I sat staring at the screen, stunned, until the screensaver kicked in and started the horticultural slide-show which, on my laptop, passed for a family album. My mother died long before the digital age and my father always refused to pose for photos, or spoiled them by moving, so the laptop shuffled shots of me with David, friends or film crews at the Chelsea Show, Hidcote, Sissinghurst and other famous gardens. These were interspersed with pictures of Janet at Tigh-na-Linne. One of my favourites showed her looking oddly sinister in Wellingtons and midge hood, dealing death to invertebrates with a spray gun. Always kind, if undemonstrative, Janet gave no quarter on the garden battlefield.
But Aunt Janet, a plagiarist? Never.
The woman I knew, who epitomised the Highland virtues of honesty, courtesy and self-effacement, would never take the credit for someone else’s work. But what other explanation was there? And what did I know anyway? I thought I knew Janet well, but it turned out I didn’t know a thing about her love life and, knowing nothing, I’d arrogantly assumed there was nothing to know. I could be just as wrong about her professional life. The classical music world was ruthlessly competitive and the dice had always been loaded against women. I knew how much her music had meant to Janet and how broken-hearted she’d been when she had to give up performing and resort to teaching for a living. So why assume she wouldn’t have used any means possible to further her career?
The whole business made me feel uneasy: the idea that there was a side to Janet - more than one, in fact - that I hadn’t known. I didn’t want to deal with it. And I certainly didn’t want Athelstan at Tigh-na-Linne. Tactful and courteous as he seemed, I didn’t want to be landed with entertaining an eccentric academic whose enthusiasm for little-known composers might encourage him to outstay his welcome. The best plan was surely to send the whole archive to Toronto, well-packed and well-insured, and let Athelstan do his detective work there. If, that is, I wanted him looking into the Gillespie cupboards and finding skeletons.
That unsettling thought reminded me of the box Tom had found inside the wardrobe. Consumed with curiosity, I shut down my laptop and headed for the study, consoling myself with the thought that, if the box contained a skeleton, it would be a very small one.
As soon as I picked up the box, I remembered it was locked. I shook it gently, but couldn’t hear or feel anything moving inside. Why would anyone lock an empty box? I studied the exterior which was delicately inlaid with mother-of-pearl flowers and insects. It had probably belonged to a woman. Too small for a jewel casket, it had perhaps held trinkets or letters. Did it now hold letters from Tricia? I couldn’t remember where Tom and his mother had lived, but it was somewhere in England. They’d had a long journey to Skye for their holiday, so Tricia and Janet can’t have met often - certainly not while Tom lived at home. They probably did write to each other.
Again, I experienced a queasy feeling. I wasn’t comfortable with my eager curiosity to know about the life Janet had wished to keep private, but a locked box is a temptation few could resist. I knew I was likely to succumb.
Examining the fastening, I could see it wouldn’t be difficult to force with a knife, but I didn’t want to risk damaging the box. In any case, as Tom had pointed out, Janet was extremely organised. If the box was locked, there would be a key. But where?
The box had been stored in a corner of the wardrobe so she can’t have needed ready access to its contents. The more I thought about it, the more I thought the box must contain love letters.
I did a deal with myself: I would look for the key and, if I found it, I would open the box. If it contained letters, I wouldn’t read them, not unless it looked as if they’d help Stan with his research. It would be no invasion of Janet’s privacy to just open the box, would it? Unbidden, a memory swam into my mind of Heckie telling me the story of Pandora...
I would simply look for the key. That surely could do no harm?
I spent the rest of the day looking for the key in drawers and boxes and working my way methodically through key rings, but to no avail. I should have just let it go, but failure only made me all the more determined to find the key.
My moral scruples were dwindling by the minute.
I tried to put the box and its contents out of my mind, but the following day it occurred to me that the key might have been in the lock originally or stored near the box. It must be very small, so perhaps Tom had missed it. It could have fallen to the floor when he was dismantling the wardrobe.
I took the box upstairs. As I turned the corner on the landing, I faltered, remembering the shock of recognition when I’d first seen the figure in the memorial window. I approached cautiously, eyes down, scanning the floor for a key, but I saw nothing, just dust and a few splinters of wood where Tom hadn’t cleared up thoroughly.
The hall was gloomy. The light of a dreary winter’s afternoon was further dimmed by the coloured glass through which it had to pass. I reached for the switch on the table lamp, then hesitated. The last time I’d done this, I’d seen mud and blood on the floor. But that, I chided myself, had just been a bad dream.
I switched on the lamp. As I examined the floorboards in front of the window, the light bulb flickered for a moment, then settled down. Variations in current were common on Skye, as were power cuts. Perhaps the bulb was about to go. I thought nothing of it. Almost nothing.
I finally spotted the key, wedged in a gap between floorboards, barely visible. I pounced on it, extracting it carefully, then, holding my breath, I inserted it into the lock. It turned easily and so - just call me Pandora - I lifted the lid.
The box was crammed with letters, but these weren’t written by Tricia. They looked far too old. Peering at the envelopes, I saw they were addressed to Tigh-na-Linne, but to a Mr and Mrs J F Munro.
James Hector’s parents.
I put my hand into the box to gather up the letters and found there was something solid underneath. A notebook or journal of some kind - old, battered and very dirty. I set the letters down on the side table and extracted the little book. As I handled it, my fingers dislodged powdery grains of dirt and, as in my dream, I thought I could smell damp earth and decay.
I put the empty box down beside the letters and opened the soiled notebook. As I turned them, its closely-written pages crackled with age. Some were stuck together, caked and stained with what looked like dried mud. And something else: a dull, reddish-brown substance.
Blood.
As if my fingers had been burned, I dropped the book and clapped a hand to my mouth, stifling a cry. My nostrils filled with the stench of death and it was then the table lamp went out.
I wasn’t plunged into darkness, but it took my eyes a second or two to adjust to the altered light. It took my body longer to adjust to the sudden change in temperature, as if every door and window in the house had been flung open to the dank November air.
As I stared at the notebook lying open on the floor, its blistered and blood-stained pages were turned by a breeze from nowhere. Then from behind me, a long, pale hand reached down, picked up the book and placed it carefully beside the letters.
A voice said, ‘D’you remember what lay at the bottom of Pandora’s box, Ruth?’
That voice. That beloved Highland voice: calm, low and musical; a voice I hadn’t heard since childhood.
Unable to move, unable even to tear my eyes from the notebook, I whispered, ‘Hope’.
‘Aye... There’s always hope. You didn’t forget that, even if you forgot me.’
I wheeled round, inflamed by childish anger. ‘You forgot me, Heckie!’
He stood before me, dressed, as always, in kilted uniform, his creamy skin of a pallor so unearthly, it seemed to glow in the twilight. His sad, blue eyes regarded me kindly and a half-smile played about his lips, twisting a mouth that my child’s eyes had never noticed was generous. He was shorter than I remembered and his eyes were now almost level with mine. Trembling, I beheld a slender young man of medium height, perhaps in his mid-thirties, but all
these characteristics would strike an observer long after he’d noticed the man’s hair: a dark, vivid auburn, almost shocking against his ivory skin.
Heckie sighed and the air grew colder still. ‘I didn’t forget you, Ruth. You stopped believing in me. So you couldn’t see me any more. I couldn’t make you see me. I can’t make anyone see me, unless they believe. D’you not remember your William Blake? If the sun and moon should doubt, they'd immediately go out.’
‘But he said he’d—’ I broke off, absurdly reluctant to tell tales, even thirty years after the event. ‘Someone told me you were dead.’
A slow, lopsided smile spread across Heckie’s face. He tilted his head and said, ‘I am dead, Ruth.’
‘I mean, he said he’d killed you.’
The pale eyes narrowed. ‘Tommy?’ I nodded. The sad smile again. ‘No, Tommy didn’t kill me. A German bullet did that. Don’t you remember?’
‘I remember what you told me.’ My eyes travelled to the bloody notebook. ‘But was it that clean, Heckie? Was it quick? You said so, but I was never sure I believed you.’
‘Och, you were just a wee girl. You didn’t need to know any more.’
Silence hung between us while, for a few seconds, I tried to imagine how Heckie might have died; how long it might have taken. Nausea was rising, so I said quickly, ‘After Tommy and I had that fight... I mean, after he said what he said, you never came again. So I believed him.’
‘I can’t come to you unless you need me, Ruth. You have to be willing. You thought it possible for Tommy to kill me, so I knew you were ready to move on. I think you knew it too. You broke away, from me and from Tommy. You started to fend for yourself. And you started to grow up.’ He paused and studied my face, then nodded, as if satisfied. ‘I always knew you’d grow up bonny. I never dreamed you’d turn into a beauty.’
Astonished, I gaped at him, my mouth trying to form words. ‘So why... why have you come back?’
He spread long-fingered, elegant hands, hands that must have done so much killing. ‘You need me. And I need you.’
The telephone’s shrill summons made me jump so high, I put my hand out to clutch at Heckie for support. My fingers met little resistance, as if they were displacing water and his body felt just as cold, but he steadied me with chilly hands. The table lamp flickered back to life and lit his extraordinary gaunt face with its skeletal hollows, the double of the figure in the window behind. As he turned his head, his blue eyes glittered. I thought of hoar frost and shivered.
Heckie released me. As he did so, he became paler still, then transparent. As his body appeared to evaporate, I clutched at him again, but there was nothing there. Nothing solid. Just the smell of damp earth.
Chapter Seven
The phone stopped ringing and I began to breathe. It started up again immediately, shredding my nerves. I strode into the bedroom, snatched the phone off its cradle and snapped, “Hello?” in a voice guaranteed to put the fear of God into cold-callers.
‘Ruth, it’s me. Is something wrong?’
‘Tommy?’ I said, thrown by a voice I hadn’t been expecting.
He laughed softly. ‘Funny to hear you call me that after all these years... Look, I was just ringing to say, I forgot to lock up yesterday. The garage door, I mean. Sorry about that. I was a bit... well, fazed when I left. My mind was on other things.’
‘Oh... Right. I’ll lock up. Thanks.’
I suppose I must have sounded like the Speaking Clock because Tom said, ‘Ruthie, are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course!” I exclaimed, my voice just this side of hysteria.
‘Is someone there?’
‘No! There’s no one here. No one at all. Just me. Why? Who should be here?’
‘Calm down! I was only asking. You just sounded a bit strange, that’s all.’
‘Strange?’
‘As if a masked man was holding a gun to your head, or something.’
‘I’m fine!’ I announced. ‘But I’m rather busy. Was there anything else you wanted?’
‘Well, no...’ Tom replied, sounding mystified, as well he might. The man’s tongue had been down my throat the day before. ‘Just thanks for lunch, I guess.’
‘You’re welcome!’ I said brightly. ‘Bye!’
I rammed the phone back on its cradle and sank on to the bed. I closed my eyes, put my head in my hands and wished the world - my world - would simply go away.
You can prepare yourself for a lot of things in life. A wedding. A baby. A death. (Even your own.) You can see some things coming. A road accident. Divorce. Bankruptcy. But you can’t - you simply can’t - prepare yourself for an encounter with a ghost.
For a start, they don’t exist. Obviously. And even if they did, you aren’t the kind of sad weirdo who’d see one. Ghosts only happen to attention-seeking fantasists with over-active imaginations and a shaky grip on reality.
And that certainly wasn’t me.
So meeting a ghost wasn’t a matter to which I’d ever given any thought. Not like, say, meeting Johnny Depp. Or the Queen. (Some TV personalities get invited to those big garden parties at Buck House where the Queen gets to network. Me hooking up with HRH wasn’t as unlikely as it sounds. Not nearly as unlikely as seeing a ghost.)
I decided it was time to leave. Go home. (But wasn’t Tigh-na-Linne my home? A second home that Janet had made for me, then given to me?) I should go back to my nice, sane London flat where I only got burgled once a year, on average. Doubtless I would soon become inured again to the noise, dirt, expense and aggression of metropolitan life. At least London didn’t have ghosts. Or if it did, they’d never bothered me.
So I would pack up and go home.
I pulled open the bedside drawer and took out a notepad and pencil. I wrote TO DO at the top of the page and began to draw up a list.
1. Send Janet’s archive to Toronto.
There was no other way I could resolve the matter of her plagiarism. If I took Stan at his word and asked him to abandon his book, there would be other academics knocking at my door, asking the same awkward questions and they might not be as charitable as Stan. The potential story wasn’t quite “Musical high jinks in lesbian love nest”, but it was close. If Janet had done anything underhand, the music establishment would crucify her and her professional reputation would never recover.
I didn’t believe she was guilty, but the matter couldn’t be settled without further investigation and, for some reason, I trusted Athelstan. What can you learn about a man from a few emails? Not a lot, but more than you might think. My instincts said Stan was sound and I always trusted my instincts. They spoke to me loud and clear, even if they sometimes told me things I didn’t really want to know. Like the fact that David and I had just been going through the motions of a sexual relationship. Or that some of the time I’d spent with Tom, I’d been thinking about going through those motions with him.
I wasn’t exactly proud of my instincts, but so far, they’d told me no lies. And now they said, ‘Run’. So that’s what I was going to do.
I wrote down
2. Pack up my stuff
3. Shut up house
and then froze as a thought struck me. I wouldn’t be able to get away without spending another night at Tigh-na-Linne. There was just too much to do. Apart from Janet’s papers, which would have to be parcelled up and sent to Canada, I had to make the house secure for the winter. That meant draining the water system to avoid burst pipes. Or alternatively, I needed to leave some back-up heating on. At least that way the house wouldn’t become damp and the contents deteriorate. The last thing I wanted to have to deal with in the spring was a house full of mouldy furnishings and mildewed books, especially if it was going on the market.
Was I going to put Tigh-na-Linne on the market?...
Common sense said yes, especially as I was currently unemployed, but my heart baulked at the idea, at making any decision apart from the decision to run. I hadn’t thought it through, I’d just panicked. (So would you i
f you’d seen a ghost.)
I tossed the notepad aside and lay down on the bed. Was I cracking up? Should I ring Dr Mackenzie, who’d been so understanding when Janet died? But what could I say?... ‘I’ve seen a ghost. Well, not a ghost exactly, more of an imaginary friend. A distant relative, in fact. My great uncle Hector who died in 1915. On the Western Front, at the Battle of Loos.’ What could I say, who could I talk to, without being dismissed as off my head? (And surely I was off my head if I thought Heckie was talking to me?)
The person I needed to talk to wasn’t David, or Tom, or even Dr Mackenzie, it was Janet. I wanted Aunt Janet to tell me what I should do. I wanted her to make me laugh, make me see how completely absurd I was being.
But Janet was gone.
Grief twisted my innards again and I felt that lurch toward emptiness and despair, as if I was tumbling into an abyss. Drawing my knees up into a foetal position, I lay still on the bed, trying to decide what to do.
There was someone else I could turn to... Someone who’d helped me before, many times. When my mother was ill. And when she’d died. Someone who’d kept me company when Tommy locked me in the attic for hours because I wouldn’t let him use my new roller skates. Someone who’d never let me down, ever, not until I believed him to be dead. And now? If I needed him? If I believed he existed? What then?
I sat bolt upright, all my senses alert, my nerve ends jangling. Wanting to dispel the late afternoon gloom, I switched on the bedside light and surveyed the room. I saw nothing untoward, but unless I was imagining it, the temperature was falling rapidly. I gathered up the thick folds of the bed’s faded patchwork quilt, wrapped it round me and, scarcely breathing, I waited.
Silence. Even the wind outside seemed to have dropped. The only sound was the distant, rhythmic grinding of the waves clawing at the shore.
Then, there was a light tap at the door.
My heart rose up into my mouth and I ordered it back down to its proper place. Willing lungs and vocal cords to function, I said, quite superfluously, ‘Who is it?’
The Glass Guardian Page 7