by Kirsty Ferry
Becky smiled. She began to imagine gorgeous dresses and sumptuous coaches; handsome gentlemen and beautiful ladies. ‘I’m getting too carried away with this lot,’ she said. ‘My imagination is going into overdrive. There’s more as well. How come you never found any of these things?’ she complained to Jon.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never found the secret compartment,’ he said. ‘It never bothered me enough to keep trying.’
Becky shook her head, and tucked a stray strand of chestnut hair behind her left ear. ‘Men,’ she muttered. ‘Look. What’s this?’ She pulled out another sheet, folded this time, and just ordinary paper. She began to unfold it carefully, smoothing the creases out. ‘Oh my, this is so delicate. It’s been in here for years. We’re lucky it hasn’t rotted or anything.’
She turned the paper over so the printed side faced her. ‘What on earth?’ she said. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes widened. She was holding a sheet that showed the hand formations for finger spelling in sign language. She lifted her hands up and spelled out her name. ‘I’m slow at this,’ she said.
Jon moved away from the camera and came over to have a closer look. ‘Well, look at this!’ he said, pulling the paper towards him. ‘It’s not something I would have expected to see in there.’ He tried to shape the letters J-O-N and stared at his hands, as if they wouldn’t agree to conform.
Becky laughed, watching his attempts. ‘Do you have dyslexic fingers?’ she asked. ‘That was nothing like your name.’
‘It’s nothing I’ve ever had cause to use,’ he admitted. ‘I could learn, I suppose, if I ever needed to.’
‘You could,’ said Becky, ‘but this looks like somebody tried and failed. That’s probably why it’s been shoved in here.’
‘I don’t suppose they took too much time to learn it, really,’ said Jon. ‘In Victorian times they probably thought if people could lip-read that would be enough. Look at Princess Alice of Battenberg. I think I read somewhere that she could lip-read in four different languages.’
‘That might have been all right for the privileged classes,’ said Becky. ‘But what about the ordinary people? They wouldn’t be able to do that – and I can’t imagine anyone taking the time to learn how to communicate with them in any other way. They’d just be written off. It must have been really lonely for them.’ She fingered the piece of paper with the symbols on. ‘Someone tried to use it, though.’
‘Yes, but this box looks as if it’s come from a pretty affluent household, don’t you think?’ said Jon. ‘Perhaps they had no need to use the alphabet after all.’
‘If I dig deeper I might find an ear trumpet,’ said Becky with a laugh. ‘Perhaps that’s why they abandoned the lessons.’ As she spoke, she felt around inside the compartment and smiled as her fingertips touched another piece of paper. ‘One more thing,’ she said. She pulled the paper out and slid it onto the table. ‘Sheet music,’ she said in surprise. ‘Well, I never.’
‘Let me see that,’ said Jon. He picked it up and studied it. Becky watched his face as he frowned and muttered to himself. He was just as nice as she remembered him. He was six years older than Lissy and Becky and he had usually been quite tolerant of them, apart from when they had really, really pushed it. And she had to admit, the years had been pretty good to him and the boy she had known had turned into a very attractive man. She had almost forgotten about the coffee spillage in fact. It was turning out to be an interesting afternoon.
The frown suddenly cleared from Jon’s face and he looked at Becky. ‘Mozart,’ he said. ‘It’s one of his more romantic pieces, I think. Là ci darem la mano. It’s from Don Giovanni.’
Becky looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t understand Italian,’ she said. ‘What does it mean in English?’
‘Oh, sorry – it’s something like, there we will join our hands,’ said Jon.
‘Opera’s not my strong point, which isn’t surprising, really,’ she said, ‘but how do you know all that?’
‘Remember that big piano in the hall?’ he said. ‘That was mine. I had lessons, but I didn’t play it as much as I should have done and I still don’t bother much now, but some things just stick with you.’ He nodded to the sheet music. ‘For instance, I can still sight-read this sort of stuff.’
‘I’m not musical at all,’ said Becky. ‘Good job you are here. I could never have fathomed it out.’
‘Well, you worked out the other sheet,’ said Jon. He looked at his fingers again and flexed them. ‘You’d think I would be able to do that spelling thing after learning piano.’
‘Probably different parts of the brain,’ said Becky with a smile. ‘We’ve all got our strengths.’ She sat back in the chair and fingered the items from the writing slope thoughtfully. ‘What an odd collection, though. I need to piece it all together I think.’
‘Now it’s back to “you” piecing it together. It was “we” before. Remember, when you wanted the portrait lady’s details?’ said Jon.
Becky realised there was no malice in his voice. She lifted her hands up and shrugged her shoulders. ‘You can help,’ she said. It was so strange. She hadn’t given him more than a passing thought for years, but she felt an affinity with him. Her instincts had been right.
‘So you wouldn’t mind meeting again? With or without Lissy?’ She realised Jon was speaking again as he moved back to the camera. ‘That’s good to hear, anyway.’
‘Yes, I think it would be a good plan,’ replied Becky. ‘Do you want me to pose properly now? So we can get this picture done?’
‘Yes please. I’m so glad I spilled that coffee on you before.’
Becky laughed as Jon clicked the shutter. Then she realised that was the wrong sort of expression. She made her face expressionless and stared at the camera. Jon raised his thumb over the top and clicked the shutter again.
‘Perfect,’ he said.
Becky took the dress off carefully and hung it back on the hanger, hooking it on the door of the changing room and putting her own clothes back on. She looked at herself in the mirror and half smiled.
‘Hello, Becky,’ she said to her reflection. ‘You’re not quite Lady Rebecca any more, are you?’ She sighed. ‘Never mind.’ She pulled open the door and brought the dress reverently out of the changing room. She handed it to Jon and sighed again as she saw it disappear into the Narnia wardrobe.
He shut the door and turned back to face her. ‘I’ll padlock it later,’ he said, ‘just to make sure you don’t go back in for it.’
‘Hardly likely,’ she said. ‘It’s not like I could get in here on my own. I’m assuming you have an alarm system in place? One that needs a certain combination to get in, perhaps?’ She put her head on one side. ‘Eighteen ninety-seven,’ she said suddenly. Jon’s face registered surprise and she saw him slide his gaze to the door. She turned, following it and laughed. ‘Nice one,’ she said, ‘that’s the combination and the keypad worked out.’
‘How did you …?’ he asked.
‘Hmm? How did I do it? I don’t know.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It just came to me. Oh – it’s also the date that Dracula was first published so maybe I had an inkling; especially since you have a copy of the book right there, right next to the door. Probably in case you forget – you can just look inside, can’t you?’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Jon. ‘Of course, I’m forgetting you’re a journalist now. You lot poke around places all the time.’
‘I’m not that sort of journalist,’ replied Becky, putting her camera inside her bag and zipping it up. ‘I have to go. I need to find my hotel. It’s been very nice meeting you again, Jon.’ She held her hand out to shake his and he took it. He held it, she noticed, for a little too long.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked. ‘I can probably help you find it.’
‘I have satnav, thanks,’ she said.
‘Oh, come
on, surely it’s better to have a human direct you sometimes?’
‘Maybe it is, but I need to get there quickly. I have a bag full of notes to sort through, photos to download and I have an article on a deadline. I need to find this blasted hotel before it gets any darker and the thunder starts up again.’
‘What thunder?’ asked Jon.
‘The rumble that went on when I was getting changed,’ said Becky. ‘You must have heard it! I did.’
‘I couldn’t hear any thunder,’ said Jon, shaking his head.
‘Oh,’ said Becky. ‘I was pretty sure I heard some.’
‘Nothing I heard,’ replied Jon, still shaking his head. ‘Which hotel is it, anyway?’ He smiled, disarmingly.
Becky narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t know if I can tell you,’ she replied. ‘What if you’ve changed into some weird stalker type who follows me there instead of that innocent boy from the countryside?’ She paused, wondering if her sixth sense would jump in; no, no stalker-type phrases came to her mind. Good company did, however. She sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you. Are you going to follow me there, by any chance?’
Jon stared at her, exuding innocence. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘If they do good evening meals I might just come along and try one. Oh, don’t look like that, Becky. I’ll go home and get showered and changed first. Then you won’t be ashamed of me when we sit together—’
‘Enough!’ she cried. ‘It’s Carrick Park. It’s a few miles north of here, on the moors. I’ve never been before; it was the only place I was able to book into with it being Goth Weekend. It looks nice on the website.’
‘Carrick Park. Very grand,’ replied Jon. He bowed mockingly, doffed an invisible cap, then said something that seemed to involve the words ‘reet’ and ‘crackin’.
‘What was that meant to be?’ enquired Becky, frowning. ‘I didn’t understand a word of it.’
‘Sorry. That was broad Yorkshire,’ replied Jon. ‘Come on, you’ve lived here long enough. Anyway, I couldn’t resist. I said it seems like a nice place.’
Becky shook her head in despair. ‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘Right, I’m going now. No doubt I will see you later.’ She turned and walked out of the studio, closing the door smartly behind her. If he was at all sensible, he would see the business card she had left on the table by the Dracula book. She smiled to herself as she felt her phone vibrate. She took it out of her pocket and read the text message. I’m changing the key code right now, it said.
‘No you’re not,’ said Becky, putting the phone back in her pocket and hitching her bag over her shoulder. She looked around the darkening streets at the people wandering about, still dressed in deliciously Gothic costumes and she shivered with pleasure.
It was only when she was driving away from the Abbey car park, that she realised she hadn’t managed to track the girl from the procession down after all.
Becky’s phone vibrated again on the car seat next to her as she followed the satnav’s directions to Carrick Park. Driving along a country road, she didn’t dare chance looking at it – the night had really ‘put in’ as Becky’s granny used to say, and it was a strangely silent and fogbound road she travelled.
‘Middle of nowhere,’ she muttered, slowing the car down as she went around yet another bend. Her headlights glinted off a signpost pointing to Carrick Park and she felt her heart rate slow down to that of mild panic as opposed to pure terror, knowing that she couldn’t be that far away now. A third of a mile, according to the satnav – and not a yard too soon, she admitted. For a fleeting moment she felt guilty about Jon driving all the way out here, but she quashed the thought as she admitted to herself that it might actually be quite nice to see him again. She smiled as she saw the lights up ahead, by the side of an enormous gateway. Once, she imagined, there would have been huge iron gates between the posts.
Becky drove through the gateway and along a one-time carriage drive studded with brightly lit lamp posts, which led towards the hotel car park. She pulled up into a space and put the handbrake on thankfully. She picked up her phone and saw the text message. Jon again. What’s it like? Are you there yet?
Becky quickly typed an answer. It’s nice. Stop stalking me. She pressed ‘send’. Almost immediately, a smiley face icon came back and she groaned, stuffing the phone into her pocket as she made to leave the car. It vibrated again. See you at 8. She shook her head and went around to the boot to haul her case out.
The hotel had once been an old house, that much she had gathered, and tonight it was lit up rather spectacularly with floodlights outside. Becky stared at the honey-coloured stone and porticoed doors, the roof of the massive porch-like structure over the entrance supported by beautiful classic columns. There was something familiar about it that she couldn’t quite place. All of a sudden she shivered as if someone had breathed air onto her neck. She looked around, but there was nothing near her except the darkness. She hurried up the staircase onto the wide, front step as fast as she could, bearing in mind the weight of her luggage, and pushed open the big, panelled front door.
Becky found herself in an entrance hall with a grand staircase leading up the centre. It split into two and she knew without a doubt that her room was on the left hand side, three rooms along the corridor. She felt something brush past her and again she shivered, her eyes seeking out Reception – a small desk to the left of the staircase, guarded by a neat receptionist whose dark hair was almost as shiny as the mahogany staircase.
‘Hello, I have a room booked in the name of Rebecca Jones?’ she said, putting her case on the floor.
‘Certainly, Miss Jones. It’s room one hundred and thirteen, it’s just—’
‘Up the stairs to the left and three doors along?’ said Becky mechanically.
The receptionist looked impressed. ‘It certainly is, Miss Jones. Have you stayed with us before?’
Becky simply smiled and dropped her head, studying the papers she needed to fill in for her stay. She hoped it would stop the woman asking any more questions. Her tactic appeared to work as the receptionist didn’t pursue the point. Becky pushed the paperwork back to the girl and tucked her hair behind her left ear again. Damn you, nervous habit, she thought. What was there to be nervous about here, anyway, for God’s sake? The place felt familiar. It felt – and she hated that she was even thinking such nonsense – as if she was coming home.
The receptionist handed over her room key and Becky bent to pick her case back up from the floor before setting off up the stairs.
Becky was at the first landing, where the staircase split into two, and it was as she turned to climb the next flight, that she found herself facing a full-length portrait of a woman whose hair rivalled the honey colour of the stones outside.
‘Good Lord,’ she said. A jolt of pure recognition flooded through her and she stared at the girl. She had sapphire-blue eyes that seemed to drill into your deepest thoughts and a creamy complexion, set off by perfectly red lips. She wasn’t exactly smiling. There was a hint of something Becky understood in her eyes, but she couldn’t put a word to it; a struggle, perhaps, or a need for acceptance. But the thing that stood out most for Becky was the dress the girl was wearing. It was exactly like the one she had tried on at Jon’s studio that afternoon, even down to the tiny crystals that covered it. They seemed to twinkle out from the portrait under the electric lighting and she stood entranced by the girl. Becky, with no thought for her luggage, dumped her case on the landing and ran back down the stairs. She seemed to know exactly where to place her feet and that the third step from the bottom was uneven. Shut up! she told herself. You came up them, you know that from a minute ago.
‘Please, excuse me,’ she said to the startled receptionist. ‘That portrait on the stairs. Who is she? I’ve seen something similar in a museum catalogue,’ she fibbed.
The receptionist smiled suddenly and nodded as if she was talk
ing to a very stupid child or a slightly mad woman. ‘That’s right, a museum catalogue,’ she said. ‘Lady Eleanor has been on loan to the British Museum for a while for the Landseer Portraiture exhibition. She only came back this week.’
‘Lady Eleanor?’ Becky said. And again, it was as if someone shouted the name in her head. Ella. She felt faint and slightly dizzy and stood staring at the receptionist. ‘Ella,’ she said.
‘No, Miss Jones. Eleanor.’ The girl enunciated it slowly, giving Becky a queer look that spoke volumes.
‘I’m sorry – it’s been a long drive here,’ Becky said. ‘I think I’m ready for some food and a rest. Tell me, can I book a table in the restaurant?’
‘You can, Miss Jones. What time?’ The receptionist clicked the end of her pen and flicked open the restaurant reservations list.
‘Eight o’clock please. For two.’ Becky almost choked on the words. Jon had to turn up tonight. For the first time, she desperately hoped he wasn’t teasing her and would do his stalker-ish best to come to Carrick Park that night.
‘Miss Jones,’ said the receptionist, ‘your name is already in for that time.’
‘What?’ said Becky. ‘You mean there’s a reservation already?’
‘Yes,’ said the receptionist looking at her oddly again. ‘There’s a note beside it – we have to tell you that a Mr Jonathon Nelson—’
‘Oh, thank God!’ said Becky, laughing maniacally. ‘He’s already done it! Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry to bother you. I’ll go now, shall I?’ She backed away from the desk, feeling a strange mixture of elation and embarrassment. Thank God for my stalker! she thought. Then she turned and headed up the stairs again. She retrieved her case and practically ran up the second flight of stairs, taking care not to look at Lady Eleanor as she passed. She had the feeling Lady Eleanor was looking back at her though.
