The Empty House

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  Slightly discouraged by these parting remarks, Virginia went back to her car. The keys of the unknown house weighed heavy as lead in her handbag. All at once, she longed for company, and even considered, for a mad moment, returning to Wheal House to make a true confession to Alice and persuade her to come out to Lanyon and lend a little moral support. But that was ridiculous. It was just a little cottage, to be viewed, and either rented or rejected. Any fool … even Virginia … could surely do that.

  The weather was still beautiful and the traffic still appalling. She crawled, one of the long queue of cars, down into the depths of town and out the other side. At the top of the hill where the roads forked, the traffic thinned a little and she was able to put on some speed and pass a line of dawdling cars. As she went up and over the moor and the sea dropped and spread beneath her, her spirits rose. The road wound like a grey ribbon through the bracken-covered hillside; to her left towered the great outcrop of Carn Edvor stained purple with heather, and on her right the country swept away down to the sea, the familiar patchwork of fields and farms, that she had sat and watched only two days before.

  She had been told by Mr. Williams to look out for a clump of wind-leaning hawthorns by the side of the road. Beyond this was a steep corner and then the narrow farm track which led down towards the sea. Virginia came upon it and turned the car down into it, no more than a stony lane high-hedged with brambles. She went into bottom gear and edged cautiously downhill, attempting to avoid bumps and potholes and trying not to think about the damage that the prickly gorse bushes were inflicting on the paintwork of her car.

  There was no sign of any house, until she turned a steep corner and was instantly upon it. A stone wall, and beyond, a gable and a slated roof. She stopped the car in the lane, reached for her handbag and got out. There was a cool, salty wind blowing in from the sea, and the smell of gorse. She went to open the gate, but the hinges were broken and it had to be lifted before she could edge through. A path of sorts led down towards a flight of stone steps and so to the house, and Virginia saw that it was long and low with gables to the north and the south, and at the north end, looking out over the sea, had been added an extra room with a square tower above it. The tower imparted an oddly sanctified look to the house which Virginia found chilling. There was no garden to speak of, but at the south end a patch of unmown grass blew in the wind and two leaning poles supported what had once been a washing line.

  She went down the steps and along a dank pathway that led along the side of the house towards the front door. This had once been painted dark red and was scarred with splitting sun blisters. Virginia took out the key and put it in the keyhole and turned the door knob and the key together and the door instantly, silently, swung inwards. She saw a tiny flight of stairs, a worn rung on bare boards, smelt damp and … mice? She swallowed nervously. She hated mice, but now that she had come so far there was nothing for it but to go up the two worn steps and tread gingerly over the threshold.

  It did not take long to go over the old part of the house, to glance in at the tiny kitchen with its inadequate cooker and stained sink; the sitting-room cluttered with ill-matching chairs. An electric fire sat in the cavern of the huge old fireplace, like a savage animal at the mouth of its lair. There were curtains of flimsy cotton hanging at the windows, fly-blown and dejected, and a dresser packed with cups and plates and dishes in every sort of size and shape and state of dilapidation.

  Without hope, Virginia went upstairs. The bedrooms were dim with tiny windows and unsuitable, looming pieces of furniture. She returned to the top of the stairs, and so up another pair of steps, to a closed door. She opened this, and after the gloom of the rest of the house, the blast of bright, northern light by which she was immediately assailed, was dazzling. Stunned by it, she stepped blindly into an astonishing room, small, completely square, windowed on three walls, it stood high above the sea like the bridge of a ship, with a view of the coastline that must have extended for fifteen miles.

  A window-seat with a faded cover ran along the north side of this room. There was a scrubbed table, and an old braided rug and in the centre of the floor, like a decorative wellhead, the wrought-iron banister of a spiral staircase which led directly down to the room beneath, the “Hall” of Mr. Williams’s prospectus.

  Cautiously Virginia descended, to a room dominated by an enormous art nouveau fireplace. Off this was the bathroom; and then another door, and she was back where she’d started, in the dark and depressing sitting-room.

  It was an extraordinary, a terrible house. It sat around her, waiting for her to make some decision, contemptuous of her faintness of heart. To give herself time, she went back up to the tower room, sat on the window-seat and opened her bag to find a cigarette. Her last. She would have to buy some more. She lit it and looked at the bare scrubbed table, and the faded colours of the rug on the floor, and knew that this had been Aubrey Crane’s study, the workroom where he had wrestled out the lusty love stories that Virginia had never been encouraged to read. She saw him, bearded and knickerbockered, his conventional appearance belying the passions of his rebellious heart. Perhaps in summertime, he would have flung wide these windows, to catch all the scents and sounds of the countryside, the roar of the sea, the whistle of the wind. But in winter it would be bitterly cold, and he would have to wrap himself in blankets, and write painfully with chilblained fingers mittened in knitted wool …

  Somewhere in the room a fly droned, blundering against the window-pane. Virginia leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window and stared sightless at the view and started one of the interminable ding-dong arguments she had been having with herself for years.

  I can’t come here.

  Why not?

  I hate it. It’s spooky and frightening. It’s got a horrible atmosphere.

  That’s just your imagination.

  It’s an impossible house. I could never bring the children here. They’ve never lived in such a place. Anyway, there’s nowhere for them to play.

  There’s the whole world for them to play in. The fields and the cliffs and the sea.

  But looking after them … the washing and the ironing, and the cooking. And there’s no refrigerator, and how would I heat the water?

  I thought that all that mattered was getting the children to yourself, away from London.

  They’re better in London, with Nanny, than living in a house like this.

  That wasn’t what you thought yesterday.

  I can’t bring them here. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Not on my own like that.

  Then what are you going to do?

  I don’t know. Talk to Alice, perhaps I should have talked to her before now. She hasn’t children of her own, but she’ll understand. Maybe she’ll know about some other little house. She’ll understand. She’ll help. She has to help.

  So much, said her own cool and scathing voice, for all those strong resolutions.

  Angrily, Virginia stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette, ground it under her heel and got up and went downstairs and took out the keys and locked the door behind her. She went back up the path to the gate, stepped through and shut it. The house watched her the small bedroom windows like derisive eyes. She tore herself from their gaze and got back into the safety of her car. It was a quarter past twelve. She needed cigarettes and she was not expected back at Wheal House for lunch, so, when she had turned the car, and was driving back up on to the main road again, she took not the road to Porthkerris, but the other way, and she drove the short mile to Lanyon village, up the narrow main street, and finally came to a halt in the cobbled square that was flanked on one side by the porch of the square-towered church and on the other by a small whitewashed pub called The Mermaid’s Arms.

  Because of the fine weather, there were tables and chairs set up outside the pub, along with brightly coloured sun-umbrellas and tubs of orange nasturtiums. A man and a woman in holiday clothes sat and drank their beer, their little boy played with a puppy. As Virginia
approached, they looked up to smile good morning, and she smiled back and went past them in through the door, instinctively ducking her head beneath the blackened lintel.

  Inside it was dark-panelled, low-ceilinged, dimly illuminated by tiny windows veiled in lace curtains; there was a pleasant smell, cool and musty. A few figures, scarcely visible in the gloom, sat along the wall, or around small wobbly tables, and behind the bar, framed by rows of hanging beer-mugs, the barman, in shirtsleeves and a checkered pullover, was polishing glasses with a dishcloth.

  “… I don’t know ’ow it is, William,” he was saying to a customer who sat at the other end of the bar, perched disconsolately on a tall stool, with a long cigarette ash and half a pint of bitter, “… but you put the litter bins up and nobody puts nothing into them…”

  “Ur…” said William, nodding in sad agreement and sprinkling cigarette ash into the beer.

  “Stuff blows all over the road, and the County Council don’t even come and empty them. Ugly old things they are, too, we’d be better without them. Managed all right without them before, we did…” He finished polishing the glass, set it down with a thump and turned to attend to Virginia.

  “Yes, madam?”

  He was very Cornish, in voice, in looks, in colouring. A red and wind-burned face, blue eyes, black hair.

  Virginia asked for cigarettes.

  “Only got packets of twenty. That all right?” He turned to take them from the shelf and slit the wrapper with a practised thumbnail. “Lovely day, isn’t it? On holiday, are you?”

  “Yes.” It was years since she had been into a pub. In Scotland women were never taken into pubs. She had forgotten the atmosphere, the snug companionship. She said, “Do you have any Coke?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, I’ve got Coke. Keep it for the children. Want some, do you?”

  “Please.”

  He reached for a bottle, opened it neatly, poured it into a glass and pushed it across the counter towards her.

  “I was just saying to William, here, that road to Porthkerris is a disgrace…” Virginia pulled up a stool and settled down to listen. “… All that rubbish lying around. Visitors don’t seem to know what to do with their litter. You’d think coming to a lovely part like this they’d have the sense they was born with and take all them old bits of paper home with them, in the car, not leave them lying around on the roadside. They talk about conservation and ecology, but, my God…”

  He was off on what was obviously his favourite hobby-horse, judging by the well-timed grunts of assent that came from all corners of the room. Virginia lit a cigarette. Outside, in the sunny square, a car drew up, the engine stopped, a door slammed. She heard a man’s voice say good morning, and then footsteps came through the doorway and into the bar behind her.

  “… I wrote to the MP about it, said who was going to get the place cleaned up, he said it was the responsibility of the County Council, but I said…” Over Virginia’s head he caught sight of the new customer. “’Allo, there! You’re a stranger.”

  “Still at the litter bins, Joe?”

  “You know me, boy, worry a subject to death, like a terrier killing a rat. What’ll you have?”

  “A pint of bitter.”

  Joe turned to draw the beer, and the newcomer moved in to stand between Virginia and lugubrious William, and she had recognized his voice at once, as soon as he spoke, just as she had known his footfall, stepping in over the flagged threshold of The Mermaid’s Arms.

  She took a mouthful of Coke, laid down the glass. All at once her cigarette tasted bitter; she stubbed it out and turned her head to look at him, and she saw the blue shirt, with the sleeves rolled back from his brown forearms, and the eyes very blue and the short, rough, brown hair cut like a pelt, close to the shape of his head. And because there was nothing else to be done she said, “Hallo, Eustace.”

  Startled, his head swung round and his expression was that of a man who had suddenly been hit in the stomach, bemused and incapable. She said, quickly, “It really is me,” and his smile came, incredulous, rueful, as though he knew he had been made to look a fool.

  “Virginia.”

  She said again, stupidly, “Hallo.”

  “What in the name of heaven are you doing here?”

  She was aware that every ear in the place was waiting for her to reply. She made it very light and casual. “Buying cigarettes. Having a drink.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean in Cornwall. Here, in Lanyon.”

  “I’m on holiday. Staying with the Lingards in Porthkerris.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About a week…”

  “And what are you doing out here?”

  But before she had time to tell him, the barman had pushed Eustace’s tankard of beer across the counter, and Eustace was diverted by trying to find the right money in his trouser pocket.

  “Old friends, are you?” asked Joe, looking at Virginia with new interest, and she said, “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

  “I haven’t seen her for ten years,” Eustace told him, pushing the coins across the counter. He looked at Virginia’s glass. “What are you drinking?”

  “Coke.”

  “Bring it outside, we may as well sit in the sun.”

  She followed him, aware of the unblinking stares which followed them; the insatiable curiosity. Outside in the sunshine he put their glasses down on to a wooden table and they settled, side by side on a bench, with the sun on their heads and their backs against the whitewashed wall of the pub.

  “You don’t mind being brought out here, do you? Otherwise we couldn’t say a word without it being received and transmitted all over the county within half an hour.”

  “I’d rather be outside.”

  Half turned towards her, he sat so close that Virginia could see the rough, weather-beaten texture of his skin, the network of tiny lines around his eyes, the first frosting of white in that thick brown hair. She thought, I’m with him again.

  He said, “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What happened to you.” And then quickly: “I know you got married.”

  “Yes. Almost at once.”

  “Well, that would have put paid to the London Season you were dreading so much.”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “And the coming-out dance.”

  “I had a wedding instead.”

  “Mrs. Anthony Keile. I saw the announcement in the paper.” Virginia said nothing. “Where do you live now?”

  “In Scotland. There’s a house in Scotland…”

  “And children?”

  “Yes. Two. A boy and a girl.”

  “How old are they?” He was really interested, and she remembered how the Cornish loved children, how Mrs. Jilkes was for ever going dewy-eyed over some lovely little great-nephew or niece.

  “The girl’s eight and the boy’s six.”

  “Are they with you now?”

  “No. They’re in London. With their grandmother.”

  “And your husband? Is he down? What’s he doing this morning? Playing golf?”

  She stared at him, accepting for the first time the fact that personal tragedy is just that. Personal. Your own existence could fall to pieces but that did not mean that the rest of the world necessarily knew about it, or even bothered. There was no reason for Eustace to know.

  She laid her hands on the edge of the table, aligning them as though their arrangement were of the utmost importance. She said, “Anthony’s dead.” Her hands seemed all at once insubstantial, almost transparent, the wrists too thin, the long almond-shaped nails, painted coral pink, as fragile as petals. She wished suddenly, fervently, that they were not like that, but strong and brown and capable, with dirt engrained, and fingernails worn from gardening and peeling potatoes and scraping carrots. She could feel Eustace’s eyes upon her. She could not bear him to be sorry for her.

  He said, “What happened?”

  “He was ki
lled in a car accident. He was drowned.”

  “Drowned?”

  “We have this river, you see, at Kirkton … that’s where we live in Scotland. The river runs between the house and the road, you have to go over the bridge. And he was coming home and he skidded, or misjudged the turn, and the car went through the wooden railings and into the river. We’d had a lot of rain, a wet month, and the river was in spate and the car went to the bottom. A diver had to go down … with a cable. And the police eventually winched it out…” Her voice trailed off.

  He said gently, “When?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “Not long.”

  “No. But there was so much to do, so much to see to. I don’t know what’s happened to the time. And then I caught this bug—a sort of ’flu, and I couldn’t throw it off, so my mother-in-law said that she’d have the children in London and I came down here to stay with Alice.”

  “When are you going away again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was silent. After a little he picked up his glass and drained his beer. As he set it down he said, “Have you got a car here?”

  “Yes.” She pointed. “The blue Triumph.”

  “Then finish that drink and we’ll go back to Penfolda.” Virginia turned her head and stared at him. “Well, what’s so extraordinary about that? It’s dinner time. There are pasties in the oven. Do you want to come back and eat one with me?”

  “… Yes.”

  “Then come. I’ve got my Land-Rover. You can follow me.”

  “All right.”

  He stood up. “Come along, then.”