The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  ‘She told me I was being watched.’

  Startled at the sound of Lillian’s voice, she leans in a little closer. ‘What was that, Gran?’

  ‘She warned me. I didn’t believe her . . . but he was watching, all the time.’

  Maggie stares in confusion, unsure if she’s misheard. ‘Sorry, Gran, who was watching you?’

  ‘There are eyes in that house.’

  Lillian isn’t looking at her but staring instead at the foot of her bed. Maggie follows her grandmother’s gaze but there is no one there. Her skin prickles.

  Lillian’s head turns slowly back to Maggie and her gaze refocuses.

  ‘I got all your letters,’ tries Maggie. ‘I loved reading them. Sorry I wasn’t the greatest pen pal.’

  Lillian reaches out and grips Maggie’s hand with her own, her skin surprisingly cool and soft. ‘Take me home,’ she says, her voice low and urgent. ‘Promise me you’ll take me home.’

  Maggie squeezes her grandmother’s hand. ‘I promise, Gran. As soon as you’re feeling better.’

  ‘Nowhere but Cloudesley. Do you understand?’

  Maggie nods.

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Yes, I promise. As soon as you’re well enough.’

  Lillian nods and lies back against her pillows, closing her eyes.

  Maggie stays a while longer. Outside the window another identical hospital wing looms across the car park. Maggie wonders what stories are unfolding in that building: babies being born, loved ones being lost; lives shifting on their axes. Down on the asphalt she sees two cars vie for the same parking space. Maggie watches as one driver gets out of her car and storms across to the other, gesticulating angrily. Emotions run high in a place like this, where everything boils down to life and death. I promise I’ll take you home, she thinks. She’s stuffed up so many things in the past twelve months, but this, surely, is one thing she can get right.

  The taxi drops her at the house at dusk, the violet sky darkening like a bruise as it turns through the open wrought-iron gates. Stone peacocks, speckled with lichen and perched like sentries atop the gateposts, glower at her as she passes. Tall beech trees crowd the twisting drive on either side, their leafy boughs blocking out the sky. The effect, in the failing light, is of a forbidding tunnel curving away into darkness.

  She’d held the anxiety of her return in check, like a small, coiled spring buried somewhere deep in her gut as the taxi had navigated the country lanes of the Chiltern Hills, winding up through villages of brick-and-flint cottages, past hedgerows rustling with life and rippling fields of young wheat. Her driver had been blessedly mute, just the low hum of the radio to break the silence. At the sign for Cloud Green, she’d sunk a little lower in her seat, averting her gaze as she’d passed the Old Swan pub on the village green, keen to keep news of her return under wraps for as long as possible. Less than a mile on, past the old Saxon church with its tilted gravestones littering the churchyard like rotting teeth, they’d turned through the familiar metal gates.

  Potholes are scattered at intervals along the drive. The taxi judders and bumps past bristling banks of nettles and cow parsley. A magpie flutters from a low tree branch, gliding ahead of the car before soaring up into the dark canopy above. They carry on until the trees eventually begin to thin and the dusky purple sky reappears, stretching over an unkempt lawn spotted with clover and daisies until finally, there in the distance, stands Cloudesley, an old manor house of brick and flint, with its arched stone entrance, grand, gabled roofline, and chimneys twisting skywards.

  The taxi driver lets out a long, low whistle. ‘Home?’ he asks.

  She nods. Home.

  ‘Not a bad place to grow up.’

  She nods again. ‘Yeah, not a bad place.’

  She had never thought to ask how the house had got its name, presuming, as a child, that it had something to do with its position, perched atop a hill like the crowning decoration on a huge cake, or grazing the sky like a large cloud. To her, it had always just been Cloudesley.

  There was no denying it had been a solitary sort of childhood, tucked away in the heart of rural Buckinghamshire, living with her grandparents in the old house, with its twisting corridors and draughty rooms; but her points of reference mostly had been the characters she sought from the dusty books in the library, and when compared to the upbringings of some of her companions – Mary Lennox, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre – it hadn’t seemed so very strange. It was only as she grew older, when she’d returned from boarding school, or later, hanging out with the Mortimer boys, that she’d come to see the house through others’ eyes, and begun to realise how unusual it had been.

  She asks the taxi driver to drop her at the rear of the house. As her car door slams, a flock of rooks take flight from the branches of a tall beech tree, their raucous cries fading into the sky. She stands for a moment, gazing up at the towering facade with its blackened windows and ivy scrambling unchecked across the exterior. The house looks shuttered – no visible signs of life – and Maggie can’t help the slight shiver that runs down her spine. Strange, she thinks, how you often have to leave a place, before you can truly see it. The driver hefts her rucksack out of the boot of the car and she watches as his tail lights disappear up the drive.

  Inside the back entrance, a long flag-stoned corridor stretches away before her. To her right is the scullery, a small utility room that would have once been a flower room, and a door leading down into the cellar; to her left is the kitchen. Ahead looms a wood-panelled staircase, a steep set of steps winding into the upper reaches of the house, once used by the staff. The scent that assaults her is achingly familiar: a heady mix of damp stone, lilac, polished wood and a fragrance reminiscent of the cold, white ash left in an old grate. ‘Hello?’ she calls out, making for the only light spilling from the open kitchen door.

  Radio 4 plays softly on the Roberts radio in the corner of the kitchen. Jane Barrett hasn’t heard her and Maggie takes the moment to observe the reassuring familiarity of the scene in front of her. The scrubbed oak table and the pots of herbs and geraniums growing on the windowsill, the old willow-pattern china standing on the dresser, a jug filled with peonies spilling petals onto the floor.

  Maggie clears her throat and watches as Jane spins around, her face transforming from surprise to delight. ‘Maggie! I didn’t hear you arrive.’

  Jane dries her hands on her apron and meets Maggie in the centre of the room. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she says, drawing back to hold her at arm’s length, ‘not even that tan can hide the fact you’re all skin and bone. Let’s get you some tea. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  She doesn’t give her a chance to answer, but bustles around, filling the kettle, pulling out cups and saucers and a tin of loose-leaf tea. ‘Can I help?’ Maggie feels redundant in the face of Jane’s activity. ‘Let me do something.’

  ‘No, no, sit down.’

  Maggie relents, exhaustion settling over her as she seats herself at the oak table in the centre of the room, watching as Jane prepares a tea tray.

  ‘I waited specially,’ says Jane, retrieving the milk from the fridge. ‘Didn’t want to leave before I’d seen you. You went straight to the hospital? How was she?’

  Maggie thinks of Lillian lying pinned beneath the white hospital sheet and her desperate plea: take me home. ‘She seems very tired and confused. But the doctor I spoke to said she is doing well. The kidney infection is under control and she’s responding to the new medication.’

  Jane shakes her head. ‘She gave me quite a fright, finding her lying in the hall like that in her nightdress. I dread to think how long she had been there.’

  Maggie nods. ‘I’m glad it was one of your mornings.’

  ‘I’ve been making it my business to pop in a little more frequently in recent months.’

  Not for the first time does Maggie silently thank her lucky stars that she had the good sense to hire Jane, a local woman from the village, to check on Lillian a few times each week. For a yea
r now, Jane has been helping Lillian with a little shopping and cooking. She’s a cheery, uncomplicated sort, the kind of no-nonsense person you’d want at your side in a crisis.

  Jane pulls out a chair and sits opposite Maggie, pushing a plate of biscuits toward her pointedly. ‘I hope you don’t feel I’m speaking out of turn, but I’ve been worried about your granny. This house . . . it’s too much for her on her own. How she copes with all those stairs I don’t know. But she won’t hear a word about it. Stubborn as a mule.’

  ‘She certainly is.’

  ‘Sometimes I arrive in the morning and find things have been moved. Vases and the like, disappearing. Dirty footprints trodden through the house. I suspect that wasn’t the first night she’s spent wandering about, though Lord only knows why.’

  ‘How odd.’

  ‘That’s not all. The other day she asked me when Charles would be returning from London. I think she had really forgotten.’ Jane gives Maggie a meaningful look over her mug of tea. ‘Then she asked me to get Albie’s room ready for a visit, though I’m certain he hasn’t phoned in months. She keeps losing things, too. Her spectacles . . . a pair of slippers . . . last week it was a key. She seemed quite beside herself about it, though when I pressed her a few minutes later, she’d gone blank. She’s been increasingly confused these past weeks. Agitated. Repetitive.’ Jane pauses.

  ‘I had no idea.’ Maggie thinks of the correspondence she has exchanged with her grandmother, brief but cheerful letters Lillian had written to her with news from the village and repetitive questions about life in Australia, questions Maggie had never seemed to have the right answers for. She’d replied as best she could, waxing lyrical about the weather and the beaches, while editing out the gorier details of the grimy hostels she had stayed in, the disappointing cafe where she’d found waitressing work, and the random men she’d found momentary distraction with. It seems, perhaps, that she isn’t the only one who has been hiding truths; maybe they had both been masking the reality of their solitary lives. A wave of guilt washes over her. She should have guessed all was not well. No, more than that; she never should have left in the first place. She owed Lillian so much more.

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ Maggie offers, clutching at a straw, ‘the doctor I spoke to seemed very upbeat. He thought they might release her at the end of the week.’

  Jane tuts. ‘Release her? Back here?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maggie thinks for a moment of her promise to her grandmother. ‘I suppose they might consider transitioning her to a care home, but the doctor implied that if she had people around her here then there was no reason she shouldn’t come home.’

  Jane rolls her eyes. ‘Well, that might be fine for some patients; but I’ll bet most of them aren’t eighty-six years old and living in a house like this. If you ask me, they just want the bed back. All these cuts . . .’ She shakes her head.

  ‘Yes. Perhaps. Though with me here now, and you helping out, and Mr Blackmore of course . . .’

  ‘Oh no, dear. Didn’t you know?’ Jane leans forward in her chair. ‘Mr Blackmore retired at the end of last year. It all got a bit too much for him.’

  Another omission from Lillian’s correspondence; well that explains a few things, thinks Maggie, remembering the state of the lawn and the vines scaling the house.

  ‘Your grandmother did hire a new groundsman to help about the place – a little gardening and some general handyman jobs, you know . . .’ Jane trails off, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?

  ‘Yes. It is,’ says Jane firmly. ‘I thought she might have told you. I have to say, I wasn’t entirely sure what you’d think.’

  ‘As long as they don’t mind a little hard work and can put up with Gran’s demands, it can only be a good thing.’

  Jane looks as if she might say something else, then seems to change her mind. ‘Yes,’ she says firmly. ‘That’s exactly what I thought.’

  Maggie reaches for Jane’s hand and gives it a squeeze, her resolve growing. ‘I don’t want you to worry. You’ve been such a great help, but I’m back now. I’ll do whatever it takes to help Lillian and bring her home.’

  ‘Well, it will certainly be a weight off my mind to know you’re here with her.’

  Maggie shrugs. ‘I’d put money on the fact that you and Lillian will be the only people pleased to see me back in Cloud Green.’

  ‘Now, now, we’ll have no self-pity in this kitchen,’ says Jane, reaching for the tray and gathering the cups and saucers. ‘I’m sure you’ll find any fuss died down a while ago. You know what village life is like: a hotbed of gossip for five minutes, but the flames that fan rumours soon burn themselves out.’

  Maggie eyes her doubtfully as the woman continues.

  ‘We’ve seen upsets in Cloud Green before and I’m sure we’ll see them again. You mark my words. Most people will have far better things to talk about than what happened, you’ll see. Besides, it’s really none of anyone’s business, is it?’

  Maggie nods but she isn’t convinced; for all her talk, Jane isn’t quite able to meet her eye. They both know exactly what life in a small English village can be like.

  Maggie’s feelings of unease only grow as the sound of Jane’s car fades away down the drive. The house stands eerily silent. Wanting to reacquaint herself with the old place, she moves through the ground floor, following the twisting, wood-panelled corridors, opening doors and switching on lights, gazing upon each room in turn before plunging it back into darkness.

  In the dining room, the draught created by opening the door makes the dusty chandelier jangle overhead but the rest of the room has an abandoned air. The shutters are closed and the walnut chairs, the long, polished table and sideboard stand draped in ghostly sheets. Her grandfather’s eclectic tapestries and painted African masks still hang upon the panelled walls beside a collection of mounted horns and antlers, while the porcelain dinner service and crystal wine glasses stand redundant in a huge glass cabinet.

  It’s a similar scene in the library: the bookshelves jammed to the rafters with leather-bound volumes, the tall ladder still resting against them, but the armchairs are now covered in white sheets and the Persian rugs have been rolled up and left propped against a wall. Over on the hearth Maggie notices a once-prized collection of carved ivories covered in a thick layer of dust. Two of the window-panes are cracked and tendrils of ivy creep into the room between the rotting window-frame and the wall. The air smells musty and dank, fetid like a greenhouse.

  On into the morning room and it’s an even worse story: shuttered windows, faded Chinese wallpaper, and abandoned clutter and ornaments. Several buckets stand dotted at ominous intervals beneath the ceiling rose, most of them half-filled with grey water, stains spreading around them on the carpet. When she looks up, she sees the watermarks leaking across the ceiling and a large zigzag crack scarring one wall.

  Her grandfather’s study is intact, its walls lined with Charles’s entomological collections – beetles and butterflies pinned to boards in box frames – but so dusty and the air so still it feels like a vault that hasn’t been opened in decades.

  With each new room, Maggie’s spirits sink a little lower. In the year she has been away, the house seems to have fallen in on itself; wandering its rooms and corridors feels a little like venturing through a museum only to find many of its exhibits damaged or closed for restoration.

  Other than the kitchen, the only room that maintains any semblance of order and activity is the drawing room, still in regular use as evidenced by the presence of her grandmother’s favourite shawl, a pair of reading glasses and a crossword lying beside her armchair. On the wall opposite, Maggie sees the painting she gave Lillian for her eightieth birthday, a crude, colourful abstract she’d completed during a more experimental phase at art college. Looking around, it makes Maggie sad to realise what a small and intimate radius Lillian’s life has shrunk to in this huge, echoing house.

  Sick of the cloying stillness
, Maggie moves across to the window and unlocks the catch, throwing it open to the night air. A welcome gust blows into the room, lifting a pile of papers off the writing desk and sending them tumbling to the floor.

  Maggie retrieves the one nearest her feet: an outstanding electricity bill, FINAL DEMAND printed in red across the top. She drops to her hands and knees and gathers the rest of the papers. They are all bills, dozens of them – gas, water, roofing work, the unpaid invoice of a plumber, several of Jane’s own invoices – all of them overdue. Maggie stares at them in dismay. She gathers up the papers and takes them with her. It’s becoming all too clear that it’s not just Lillian’s health that is a concern, but also the state of the vast, decaying house.

  Eventually, she comes to the grand entrance hall. She flicks a light switch and hears an ominous fizzing sound overhead. The French chandelier flickers then shorts with a loud bang. She turns on one of the beaded lamps on the console instead, brushing off the cobwebs hanging from its shade, looking around as the dim light throws eerie shadows up into the gallery where rows of gilt-framed paintings hang upon the wall, their occupants gazing down at her with blank eyes. She can see loose tiles lifting here and there across the gritty chequered floor, another bucket waiting for the next downpour, mouse droppings strewn in the corners and a carpet winding up the grand curved staircase so worn and full of holes it could only be deemed a safety hazard. Hardly a home fit for an elderly patient recuperating from a serious illness. For the first time she wonders about her rash promise to Lillian: she has given her word that she will bring her home, but is this really the right place for her to recover?

  She runs a hand over the huge, faded tapestry hanging across the wall – then turns to climb the curved staircase to her own room. Halfway up she stops and listens. There is no scrabble of dog paws on the tiled floor, no shuffle of newspaper pages from the library, no distant murmur from her grandmother’s radio. There is nothing; not even the glug of water moving through old pipes. This house, that has witnessed so much throughout the years – dinner parties and laughter, conversation and arguments, dancing and music – a house that has seen so much life, had so many people pass through its doors, stands utterly silent. It is unnerving to be its only occupant. What echoes would she hear – what stirrings from the past – if she only knew what to listen for?