River of Destiny

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘Not another bloody ghost!’ he retorted.

  She shrugged. ‘I heard someone laugh.’

  He sighed. Shaking his head, he came towards the door. They retraced their steps quietly and stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, then Ken reached out for the bank of light switches, flooding the whole area with light.

  Two figures were standing on either side of one of the armchairs, in the act of pulling it round. ‘OK,’ Ken roared, ‘stop that right now!’

  The boys dropped the chair and fled, racing across the floor towards the kitchen.

  ‘Let them go,’ Zoë said. She stood where she was and subsided into a sitting position on the top step as Ken ran down the stairs. She was cross to find that she was shaking.

  ‘Little buggers!’ Ken swore as he followed them out into the kitchen. ‘Straight out of the back door. I take it that they are those two little bastards from next door?’ She heard the door slam and moments later he reappeared.

  Zoë nodded. ‘It was Darren and Jamie.’

  ‘Right. I’m ringing their father.’

  ‘Why not leave it till morning?’ She was amazed to find that instead of being relieved that they had been caught in the act, she was oddly disappointed. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eleven.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Not even late!’

  ‘They could see the lights were off. We should have done as Leo suggested and put bolts on the doors. I asked you, Ken!’

  Ken walked over to the sideboard and reached for the phone. He carried it across to the window and stood staring out into the darkness. ‘What is their number?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never phoned them.’

  He gave an exaggerated sigh and threw the phone down on the table. ‘I’ll go over there.’

  ‘No, Ken, don’t. They are probably asleep.’

  ‘I doubt it! They don’t look the types for early nights.’ He strode back towards the kitchen and reached for his jacket from the back of the door.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Zoë called. She stood up.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it! And don’t bother to say I told you so. I forgot about the bolts, OK? And, yes, we ought to change the locks as well. I’ll do it tomorrow. We can’t all be perfect!’ He didn’t pause to wait for her. Dragging open the door he disappeared out into the night.

  She followed him.

  The Summer Barn was ablaze with light; the huge ground-floor windows were uncurtained and showed inside several members of the family clustered round an enormous TV screen. As far as Zoë could see, as she followed Ken towards the front door, Darren and Jamie were there, on one of the large leather sofas; there was no sign of either parent. With them was a motley selection of other young men, some older, some younger; there was no sign of Jade. As they headed across the damp grass the floodlights came on, adding to the daylight effect as Ken reached the door and began to hammer on it.

  It was several seconds before it opened. A young man who appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties stood before them. ‘Yeah?’ The flaming hair and freckles identified him as Jade’s missing brother, Jackson.

  ‘I need to speak to your father.’

  ‘He’s not here.’ Behind him the others appeared in the hallway. Zoë felt a frisson of fear at the sight of them. They did not look friendly.

  ‘Then I will wait for him.’ Ken stepped forward. Zoë was impressed in spite of herself. It took courage to face up to this bunch. As it happened he was not required to prove his point any further. Jeff appeared in the hall with, behind him, Sharon. Both were fully dressed. Zoë pulled her dressing gown more tightly round her. She was shivering.

  ‘I am sorry to come this late,’ Ken said angrily, ‘but we caught two of your boys in our house, messing about with the furniture, pretending to be ghosts. As they assumed we were in bed and the lights were out I think we can assume they broke in. I understand it is possible they have keys to our house.’

  For a moment no one said anything, then Sharon turned to face the boys. ‘Jamie! Darren! You bleeding little tykes! They only came back this evening,’ she yelled. She pounced. Darren managed to dodge out of the way but she caught Jamie by the ear. ‘What did I tell you? What? You thieving no-good scumbags!’ Her voice had reached a screech. ‘That’s it. You are going home! I will never ever bring you down here again.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jeff said to Ken. ‘I really thought we had fixed this.’

  ‘Fixed it?’ Ken said incredulously. ‘You mean they have done this before?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ He paused. Sharon had pursued her sons out of sight into the back of the house and they could hear each other more clearly. The other boys sheepishly retreated back into the large living room and reassembled on the sofa. Now, in the relative quiet Zoë noticed that Jade had appeared. She was wearing a T-shirt and knickers, which was presumably her sleeping attire. Her hair was standing on end and her eyes were dazed with sleep.

  ‘Did they do any damage?’ Jeff asked wearily. He reached into the hip pocket of his jeans and produced a wallet. ‘If it’s too much I might have to get some cash tomorrow.’

  ‘No. No, no. I don’t want any money.’ Ken shook his head. ‘I just want to make sure they don’t do it again. They have been terrifying Zoë. She thought the house was haunted.’

  There was a long silence, broken only by a snigger from the sofa. Jeff looked up. He turned his gaze on Zoë, who was standing immediately behind Ken there in the entrance hall.

  He’s going to say it is haunted, she thought suddenly, and she felt a wave of panic run through her. She was cold and very aware of her state of undress. He is going to say it always has been.

  The sound of Sharon’s voice had died away and the house seemed unnaturally quiet now. ‘I am really sorry. Yes, they did do it before, to the poor blighters who lived there before you. I made them give back the keys. They must have kept a set. I will personally see to it that they apologise and that they don’t do it again.’

  Ken shook his head. ‘Just the keys will do, mate. Please don’t worry about the apology.’

  ‘I insist.’ Jeff glared at them. ‘Now, come in and have a drink. To show there are no hard feelings.’

  It was Zoë who shook her head this time. ‘I won’t, Jeff, thank you. I was in bed, and I am freezing and I just want to go home.’ She turned and walked away, aware almost at once that Ken had stayed. He had gone in after Jeff and the door had closed behind him, leaving her on her own.

  She stood still for a moment, staring round the darkened lawns. She was just out of reach of the light sensors now and the great illuminating spots had gone out, leaving glowing bulbs, fading into the dark. The garden seemed very black and cold. The wind was still strong and she could feel it tugging at her dressing gown and her hair. There was no moon. The cloud was heavy, tinged to a strange muddy red as it streamed overhead. The branches of the pine trees were thrashing up and down and the wind in the wood sounded like the roaring of a train. She could see the gleam of water from the river. There were no lights down there, no lights on in Rosemary and Steve’s house, nor in The Old Forge. She wondered for a minute how they had managed to sleep through all the noise, but the barns were quite some distance apart and in the roar of the wind they would have heard nothing of the commotion.

  Setting her face into the wind she began to walk home, feeling the chill damp of the grass striking up through her slippers as she headed back towards their own house. There too the lights were blazing; she could see the great room, empty of life. There was no TV on here, no kids, however badly behaved, ranged on the sofas. The place was deserted.

  Letting herself in she closed the door behind her and walked through towards the stairs. The chairs by the window were still in disarray but she didn’t try to straighten them. All she wanted was to go upstairs and run herself a deep warm bath.

  Halfway up the flight she paused and turned to look down at the room behind her. The shadows were there again, the echoes
from the past; nothing the boys had done had caused this frisson in the air, the sound of a horse’s hoof scraping on the cobbles, the smell of dusty straw and the feeling that somehow in this great barn there was unfinished business awaiting its moment for resolution.

  No one had stopped her working in the dairy. As she and Betsy worked, skimming the cream off the great flat bowls of milk they had talked easily about the coming baby, about the forthcoming wedding of Betsy and George’s daughter, Freda, to Sam the head groom’s son, Walter. Susan was making a lace collar for the girl, and Betsy was stitching baby clothes for Susan’s baby. The women were comfortable in their gossip. There was no mention of Dan or of Emily Crosby. They heard the skid and grate of hooves as two of the great shire horses hauled the cart down loaded with logs into the barnyard, and they heard the shouts of the men as they began to unload. All was as it should be and peaceful in the cold dairy.

  The first yell went almost unnoticed by the two women as they worked. At the second Betsy looked up. She was a short, grey-haired woman, her complexion reddened by wind and weather, but still possessed of the startlingly beautiful eyes which had charmed and won George Roper all those years before. ‘Someone is calling for Dan.’

  Susan straightened, her hand to her back. ‘If he’s not in the forge he’ll be with the mare in the old barn.’ There was a sinking feeling deep in her stomach.

  Moments later she heard footsteps outside and George put his head round the door. A small wiry man, muscular, with a red neckerchief over his heavy brown work shirt, he had far-seeing clear grey eyes which missed little as he greeted his wife with a fond grin, then turned to Susan. ‘Do you know where Dan is? We’ve broken some chain on the trace harness out there. It needs to be welded soon as possible.’

  Susan swallowed. ‘Did you look in the old barn?’

  ‘We did. He’s nowhere in the yard.’ There was a pause.

  Susan saw man and wife exchange glances, and she groped for the stool near the butter churns and sat down heavily. ‘I don’t know where he is,’ she whispered.

  ‘All right. Don’t you worry yourself,’ George said. His voice was full of sympathy. ‘We’ll leave it till later.’

  As he ducked out of the doorway Susan felt Betsy’s gaze on her. ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ she said at last. ‘You’re the one he loves.’

  ‘Does everyone know?’ Susan’s voice was husky.

  ‘I dare say.’

  ‘She said she would see to it that I couldn’t work in the dairy any more.’ Susan didn’t need to say who she was talking about.

  ‘That’s up to Mr Turtill, not her. And he takes his orders from Mr Crosby and she’s hardly likely to tell him all this, is she?’ Betsy picked up her skimmer. ‘You take no notice of that, Susan. And don’t think about the other.’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever she makes Daniel do, he is still yours.’

  It was after two a.m. when Ken came back. He smelled of alcohol and crawled into bed beside her without taking a shower. Zoë had been lying awake waiting, not for him, she realised, but for the sounds she might hear from downstairs. Not the Watts boys moving furniture, but the echoes of a working farm. Horses, wagon wheels creaking over cobbles, the scraping of hooves.

  Downstairs, in the great room, near the hearth, the developers had left some of the herringbone bricks of the original threshing floor, preserved under a plate-glass panel in the floor. It was beautiful, intricate, worn. Was that where the sounds were coming from? She remembered reading an article once about the sounds of a former bar and its customers being accidentally recorded onto the wall of a pub in Wales. It was something to do with the silica content of the bricks. If she remembered she would try and look it up on Google. She turned her back on her husband with a sigh and closed her eyes.

  The telephone woke her next morning. She glanced at her watch and saw to her surprise that it was after nine. There was no sign of Ken.

  ‘Zoë?’ Rosemary’s voice boomed in her ear. ‘What a night you had! My goodness, and we heard nothing! Those wretched children! Well, Jeff and Sharon have packed them into the car and gone back home with the dogs. Half-term was just about over anyway. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’ve left the other two kids here.’ Zoë climbed out of bed and walked over to the window, the phone to her ear. ‘Jade is at private school,’ Rosemary’s voice in her ear rattled on without pause. ‘Would you believe it? But she’s a bright kid and they’ve got the money – but it means her half-term is longer than the boys’. She’s no bother, she’s a strange child, but quite quiet, but the eldest, Jackson, is almost as much of a nightmare as the younger boys. He doesn’t seem to have a job and I doubt if he’s doing any further education. Perhaps he’s on a gap year.’ She laughed dryly. ‘I suppose they didn’t want to spoil half-term for the girl and they couldn’t leave her on her own.’ It was raining. The wind was still strong and the lawns were bleak and wet. The walnut tree out on the lawns was shedding its leaves, black and wilting across the grass. ‘Now,’ Rosemary went on, suddenly changing the subject. Zoë brought her attention back to the phone call. ‘I am having a few people over this evening for a drink at six and I want you and Ken to come. It is important.’

  Ken was standing in the ironmonger’s looking at a selection of bolts. It was strange how flaky he felt about putting them on. He should have done it days ago, and changed the locks too, but to do so was to admit that they were afraid of a bunch of unruly kids. On the other hand, Zoë was genuinely scared of the boys and her imagination was beginning to go into overdrive.

  He reached out towards the display at the same moment as someone who was standing beside him and their hands converged. He pulled back. ‘I’m sorry!’ He glanced up. The woman standing beside him was an attractive blonde, perhaps in her mid-thirties. He felt an automatic stirring of interest. She wore dark glasses pushed up onto her forehead and an expression of confused concentration. She gave him a distracted smile.

  ‘Does it matter what a bolt is made of?’ she asked. Her attention was focused on the array in front of her.

  He grinned. ‘It depends what you want it for.’

  ‘Garden gate. Kids keep opening it.’

  ‘Ah, we have a similar problem, it seems.’ He hesitated. Surely he recognised her. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  She looked up at him properly for the first time. ‘Ken Lloyd?’

  He nodded. ‘You’ve a better memory for names than I have, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Sylvia Sands.’

  He and Zoë had met her at a social evening at the sailing club a few weeks earlier, he remembered now. She was some kind of journalist and had her own boat at the marina. He smiled to himself. He had recognised the sudden flicker of interest in her eyes as she met his gaze and the excitement of exchanging looks for just a second or two longer than necessary.

  He bought her a coffee and then offered to put on her bolt for her. She lived in a terraced Victorian cottage behind the Thoroughfare and by the time they reached it he already knew she was available and that he was going to sleep with her.

  Rosemary met Zoë and Ken at the door and caught Zoë’s arm. ‘You need to charm Leo,’ she whispered. ‘He’s looking like a wild beast and I need him onside.’

  Ken had arrived back late from Woodbridge with an assortment of bolts for the kitchen and front doors and had left them in a bag on the worktop in the utility room. Showering and changing swiftly while Zoë waited, he was ready in ten minutes but they were still late for the drinks.

  The people already there turned out to be Leo, Bill Turtill from the home farm and his wife, Penny, Lesley Inworth from the Hall and a couple who lived in Woodbridge called Jim and Dottie Salcombe.

  Leo was standing alone by the window, a glass in his hand. The others were seated in a loose semicircle round the fire, chatting. The introductions were made and Ken sat down in the circle. Zoë felt her husband’s eyes on her speculatively for a moment and she found herself wondering where he had been to make him
so late.

  Obediently she followed Rosemary over to the window and stood beside Leo. She gave him a conspiratorial smile. ‘What’s going on, is this a council of war?’

  ‘That is exactly what it is,’ he replied. ‘Stupid woman!’

  Zoë wondered briefly which woman he was talking about and concluded that it must be their hostess. Bill Turtill, she knew, farmed the land around the barn conversions. It had been his father who had sold the land off for the development. The other couple, Jim and Dottie, were friends of Rosemary’s, who belonged to the same walking group.

  ‘I thought if I explained, Bill, why it is necessary to restore the footpath to its original route, we can make all the arrangements to get it signposted without any fuss.’ Rosemary had taken up a stance with her back to the fire and was addressing the room as if it were a meeting. ‘It can’t make any difference to you where it goes.’ She had, it appeared, handed out photocopies of a map. Jim and Dottie were nodding. Lesley looked angry and Bill and Penny seemed confused.

  ‘As I’ve told you before, all the footpaths on my farm are waymarked,’ Bill said after a pause. ‘I don’t see what this is about.’ He was a large man in his fifties, fresh-faced with curly blond hair, greying at the temples. ‘And if I might ask, who cares about this path apart from you? Where are all these people in such a hurry to queue to cross my field?’

  ‘Oh, they are there, I promise you.’ Rosemary gave him a saccharine smile. ‘You are very good about your paths on the whole, I give you that. Unlike some. But this is a path which seems to have got lost.’ She fixed her gaze on him intently. ‘Look at the map.’

  ‘There is no footpath there, Rosemary,’ Lesley put in patiently. ‘There never has been. I told you. I’ve checked the records.’

  ‘Obviously not the right ones.’ Rosemary shook her head. ‘The path across the lower field is vital to the footpath circuit if one wants to get down to the quay.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jim and Dottie chimed in as one. ‘It’s an ancient path. We’ve seen it marked on the map as well.’