The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Well, and haven’t you anything to say about it, young man?’ demanded Mrs Wheeby. ‘She was your “girlfriend”, wasn’t she? Going off like that, ungrateful little monkey.’

  Derek shrugged. He had one thought in his head: how would he get back to London? He had no money. Not just a few new pence; no money. Not one new halfpenny. And if he did manage to hitch-hike, where would he go?

  They wouldn’t have him back: he couldn’t go back to the rooms darkened by rags at the windows and the wildly dangerous fires blazing in the grates too small for them, and the icy wind pouring down through the holes the mob had knocked in the roof for a giggle . . . until the navvies and the guard dogs had come. He wanted to think about that bit of bother in the 1938 Renault’s engine; that was interesting, that was; but you always had some bloody thing on your mind . . .

  ‘I spoke to you,’ Mrs Wheeby said, ‘and you heard me, I’m sure. You remind me of my cousin’s––’

  ‘She’s always goin’ off,’ he muttered. ‘Run off from home, run off from our mob. She’s off her trolley.’

  Mary, who was sitting at the table looking sulky, said: ‘I’ll be seeing her when I get back, I expect,’ for she did not believe her host’s airy prophecy. ‘Any message?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Mary slowly went deep pink. ‘She’s on her own. She didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Well,’ announced Mrs Wheeby, setting down her cup, ‘that was very welcome, thank you Miss Dollette. All good things must come to an end, and we should be making a move, and Dicky’s all ready in the hall. I was careful to dust your record-player, Mr Taverner, and I put the duster back on the bookshelf in its place. Thank you for the loan of both. A great pleasure; I’m sure my whales appreciate the use of such a fine machine. Well, Mr Davis, Mary, I’m sure you’re all packed and ready, aren’t you?’

  There was general bustle, and everyone moved into the hall.

  ‘Oh – my toothbrush!’ exclaimed Wilfred, pausing.

  ‘Dad, you are the limit! I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, love.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You give Mrs W. a hand. I’ll go – really –’

  He was whistling under his breath as he reached the landing; really, it had been a . . . a lovely little holiday . . . and Mary was coming on so nicely . . . a good thing that other little piece had taken herself off . . .

  He went quickly along the passage. Some of the bedroom doors stood open, and as he passed them he glanced in, partly instinctively, and partly because – he admitted the impulse – here were rooms he hadn’t seen in the Yellow House.

  One room, furnished in a style that instantly suggested Katherine Cornforth, was full of sunlight, blazing up from the dazzling snow. He noticed the low, wide bed covered in crimson, the dressing-table crowded with glittering bottles, the dark shining furniture – vaguely, because his eyes were drawn to the fireplace.

  Something was moving there. The grate had been cleared of last night’s ashes and was ready for the laying of today’s fire.

  And in front of it . . . the sunlight was so glaring . . . he could hardly see . . . in front there crouched two things . . . were they dwarfs? Brown children? . . . What were they?

  The light hurt his eyes. He peered, suddenly very cold, and the things turned their faces . . . were they faces or masks, brown masks? . . . toward him, mischievously smiling.

  They were naked, male and female; and there was a rudimentary quality, that was yet not repulsive, about testicle and breast.

  Then they had gone. The sun poured into the low, wide, rich room scented with fern. There lay the coal in its metal bucket, and the bundles of freshly chopped wood; and that was all.

  He turned and went back along the corridor, cold and shaking.

  They aren’t evil, he thought, over and over again; not evil. That’s all I’m sure of. Not evil – so long as someone can control them.

  But what, in God’s name, is going on here?

  He descended the stairs slowly, to give himself time to recover. Just halfway, he found himself looking down into the lifted face of Mr Taverner. No expression – beyond the mild concern of a host for a departing guest’s welfare. None.

  ‘All clear?’ Mr Taverner drawled, and Wilfred nodded. He remembered the toothbrush above the basin in his bedroom. It would have to stay; he was not going upstairs again.

  They went out into the snowy light under the azure arch of the sky, and Mrs Wheeby exclaimed to see an unusually large car, mint-new and precisely the colour of crème caramel, drawn up beside the gate.

  ‘Cor!’ breathed Derek, who had loitered in the wake of the party. ‘Where’d you whip that, Laf?’ His face was transformed.

  ‘Hired it – since the innards of mine are all over the garden. In you get, loves –’ addressing them collectively as he opened the back door of the car. ‘You’ll give Miss Dollette a hand with the potatoes, won’t you?’

  Derek went straight to the kitchen, still thinking about getting back to London. Whip something and sell it? Miss Dollette was alone in the house now . . . Something stopped the idea before it took shape.

  ‘Oh . . . Derek – would you very kindly peel the potatoes for me?’

  Miss Dollette’s voice was almost inaudible; so faint that he noticed it even in his preoccupation. He glanced at her.

  ‘You all right, Miss?’ he demanded. ‘You aren’t half white – your face, like.’

  ‘Oh yes . . . yes, thank you . . . perfectly all right, it’s just . . .’

  ‘’Ere,’ said Derek, as a thought struck him that he did not like at all. ‘You aren’t – well, a bit scared like of me, are you, Miss? I mean, us being alone, and that?’

  It was odd to see Miss Dollette’s amused smile on her pallid face, and he was not sure that he liked the implication either. She shook her head, so that its wheat-coloured, silver-streaked hair slipped about.

  ‘Oh no, dear boy, of course not. You couldn’t hurt anyone,’ she said, low and rapidly.

  ‘I’m not soft, you know,’ he tried to growl. It would never do to tell her about the groupie, and sleeping in ruined rooms, and hunger, and small thefts, and being dropped by your mob.

  ‘You aren’t soft at all; you’re rather brave, as people go,’ she went on, still very quickly. ‘No – it’s just that I have something to ask you, and it’s enjoyable – that is, I think you’ll be pleased – and it’s so very difficult . . . for me to talk to people unless I – I know them very well, you see.’ She stopped.

  ‘Here, I’d best get on with those potatoes,’ Derek said, pushing up his sleeves and turning to the sink. He began to peel the skin off in chunks.

  ‘Mr Taverner – thought it would be good for me to tell you, you see. Ask you (oh dear, I am so bad with words and people. Now if you were a bulb or a shrub –)’

  Derek suddenly gave a loud, boy’s guffaw without turning round, a completely different sound from the sneers and sniggers and mindless roars uttered by the mob; a childish pleasure in sheer silliness sounded in it.

  ‘If I was, I couldn’t peel these here potatoes, could I? Look funny, that would, a bulb peeling –’ he laughed again.

  ‘You aren’t peeling them, you’re – my dear boy! Thinly, thinly – here –’ Miss Dollette came over to him, distractedly sweeping aside hair from her brow. ‘Let me show you.’

  ‘No, I’ll manage – thanks. What is this bit o’ good news, then?’

  ‘Well,’ she was back at the kitchen table now, with her hands in the pastry bowl. ‘How would you like to go and work with a friend of Laf’s? He lives in a little seaside town in Wales. He’s nice. He’s married, with a baby boy. Would you like it?’

  He turned, letting the knife sink into the mess of skins and potatoes in the basin. He looked full at her, and his eyes were suspicious, and behind the suspicion was the child’s longing and instinct to believe.

  ‘Is that on the straight?’ he asked, surlily at last.

  She nodded.

  ‘I ain’t – I’ve got
no money, Miss.’

  ‘That’s all right. Laf will drive you down. And Tim Stanton – that’s his friend – will pay you a week in advance.’

  ‘And I’m not trained, not proper. But there was a chap I was going in with, to help in his garage. He went broke, but he always said I had a gift for cars, like. Come natural, he used to say.’

  ‘Then do go!’ she exclaimed. ‘I – I like so much to think of you working with cars and enjoying it.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like cars, Miss.’ He smiled, teasingly, as the excitement rose in him. ‘And I’ve no overalls.’ He spoke solemnly, as if confessing some secret crime.

  ‘We’ll buy you some, Derek. Really we will. Oh do say you’ll go. It’s just the right thing for you – I’m certain of it. I – I see you there.’

  So did Derek. The child’s imagination in him, blessedly surviving five years of artificial manhood, ran towards a vision of screws, little bolts, nuts, jacks, brick Volkswagens and ageing beauties made by Rolls-Royce, oil, and bright mornings, and himself smart as a new spanner in his overalls. The air smelt of the sea.

  ‘All right,’ he said, turning back to the murdered potatoes. ‘I’ll buy it. You tell Laf when he comes in.’ His voice was flat and rather bored.

  Then he turned quickly, staring. Something warm, like a kiss, had touched his cheek; and Miss Dollette was standing there laughing, minute floury hands palm to palm in a soundless clap.

  Outside Lamorna the car was being slowly emptied of Mrs Wheeby, Dicky, Mary and Wilfred.

  Wilfred glanced at Mr Taverner, who was arming Mrs Wheeby up the slippery path to the front door.

  ‘Give her a hand upstairs, love,’ he said in an undertone to Mary. ‘I want a word with Mr Taverner.’

  Having run up the stairs with cases and Dicky, and paused at the door to say something that left Mary giggling and Mrs Wheeby wheezing in a way that suggested laughter, Mr Taverner came lightly down the path. He was smiling.

  Pale and disturbed, Wilfred stood by the car, waiting. And how, in the name of heaven and earth, and he hoped no further, was he going to begin?

  He swallowed, and said quickly: ‘Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘Of course. Get in, won’t you – it’s nippy.’

  They settled themselves side by side; the great car smelt faintly of the man-made substances covering the seats, but Wilfred was at once aware of another smell – oh, he knew, he knew – fern. It stole over his senses like music. Mr Taverner turned attentively towards him.

  A prolonged pause.

  ‘It’s so difficult –’ Wilfred broke out at last.

  ‘Well, perhaps I can give a hand . . . would it clear things up at all if I told you that our Yellow House is supposed to be haunted – always has been?’

  Wilfred stared at him. Yes, it would clear ‘things’ up; of course it would; but was it true? The smile that had just hovered on the mouth and luminous eyes had vanished. Grave as a judge, thought Wilfred resentfully.

  ‘Not by the usual miserable “ghost”,’ Mr Taverner went on, oh so lightly. ‘But by odd happenings; slipping back into the past; memories?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wilfred nodded.

  Yes, that could account for . . . yes, he supposed so.

  ‘I never heard anything about its being haunted,’ he said at last, with a touch of sulkiness. ‘And I’ve lived in Torford all my life.’

  ‘I don’t know . . . everything . . . about it,’ and Mr Taverner’s tone was unmistakably final, and one hand moved towards the dashboard, ‘but people who’ve lived there have had peculiar experiences. Nothing unpleasant. Just . . . peculiar.’

  ‘Have – any of you?’

  ‘Lord, yes!’ Mr Taverner said heartily. ‘Very rum indeed.’

  Another pause. Wilfred knew that the natural thing would be for him to ask what experiences, and in what way were they rum?

  I don’t want to know what’s going on there, he thought suddenly. Let it be haunted. He felt helpless, and bewildered, and longed to get quickly into Lamorna with Mary, and Mrs Wheeby and Dicky, and the dusty unused gadgets, and the whales safely imprisoned in their gramophone record.

  ‘Well, thanks for putting that straight,’ he said at last, managing to smile. ‘I – don’t think I’ll bother telling you what I did see – or thought I saw.’

  Mr Taverner nodded, all soothing attention.

  ‘So – well – thank you all again for a very happy Christmas. It . . . I mean I was dreading being alone . . . you know . . . for Mary, I mean. The first time after her mother passed on.’

  ‘We’ve all loved having you.’ Mr Taverner’s smile had come back. ‘I’ll ring you soon, and a happier New Year.’

  Wilfred was outside again; the door was shut. Mr Taverner lifted a hand and smiled, and the great crème caramel glided away under his expert control.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Mary asked indifferently, standing at the entrance to Lamorna. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe for a bit, she’s making some muck for herself.’ The house was already ringing with the song of Dicky.

  ‘Just thanking him . . . did you enjoy it, love?’ He picked his way carefully along the path towards her.

  ‘Of course. It was smashing. I like them, too. But,’ she slipped her arm through her father’s as he stepped into the hall, ‘I’m ever so glad to be home again, with you, all to ourselves.’

  He lifted his arm and put it round her shoulders and they went into the house.

  ‘What did you say, Laf?’ Katherine asked eagerly. ‘How did you get out of it?’

  Mr Taverner looked at her for a moment in silence, with judging eyes, then said gently: ‘I know it excites you, Katherine. But do try to remember, all the time, that he needs us, and what our work is, and that we aren’t sitting on the edge of our stalls at some bloody thriller.’

  ‘I know – I know –’ she said at once, biting her lip, but also half-laughing. ‘I do try to remember . . . What you can never remember is that you aren’t me.’

  ‘No, indeed.’ Mr Taverner was leisurely hanging up the white raincoat as they stood in the hall. ‘You can – as they say – say that again.’

  ‘Children,’ Miss Dollette said under her breath as she passed them on her way to the kitchen.

  ‘All right – I’m sorry. I’ll try to remember – I will remember. Now tell me what you said.’

  ‘I went into the “haunted” routine,’ he said over his shoulder as he opened the kitchen door.

  ‘Do you think he believed it?’ Miss Dollette breathed anxiously.

  ‘Oh no.’ Mr Taverner’s tone was cheerful. ‘Not by a long chalk. You see, he saw our – helpers.’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ from Katherine.

  ‘Yes. This time, I’ll have to give them a real ticking off. I suppose the temptation was simply irresistible – I don’t imagine he saw them for longer than a second or so, if that, and of course he couldn’t believe, he isn’t sure – if he really did see anything. But it was very naughty. They could feel he was the most responsive one of the five.’

  ‘And they must have felt him coming and smelt him, too,’ Miss Dollette put in. ‘They’ve no excuse there.’

  ‘Of course they did. I’ll bet they were grinning all over their unbelievable little faces . . . The trouble is, when I’m ticking them off I always want to laugh,’ Mr Taverner said.

  ‘But they don’t know that, Laf,’ said Katherine. ‘I do laugh, that’s why I’m not much use. Now Felicity is useful, aren’t you, love?’ turning to her.

  ‘I suppose I am, yes . . . it’s like babies. Sometimes you want to laugh at the baby because it’s so funny – beautiful –’

  ‘Your favourite “funny-beautiful”,’ Katherine said, teasingly yet gently.

  ‘. . . Yes. But behind this laughter there’s always the solemn feeling: it’s so important . . . I try to remember that feeling when I’m giving them a little talking-to,’ Miss Dollette ended.

  ‘Only they aren’t human souls.’ Mr Taver
ner was extended in the big armchair, arms linked behind his head, staring into the fire. ‘Solemnity . . .’

  ‘But they will be,’ Miss Dollette said distinctly though softly, as always.

  A long pause.

  ‘And what do you think I did!’ she said in a moment, beginning to laugh. ‘When that boy said he would go to Wales I – I kissed him! And I was then feet away. He did turn round, but I don’t think he knew anything.’

  ‘Oh, he’s going, then?’ cried Katherine.

  Miss Dollette nodded. ‘I persuaded him,’ she said cautiously. ‘I really believe I did.’

  ‘Jolly d and congrats,’ Mr Taverner said, brightening. ‘Where is he, by the way? – And when we’ve got visitors, also by the way, we really must censor our conversations. I suppose we could always say we were MI5, but that won’t convince some people . . .’

  ‘He’s under the car, of course – Just look at these potatoes! What am I going to do with them?’ Miss Dollette almost wailed.

  ‘Make us some more, love,’ Katherine half-whispered, and all three burst into stifled laughter in the firelit quiet kitchen.

  15

  Mrs Wheeby’s cousin Fred

  Mrs Cadman was not the kind of landlady who rushes at lodgers returning from holiday, ravenous to hear and impart news. For three days after she got back to Rowena Road, Mary saw her only from a distance, cleaning the lower stairs, or setting out to shop with a large wicker basket.

  However, on the third morning she met her in the hall. Mary had been down to see if there was a letter from Sylvie. There was not.

  ‘Have you any idea where that silly friend of yours has got to?’ Mrs Cadman asked, questions and answers about a nice Christmas having been exchanged.

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest. I was going to ask you,’ Mary answered rather pertly.

  ‘Oh well.’ Mrs Cadman sighed. ‘Her rent was paid up, I will say that, though I reckon it wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t asked for it before she went off with you. But rushing in here, wouldn’t say a word (not that I asked her much, I didn’t care what was the matter with her), banging about in her room. We were watching TV and Mr Grant was asleep. She woke him up, trust her. And the state of her room! Bed not made, lipstick all over the pillow, bits of fluff on the floor, dirty cups . . . oh, it was a picnic.’