by Karen Swan
And with the suitcase in his hand, he headed back into the trees again, without even so much as a glance Linus’s way. Hanna stared at his retreating back with an expression Bell couldn’t explain, only feel, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took the girls’ hands and followed on the path too. Linus came after, walking with the stiffly swinging arms of a toy soldier, the resigned fate of the prisoner.
Bell reached for him as he passed and took his hand in hers. ‘Ready for an adventure?’ she winked, forcing a jollity she didn’t feel. For his sake, she had to somehow find some positives in this perverse situation.
He nodded uncertainly. ‘You won’t leave me here?’
‘Hope to die,’ she said, crossing her heart. ‘Now, look out for the rottweilers, okay?’
He looked surprised, then managed a small smile. ‘If you keep a lookout for the sniper rifles and camouflaged man-traps.’
‘Deal,’ she said with a sharp nod, beginning to walk.
They strode through the woodland, moving through deep shade into sudden puddles of sunlight, the sun flashing over their faces like a playful sprite as they wove between the trees. Ahead, the twins were chattering like busy birds, stopping every few metres to admire a flower or pick up a particularly straight stick that might pass for a fairy wand. Hanna walked in silence behind them, oblivious to their games, her pale legs scissoring over the stones, slender as the birches, until after a few minutes, she stepped out of the wood and stood with the girls, bathed in a fierce light. Bell and Linus caught up with them a moment later, all of them taking in the view.
It was sensational, but not at all what she had expected of 007. It wasn’t a show space – all clipped box and clever topiary – but rather an old-fashioned garden, the sort that seemed to have fallen out of style. A real-life chintz, somewhat scruffy and overblown, it was as unlikely a thing to find in this landscape as a giraffe on an iceberg. Clover and daisies and buttercups speckled the grass, a few mature specimen trees dotted around, old flowerbeds a riotous jumble of colour with butterflies flocking to agapanthus and buddleia stems, towers of frothy pale blue delphiniums nodding in the breeze, pink and yellow roses rambling wildly up arched trellises, an old oak swing dangling from a four-metre length of thick nautical hemp rope.
The long, gently sloping lawn was fringed by the dense wood, hiding this garden and home from the curious gazes on passing boats. The house itself matched the garden, like a glove to a coat – wide and two storeys high, with a columned portico in the centre and a mansard roof, a row of seven large rectangular windows winking back at them. It was grand, but nonetheless stamped as an island house by the vertically grooved wooden walls that were the vernacular of properties in the archipelago. Those were usually a brownish-red (and significantly smaller) but this was a bold, juicy tangerine. A Bond villain’s lair it was not. Dr No wouldn’t have been seen dead in an orange house. It was far too . . . cheery.
Bell wished she didn’t like it. She wished she hated all of it – the gracious, somewhat tired-looking house, the enchanting, overgrown, blowsy gardens. ‘It’s going to be a nightmare playing football on that lawn,’ she muttered to Linus.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he breathed back.
‘Dibs I get to play downhill.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Yes it is. I’m way older than you. You’ve got youth on your side.’
He looked at her through narrowed eyes, wanting to lose himself in their game, but she could see the glint of fear in them and knew he was faking it as much as her.
Hanna looked across at them both, seeming baffled by their role-play as a tiny frown puckered her brow. She turned to Linus and crouched down so that her knees dipped into the cool grass. ‘Do you see how lovely it is, darling?’
Linus hesitated, then nodded.
‘This is your daddy’s home. Which means it’s yours too. All this is yours, isn’t that wonderful?’ He stared at her. ‘You can play in this garden – there’s not another island in the archipelago with a garden like this, did you know that? Not a single one. You’re going to have so much fun. And you can climb on the rocks, find the hidden beach –’
‘The hidden beach is here?’ he gasped.
‘I want to go to the hidden beach!’ Elise interjected, but Bell silenced her with a reproving look that seemed to work for once. The girls instinctively understood that nothing today was quite as it seemed. This wasn’t just any boat ride, any island, any garden . . .
Hanna nodded slowly. ‘Pappa pretended he forgot, because this island is privately owned, so you wouldn’t have been allowed over to play. But now you can.’
‘How will I find it?’
She smiled. ‘Trust me, you will. The Soviets accidentally dropped a bomb here on their way to a missile test site during the Second World War and – pow! – the hidden beach was created. It’s completely invisible from the sea. That’s why no one else knows about it. Only the people lucky enough to get to stay here.’
His interest was piqued – that was worthy of a Bond lair – and Hanna’s face brightened momentarily in response to his expression. ‘The fun is in finding it.’
Bell wasn’t so sure. How could a beach be hidden? They weren’t like socks kicked under the bed.
‘Trust me, you’ll love it here,’ Hanna went on, her voice thickening suddenly. ‘You were always supposed to play in this garden, darling. When you were a baby, I would think about how exciting it would be for you when you were a big boy of ten, able to go exploring. You’re so lucky.’
Had it not been for the way her voice splintered on the last word, her proclamations might have been convincing. Instead, Linus threw his arms around her neck. ‘I don’t want to be lucky. I want to be with you.’
There was an anguished silence as they gripped each other with tightly squeezed shut eyes. ‘And you will be, darling. Very, very soon. I promise.’
Bell saw the tears begin to stream, and watched as Hanna quickly pulled down her sunglasses from the top of her head as she pulled back from him. She tried to gather herself, glancing up at the house again and falling still as she saw someone standing there, watching them. Bell followed her gaze. A white-haired man was standing there, Linus’s suitcase positioned by his legs.
She watched Hanna turn back to her son again. There was something different in her expression now. ‘In the meantime, you’ve got Bell. She’ll be with you all the time. You won’t ever be alone here. Bell will look after you, as she always does.’
Linus nodded, his green eyes flashing between their two faces, but it was to his mother’s that his gaze returned. ‘You promise you’ll come back?’
‘Nothing can stop me.’ She forced a smile that fooled no one. ‘Now go up to the house and Måns will look after you.’
‘Who’s Måns?’
‘A very kind man who’ll help take care of you.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’ This time, it was Linus’s voice that shook.
‘It’s better if I leave you here today. But I’ll visit, I promise. I’m just across the water, remember that.’ Hanna rose to standing again. ‘Now off you go. Be a good boy for Mamma. And your father.’
Linus stared up at her, his shoulders heaving like an ocean swell, unformed emotions rolling through him like a storm. ‘. . . What if he screams again?’
Hanna’s mouth parted at the question, but no words came.
‘Then we’ll scream back,’ Bell said firmly, taking his hand in hers again and giving him one of her signature wry looks.
Linus looked shocked. ‘We can’t do that.’ He looked at his mother. ‘Can we?’
‘You won’t need to. Your father was sick then, but he’s much better now. You’ll see.’
Bell tugged his arm affectionately, pulling him away. ‘Come on. I want to see what our rooms are like.’
‘Do you?’
No. ‘Absolutely,’ she said, sticking her chin in the air. ‘I hope I’ve got a revolving bed.’
He nodded, as though that
seemed like a good thing to have. ‘I want an observatory in mine.’
‘You might well have one,’ she sighed. ‘Have you seen the size of this place?’
‘The mirrors had better be two-way.’
‘They’d better be,’ she agreed. They trod over the grass, crushing daisies underfoot, the ground springy beneath their feet. ‘D’you reckon they keep cheetahs here?’
He looked up at her. ‘Why cheetahs?’
‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps your dad’s a fast runner.’
‘He was in a coma for seven years.’
‘All the more reason to run now he’s awake, then.’
Linus chuckled. ‘I think you’re the crazy one, Bell.’
‘You could very well be right, Linus,’ she grinned.
They were at the top of the lawn now, just a few metres from the feet of the white-haired man. He hadn’t moved a muscle in all that time. The suitcase was still standing on its side, beside him.
Linus gave a little startle at the sudden nearness of him and turned back, realizing he had distractedly left his mother and sisters by the trees. But they were not there now. Only a rabbit, hopping lazily through the longer grass, ears pinned back as it began to nibble on a dandelion.
Bell squeezed his hand and made him look at her. She gave him the slow blink they sometimes shared in the playground when he didn’t want to hug her in front of his friends.
‘You must be Isobel?’ the man said to her, after a moment.
She turned to face him, gripping Linus’s hand more tightly in hers, though whether that was for his benefit or her own, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was, she had to protect this child against these people. ‘Yes. But please call me Bell.’ Her voice was polite but firm, her eyes steely.
To her surprise, the blue eyes looking back at her were kindly. ‘I am Måns, Mr Von Greyer’s valet. And this must be Master Linus?’
Linus stared back at him, anachronistic against the grand orange house and the valet’s crisp suit, in his cut-off jean shorts and trainers. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ His voice was robotic and he looked ready to run.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, young sir. Everyone is very excited that you have come to stay with us. Won’t you please follow me?’
They both stared after him for a moment, wrong-footed by the warm welcome. Bond villains weren’t supposed to have friendly old men as their sidekicks. Nor orange lairs.
They followed him into the building. It was immediately cool and shaded inside, the brightness of the day falling in long strips through the large windows. They both looked left and then right. The house was a series of interconnecting, open airy salons, high-ceilinged with old, worn strip-wood floors. There didn’t seem to be much furniture but what there was – stickback chairs, diamond-doored cabinets, curvy long-case clocks – was very old and seemed to be largely pale and peeling, in the old Gustavian style, a baroque fashion that was very different to the Mogerts’ modern, minimal aesthetic. Bell had the impression of peering through bright light and dust, even though the place was clearly spotless; everything was muted, hushed, as though a veil of silence had been hung over the roof, in distinct contrast to the bright, almost shouty exterior. She tried to imagine Linus haring about in here, and couldn’t. It wasn’t that it was grand per se, just that it was somehow disapproving of frivolity.
They caught up with Måns on the stairs – which wasn’t hard – treading slowly behind him, their eyes casting nervously around at the dark oil paintings on the walls, up at the crystal lights, hands gliding over the polished elliptical handrail. They swapped glances in silence, noticing every creak of the floorboards, the sheer scale of the house dwarfing them. Bell felt like it was swallowing them whole.
Upstairs, the house felt a little cosier, but it was a matter of mere degrees – maybe half a metre off the ceiling heights? There was more furniture, though, dressing the spaces and making it feel like a home rather than a museum – rugs at spaced intervals on the floors, an antique smiling wooden horse on bows.
Måns walked towards a closed door at the end of the corridor, furthest from the stairs. ‘Master Linus, you will be sleeping in the room that your father had when he was a child. He was most insistent it should now be yours. Everything has been kept exactly as it was, including all his old toys.’
Bell arched a quizzical eyebrow, but said nothing. Clearly neither Måns nor his employer knew the first thing about kids. They wanted new and they wanted tech; old Action Man figures – or whatever the guy had played with as a boy himself – weren’t going to cut it with his press-ganged son.
‘Your father is waiting for you in here.’ Måns paused, as though about to say something else, but he appeared to think better of it, and turned away and knocked on the door instead.
There was no reply, but he opened the door anyway and entered. ‘Your guests, sir.’
Bell and Linus looked at one another as they stood on the threshold. ‘You okay?’ she mouthed to him.
He nodded, but she could see the tension in the downward pull at the corners of his mouth. The man they were about to meet had threatened this poor child’s mother with a ruinous court case, public shaming and loss of custody. How could she put a positive spin on that?
She dipped her head closer to him, speaking in a hushed tone. ‘Remember, he’s your dad and he loves you. A very sad thing happened to him and he was poorly for a long time, but all he wants is to get to know you. That’s all this is. And I’ll be here the whole time.’
‘Promise?’ Linus breathed.
‘Hope to die,’ she mouthed, crossing her heart again. She gripped his hand harder and, taking a long, deep breath, they walked in together.
Måns was standing motionless in the centre of the room, his long shadow in the window frame flattering his stooped stature.
‘Where is he?’ she asked him, more snappily than she had intended.
The old man looked back at her with a look of fluster and bewilderment. She suspected it wasn’t a familiar feeling for him; he seemed to ooze capability. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bell. I have absolutely no idea.’
Chapter Fourteen
The day passed quietly. Literally. Though Bell and Linus crept and whispered, not wanting to make an imprint on this new place of residence, the house seemed to breathe around them; other people’s stories were held in abeyance in every picture, table-top, chair. There were few photographs to identify the family who had built this house and inhabited it for five generations, but those that were around were old black-and-whites of long-ago scenes. The two of them peered at unrecognizable faces, trying to find Linus’s features in a young girl’s muddy squint into the sunlight, his gait in a boy’s stride as he walked away from the camera, the stern frown, caught off guard, of an older man fishing from a boat.
Måns’s embarrassed beseeching that they should make themselves at home whilst he located the absent host – and father – didn’t extend, they were sure, to skateboarding down the long, smooth corridors, though both she and Linus had caught each other’s eye and thought about it.
For a while, they had sat quietly in the bedroom – hers was next door to Linus’s, though not interconnecting – pretending to be interested in the old wooden and tin toys which had a retro charm to them, but little beyond that. Bell had flicked idly through the paperbacks in the bookcase whilst Linus dutifully sat on the floor, playing with an old red Corvette Matchbox car and building with the Lego bricks he’d found in a box – both of them waiting, braced, any second for the sound of footsteps on the boards and the door to open . . . But as the minutes turned to hours, their stiff manners had softened, both of them curling up on the bed for a quick nap, the emotional anticipation of the day having drained them.
Finally, boredom had propelled them into leaving the room and exploring the house. Timidly, they had crept from room to room, always knocking on the closed doors before peering in. There were eight bedrooms upstairs, and it was almost impossible to tell which were inh
abited and which were for guests; all were sparsely decorated and restrained in content, as though to own anything more than was strictly necessary was infra dig.
Her own room was frustratingly charming. It had hand-painted hessian wallpaper, with drawn tendrils of ivy dangling and creeping down from the ceiling in varying lengths. Her bed was a pale grey sleigh-style with a green-and-pink padded eiderdown and there was a vast, peeling painted armoire against one wall which she felt sure must provide passage to Narnia. Everything felt weighty, substantial and grandiose.
Her room overlooked the ‘back’ garden, although given all approaches to the house were by water, she wasn’t sure there was any such thing as front or back; guests simply arrived wherever they docked, surely? The lawn swept around the property like a green velvet cape, flowerbeds dotted whimsically, stray linden trees looking statuesque and dramatic – like eight-pointer stags – compared to the huddled and slender modesty of the birches and pines in the woods.
Downstairs, they had found a dining room with a beautiful whitewashed oval table that looked like it could seat thirty people, a library, a drawing room with some very formal, uncomfortable-looking wooden settles, an exceptionally well-equipped modern gym, an office, the kitchen, a laundry room and behind that, in the darkest corner of the house, a tiny snug with two squashy sofas and a pile of sailing magazines that suggested more life in this space than the whole rest of the building.
Their curious faces at the kitchen door had been taken as proof of hunger – as well as proof of life – and lunch was served on the terrace shortly afterwards by a middle-aged lady who stuck a strawberry on the side of Linus’s fruit juice and extra jam on his waffles. Afterwards, aware they were on show to the various staff who flitted in and out of the house like swifts, they had lazed on the lawn, playing Would You Rather and knocking a ball about with wooden beach bats. Occasionally, Måns would step out onto the terrace with a tray of juice or fruit, but his placid smile couldn’t quite suppress the anxious gleam in his eyes, his gaze constantly darting to the shaded woods at the fringes of the garden. It was the only way in and the only way out. Where was he? It was the question they all wanted answered.