House of Echoes

by Barbara Erskine

  It wasn’t until quite a bit later that Joss managed to go back to the church alone. She had in her hand a small bunch of holly mixed with red dead nettle, and winter jasmine and shiny green sprigs of ivy covered in flowers.

  The church was almost dark when she found the key in its hiding place and pushed open the heavy door to make her way up the dim nave. The vase was clean and full of fresh water as she stood it gently on the shelf in front of the little brass. ‘There you are, Katherine,’ she whispered. ‘New flowers for Christmas. Katherine?’ She paused, almost expecting there to be a response, a repeat of the strange reverberation in her head, but there was none. The church was silent. With a wry smile she turned away.

  The kitchen was empty. For a moment she stood in front of the stove, warming her hands. The others were all out, all occupied. She should be unpacking boxes or packing presents; there was no time to stand and do nothing. On the other hand now would be the perfect time, alone and undisturbed, to turn once more to the box of letters in her mother’s study. And the doctor did tell her to rest …

  The great hall was already taking on the look of Christmas. Luke and David had brought in the seven foot tree they had cut in the copse behind the lake that morning and the whole room smelled of the fresh spicy boughs. It was standing near the window, firmly wedged into a huge urn filled with earth. Lyn had found the boxes of decorations, and they stood on the floor near the tree. They had promised Tom that he could help decorate the tree after his supper and before he went to bed. She smiled. The little boy’s face as the tree was dragged in had been a sight to behold.

  She had filled a huge silver bowl with holly and ivy and yellow jasmine and it stood in the centre of the table, a blaze of colour in the dark of the room.

  Katherine

  Joss frowned. There was a strange electric tingle in the air, a crackle of static as though a storm were about to break. It was there again: the echo at the back of her head – the voice she could not quite hear.

  As he thundered into the courtyard the house lay quiet under the blazing sun. His horse’s breath was whistling in its throat as he dragged it to a halt. There was no sign of servants, even the dogs were silent.

  Puzzled, Joss shook her head. She was staring hard at the bowl of flowers. The silver, still dull where her quick rub with a duster had failed to remove the years of tarnish gleamed softly in the dull light from the lamp near the table. As she watched a yellow petal from the jasmine fell onto the gleaming black oak.

  Throwing himself from the saddle he left the sweating trembling horse and ran inside. The great hall, dim after the sunlight, was equally empty. In five strides he was across it and on the stairs which led up to her solar.

  The smell of resin from the newly cut fir tree was overpowering. Joss could feel the pain tightening in a band around her forehead.

  ‘Katherine!’ His voice was hoarse with dust and fear. ‘Katherine!’

  ‘Joss!’ The cry echoed through the open doorway. ‘Joss, where are you?’

  Luke was carrying a great bunch of mistletoe. ‘Joss. Come here. Look what I’ve found!’ In quick strides he crossed the room to her side and held the huge pale green silvery bouquet above her head. ‘A kiss, my love. Now!’ His eyes narrowed with laughter. ‘Come on, before we decide where to put it!’

  Katherine!

  Joss stared at Luke sightlessly, her mind focused inwards, trying to catch the sounds as they came, seemingly from endless distances away.

  ‘Joss?’ Luke stared at her. He lowered the mistletoe. ‘Joss? What’s wrong?’ His voice grew sharp. ‘Joss, can you hear me?’

  Katherine!

  It was growing fainter; muffled; distant.

  ‘Joss!’

  She smiled suddenly, reaching out to touch the mistletoe berries. They were cold and waxy from the old orchard where lichen- covered apple trees tangled with greengage and plum.

  In the end they put one bunch in the kitchen and one in the great hall hanging from the gallery. Before he left to return home David gave Joss a lingering kiss under the bunch in the kitchen. ‘If I find out any more about the house I’ll stick it in the post. And in the mean time, you get a couple of chapters under your belt to send to my friend Bob Cassie. I have a good feeling about your writing.’

  ‘And so do I, Joss.’ After he had gone Luke and Joss were discussing it in the study. ‘It makes perfect sense. Lyn is here to help you with Tom and the baby when it’s born. You can write, we all know that. And we do need the money.’ He didn’t dare count on the wine yet.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you got any ideas?’ He glanced at her sideways.

  She laughed. ‘You know I have, you idiot! And you know I’ve already made some notes on how to expand that story. I’m going to take it back to when my hero is a boy living in a house a bit like this one. He’s a page, learning to be a gentleman, and then he gets mixed up in the wars between the white rose and the red.’

  ‘Great stuff.’ Luke dropped a kiss on her head. ‘Perhaps they’ll televise it and make us millionaires!’

  Laughing she pushed him away. ‘It’s got to be written and published first, so why don’t you go out and play cars while I make a start right now.’

  She had found an empty notebook of her mother’s in one of the drawers. Sitting down at the desk she opened it at the first page and picked up a felt-tipped pen. The rest of the story was there, hovering at the edge of her mind. She could see her hero so clearly as a boy. He would be about fourteen at the beginning of the novel. He was tall, with sandy hair and a spattering of freckles across his nose. He wore a velvet cap with a jaunty feather and he worked for the lord of Belheddon.

  She stared out of the window. She could see a robin sitting on the bare branches of the climbing rose outside. It seemed to be staring in, its bright eyes black and intent. He was called Richard, her hero, and the daughter of the house, the heroine of her short story, his age exactly, was called Anne.

  Georgie!

  She shook her head slightly. The robin had hopped onto the window sill. It was pecking at something in the soft moss which grew around the stone of the mullions.

  Georgie!

  The voice was calling in the distance. The robin heard it. She saw it stand suddenly still then with a bob of its head it turned and flew off. Joss’s fingers tightened round her pen. Richard was of course in love with Anne, even at the beginning, but it was a sweet innocent adolescent love that only later was to be dragged into adventure and war as opposing sides brought tension and dissent and murder to the house.

  She wrote tentatively, sketching in the first scene, twice glancing at the window, and once at the door as she thought she heard the scuffle of feet. In the fireplace the logs shifted and spat companionably, once filling the room with sweet-smelling smoke as a gust of wind outside blew back down the chimney.

  Georgie! Where are you?

  The voice this time was exasperated. It was right outside the door. Joss stood up, her heart pounding, as she went to pull it open. The hallway outside was empty, the cellar door closed and locked.

  Shutting the study door she leaned with her back against it, biting her lip. It was her imagination, of course. Nothing more. Stupid. Idiot. The silence of the empty house was getting to her. Wearily she pushed herself away from the door and went back to the desk.

  On her notebook lay a rose.

  She stared at it in astonishment. ‘Luke?’ She glanced round the room, puzzled. ‘Luke, where are you?’

  A log fell with a crackle in the fire basket and a shower of sparks illuminated the soot-stained brickwork of the chimney.

  ‘Luke, where are you, you idiot?’ She picked up the flower and held it to her nose. The white petals were ice cold and without scent. She shivered and laid it down. ‘Luke?’ Her voice was sharper. ‘I know you’re there.’ She strode across to the window and pulled the curtain away from the wall. There was no sign of him.

  ‘Luke!’ She ran towards the door and tugg
ed it open. ‘Luke, where are you?’

  There was no answering shout.

  ‘Luke!’ The scent of resinous pine was stronger than ever as she ran towards the kitchen.

  Luke was standing over the sink scrubbing his hands. ‘Hello. I wondered where you were –’ He broke off as she threw her arms around his neck. Reaching for the towel on the draining board he dried his hands and then gently he pushed her away. ‘Joss? What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She clung to him again. ‘I’m being neurotic and hormonal. It’s allowed, remember?’

  ‘You’re not going to let me forget, love.’ He guided her to the table and pushed her into the armchair at the end of it. ‘Now. Tell me.’

  ‘The rose. You put a rose on my desk …’ her voice trailed away. ‘You did, didn’t you.’

  Luke frowned, puzzled. With a quick glance at her he sat down next to her. ‘I’ve been out working on the car, Joss. It seemed a good idea before it got too dark. The lights in the coach house are not good and it’s freezing out there. Lyn is still out with Tom. They went to collect some fir cones but they’ll be back at any moment, unless they came past me without my noticing. Now what’s this about a rose?’

  ‘It appeared on my desk.’

  ‘And that frightened you? You cuckoo, David must have left it.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She sniffed sheepishly. ‘I thought I heard –’ she broke off. She had been about to say, ‘Someone calling Georgie,’ but she stopped herself in time. If she had she was going mad. It was her imagination, working overtime in a shadowy too-silent house.

  ‘Where is this rose? Let’s fetch it in.’ Luke suddenly stood up. ‘Come on, then I’ll help you put the supper on for the infant prodigy. He’s going to refuse to go to bed until he’s had his money’s worth of the Christmas tree this evening.’

  The fire in the study had died to ashes. Stooping Luke threw on a couple more logs as Joss walked over to the desk. Her pen lay on the page, a long dash of ink witness to the haste with which she had thrown it down. Next to it lay a dried rose bud, the petals curled and brown, thin and crackly as paper. She picked it up and stared at it. ‘It was fresh – cold.’ She touched it with the tip of her finger. The petals felt like tissue; a crisped curled margin of the leaf crumbling to nothing as she touched it.

  Luke glanced at her. ‘Imagination, old thing. I expect it fell out of one of those pigeon holes. You said they were full of your mother’s rubbish.’ Gently he took the rose out of her hand. Walking over to the fire he tossed it into the flames and in a fraction of a second it had blazed up and disappeared.

  12

  Lydia’s notebook fell open at the marker, a large dried leaf which smelled faintly and softly of peppermint.

  16th March, 1925. He has returned. My fear grows hourly. I have sent Polly to the Rectory for Simms and I have despatched the children with nanny to Pilgrim Hall with a note to Lady Sarah beseeching her to keep them all overnight. Apart from the servants I am alone.

  Joss looked up, her eyes drawn to the dusty attic window. The sun was slanting directly into the room, lighting the beige daisies which were all that was still visible on a wall paper faded by the years. In spite of the warmth of the sun behind the glass she found she was shivering, conscious of the echoing rooms of the empty house below her.

  The rest of the page was empty. She turned it and then the next and the next after that. All were blank. The next entry was dated April 12th, nearly a month after the first.

  And now it is Easter. The garden is full of daffodils and I have gathered baskets of them to decorate every room. The slime from their stems stained my gown – a reprimand perhaps for my attempts to climb from the pit of despair. The best of the flowers I have saved for my little one’s grave.

  April 14th. Samuel has taken the children to his mama. Without Nanny I cannot look after them.

  April 15th. Polly has left. She was the last. Now I am truly alone. Except for it.

  April 16th. Simms came again. He begged me to leave the house empty. He brought more Holy Water to sprinkle, but I suspect like all the perfumes of Arabia, even jugs full of the miraculous liquid cannot wipe away the blood. I cannot go to the Rectory. In the end I sent him away …

  ‘Joss!’

  Luke’s voice at the foot of the attic stairs was loud and sudden. ‘Tom’s crying.’

  ‘I’m coming.’ She put the diary back in the drawer of the old dressing table and turned the key. There were only two more entries in the book and suddenly she was afraid to read them. She could hear Tom’s voice now, quite clearly. How could she not have heard it before?

  Which of Lydia’s children had died? Who amongst her lively, much-loved brood occupied the grave in the churchyard which she had decorated with Easter daffodils?

  Two at a time she fled down the steep stairs and along the corridor to the nursery. At every step the fretful wails grew louder.

  He was standing up in his cot, his face screwed up, wet with anger and misery. As he saw her he stretched out his little arms.

  ‘Tom!’ She scooped him up and cuddled him close. ‘What is it, darling?’ Her face was in his soft hair. It smelled of raspberries from his jelly at lunch.

  How could Lydia have borne to lose a child: one of her beloved brood?

  She hugged Tom closer, aware that his bottom was damp. Already the sobs were turning to snuffles as he snuggled against her.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Luke put his head round the door.

  Joss nodded. For a moment she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. ‘I’ll change him and bring him down. It’s almost time for his tea. Where’s Lyn?’

  Luke shrugged. Striding into the room he threw the little boy a pretend punch. ‘You OK soldier?’ He glanced at Joss. ‘You too?’ He raised a finger to her cheek. ‘Still feeling bad?’

  Joss forced a smile. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  Tom changed and smart in a new pair of dungarees and a striped sweater his grandmother had knitted him, Joss carried him into the study. Putting him down on the floor she gave him the pot of pencils to play with, then she sat down at the desk and reached for her notebook. On the table nearby sat Luke’s Amstrad. The file headed Son of the Sword already contained several pages of character studies and the beginning of her synopsis. She looked at her notebook, staring down sightlessly at the pages, then back at the blank screen of the computer. She wanted to get on with her story, but her eye had been caught by the family Bible, lying on its shelf in the corner. With a sigh of resignation she closed the notebook. She knew she could not concentrate on it until she had spent just a bit longer on the story unfolding on the flyleaves of that huge old tome. Heaving it up off its shelf she laid it on the desk and opened it.

  Lydia Sarah Bennet married Samuel Manners in 1919. They had four children. Baby Samuel who died three months after his birth in 1920, John, who was born the following year and died aged four in 1925, Robert, born in 1922 who died at the age of fourteen, and Laura, her mother who was born in 1924 and died in 1989, aged sixty-five. Lydia herself had died in 1925. Joss bit her lip. The diary entries must have been written only a few months before she herself was dead.

  She swallowed, looking down at the page in front of her. The faded ink was blurred and in places the pen which had made the entries had blotted the page with a smattering of little stains. Slowly she closed the book.

  ‘Mummy. Tom’s tea.’ The anxious voice from the carpet caught her attention. He was sitting on the hearth rug looking up at her. His face was covered in purple ink.

  ‘Oh, Tom!’ Exasperated she bent to pick him up. ‘You dreadful child. Where did you find the pen?’

  ‘Tom’s colours,’ he said firmly. ‘Me draw pictures.’ His fist was clamped around a narrow fountain pen which Joss could see at once was very old. It couldn’t have still had ink in it so the lubrication for the nib had appeared when the little boy had sucked it. Shaking her head, she slung him onto her hip. … Except for it … th
e phrase was running round and round in her head. Except for it … … My fear makes him stronger … Words written by two women in their diaries more than half a century apart, two women driven to extreme fear by something which came to them in the house. Two women who had resorted to the church and to Holy Water to try to protect themselves, but to no avail.

  As she carried Tom through the great hall she glanced at the Christmas tree. Covered now in silver balls and long glittering swathes of silver cobwebs and decorated with dozens of small coloured lights it stood in the corner of the room like a talisman. Already she and Luke had placed a pile of parcels under it including one for each of them from David. Tomorrow Alice and Joe would arrive and with them lots more presents. ‘Me see tree.’ At the sight of it Tom began to struggle in her arms. ‘Me walk.’ As she set him on his feet he was already running towards the corner, his chubby hand pointing at the top of the tree. ‘Tom’s angel!’

  ‘Tom’s angel, to keep us safe,’ Joss agreed. Luke had lifted the little boy up so he could put the finishing touch, the beautiful little doll, made by Lyn, with its sparkling feathered wings. ‘Please,’ she murmured under her breath as she watched the little boy standing open mouthed below the sweeping branches, ‘let it keep us safe.’

  They were half way through an early supper when the front doorbell pealed through the house and almost at once they heard the raised voices from the front drive.

  ‘Carol singers!’ Lyn was first on her feet.

  The group stayed twenty minutes, standing round the tree while they had a glass of wine each and sang carols. Joss watched from the oak high-backed chair in the corner. For how many hundreds of years had just such groups of singers brought wassail to the house? Through narrowed eyes she could picture them as Anne and Richard in her story would have seen them, clustered in front of the huge fireplace, muffled against the cold, in boots and scarves, with red noses, and chapped hands. Their lanterns were standing in a semi circle on the table, and Lyn had lit the candles in the old sconces and turned out the lights, so there was no electric light save for the little coloured balls of glass upon the tree. Even the carols would have been the same – from This Endris Night they had launched into Adam lay ybounden. She let the words sweep over her, filling the room, resonating around the walls. Katherine might have heard these songs five hundred years ago on just such an icy night. She shivered. She could picture her so easily – long dark hair, hidden by the neat headdress, her deep sapphire eyes sparkling with happiness, her gown sweeping across the floor as she raised a goblet of wine in toast to her lord …