are going to be different.’

  He stared at the cage. ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘My Rosie liked animals like you. She had a barrel laid on its side where she kept ferrets. She watched them for hours in their run.’

  He was holding a child’s plastic bucket full of worms and he threw them through the cage bars. The birds vied with each other to peck at them.

  ‘Survival of the fittest,’ he said, nodding at a blackbird with a trailing wing. ‘He won’t make it, not for long.’

  After that Chloe often met Nimbus wandering about the valley. He would show her the wild flowers, the birds, the badger holes and the secret tracks where the foxes walked. And yet there was no subject that did not lead him back to Rosie. Perhaps it was because of her own unsettled feelings that she found herself becoming more trusting.

  She was off her guard when he first offered her the pills. It was the day when the bully at school had shown up her accent by mimicking her and making the others laugh.

  ‘This’ll help,’ he said when she told him – and it was true.

  That afternoon her spirits lifted, she felt as if even school would never get her down again. From then on, whenever she was depressed, she took what he offered and liked the way he included her, as if he was her ally against her new school and this great ruin of a house and all the grandiose plans. Yet she didn’t altogether trust him. As the days passed, she realized there was something strange and bitter about the way he talked to her, almost as if – dare she think it – as if it was all her fault that Rosie had died. But then his voice would turn soft and lingering, so she couldn’t resist it. He had a deep, commanding voice, not like Dad, who often sounded breathless and exhausted, or Mum, who was always sighing. Chloe found herself telling him about her old house and the friends she really missed. But she never mentioned Sam. There was no need, she thought.

  Chapter Three

  One day Nimbus said to Chloe, ‘Come up to my place. You can meet Gina and the baby, and maybe you can help Tammy. She can’t read any more than I can.’

  Chloe toyed with the idea for a long time, peeping from her bedroom window at the stone cottage on the slope above the wood. Then, one Saturday, when no one else was about, she found herself walking towards it, holding a book for Tammy, as if someone else had decided for her. She had refused to accompany Mum and Dad to the market, watching them sweep up the drive in the Range Rover, stopping while Mum opened the gate. Her mother had turned and waved, and for a moment, Chloe wished she had gone with them. Then the car disappeared round the corner and she caught sight of the smoke rising from Nimbus’s cottage like a signal.

  She went quickly through the dark wood, past the dead tree – the Nimbus Tree – and out onto the sloping field where the stone building stood. It was dilapidated, with a lopsided front door and a garden overgrown with thistles. Rusty toys lay about in the grass and Nimbus was holding an axe in both hands, swinging the blade down onto a large log.

  ‘Mind the thistles,’ he said but it was too late. Chloe tripped over a stone and put out her hand to keep her balance. A small prick of blood rose on her forefinger, a tiny, bright red sphere.

  Wiping it away, she looked up. A little way off, a girl – surely it was Tammy – was sitting on the grass, painting her toe nails bright red.

  ‘I’ve brought you a book,’ said Chloe, ‘We could read it together.’

  ‘No point.’ Tammy, barely looking up, ‘I’ve finished school.’

  ‘How old are you then?’

  ‘Sixteen, aren’t I?’

  She was slight boned with a mass of auburn hair round her pale face and blank eyes, one hazel, one green. She’s more like twelve, thought Chloe, and it’s not just her looks. It’s the way she’s painting her toenails, hunched up, intense, private, like a twelve year old acting big. She doesn’t like me, she thought.

  ‘Your dad wants you to learn to read,’ she said, ‘and I’ve especially chosen this book. It’s about a girl who hears voices. Well, it’s about St. Joan —’

  Tammy laughed. ‘Hears voices? I do that all right, don’t I Dad?’

  Nimbus put down his axe and looked up. His brown arms glistened with sweat. His jeans were torn at the knee and his old vest was full of holes.

  Tammy screwed the lid onto the bottle of nail varnish, took the book from Chloe and hurled it at the house. ‘That’s what I think of that.’

  ‘It’s not mine,’ said Chloe angrily. ‘It’s from Kingsholt. And if you feel like that I won’t bother again.’ She ran to pick it up. To her surprise Nimbus threw back his brown head and laughed.

  ‘She’s like me, eh? No truck with reading or writing. Give it a miss today, Chloe. Who knows, Tammy might end up carrying everything up here, see?’ He tapped his head. ‘Can you read my mind, Tammy?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Tammy, shooting him a conspiratorial look.

  She went indoors while Nimbus picked up his axe again and felt its edge. His arm swung back and down and the log sprang apart. He spoke softly as if he knew what Chloe was feeling. ‘There’ll be other days. She’ll get by, people like us always do. Come on in and eat with us, Chloe. We got baked taters today. She’s good at baked taters is our Tammy.’

  Dark and dusty, thought Chloe as she stepped inside the cottage. An old-fashioned iron stove stood inside the wide chimney place. It had two doors side by side, one for the oven, the other for the fire. Wood ash filtered down onto the stone floor and over the rag rug that spread, discoloured and dull, before the hearth. Tammy knelt down, opened the door of the oven and poked at the jacket potatoes with a sharp knife.

  She’ll never be my friend, thought Chloe.

 
Nimbus took off his boots and stretched out on a ragged couch that was covered with a dirty tartan rug. ‘Got some for her then?’

  ‘Plenty of jackets,’ said Tammy. ‘They’re good and ready.’ She grinned and waved the knife at Chloe. ‘We don’t use these things, see? We use these.’ She held up her small red-nailed hands.

  ‘Fingers and newspaper,’ said Nimbus. ‘That’s when you really taste the food. Like taters?’

  Chloe nodded.

  ‘Gina and the baby won’t be back from the market yet. We might as well begin.’

  Tammy took hold of a dirty cloth and pulled an iron tray out of the small oven. They all sat on the floor and held the potatoes in napkins of newspaper. It’s a truthful way of life, thought Chloe, not bothering about knives and forks. No thick butter or creamy milk, just potatoes and a glass of water.

  They ate in silence, until Nimbus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spoke in a slow voice. ‘So you’ve inherited Kingsholt, is that right?’

  ‘My Dad has. I don’t want it, I never did. It’s big and ugly.’

  Nimbus crashed his free fist onto the ground. ‘It’s a palace,’ he said fiercely, ‘and by any rights it should be ours. Your Uncle George killed our Rosie and left us nothing. We have nothing. NOTHING. I can’t work now I’m not in the circus.’

  Chloe had never seen his eyes flash like that, black, angry eyes.

  ‘He used to be a hypnotist and a trapeze artiste,’ said Tammy, nodding at her father. ‘That was before he hurt his foot.’ She looked up proudly. ‘I’ve seen him walk the sky. Until he fell.’

  Chloe whistled. It was all Dad could do to crawl into the car. She peered down at Nimbus’s feet, then at one of the big dusty boots lined with newspaper.

  ‘I was lucky not to be dead,’ he said. Then, after a while, ‘Enjoying it?’

  Chloe nodded and wiped her mouth with her hand as he had done.

  Nimbus finished eating, screwed up the newspaper into a ball and threw it into the stove. A fierce orange flame shot up.

  ‘Tammy would like you around, wouldn’t you, Tammy? Reading or no reading.’

  ‘Instead of Rosie?’ asked Tammy, both eyes blank.

  Nimbus ignored her and smiled at Chloe. ‘When you come up here I’ll teach you —’ He broke off and brought more logs for the fire.

  ‘We keep it going all the year round,’ he said, shoving on another log and carelessly raking the ash, ‘no matter how hot it be. This is a cold cottage at the best of times.’ He looked intently at Chloe. ‘It’s in the stones, my dear, and in the history.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Chloe.

  Chapter Four

  It was two weeks later when Nimbus told Chloe all about the cottage. She had often met him in the valley but had never gone back to the pest house on the hill. There was something about it that made her afraid.

  ‘Come on up,’ said Nimbus on a day when she was feeling very isolated. ‘Tammy’s wondering why she never sees you. She gets out of sorts, does our Tammy, without her sister or her mother.’ Loneliness was something Chloe understood, so this time she went up to the cottage and Nimbus took her inside. No one else was in the room.

  ‘It’s called the pest house,’ he said, ‘and that’s what it was.’ He pointed to the rough wall on the right of the window. ‘In the very old part over there – that’s where them with the plague were left to die.’

  Chloe looked at the dark corner of the room. Shadows and cobwebs flapped from the ceiling, and on the flint wall a corn dolly, a horseshoe and a black pendant hung from three rusty nails. Nimbus’s words came out oddly, as if he was using someone else’s voice.

  ‘Aye, the Black Death. Blood spitting, putrid inflammation, black spots, tumours on thighs and arms.’

  Tammy clattered downstairs and smirked as if she had been listening. Chloe’s mind raced back to the lesson in school about the fourteenth century, when the Black Death had killed over a third of the population of England. She touched the walls and imagined she heard the ring of the death bell and a voice calling, ‘Throw out your dead, throw out your dead.’ She rubbed her eyes. Dad always said she had too much imagination for her own good.

  Nimbus took the pendant from the wall. It was jet black and shiny and there was a hole in the top where a thin thread of leather had been strung. A funny sort of thing to have, thought Chloe as he swung it in front of her. She found herself looking at it intently, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

  ‘Backwards and forwards,’ Nimbus was saying in a soft hypnotic voice, ‘backwards and forwards, like the buzzard that flies free in the wood.’ He paused. ‘There are secrets, Chloe, grave matters to resolve, things to find out. You must do as we do, think as we think. Be one of us, one of the Nimbus tribe. And never listen to Aidan. He has nothing to tell you but lies. Come now, look into my eyes —’

  Chloe met his gaze and found herself leaning towards Nimbus, as if he was a magnet. It was like the dream she sometimes had, when she couldn’t move, although a great black rock was about to tumble on her. Yet always, at the last minute, she stepped aside and the rock fell a little way off without harming her. He began to count slowly down from ten and Chloe found herself swaying to his voice as if it was quite a natural thing to do. The pendant traced smaller and smaller arcs and eventually came to a standstill. Nimbus was silent for a while and then he spoke. Although Chloe could never recall what he said, she remembered the bitter conviction in his voice.

  With an enormous effort she moved away from him. A little later she had an uneasy feeling something strange had happened. She looked round but nothing very much had changed. Only Tammy had moved and was stuffing tight balls of newspaper into the fire, her red hair glowing in the colour of the shooting flames.

  ‘I must go now,’ said Chloe hurriedly. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

  Nimbus hung the pendant back over the rusty nail. ‘Children are always in a hurry. But I’m not. I have time. Plenty of time.’ He saw her to the door. ‘You will come back, won’t you? I’ve a thing or two to sort out and I could do with your help.’

  Chloe nodded and went out into the sunshine. She walked quickly down through the wood, fearful that Nimbus would come after her, yet wondering why she was so afraid. He and Tammy were her friends, weren’t they, needing her help, asking her to go back? Of course, Mum had told her not to talk to strangers but he wasn’t a stranger, was he? He was part of Kingsholt.

  There was a sudden ruffle in the trees overhead and through the shadows she saw a buzzard land high up in a tree, neck forward, wings back, ready to swoop. She froze, as an animal might, until the buzzard beat upwards again and left behind nothing but a few falling leaves. That was when she became aware of a strange putrid smell and a whining sound that might be Aidan’s saw.

  He’s probably spying while he’s up in the tree, she thought and stopped dead in her tracks. What had made her think that? How had that thought come into her head? In a moment of panic she broke into a run, taking a short cut through the undergrowth so that she would avoid the Nimbus Tree.

  Beyond the wood the sun lay in great sheaves over the fields, and at the bottom of the valley, the little stream shone like silver paper. Chloe watched the brown meadow butterflies flit over the grass. Ewes were grazing with their half-grown lambs under the chestnut tree. Slowly her feelings of unease and fear drained away. It was as if they belonged to another life she had left behind, on the other side of the wood. She decided to leave it behind forever.

  ‘Now this should tempt you,’ said Mrs Penfold, as Chloe walked into the kitchen. The table was piled high with fruit – apples and oranges, bananas and melons.

  ‘Enough to feed an army!’ Dorothy Penfold said, peering at her daughter carefully. ‘You’re looking peaky, darling. Well, here’s something to cheer you up.’

  ‘I’m all right, really I am,’ Chloe told her as she took the letter her mother was holding out and opened it.

  Cheriton rd. Balham. July 4th.
r />   Dear Chloe,

  In a fortnight Mum’s off to Lindisfarne with her friend (following Uncle George’s footsteps) so I thought I’d come down, even though you seem to be wrapped up with this weirdo and his daughter. Or, to be nearer the truth, my mother, who doesn’t teach Amazons for nothing, pressed me to come and see you. She’s a tiny tyrant who rules me with a rod of iron and in the end I said yes.

  p.s. I’ll come back if it doesn’t work out.

  Cheers, Sam

  Chloe handed the letter to her mother and leaned out of the window, secretly pleased. Sam would make everything normal again, just as it used to be. Aidan was in the yard feeding the chickens and from behind, her mother’s voice filled the kitchen with waves of comment and information. ‘…Trust Dad to ask me to be with him just the week that Sam’s coming. I’ll just have time to settle him down, then I’ll be off to some retirement do in London, then back to the other house, and up to London again. It’s unremitting, isn’t it darling? And of course I won’t go if you’re still under the weather.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum,’ said Chloe without turning round.

  The voice went on, bouncing off different corners of the kitchen. ‘Leela will be here to keep an eye on you all. Mind you, she’ll have to go back in the evening to feed Tyler but I know she’ll sleep over if need be. Such a kind person, and of course Aidan is a gem.’

  Chloe turned round and watched her mother sit down at the table, her chin cupped in her hands. ‘It all seems rather difficult doesn’t it, darling? I sometimes wish we could go back in time.’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ said Chloe. ‘I’d go back any day.’

  Her mother uttered a little sigh. ‘It’s too late, pet. You know Dad’s had enough of London. He really does want to develop this place and spend more time with us at the same time. And he will one day. It’s the best way through, I’m sure of that. Besides, Uncle George wouldn’t want us to abandon the ship.’

  ‘Dad always says he wants to be with us,’ said Chloe, ‘but he never is. I don’t remember the last time I went for a walk with him. I reckon he couldn’t walk properly if he tried.’