The Women of Heachley Hall

by Rachel Walkley

  She would have been the first to admit she was no beauty, but that didn’t mean she lacked presence; she certainly wasn’t ugly or slighted in anyway. She maintained a grace about herself, always wearing long flowing skirts or strange dresses, quite unlike Louise, who’d followed the fashion of short skirts and tight fitting clothes. The colourful fabrics Felicity wrapped about herself – I later discovered she preferred to wear the sari – hid her figure and the shape of hips and waist.

  Of middling years, perhaps forty or so in age when I first saw her, she possessed near black hair, so dark a brown it hid its true colour from the angles of light. She wore it in a plaited ponytail and the coarser, rogue hairs poked out of the braids seeking escape. When the loose strands flitted across her chocolate eyes, she brushed them aside. Her skin, for someone who lived an indoor life, had a golden shine to it, as if she had failed to hide from the sun and its blazing rays had chased her indoors, determined to colour her narrow face and stubby nose. India with its heat had left an indelible mark on her complexion and the more I gazed at her, the more I became convinced she had its blood running through her veins.

  When I announced my services, she clapped her hands in delight. ‘Thank God,’ she declared, shooing me into the house. ‘Charles, isn’t it? Louise mentioned you. The blasted kitchen sink is blocked. I shouldn’t have put the tea leaves down it.’

  I followed her into the kitchen. The worktop was covered in bowls, spilt flour and my feet crunched on a scattering of sugar granules.

  ‘I’m baking a cake. Lord knows why, but it seems the English thing to do, don’t you think?’

  I nodded in agreement whilst her head danced about on her neck. I detected a lilt to her accent, which I assumed betrayed her Indian origins. I examined the water in the sink. The tea leaves swirled about and pockets of air gurgled in the pipe beneath. I crouched down and inspected the u-tube underneath the sink.

  ‘I’m sure I can clear this if I remove the pipe bend and clean it out. I’ll try not to make a mess.’

  Another brief round of applause. ‘You’re a star. Louise said you’d help from time to time. She also said you’re a little erratic in your timekeeping, but very useful. I confess, I had servants in Bombay, but here, I can’t afford the luxury. I’m learning to cook.’

  ‘I’m sure you will make a fine cook.’ I rose. ‘I’ll fetch some tools from the shed.’

  ‘After that, you don’t mind fixing the wretched toilet?’

  The unblocking job began a long period of constant plumbing issues at Heachley. I told her many times that the pipes needed ripping out and replacing. However, she wouldn’t budge and insisted she would make do. ‘Tosh,’ she would say with her hands on her hips. ‘In India indoor plumbing is a rarity. There’s plenty of life left in these old pipes.’

  I disagreed, but her attitude to most things was grin and bear and avoid problems by ignoring them for as long as possible. Except for me. I, unknowingly, became something of a project for her while she kept me busy.

  Weeks trickled by and I couldn’t resist the books in the library. Boredom had set in – due to my inability to vanish – and it encouraged me to borrow books and take them to the hut in the evenings to read. Unlike Louise who preferred the Bronte’s, Dickens and Jane Austen, titles that had been available in my time and of little interest to the enquiring mind, Felicity brought with her new authors. I devoured George Orwell and D.H. Lawrence with wide-eyed fascination. How the world had changed. I discovered Indian writers and poets with their epic tales of gods and heroes, and accompanying these books I poured over her collection of treatises on the history of Asia, Hinduism, with its reincarnation theology and many other distant cultures, such as Confucian and Buddhism.

  For the first time in decades my intellect thrived on new knowledge. Instead of fearing change, I embraced the world beyond Heachley Hall. Although she cared little for the television, Felicity avidly listened to the Home Service on the radio and I enjoyed the debates, interviews, plays and comedies as much as she did. Of course, I hid my enthusiasm, pretending to focus on my task, but conducting all my activities in a laborious, painfully slow fashion to ensure I didn’t miss a favourite show.

  Although I couldn’t taste or eat her cakes, nor try out her speciality teas, my existence didn’t curtail emotional outbursts. I experienced loneliness, joy, tedium and despair. Still struggling with Louise’s departure, Felicity, with her vivacious approach to all things kept me from descending into madness, something I’ve feared for years: my ghostly apparition roaming Heachley and scaring the inhabitants with my delusional mind.

  Yes, I know fear, even if it doesn’t quicken my heart nor cause sweat to form upon my brow. I’m quite capable of the emotion as I found out several months after her arrival.

  Waiting in the closet I heard nothing: no creaks, footfalls or doors banging. I deduced she was occupied elsewhere in the house and I gave the door a shove and forced it open.

  The shock was tremendous. Ironic, since is it not the responsibility of the ghost to incite terror in those who have the misfortune to encounter one? I froze to the spot. My legs were lead weights and my mouth gaped wide. She sat upon a small wooden chair with a blanket over her knees and clutching a set of knitting needles in her sun stained hands.

  She seemed most unperturbed by my bursting out of the closet. Under the dim lighting I saw her eyes twinkle. She rested the needles on her lap and sighed. ‘Finally, I’d begun to think I was mistaken. I wondered about the cellar, whether you came out of there, but then I decided it had to be this closet. It’s that infernal ash, it collects right in front of the door.’

  I blinked, looked down and saw the particles clinging to my trouser legs, waiting for me to shake them loose. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. Her appearance had stunned me into silence. How long had she sat there, facing the closet door, waiting for me to stir and step into her trap?

  ‘It’s quite all right.’ Her face softened and her lips curved upwards, shaping into a gentle smile. ‘I know you are Christopher Isaacks.’

  I slid down the closet door, which slammed shut behind me and I rested my back against it, drew up my knees, buried my face in my hands and sobbed. It was the first time I’d heard my name spoken in over ninety years. The tears didn’t fall, they never did, but the emotion of relief, mixed with panic and uncertainty, was just as tangible as my tearless weeping.

  She coughed gently and I glanced up. She was bundling her knitting into a ball. She’d taken up knitting jumpers because of the cold, she’d told me. I’d spent hours chopping wood for the fires, but neither the heating system nor the fires managed to warm her constant coldness. I sympathised with her condition: the heat never touched me either, nor did the cold, but my indifference to temperature must have added to her suspicions – I don’t wear coats, even on snow covered days. What else had she spotted?

  ‘The books – you’ve been borrowing them,’ she said, as if to read my mind. ‘You didn’t always put them back in the right place. You never change your dreadful clothes. Then there is the lack of interest in money, and avoiding my food, which I do take offence at – you might have tried. Then those darn mysterious noises. So hard to avoid given my solitary occupation. Your family – no mention of anyone, of your father, or even male friends or where you live.’

  ‘Go on,’ I urged, desperate to know how she came by my name.

  ‘I wanted to know more about this place when I came over. I found out about the fire, did some more research at the county archives and discovered another name – Nuri Sully – a poor woman who died in a workhouse. Naturally, my curiosity rose as to why she had been abandoned. While you busied yourself in the frigid shed, I explored. I love exploring. Throughout my childhood my parents worried about my tendency to wander off. I went for a walk and found the little log cabin at the back of the woods. Had to fight my way through a pea-soup fog to find it. Not a problem; I’m use to battling the monsoon and I’m quite unstoppable when I put my mind
to something.’

  ‘I think you’re the first to make it that far,’ I said in a small voice.

  ‘I saw the evidence of your habitation. I examined the contents of the tin box.’ She halted and I flinched as she bore down with her strikingly dark eyes.

  ‘Please, don’t speak of it,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t open that box. The pain…’ I hugged my legs and rocked forward. The letters inside are not for nostalgia or happy reminisces, rather they are a hateful reminder of my mistakes.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She rose and came over as I started to sob again and she reached down to touch my juddering shoulder. ‘You’re a suffering soul trapped in this house, rather like me.’

  I lifted my face. ‘Like you?’

  ‘Do you think the locals take to somebody like me? A half-caste spinster? A bastard? We’re both outcasts.’

  I calmed and took deep imaginary breaths. ‘You’re not afraid of ghosts then?’ I tried a small smile and it shot across my face for a second, like a nervous twitch.

  She lifted her hand off my shoulder. ‘Louise, I think she suspected, but hadn’t the imagination to think it through. We chatted a little on the telephone before she moved out. I’m different and I had a rather complicated upbringing that filled my head with romantic tales.’

  ‘Louise?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes. I’m so sorry to have taken her home. I hadn’t expected to inherit this place from John. We haven’t spoken in years. Then, I suppose, it’s possible he saw me in a different light. After all, his wife was illegitimate before Louise adopted her. Maybe, I’m not quite the black sheep he considered me to be. I offered the house back to Mary, as John’s widow, but she declined and seems determined not to come back here. Shame. I’d like to get to know my niece, Anna.’

  ‘Louise couldn’t persuade her?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know Mary that well. I’ve only met her a couple of times. When I flew into London she greeted me at the airport. She’s a strong minded young woman. Wilful, my father would have said, but these days…’ She picked up her knitting and blanket. ‘I was furious when I found out what John had done – seducing her, marrying her at such a young age. But, having met her and seen her grief at his unexpected death, I do believe they loved each other very much and who am I to criticise? I myself am the product of a passionate affair, borne out of wedlock and despised by the people I live among.’

  ‘What do you make of Christopher Isaacks, the man who left his lover?’

  ‘Come here and help me with this chair.’

  I clambered to my feet and returned the chair to her bedroom.

  She walked towards the top of the staircase. ‘We shall be friends, Charles. We shall haunt this house together.’ She led me downstairs into the library and bade me sit down in an armchair opposite her own. There, with the fire spitting in the background, I told her my sad story: the sweet woman I had spurned to my chagrin, my cursed existence and my years of haunting.

  ‘I cannot be your lover,’ Felicity said without embellishing and I wasn’t surprised, because I simply knew in my heart I had not the capacity to love somebody who appeared older than me – she was more like my long dead mother: kindly and practical. ‘I will be your friend and I will keep your secret as best as I can, so you may be free to dwell here on the estate.’

  I thanked her profusely, which made her bronzed cheeks flush with redness and she offered to take my money, everything the Branston’s had paid me and she would buy clothes, a fresh mattress and bedding, and other knick-knacks I might find useful. She also suggested I might use an attic room, which I declined.

  ‘The woods protect me. I feel safe there. I haven’t lived in a house for years and I need my space,’ I explained.

  ‘You must miss male companionship,’ she remarked.

  ‘I miss many things. However, I have met many wonderful people, too.’

  ‘Write it all down for me, would you? So I understand.’

  A simple request and here in this journal, I record my existence as a ghost – not quite what one might imagine it to be. Quite tedious, she had commented after I described the misery of my comings and goings. I laughed heartily, enjoying the sensation of uninhibited humour at my predicament. She joined in, then, left me to my penmanship, while she baked scones for tea.

  PART THREE

  The Grave

  “We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.”

  ― Thich Nhat Hanh

  Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

  1992

  THIRTY-ONE

  I closed the book and due to my clammy palms I was unable to grip it; I rested it on my lap. I glanced at the man next to me, somebody whom I considered a good friend. The story made no difference: he remained Charles. He’d given himself a new identity and who he’d once been, Christopher Isaacks, didn’t exist any longer. Kit might have died in a fire, but Charles had risen from his ashes, literally, it seemed.

  Yes, many questions had been answered in his account, but not all. He’d lost his quiet repose and a vibrancy had returned to his crystal eyes. I steadied my trembling hands and flicked a few loose strands of hair out of my eyes; I had his attention.

  ‘Those times when I visited Felicity as a child, you were here too, but we never met,’ I said. ‘Though to be honest, I don’t remember much of my early childhood.’ I wondered if Charles was a morsel of imagery hidden in my mind that was too small to recall.

  ‘No, I never met you as a child. You always came with your parents or with your father.’ He wove his fingers together, leaving one sticking out and pointing at me. ‘Felicity was quite taken by you. She saw the talent in your drawings.’

  I puffed out my cheeks. ‘I don’t remember doing drawings for her. I always drew for myself. A little selfish perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps your mother sent the pictures.’

  Mum’s family had never truly featured in my life compared to Dad’s. It was too late to ask either of them. ‘You actually spoke with Mum when she was younger, before Dad joined her?’

  He gave me an apologetic frown. ‘No. I kept out of the way. I watched from afar in the garden, always hiding.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. Charles’s ability to merge into the landscape didn’t surprise me. How often had he lurked behind a bush or a tree, watching me move about the house and gardens, while he himself was unable to leave the grounds? A flurry of goose bumps sprung around my body. I’d never been alone once during my time at Heachley. Even when I slept, Charles had been half a mile away in the hut.

  ‘You see,’ he continued with a concentrated expression. ‘Felicity, everyone, they all grow old, but I don’t. It would have caused difficulties if your parents or grandmother saw me and noticed I never aged. Felicity kept her promise to keep me secret as best she could. I owe her a debt for her diligence and there is no way for me to pay it back. Because of her infirmity, I was exposed to Maggie more than anyone.’

  ‘You never lived inside the house? Why not?’

  ‘Eventually I did, but for many years we lived separately. Yes, we were friends, however, this was her home, not mine. I have no right to live here, and though she asked, I declined. Then, her needs changed. Maggie assisted with more than the cleaning. There was the cooking and other personal matters she helped do. Unfortunately, Felicity had grown frail. I stayed some nights in the attic in case she needed anything. Maggie never noticed that I kipped on the floor.’

  His ease at deception didn’t surprise me, because he’d been successful at it for years. He’d had to be. ‘Maggie is still convinced this place is haunted, and I think, because she
looked in the Chindi box, she knows it is Christopher. You.’

  Charles laughed. ‘She’s right, it is haunted, but she doesn’t suspect me, because I’m Charles. When she began to work for Felicity, a few years before she fell ill, I avoided Maggie as much as possible. You see, we didn’t see eye to eye on Felicity. Maggie wanted her to move into a nursing home, whereas I respected Felicity’s desire for independence. But, all the same, she fell and I wasn’t on hand to help.’ He pulled a glum face.

  ‘Maggie called Tony.’

  ‘Which explains why I quickly disappeared. I must have been in the garden when it happened. If Maggie was here that is where I stayed.’

  ‘All those years, you and Felicity, together. Wow.’ I held out his journal. Charles took it off me and clutched it to his chest. ‘And she never lived with anyone else?’

  ‘No.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think she cared for men.’

  ‘Except you,’ I pointed out, poking his arm.

  He frowned, his posture slumping slightly. ‘I’m half a man. A spirit stuck in time, not quite the same.’

  ‘You’re not half a man, not to me. I wonder if she…it doesn’t matter.’ I couldn’t find the appropriate way to describe Felicity’s solitary ways. Perhaps she was a lesbian or asexual, uninterested in sensual companionship. It didn’t matter; she was dead. ‘It must have been hard, coming back and finding her gone and me here instead.’

  ‘Sadly I knew that day would come. I’d seen many occupants come and many are now dead, including your grandmother, but yes, I am upset by the loss of my friend.’

  ‘Mary died some years ago.’ Her departure had been the last family funeral I’d attended. A drab day spent in a cemetery in London with a handful of mourners, none of whom I recognised.

  ‘Felicity grieved for both your mother and grandmother.’ Putting the journal down next to him, he stroked the back of my hand with his fingertips and I swallowed hard, holding back the sudden arrival of tears in my eyes.