House of Echoes

by Barbara Erskine

  Sweetheart! He had first met her at the Yule tide feast, his eyes following the graceful figure as she danced and played with her cousins. The music had brought a sparkle to her eyes, her cheeks glowed from the heat of the fire.

  Joss shuddered so violently that Lyn noticed. ‘Joss, are you all right?’ She was there beside her, putting her arm around her shoulders. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Joss shook her head, staring down at her feet in the candlelight. ‘Nothing. Just a bit cold.’ The singers hadn’t noticed. They sang on, reaching effortlessly for the high notes, their voices curling into the beams. But it was their last carol. They had to move on to the Goodyears’ farm and then to the Rectory itself. Scarves were rewound, gloves pulled on, change found for their collecting bag.

  The silence when they had gone was strangely profound. As if reluctant to lose the mood they sat on by the fire staring into the embers.

  Katherine, my love, wait for me!

  They were so nearly audible, the words, like a half remembered dream, slipping away before it is grasped. With a sigh Joss shook her head.

  ‘The carols were beautiful. You know, it’s strange, you would expect there to be a feeling of evil in this house if the devil lived here. But there isn’t.’

  ‘Of course there isn’t.’ Luke dropped a kiss on her head. ‘I wish you would forget about the devil. This is a fabulous, happy house, full of good memories.’ He ruffled her hair affectionately. ‘The devil would hate it!’

  He was asleep when Joss climbed up into the high bed later. She had lain for a long time in the bath, trying to soak the chill out of her bones in water that was not quite hot enough to do the trick, and she had found she was pressing herself against the warm enamel, trying to extricate the last hint of heat from the rapidly cooling bath. When she finally dragged herself out onto the mat and wrapped the towel around her she realised that the heating system such as it was, fired from the range in the kitchen, had long ago turned itself off for the night with its usual ticking and groaning. There would be no more hot water and no more barely warm radiators until next morning when, with more ticking and groaning, the system would, God-willing, drag itself once more back into life. Shivering she looked in on Tom. He was pink and warm, tucked securely under his cellular blankets and fast asleep. Leaving his door a fraction ajar she crept into her room and reluctantly taking off her dressing gown slid in beside Luke.

  Outside, the moon was a hard silver against a star-flecked sky. Frost had whitened the garden and it was almost as bright as day. Luke hadn’t quite drawn the curtains over the back window and she could see the brilliance of the night through the crack. Moonlight spilled across the floor and onto the quilt.

  They were all there, in the shadowy room: the servants, the family, the priest. White faces turned towards him as he burst in, his spurs ringing on the boards and catching in the soft sweet hay which had been spread everywhere to muffle the noise.

  ‘Katherine?’ He stopped a few feet from the high bed, his breath rasping in his throat, his heart thudding with fear. Her face was beautiful and completely calm.

  There was no sign of pain. Her glorious dark hair, free of its coif, lay spread across the pillow; her eyelashes were thick upon the alabaster cheeks.

  ‘KATHERINE!’ He heard his own voice as a scream and at last someone moved. The woman who had so often shown him up to this very room and brought him wine, stepped forward, a small bundle in her arms.

  ‘You have a son, my lord. At least you have a son!’

  Uneasily Joss turned to Luke and snuggled against his back. The moonlight disturbed her. It was relentless, hard, accentuating the cold. Shivering she pulled the covers higher, burying her head in the pillow beside that of her husband, feeling his warmth, his solidity, reassuring beside her.

  Frozen with horror he stared down at the woman on the bed.

  ‘Katherine.’

  This time the word was a sob; a prayer.

  Throwing himself across the body he took her in his arms and wept.

  With a sigh Joss slept at last, uneasily, her dreams uncomfortable and unremembered, unaware of the shadow which drifted across the moon throwing a dark swathe across the bed. She did not feel the chill in the room deepen, nor the brush of cold fingers across her hair.

  Katherine, Katherine, Katherine!

  The name rose into the darkest corners of the room and was lost in the shadows of the roof beyond the beams, weaving, writhing with pain, sinking into the fabric of the house.

  His face wet with tears he looked up. ‘Leave me,’ he cried. ‘Leave me with her.’ He turned to the servant, and his mouth was twisted with hate. ‘Take that child away. He killed her.

  He killed my love, God curse him. He killed the sweetest, gentlest woman in the world!’

  When she woke it was with a splitting headache, and only seconds later the realisation that she was going to be sick. Not pausing to grab her dressing gown she threw herself out of bed and ran for the bathroom, falling on her knees in front of the lavatory. It was Luke, gently stroking her head while she vomited, who wrapped something round her shoulders and later brought her a cup of tea.

  13

  Dr Robert Simms was rector of the church at Belheddon from 1914 until 1926. Standing in front of the stained-glass window which had been erected to his memory in the church Joss wondered just how much he had been able to comfort Lydia in her last months. Had he sprinkled Holy Water around the house? Had he buried her son? Presumably he had buried her. The grave out in the churchyard was overgrown now with nettles and covered in ivy but, scraping away the moss she had found the inscription:

  Samuel Manners, born 1882, died 1926

  also his wife

  Lydia Sarah Manners, born 1902, died 1925

  also their children

  Samuel, born 1920, died 1921

  John, born 1921, died 1925

  Robert, born 1922, died 1936

  What happened to the sons of this house that they died so young? Walking back slowly up the path from the church towards the gate into the garden Joss stopped for a minute beside her brothers’ graves. Luke had cut the nettles now, and she had scraped away some of the moss and planted bulbs in the cold earth between them. She shivered. Edgar Gower’s words kept returning to her: ‘Don’t embroil yourself in the affairs of the Duncans; Belheddon Hall is an unhappy house, my dear. The past is the past; it should be allowed to rest.’ Was there something terribly wrong at Belheddon? And if there was, why did she feel so happy here? Why did Luke love it so much? Why had they not felt the evil which had so terrified Lydia and Laura?

  Luke was lying under the Bentley, a spanner in his hand when she walked into the courtyard. ‘Hi there!’ His voice came from the shadows beneath the chassis. ‘Lyn has taken Tom into Colchester. Are you feeling better after your walk?’

  ‘A bit.’ She leaned against the coach house wall, hands in pockets, staring down at his feet. ‘Luke, do you want a coffee? There’s something I want to ask you.’

  ‘Why not.’ He scooted himself out from beneath the car and grinned. There was a patch of oil on his forehead and his hands as always now were ingrained with black.

  ‘So?’ Blowing on the hot mug he sat at the kitchen table. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s something wrong, Luke. Terribly wrong. Can’t you feel it?’ She sat opposite him. The smell of the coffee was making her feel sick again.

  His face sobered. ‘In what way wrong? Not the baby?’

  ‘No, not the baby. Luke, I’ve found letters and diaries and things, written by my mother and grandmother.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen you engrossed in them.’ He reached for the biscuit tin and levered off the lid. ‘I thought they interested you.’ He poured some more coffee into his mug.

  ‘They both talk about something dreadful, something terrifying in the house.’

  ‘Oh Joss.’ He shook his head. ‘Not that again. Not the devil himself, living in the cellar? For goodness sak
e!’ He heaved himself to his feet, grabbing another biscuit. ‘Listen love, I’ve got to go back to work. I need to try and sort out that carburettor by lunch time if I can.’ He bent over her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Don’t look for problems where there aren’t any. We are damn lucky to have this place. We’re happy here. It’s given us the chance of a new start, and it’s given you a second family to research and get to know. But keep your imagination for your book, Joss. This was real life. Real people living in real times. It wasn’t fiction. Maybe your grandmother and your mother were neurotic. You don’t know. Maybe they were both incipient novelists – perhaps that’s where you get it from. We don’t know. All we know is that this is a fabulous, happy house. Alice and Joe will be here tomorrow, it’s Christmas in three days and our own family is the one that you should be thinking about.’

  He had been right, of course. Every time over Christmas when her thoughts returned to the tragedy of her brothers’ deaths, or her mother or her grandmother’s fears Joss firmly brought them back to the realities of running a house full of people, cooking on an antiquated stove, thinking about the book and scribbling notes on the pad she kept in the pocket of her jeans and keeping Tom’s excitement within bounds all the while hiding as much as possible her lingering morning sickness and exhaustion. Alice was not fooled for a moment but she went along with the deception in spite of Joe’s protests that she must not do too much herself, calmly and firmly taking as much as possible out of Joss’s hands and slowly, to her surprise Joss found that she was indeed beginning to relax. With people in it the house did not seem so large. The silences had gone; every room was full of family, whispering, wrapping presents, hiding parcels. The silver glitter on the tree was the only thing that moved in the shadows and the voices were silent. Twice she went out onto the lawn late at night to look up at the stars alone. Awed by their frosty beauty she stood quite still, her hands pushed down into the pockets of her jacket, imagining the ethereal beauty of the music of the spheres ringing through the silence of the garden. But in reality she could hear nothing but the distant piping of the pewits under the moon on the fields and the quick urgent hunting calls of the little owl as it quartered the old gardens beyond the lake.

  ‘Sammy? Georgie?’ Her call was tentative, making her feel a little foolish. She knew there was no one there. Probably she had imagined it all.

  She smiled to herself as she turned back towards the courtyard. It was going to be a good Christmas and they were all going to enjoy Belheddon and be very very happy there.

  Three weeks after Christmas, Joe came and found Joss dozing by the fire in the study, her notebooks on her knee, a pen lying slack between her fingers. ‘Your mother’s not well, Joss. The doctor said she mustn’t tire herself out and that’s just what she’s been doing these last few weeks. I’m taking her home so she can rest. And Lyn will still be here to help. She’s a good girl, and she’s loving the country life.’ His face creased into a network of deep wrinkles as he smiled at her fondly.

  ‘Dad.’ Joss reached out for his hand. She had been dreaming, she realised, about Richard, happily living inside the plot of her book, walking around an earlier, more primitive but sun-filled Belheddon. ‘I had no idea Mum was ill! Why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘She didn’t want anyone to know. And there’s nothing rest and a bit of TLC from her old husband can’t put right. Don’t you go worrying yourself now. Just let us go home quietly.’

  Sitting in her bedroom later Joss looked up at Lyn who was standing by the window. ‘She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.’

  ‘Nor me.’ Lyn bit her lip. ‘You know what she’s like. She never makes a fuss.’ There were tears brimming in her eyes. She turned to Joss. ‘If she gets worse I’ll have to go back. I can’t leave them on their own.’

  ‘Of course you can’t. Lyn, why won’t they stay here? We could both look after them.’

  Lyn shook her head. ‘Come on, Joss. This is your home. Your real parents’ home. However lovely it is here, this is not Mum and Dad’s scene. It’s not really mine, though I’m prepared to make a big sacrifice.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘They’re not really happy out of London, you know that. All their friends are there. The rest of the family is there. This is fantasy land. They are pleased for you – really pleased – but they don’t belong.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Joss leaned back on the bed with a sigh. ‘Why do things have to change, Lyn? Why do people get old and ill. It seems so unfair.’

  ‘It’s life.’ Lyn headed for the door. ‘Some people get old, others have babies. I’m not a philosopher like you, but even I can see that’s the way it works. I expect every new generation puts up a fight as it sees old age coming, then it gives up and accepts the inevitable. You rest now. You look washed out too. You know the doctor told you not to do too much. I’ll take Tom for a walk and we’ll have a cup of tea later, OK? Once it gets dark and Luke’s indoors.’

  Shivering, Joss pulled the counterpane up over herself. Outside the garden was very still. A sprinkling of snow that morning had melted and everything was dank and dripping. She smiled as she heard Tom’s voice, shrill and excited, outside the window, then it faded as Lyn took him down the drive towards the village and the room sank back into silence. After a while she dozed, drifting in and out of sleep. The room grew darker. Shivering she wriggled down further into the bed, her eyes shut.

  The hand on her forehead was cool; gentle. It seemed to soothe her.

  Katherine, my clever love.

  ‘Luke?’ she murmured, barely awake. His hand had moved down to her breast and languidly, still half asleep, she moved beneath the gentle fingers. ‘I’ll come down, soon.’ She slept again.

  When she woke it was dark. She lay still for a moment, still wrapped in her dream, her body glowing, sleepily aware of the hands which had caressed her breasts as she slept. Groping for the light switch she looked at her watch. It was nearly five. With a groan she heaved herself off the bed and stood up. The house was still silent. Probably Lyn had put the television on in the kitchen to keep Tom quiet while she made his tea, the routine they had fallen into so Joss could keep the afternoons for writing. She had almost two complete chapters finished now as well as a sheaf of notes and a chronology of the Wars of the Roses. Luke would be in by now. The house downstairs would be warm and busy and welcoming. She shivered, reaching for a thick sweater and pulling it over her head. All she had to do was go downstairs.

  The last two entries in the diary had been short. Her grandmother had written:

  I feel strangely weak. The doctor came again this morning and said it was the result of being tired. I shall get up when the rain stops and the sun returns. How I crave the sun.

  Four days later she wrote:

  The loneliness becomes worse. I do not let them know I am alone. The effort of going downstairs for some beef tea is too much. Perhaps tomorrow.

  That was all. The rest of the book was empty. Four days later she was dead.

  Shivering Joss put the diary back into the bedside drawer. She wished she had not read that. The thought of the woman alone in the house, completely alone and dying, was intolerable. She stood up, conscious of a slight cramp in her leg and went to look down into the garden. It was very black. Rain slanted down across the grass dissolving the last remaining patches of snow.

  ‘Joss!’

  It was Lyn calling up the staircase. ‘Phone call for you.’

  Shaking herself Joss turned away from the darkness and ran downstairs. In the study Lyn had thrown several logs onto the fire and the room was almost hot. ‘David.’ She nodded towards the phone which lay on the desk. ‘He sounds excited.’

  ‘David?’ Joss put the receiver to her ear.

  ‘Joss. Only a week until school starts. Can I come up and see you?’ He sounded almost breathless.

  ‘Of course. You know we’ve got room.’ Joss sat down at the desk, pressing the phone to her ear unaware that her voice was seductively husky with sleep. Her ha
nds were, she realised suddenly, shaking. ‘Any special reason?’

  ‘Wait and see. I’ll be down tomorrow if that’s all right. And you will never guess who I met at a dinner yesterday. A chap called Gerald Andrews who is your friendly local historian. He and I belong to the same club, it seems. Listen, we had quite a talk about Belheddon. I gave him your phone number and he is going to get in touch. And Joss. I am having lunch next week with Robert Cassie. If you have got some stuff ready for our book I could deliver it in person and if that’s not an incentive, I don’t know what is! See you tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s coming down.’ Joss put the phone down and came to join Lyn by the fire. ‘He seems to have found out some more about the house.’

  ‘You and your bloody house!’ Lyn shook her head. ‘Can’t you think of anything else?’

  Joss flinched. ‘I’m sorry. Am I being boring?’

  ‘You certainly are.’ Lyn reached for the poker and stabbed ferociously at the fire. ‘Still I’m glad David is coming down. He seems to be our only remaining link with civilisation.’

  ‘The country is getting to you.’ Joss smiled, determined not to be goaded.