by M K Jones
The roofers spent a week replacing all of the grey slate tiles and cleared the moss, ivy, and birds’ nests from around the chimneys, which were then swept ready for the fires to be lit. And the builders quickly completed the installation of central heating, much to Fiona’s relief, as they were going to spend their first family Christmas together in a long time.
On Christmas Day, they had all sat sat around the log fire blazing in the grate, with furniture and possessions in place. Fiona had agreed, grudgingly, and with great surprise, that perhaps Maggie wasn’t quite so mad, after all, even if she was lucky as hell. Maggie had expressed her own amazement that everything had gone without a hitch. She’d thought on more than one occasion that the bubble must surely burst. But it had almost been as if the house wanted her to take up residence.
The builders had also opened up the staircase to the loft. During one of her frequent visits to check on the progress of the work, the foreman pointed out to Maggie that previous occupants had left some very dirty trunks in the huge attic space. As she wanted eventually to convert it into a room for the children, Maggie decided to sort it out after Christmas but in the meantime she took advantage of the storage space. Access to the attic was through a staircase behind a door on the first-floor gallery. The stairs were rather narrow and twisted around sharply but the attic at the top was surprisingly spacious and would make a great space for the children.
Having heaved boxes up the stairs and deposited them as close to the door as possible, Maggie could just make out a couple of the old trunks under the eaves. The musty attic had clearly not been used for many years.
* * *
Searching through the kitchen draws and cupboards Maggie remembered that she had put the secateurs in the attic with the Christmas decorations. Searching through the Christmas boxes she saw the old trunks again and reminded herself that she should make some time soon to get back up there with a torch and open them up.
Maggie and Alice were soon in the car again and on their way to the cemetery. Maggie quickly located the grave and waved in triumph to her daughter.
“Here they are, your great-great-grandparents. Stand next to the headstone and I’ll photograph you. Say hello.”
“I can’t just say, ‘Hello, great-great-grandparents.’ That’s stupid. What are their names?”
“They were called John and Ruth. That a coincidence, isn’t it? Me choosing Ruth as your second name?”
“Which one shall I speak to first?” asked Alice.
“I think your great-great-grandmother, Ruth.” Maggie lifted up her camera. “Say hello to Ruth, Alice.”
“Hello, Ruth,” said Alice, smiling.
Four
As Alice spoke, and Maggie clicked the button on top of the camera, she felt movement near her feet. The camera focus blurred so that she couldn’t quite see properly. She shifted her balance slightly, to clarify the picture. But instead her foot caught on something and as she lurched forwards, the camera fell and bounced on the grass.
Her daughter looked at her, concerned. “What’s wrong, Mummy? Why did you shout at me?”
“I didn’t shout,” Maggie replied, picking herself up. “I might have sworn, but just a bit, under my breath.”
“No, you called me. You screamed at me! You said my name. You said, ‘Alice! Alice!’ I thought something was wrong, but I couldn’t see you properly when the flash went off.”
“I didn’t shout at you, Alice.”
“Yes, you did!”
Maggie picked up the camera. The flash was switched off. Her daughter was still blinking and shielding her face with her arms, as if to ward something off. Maggie quickly looked around, but there was no-one else in the cemetery. She felt a shiver.
“I’m just going to clear up this grave and see what the rest of the words are. Can you see how much it’s overgrown? It won’t take long. Do you want to help me, Al?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to take a walk over there.” She pointed towards the back of the chapel. “See what’s going on.” Maggie guessed she was going to play the graveyard game.
“OK,” she called back, “but keep me in sight. Don’t wander off any further.”
Alice pulled her usual face of huffy boredom at her mother’s warning as she picked her way to the footpath and crossed over towards the chapel. Maggie turned back to the gravestone, and began to snip at the creepers and ivy with the secateurs. In a moment she would be able to read more of the story. She knew from her research that it was customary at that time to record the place of death on the gravestone if it was of consequence. Perhaps she would add another piece to the puzzle.
She knew from the 1901 census that the family had lived on their farm, which had been a sizeable property. Now, it was a small courtyard of expensive houses. John Jones must have been a successful man, beginning life as a railway worker but ending up a farmer, a farm owner too, not just a tenant. But she had no idea what happened to them beyond that.
With a sharp wrench the last piece of ivy pulled away. She rubbed the stone hard with a cloth until she could make out the words. What she saw left her speechless. She almost stopped breathing with the shock: “John Jones died 4 May 1909 at Garthwood House.” Maggie had bought her great-grandfather’s house! The very house in which, according to his gravestone, he had died. But it had only been built two years before that, so John must have been the landowner that Brian the estate agent had been talking about. This was incredible!
She tried to focus – but where to begin? She couldn’t think of anything, her mind was a blank. Then she realised that Alice was standing next to her.
“Are you OK, Mum?” Her voice was troubled, “You’ve gone white.”
“Look at the stone,” Maggie whispered.
Alice read the headstone. She looked puzzled, but not upset. “Is that our Garthwood House?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
Alice scrutinised the headstone, taking in all of the details, then looked up at Maggie and asked, “Are you sad, or happy?”
“What?” Maggie shook her head, trying to concentrate.
“Are you sad that he died there, or happy that we got the house back?”
“Got it back? I hadn’t thought of it like that. Yes, I suppose we have got it back.” She smiled at her daughter. “That’s a good way to think of it.”
She was just starting to feel a bit more relaxed, think of it as an amazing coincidence, when Alice spoke again.
“Can I tell the girl over there to cheer her up?”
“What girl, Alice?”
“Over there,” she gestured towards the chapel, “where I went to see. She’s very unhappy because her friend died. She’s scared too.”
Maggie glanced across the graveyard. “There’s no-one else here, Alice.”
“Oh, they’ve gone. I was watching her, from the path. Bit odd, though. She looked like she’d been standing in rain, but it hasn’t rained today, has it? She was watching her friend’s funeral. And her family. But they didn’t see me. I think the other one could see me too, the one she was scared of.”
There was no funeral taking place in the cemetery. Maggie didn’t know how to respond, but felt instinctively that she should not disbelieve her daughter.
“How do you know the girl saw you, Alice?”
“She waved to me, sort of, just with her fingers. The other one saw her do it and looked round at me. She smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile.”
“Then what happened?”
“I came back when I saw you staring at the stone. I think the burial was finished so they must have gone home. They were walking away.”
“What do you mean by ‘the other one’, Alice?”
Alice thought for a moment, biting at her bottom lip. “You know when you know that someone doesn’t like you by the way they smile? That’s all, really. It made me feel like I should back off, so I did.”
“Had you seen these people before?”
“No, of course not. Can we go now?”
>
There didn’t seem to be any point in probing further, so Maggie agreed it was time to go. She gathered up her things and as they walked she looked towards where Alice said she’d seen the funeral. There was nothing, no sign of the recent presence of people, no footsteps in the grass, and certainly no recently dug grave. Maggie recalled from her earlier visit that no burials had taken place in that part since the cemetery was opened. Maggie distracted Alice with trivial chat until they reached the car. They got in and put on their seat belts and Maggie started the engine, then exclaimed, “Damn, I’ve left my camera! Stay here.”
She turned off the engine, jumped out, and started to run before Alice could follow. But instead of going back to the family grave she headed for the patch of ground behind the chapel and under the tree. She had passed these graves earlier when she was searching. There was only one girl’s grave. Esme Ellis aged twelve. Died tragically 4 May 1883. Esme had been buried about a hundred and thirty years ago. Maggie wondered what the date of the funeral was. That would be in the church records. But what tragedy? If it had been a really big tragedy it might have been recorded in the local newspaper. That would be in the library archive. Checking that her camera was still safely in her pocket, Maggie went back to the car.
* * *
Jack had a homework project, so Maggie worked with him on the computer that evening, then tested Alice’s spelling sheets. She kept what had happened at the cemetery in the back of her mind. It was only after the children were in their rooms reading and watching TV that Maggie allowed herself to think about it. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat in her favourite place – the big picture window at the back of the living room that looked out across the hills to the mountain and down the valley.
The light was fading. The trees on top of the first small round hill grew steadily darker and spread shadows down towards the canal, where the motionless water had darkened to look like black syrup. The few farmhouses in the distance shone lights against the deep blue, almost purple sky.
As she drank her wine, Maggie pieced together everything that she had found out, trying to reassure herself with a logical explanation, especially Alice’s story.
Maggie liked to take everything at face value She had bought this house on a whim (not for the first time), spending almost all her savings (also not for the first time). She was relying on good luck or chance to survive the crisis that would inevitably come from this folly. Last time she had taken a chance like that she had lost almost everything, retrieving just enough to sell up, buy a small house and exist carefully for a couple of years. She’d devoted her time to nursing the psychological wounds for her family. Buying Garthwood House had put paid to that. And now she was caught up in a conundrum, which would take up time that she hadn’t got if she was to find a job. She resigned herself to the knowledge that she was going to pursue this mystery regardless. It was too bizarre to ignore. Her sister, Fiona, would despair when she heard.
As she sat there, relaxing in her lovely, friendly, comfortable home, instinct told her that this time it was different. She knew that she had a real connection to her house, to the man who had built it, and to the family who had lived in it. This had shocked her. But didn’t disturb her. It just whetted her curiosity to find out more.
Alice’s earlier behaviour did disturb her, though. Maggie knew there hadn’t been anyone else at the graveyard. Was it just a child’s imagination? If it wasn’t, then what had happened? What had Alice seen? Maggie was convinced that Alice believed she’d seen something.
Maggie took a gulp of wine and a long suppressed fear welled up, and with it an old anxiety that death was not the end of a straight line. And there was something else, some nagging feeling that she thought she recognised but couldn’t put a name to. She had felt it a few times since her investigations had begun and she didn’t like it. It felt unsafe.
Apart from seeing her sister, family commitments were something that she had avoided. But now she was hooked… no, obsessed. Perhaps she was meant to be? No point struggling for a clear picture. There wasn’t one yet. Maybe she could get some help. There were already a few things to do at the library and the archives, and they had experienced people there. She thought of the attic, and determined that tomorrow she would search those trunks under the eaves. Might they yield information about the house’s history?
She could put off looking for work for just a little longer, say a week, maybe two. Maggie smiled guiltily to herself, acknowledging that this was a poor excuse. At least this time it was an excuse with a purpose. She could last out financially for a month or two more, just.
She had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed it was almost dark outside. All she could see now was the outline of the long mountain ridge against the last fading westerly light. This window seemed to have been designed specially for quiet contemplation of the view, with its changing colours throughout the day, and season by season. This view must hardly have changed in the century or so since the house had been built. No roads or traffic, just the countryside as it always had been. She knew from the old maps she had researched that the farmhouses she could see today were the same ones that were there a hundred years before. She was amazed that no new buildings encroached upon the mountain, or up from the town to spoil the view. It was a rare and precious thing these days, to have so much land untouched. The thought made her smile as she stood up and leaned forwards to draw the curtains.
As she caught her reflection in in the window, gazing out into the distance again, something stopped her. Staring more keenly at herself, she thought it was raining, because raindrops seemed to be running down her face. But it wasn’t raining. It was her reflection that was crying.
Five
After breakfast, Ruth settled herself at the round table in the small parlour that looked out over the front of the farmhouse, to do her accounts. John raised his eyebrows seeing her there. She usually performed this task in the evening in the drawing room when they were together, and always on a Friday, never on a Wednesday. He said nothing, understanding why she was really there.
The table stood in front of the long window that looked out over the fenced-off garden of lawn, flowers, and a small vegetable plot. And the bench that John had put there for Ruth to sit on to enjoy the sunshine that favoured this aspect. It was Ruth’s favourite spot. The back of the farmhouse was given over to machinery storage sheds around a cobbled courtyard and dwellings for the animals.
For the past hour, while she worked, Ruth watched Alice. She was sitting on the bench stroking the orphaned baby lambs that John had reluctantly allowed her to feed, and that gambolled around her feet. But mainly Alice gazed into the distance at nothing at all. From time to time the girl’s lips moved and she shook her head, and it seemed to Ruth that her daughter was caught up in an internal argument with herself.
Perhaps that was the same indistinct muttering that Ruth had heard coming from Alice’s room during the past two nights. Ruth knew that the child was sleeping poorly, and this morning Alice had dark circles under her eyes. She argued against going to bed, wept and begged to stay longer with her parents. John had been angry, and Ruth supported him, but this was out of character for Alice. She longed to comfort Alice, to find out what was troubling her, but John felt it was best to let her be and grieve for her friend. So Ruth didn’t speak of her concern to her daughter and tried to remain cheerful. But she watched her carefully and one time, when Alice thought she wasn’t looking, Ruth saw a look of such despair in Alice’s eyes that she feared that Alice was was retreating ever deeper into her grief.
How different from the scene a few weeks earlier. She had embarrassed Mrs Ellis when, watching the girls from the same spot, she remarked, “They’re so alike they could be sisters.” She saw Gwen Ellis blush, but went on, “It’s their dark hair and green eyes and those heart-shaped faces. Very different characters, though.”
Gwen nodded. “Your Alice is much stronger than my Essy, even though she’
s two years younger. Essy is small for her age. She loves your Alice.”
Essy came to the farm every day after school. Ruth had no objection to the farmer’s daughter playing with the servant’s child. She’d watched in delight as Alice showed gentle Essy how to milk cows and feed pigs, and how to chase chickens when they thought adults weren’t watching. They’d walk to and from school together and had time to play before Mrs Ellis finished her work.
At Easter, the first talk of change came. Essy would soon reach her thirteenth birthday, which meant leaving school to work for the family income. Ruth knew that Essy dreamed of working on the farm. She was frightened of having to work at one of the factories, especially the local ironworks whose distant roar reached them at night. Essy was not physically strong and children had to be tough to survive factory work.
Ruth recalled a conversation between small girls planning to be friends for life. Settled comfortably after school in the cowshed above the unoccupied pigsty, Alice shared her secret plans with Essy. Drawn from the exploits of famous people in The Star of Gwent and The Merlin.
“Wherever did you get the paper, Alice? Your Dada doesn’t approve.” Essy’s worried whisper carried into the courtyard to where Ruth was preparing feed for the livestock.
“I get them in the village and from school. Someone threw this one away. It’s a week out of date, but that doesn’t matter. Just a moment.” She put her head out of the barn opening and quickly looked around, but didn’t see Ruth directly below. Ruth knew that Alice was checking for her father.
Alice began to read out the story of a polar bear that had escaped from the circus and entered a house in Newport, killing a chicken and destroying all of the crockery, taking on a new voice for each character in turn.
