House of Echoes

by Barbara Erskine

  Behind him outside the window, a bird flapped suddenly against the glass, tossed by the wind, and as suddenly it had gone. The curtain blew inwards and he shivered as he felt the cold draught penetrating deep into the room. Standing up he went and peered out. It was black outside and all he could see was the reflection of the lamp behind him. With a shudder he pulled the curtains across.

  He stood for a moment looking down at Joss. There was a slight smile on her face now and her cheeks had flushed with a little colour. On the pillow beside her lay a rose bud. It was white, the petals slightly tinged with pink. He stared at it. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? Leaning across he picked it up and looked at it. It felt very cold, as though it had just been brought in from the garden. David. David must have brought it for her. He frowned angrily then, throwing it down on the bedside table, he walked purposefully out of the room.

  15

  ‘How can he have gone back to London?’ Joss sat up in bed, her elbow on the pillow, and stared at Lyn. ‘Why?’ Lyn shrugged. ‘I think he and Luke had words about something.’ She was stacking coffee cups onto her tray.

  ‘What do you mean they had words?’ Joss frowned, shocked. ‘What about?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ Lyn stood looking down at her. ‘He thinks David fancies you.’

  Joss opened her mouth to protest. Then she shut it again. ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You know it is. David and I were colleagues. Yes, he’s fond of me and I of him, but that’s all it is. Luke can’t think anything else. It’s crazy. Damn it all, I’m pregnant!’

  ‘He thinks David has been giving you flowers.’

  ‘Flowers!’ Joss was astonished. ‘Of course he hasn’t given me flowers. And even if he did, what’s wrong with that? Guests often bring their hostesses flowers.’

  Lyn shrugged. ‘Ask Luke.’

  Joss lay back on the pillows with a deep sigh. ‘Lyn.’ She ran her fingers gently over the bed cover. ‘What kind of flowers does he think David gave me?’

  Lyn gave a small laugh. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, I think it does.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to ask Luke. I don’t know.’

  ‘I will. He can’t order our friends out like that!’

  ‘I don’t think he ordered him out. He just went. It’s a shame. I like David. We need visitors here to cheer us up.’

  Her voice was light, casual, but Joss frowned distracted for a moment from her own worries. ‘Is it too lonely for you, Lyn? Are you missing London?’

  ‘No.’ Course not. I’ve told you before.’ Lyn picked up the tray.

  ‘I feel so guilty that you’ve got to do so much while I’m stuck here in bed.’ Joss reached out and put her hand on Lyn’s arm. ‘We’d be lost without you, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ Lyn softened the abruptness of her answer with a grin. ‘Don’t worry. I’m tough. Looking after this house is a doddle and you know how much I love Tom.’ She paused. ‘Dad just rang, Joss. The last set of results were good.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Joss smiled. ‘You must go up and see her again, Lyn. Whenever.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘I would go if I could, you know that.’

  Lyn gave a tight smile. ‘Of course you would,’ she said. She hitched the door open with her elbow, the heavy tray balanced in her hands. ‘Simon is coming later. He said not to tell you or you’ll get your blood pressure up!’ She grinned again. ‘Yoga breathing and meditation for you, madam, and then if you are sufficiently calm and laid back, maybe he’ll let you come downstairs.’

  He did in the end. Gentle walking. No housework, and don’t try to carry Tom. Those were the instructions.

  The first moment she had on her own in the study she picked up the phone and rang David. ‘Why did you go like that – not even saying good-bye?’ Luke had driven over to Cambridge for the rest of the day in pursuit of spares. She couldn’t ask him.

  She heard the hesitation in his voice. ‘Joss, I think maybe I had come down once too often to see you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Joss frowned. ‘Lyn thinks you had a row with Luke. You can’t have. No one rows with Luke.’

  ‘No?’ He paused. ‘Let’s just say that Luke and I had a small disagreement over something. Nothing serious. I just thought maybe it was time to come home and do some preparation for the new term. No sweat.’

  ‘What did you have words about?’ She glanced at the door. The house was silent. Lyn and Tom had gone for a walk.

  ‘He feels maybe I am encouraging you too much in your obsession with the house.’ He did not mention Luke’s sudden strange hostility. The accusation, sudden and frenzied, about the rose.

  Joss was silent.

  ‘Joss, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. I didn’t think he minded.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind your interest. He’s interested himself. He just doesn’t want you to get things out of proportion.’

  When Luke got back she pounced on him. ‘What on earth do you mean, quarrelling with David and sending him away like that? If you have a problem with him doing research on the house tell me, not him. I asked him to do it!’

  ‘Joss, you’re becoming obsessed – ’

  ‘If I am, it has nothing to do with David!’

  ‘I think it has.’ Luke tightened his lips.

  ‘No. Besides, it’s more than that, isn’t it. You’ve got some crazy idea that he’s in love with me.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s crazy, Joss. It’s obvious to everyone, including you.’ He sounded very bleak. ‘You can’t deny it.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘He’s fond of me, I know. And I of him.’ She met Luke’s eye defiantly. ‘That doesn’t mean we’re planning a raging affair, Luke. You’re the man I love. You’re the man I married, the father of my children.’ She rested her hand on her stomach for a moment. ‘Luke.’ She hesitated. ‘Did this start off as a row over some flowers?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘A rose is usually a love token, I believe.’

  ‘A rose.’ She went cold all over.

  ‘He left a rose on your pillow.’ Luke’s face was set with anger. ‘Come on, Joss, even you can see the significance of that.’

  She swallowed. The rose, when she had found it on her bedside table had been cold and dead. She knew it had not come from David.

  For a long time she said nothing else about the house or the family, reading her mother’s diaries in private and, between stints of writing, climbing to the attics only when Luke was out or safely ensconced beneath the car. David did not come again that term, nor did he send her any more cuttings or notes gleaned from his research.

  Taking advantage of Lyn’s baby sitting and making visits to Mothercare and research for the book her excuse, Joss made one or two trips to Ipswich and Colchester. She went to libraries, looking at books on local history, borrowing tomes on medieval costume and food and fifteenth-century politics. Given the all clear by Simon, on the condition she rested whenever she felt tired she drove around the countryside, astonished to find that, away from the house and the strained atmosphere with Lyn, she felt happier and more positive than she had for months.

  Coming home exhilarated and inspired she wrote and wrote, hearing the story inside her head almost as if it were being dictated to her by Richard himself. She began to think that the story was like a charm. As long as she thought about it and stopped thinking about the family into which she had been born, the house remained gentle and benign, content to sleep with its memories, content perhaps, she sometimes wondered, that she was weaving its story into her novel and exorcising its legends by putting so much of it down on paper.

  Sometimes, when it was her turn to do the lighter chores she was still allowed she would straighten up from sorting clothes or dusting or washing up and listen intently, but the voices in her head were only those of her own imagination. Perhaps the ghosts had gone. Perhaps, they had never been there at all.

  A
few weeks later Gerald Andrews came. On the back seat of his car was a pile of books. ‘I thought I would leave them for you. Just for when you have time. No rush to give them back.’ He shrugged. ‘I am hoping to go into hospital next month. When that’s all over may I come again and bring my friends? I so want to be there when they see the vaulting.’ He smiled conspiratorially and she said she would look forward to seeing him. She put the books in the study, in a pile behind the chair. Luke would never notice a few more amongst so many.

  For several days she ignored them, then she realised they could be fruitful sources for her novel. One by one she brought them out when she wasn’t writing and scoured the pages for information.

  It was all there – especially in the Victorian guide books to East Anglia. The legends, the rumours, the ghost stories. Belheddon Hall had had a reputation as long as it had stood.

  Outside, a short grey February leached into March. Her stomach had at last rounded a little as though acknowledging that spring was on the way. There were golden whips on the willow trees, hazel catkins in the hedge. Snowdrops and primroses gave way to daffodils. Hidden under her steadily growing manuscript was her family tree. She had filled in details covering more than a hundred years now – births, marriages and deaths. So many deaths. It was compulsive. She pushed the pile of paper aside and read about the house again. Her excursions became fewer, and as she moved around the house with dustpan and brush or piles of clean clothes and towels for the various cupboards and drawers or took her turn – less often because she hated cooking as much as Lyn loved it – at the hot stove in the kitchen, she found she was again listening for voices.

  Climbing to the attics, almost against her will, when Lyn or Luke and Tom were all out in the stableyard she moved slowly through the empty rooms, listening intently. But all she could hear was the wind, soughing gently in the gables and she would go back down to the bedroom or to the study with a sigh.

  She was mad, she knew that. To want to hear the voices again was idiotic. But they were the voices of her little brothers; her only contact with a family that had gone forever. She began to ignore her writing, deliberately challenging her theory that the intensity of her concentration on the book had driven Georgie and Sammy away, but without her writing there was an empty space inside her – that thought made her smile wryly as she patted her steadily swelling stomach – an empty space which left her feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

  Luke noticed her restlessness and tried to help. ‘Lyn wondered if it would be fun to take Tom to the zoo. He’s had so few excursions since we moved here. Shall we make a day trip of it? All of us go? It’ll get you out of the house.’ He had noticed that her own private excursions had stopped.

  She felt her spirits rise. ‘I’d like that. It would be fun. Tom will love it!’

  They settled on the following Wednesday and Joss began to look forward to the trip. Her aimless visits to the attic stopped and she helped Lyn prepare Tom for the animals, looking at pictures of elephants and lions and tigers and telling him stories about the other animals they thought they would see there.

  On Tuesday night Tom was sleepless with excitement. ‘It’s our own fault.’ Wearily Joss stood up. They were sitting at the kitchen table finishing supper when the baby alarm had crackled into life for the second time that evening. ‘It’s my turn. I’ll go and see to him.’

  She let herself into the great hall, hearing Tom’s cries for real now, not through the plastic alarm on the kitchen dresser. Hurrying to the foot of the stairs she peered up into the dark and reached for the light switch.

  The shadow on the wall at the angle of the stairs was clearly that of a man. Hunched towards her menacingly it hovered above her as she clutched at the banister. Paralysed with fear she stood for a moment staring up towards it, Tom’s screams echoing in her ears.

  ‘Tom!’ Her whisper was anguished as she put her foot on the bottom step, forcing herself to move towards it. ‘Tom!’

  One of its arms was moving slightly, beckoning her onwards. She froze, willing herself upwards, craning her neck towards the landing. Luke’s waterproof jacket was hanging jauntily from the carved acorn knob at the top of the stairs. What she had seen was its shadow.

  That night she had a nightmare which woke her shivering and sweating. In her dream a huge metal drum on legs had walked slowly towards her across the room. On top of it a jaunty tricorn hat belied the evil expression in its two press-stud eyes. Its arms like giant linked paper clips were stretched out towards her, its method of propulsion hidden by the gleaming aluminium of its body. She awoke with a start and lay there, too afraid to move, her heart thundering in her chest. Beside her Luke stirred and groaned. She listened intently. Beyond his gentle snores there was silence. No sounds from Tom. No sounds from the house. There did not seem to be a breath of wind outside in the garden.

  When she awoke at last it was with a splitting headache. She sat up and groped for the alarm clock and then fell back on the pillow with a groan. She could hear Lyn talking cheerfully to Tom as she got him up. The little boy was giggling happily. Of Luke there was no sign.

  By the time the others had had breakfast she knew she couldn’t go with them to the zoo. Her head was spinning and she was so tired she could barely move.

  ‘We’ll put it off; go another day.’ Luke bent over her, concerned.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, you can’t disappoint Tom. You go. I’ll go back to bed and sleep the rest of the morning. Then I’ll do some work on the book. Honestly. I’ll be fine.’

  She waved them off, torn by Tom’s tears when he found his mummy wasn’t coming too, and then, her head throbbing she turned back towards the house.

  It was after two when she awoke. The morning sun had gone and the sky was overcast and sullen. As she made her way downstairs she could hear the wind in the huge chimney.

  Making herself a cup of tea and a Marmite sandwich she sat for a long time at the kitchen table before at last reaching for her jacket.

  At the edge of the lake she stopped, her hands in her pockets, watching the gusty wind blow sheets of black ripples across the water. Staring down into its depths she hunched her shoulders against the cold, deliberately fending off the thought of a little boy with his jam jar of tadpoles bending towards the water on the slippery bank.

  She tensed at a sound behind her. Turning she surveyed the lawn. There was no one there. She listened, straining her ears to separate sounds from the roar of the wind in her ears, but there was nothing.

  Turning she began to walk slowly back towards the house. Another cup of tea and she would go back to the book. She had wasted too much time day dreaming; she had a novel to write.

  Sammy!

  One hand on the mouse the other on the keyboard she looked up, listening. Someone was running down the stairs.

  Sammy! Play with me!

  Holding her breath she stood up slowly and tiptoed towards the door.

  ‘Hello? Who’s there?’ Reaching out to the doorknob she turned it slowly. ‘Hello?’ Peering out into the hall she squinted up the staircase into the shadows. ‘Is there someone there? Sammy? Georgie?’

  The silence was electric; as if someone else too were holding their breath and waiting.

  ‘Sammy? Georgie?’ She was clutching the doorknob as though her life depended on it, a thin film of perspiration icing her shoulder blades.

  She forced herself to take a step out into the hall, and then, slowly, she began to climb the stairs.

  ‘You know better than to ask me for sleeping pills.’ Simon sat on the chair next to her in the study. He was watching her closely. ‘Come on now. What is it? You’re not afraid of the birth?’

  ‘A little. What woman isn’t.’ Joss hauled herself up from her chair and went to stand at the window with her back to him, wanting to hide her face. Outside, Lyn and Tom were playing football on the grass. Not too near the water, she wanted to shout. Don’t go too near. But of course Lyn wouldn’t let him go too near. Eve
n if she did there was a solid wall of vegetation round the lake now – dead nettles, brambles, a tangle of old man’s beard.

  Sammy

  The voice calling, was loud in the room. It was the third time she had heard it that morning. She swung round and stared at the doctor. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Simon frowned. ‘What? Sorry?’

  ‘Someone calling. Didn’t you hear?’

  He shook his head. ‘Come and sit down Joss.’

  She hesitated, then she went and perched on the low chair opposite him. ‘I must be hearing things.’ She forced herself to smile.

  ‘Maybe.’ He paused. ‘How often do you hear “things”, Joss?’

  ‘Not often.’ She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘When we first moved here I began to hear the boys – shouting – playing – and Katherine – the voice calling out for Katherine.’ She shrugged, finding it difficult to go on. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m ready for the men in white coats. I’m not mad. I’m not imagining it – ’ she paused again. ‘At least I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are we talking about ghosts?’ He raised an eyebrow. Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, he was watching her intently, studying her face.

  She looked away, unable to meet his gaze. ‘I suppose we are.’

  There was a long silence. He was waiting for her to say something else. She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Women grow fanciful in pregnancy don’t they? And, thinking about it, I’ve been pregnant since we moved in.’

  ‘Do you think that is what it is?’ He leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other, almost too deliberately casual.

  ‘You tell me. You’re the doctor.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Joss.’

  ‘So I’m going mad.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I think you have been physically and mentally exhausted since you moved into the house. I think you have allowed the romance and history and emptiness of the place to play upon your mind.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose if I told you to take a holiday you would say it was out of the question?’