The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Always.’ Mr Taverner nodded, leaning an elbow on the mantelshelf. He looked very tired.

  ‘Why was that? Not that it isn’t a beautiful colour. I remember the first time I saw it, looking out of our kitchen window at home. Not quite like sunlight. Softer, somehow. – Why were they yellow, Mr Taverner? Is that the – the Brotherhood’s colour? Kind of a badge, I mean?’

  ‘It’s said to be the colour of the light in the highest region. The spiritualists could tell you about that.’

  ‘Oh – Spiritualism. When we were engaged Pat and I went into that a bit – and going to different churches and that sort of thing . . . And we decided at last that it was enough if you respected the Church and tried to lead a decent life . . . I don’t fancy Spiritualism, never did . . . What’s the joke?’

  ‘You make it sound like sardines on toast.’ A clock in a corner chimed quickly and silverily. ‘Midnight. Shall we turn in?’

  The old-fashioned phrase came to Wilfred comfortingly, helping to restore his feet to the earth. He got up.

  ‘As late as that? I’d no idea.’ He paused, surveying the long, gaunt form standing beside the fire. ‘Don’t think you’ve got away with taking me in, Mr Taverner. I know the garden path when I see it, even if I don’t know what’s at the end of it. You’ve hardly told me a thing. But if your Brotherhood’s like the Masons – secret, you know, except to members – that’s all right with me. It’s been – you’ve been – very kind to me. Don’t know how I’d have managed without you and the Yellow House, in fact––’

  ‘That’s the point, dear man. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Say goodnight to Mrs Cornforth for me, will you? And say of course I don’t bear her any malice. Give her my – well, just say I wish her well. I do, too. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight. Sleep well.’

  Wilfred shut the door. He crossed the hall, yawning as he went. The hall looked, for all its peacefulness, a little sad without Kichijoten. But no doubt she would be back soon. It would be all right. Things usually seemed to work out all right in the Yellow House.

  He went to bed and slept for eight hours without a dream.

  He overslept, and had to hurry over washing and shaving and his breakfast. His train left at half past nine, and the station was twenty minutes’ walk away, and he dared not wait for a bus.

  He hastened down the stairs and across the hall. The walls looked peculiarly bright this morning, and as he went he tried to remember exactly what Mr Taverner had said about their colour on the previous evening, but it was useless; he retained only an impression of mystery and – yes, there was that vague feeling of size, bigness somewhere. The highest region. The words returned suddenly. Well, if you believed in heaven at all, it might well be that colour. Only better, of course. Better.

  He gently opened the kitchen door.

  They were lingering over breakfast, Mr Taverner and Miss Dollette; he rustling through The Times and she with her embroidery, a length of rose linen with a half-finished pattern of dazzling marguerites. She was carefully drawing a thread of snowy cotton into place to begin a new petal. Both looked up and smiled as Wilfred put his head round the door.

  ‘Just to say good morning and I’m off.’

  ‘You’ll have a bright evening,’ said Miss Dollette, ‘though it looks as if it might darken over this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes . . . well, I’m prepared.’ He laughed, touching his raincoat. ‘Cheerio, then.’

  Mr Taverner lifted his hand for a moment and smiled.

  ‘Goodbye, dear man.’

  Miss Dollette echoed softly, ‘Goodbye,’ and Wilfred shut the door.

  Irritating and exhausting frustrations followed, attaching to the shortest journey: late buses; no buses; buses that crawled because of traffic; and trains that went too fast to be enjoyable; inexplicable ten-minute dead stops outside stations; and the occasional addition of tremendous thunders from passing jet liners. But when Wilfred saw Cousin Fred’s house, he immediately felt calmer.

  Here was a row of the small red-brick Edwardian villas that he liked best; here were the small front gardens, the net curtains – no, they’d be nylon nowadays – and . . . and the respectability that he had longed for since he was fifteen and beginning to find his parents’ cottage, cosy and loved though it was, rather rough.

  The unchanged ’30s atmosphere in Cousin Fred’s house soothed him. Everything, from the light oak furniture to the jazz-patterned curtains, belonged to the days before the world began to go mad, the days before the Second War. The pictures were all of pretty scenery, sunlit or moonlit. Little dogs of metal or china sat about on shelves looking saucy or pathetic. The cat was named Tiger, but was of a noticeably un-tigerish appearance, and the drama in Mrs Wheeby and Cousin Fred’s joint life was generated by a theory that ‘Tiger would Have Dicky in a Flash if he got a Chance’, and acted out daily in many a hasty shutting of doors and windows and loud alarums from garden or kitchen, though Wilfred was soon convinced that if Tiger had really wanted Dicky he would have Had Him, for neither Cousin Fred nor Mrs Wheeby moved as quickly as they supposed they did.

  But the familiar peace! The solid enjoyment of a treacle pudding, the bottled beer, the half-hour nap in the afternoon, and the slabs of plum cake with the thin bread-and-butter Pat could never be bothered with at four o’clock.

  The sun was setting as he left them, standing in the doorway to wave him goodbye; for he would not let them accompany him down the short path to the gate, saying that the evenings got very chilly.

  So he turned to wave to them, as they stood in the lighted doorway with the unfashionable comfort of their hall visible behind them: Mrs Wheeby wrapped and shawled and scarfed and muffled against draughts, yet with eyes wandering from the departing guest to take in the clear sky and its one low star, and Cousin Fred, two feet taller, looming protectively behind her.

  Happy, thought Wilfred, turning up his collar against the evening chill as he hurried down the road; really happy, I’d say. And more like a married pair than cousins. Nice to see that, nowadays.

  After a journey worse than that of the morning, for he had unwisely let himself in for the very middle of the frenetic rush back to their dens of the daily workers, he came out of Torford station to see the last of the husband-meeting wives edging the car bearing her exhausted junior executive out into the ordered chaos of the maelstrom. It was dusk now; the red lights burned with their false romance along the narrow old road jammed with vehicles. Already mist loitered in the leafless trees. He was walking homewards, when he heard what he thought of irritably as someone yelling. At first he felt only annoyance at anybody increasing the infernal racket all around him. Then he realized that he was hearing his own name.

  ‘Wilf! Wilf! Want a lift?’

  Joan – or was it Shirley or Sheila? – a rosy face smiling through the window of a car immediately opposite him, imprisoned in the block. He hesitated.

  ‘Buck up! – the lights’ll change any minute. Hop in.’

  He hopped, slamming the door, and scrambling. Damn, he thought, and braced himself for Joan’s – yes, it was Joan – questions.

  But Joan kept her eyes on the car just ahead, and said nothing for two or three minutes; and then, in the quick, shy tone she and her friends kept for certain occasions, said:

  ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’

  She did not look at him. Then, in a moment, she added: ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what? I’ve been with friends in Chelmsford all day. I haven’t heard anything. That loony Nixon been pressing buttons again?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that. It’s your friend – that woman in the pink coat – Mrs Cornforth, did you say? She’s dead. Drowned.’

  The traffic had stopped again. The air outside the car seemed to beat and shake, and his hands were cold and his mouth dry and his heart leapt, then settled to a steady hammering. He felt sick, staring at Joan.

  ‘But – she can’t – what happened?’

  �
�Got caught in the tide – or that’s what they think. It was in this evening’s Standard – didn’t you see it? This morning, it was, quite early.’

  ‘I tell you I haven’t seen or heard anything – are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Everybody was talking about it at coffee this morning. The police are certain she’s drowned, although they’re still looking for the body. They’ll have to wait to see if it’s washed up further down the coast before they can issue a statement – presumed drowned, I suppose it’ll be, until then . . . The tide’s terrible round Vikor, of course – I’ve heard it comes in as fast as a galloping horse.’ Joan broke off, as she turned the car down a less crowded street. ‘She’s lived here about a year – I used to see her around last Christmas. She must have known what the tides are down there – we all do. (All of us with kids, anyway.) Suicide, it must have been. She always looked to me like the sort that might take her own life. – What?’

  ‘I said “Take it, and do something with it”,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Didn’t you see her this morning before you left, then?’

  ‘No,’ he answered faintly. ‘No, she wasn’t up when I left.’

  Joan looked satisfied, as if ‘lying in late’ were all of a piece with suicide. What she said, however, was: ‘Oh well, we mustn’t judge, must we? What that poor soul must have gone through, to take an action like that! Did you ever see any signs of strain?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘But you lived in the same house, I thought you said?’

  ‘She was a bloody nuisance,’ he shouted, fumbling with the door of the car, as the traffic lights held them up again, just beyond the road leading to the ‘poor’ end of the town. ‘Cheerio – thanks,’ he added over his shoulder, and scrambled out and, darting perilously between the cars, was across and down the road leading into Hardy Crescent before Joan could shut her mouth, or get the shocked look off her face.

  Enjoying it, he thought savagely, walking fast between the small, dimly lit shops and the empty ruinous houses and glaring snack bars. Enjoying every minute of it. Oh God. How could I say a thing like that? How could I?

  He was almost sobbing as he hurried along and his thoughts raced with him. The worst thing is, the worst thing of all is, I meant it. She was a bloody nuisance. We all got on so nicely together, and were so peaceful and – almost happy – and she upset things. She did. She upset things.

  Clearly, as unmistakably as he heard the noise of the passing lorry through which it came to him, he heard the voice of Mr Taverner saying: Saints have to upset things.

  Saints? He lowered his head, and shut his eyes for a moment, as if to drive off grief and bewilderment and fear; and when he looked up, he saw Hardy Crescent before him – the graceful houses blanched and still in the false moonlight of the lamps.

  It’s all got so awful, he was thinking as he drew near to the Yellow House. For two pins I’d chuck living with them, and ask Joan – or Mrs W . . . it would only be until April. Suit me really down to the ground, that would, a room at Cousin Fred’s. (’Course, I’d pay them.) No mysteries or tragedies there.

  Then the horror and grief came back, and as he pushed open the gate of the Yellow House, he groaned. The mist hung thick and icy. The last Japanese sunflowers and chrysanthemums lay in withered swathes at either side of the path. He looked up at the windows . . . and saw, with a sickening shock, that they were curtainless.

  He ran up the steps, and, breathing fast, fumbled for his key, and managed to get it into the lock, and swung the door back.

  He knew what he would see . . . what he would find.

  Nothing. Emptiness. Gone. And the walls glimmering wanly in the reflected glow of the street lamps. The stairs, still seductive to the eye, though carpetless, curved upwards into the darkness.

  He switched on the light by the door and instantly the hall was gently glowing with the colour which, if Mr Taverner had spoken truly, was literally heavenly; and on the air there lingered faintly the scent of fern, the woods and moss fragrance that he had first breathed on Mr Taverner’s handkerchief just over a year ago. Tears came to his eyes. Slowly he began to climb the stairs, switching on lights as he went. Slowly he entered room after empty room, their bare walls singing in that holy colour, or with the rose of sunset, the green of spring woods.

  At least they had left him these ravishing colours.

  His footsteps echoed from room to room as he made his wretched pilgrimage, everything forgotten but the loss of his friends. Not a fragment of string or an old cardboard box or a scrap of newspaper was left to prove that anyone had ever lived there, and, in his own room, his few personal possessions were stacked neatly. He gulped at the neatness – that would be Miss Dollette. The few books, the photographs of Pat and Mary, his old television set and armchair, and the wardrobe full of worn clothes.

  Where would he go? What would he do, until April?

  But it was not that. He would manage. He had Mary, and he had some money. It was the longing to hear, and the expectation that at any minute he would hear, Mr Taverner’s voice, or see the light glinting softly on Miss Dollette’s hair as she came quietly down the long passage towards him, smiling. And ready to explain . . .

  Ah, explaining!

  But there was nothing. Silence, and his echoing footsteps, and nothing.

  He paused at the door of Katherine’s room and put his hand on the knob, then stood for a moment listening, staring at the bright, silent landing; seeing her body rolling to and fro in the darkness, in the icy sea out beyond Vikor Sands, with her red coat drifting around her. Katherine, who had made this emptiness and silence.

  Saints have to upset things.

  Slowly, he opened the door. He did not want to; he was frightened at the thought of what he might see; but he wanted to give her room a last look. He turned on the light.

  The walls glowed like a dark red rose, the air was scented by Katherine’s scent. He made a little groaning noise, strange and weak, as if grief itself had given tongue, looked slowly around, then turned off the light and shut the door.

  Presently, I’ll have to think, he thought as he walked – lightly now, for the noise of his own footsteps seemed to intensify the silence. But not yet. I’ll look into the dining room. There might just be something . . . Where shall I go tonight?

  Down the stairs he crept, and across the hall, all the time with that overwhelming sensation of walking away from something; leaving something irrevocably behind him; and up to the dining room. Again, for the last time, he opened a door on a room that he knew would be dark and empty. And it was dark, utterly dark, and utterly silent. His gaze travelled hopelessly, as he stood for a moment by the half-open door, into that silent darkness. And then he noticed the scent. Not fern or moss. Something else.

  Straw. The smell, faint and dry and pure, that comes up from stubble-fields when the harvest is over. That’s a very old smell, he thought dreamily, pain and sorrow drowsing while he breathed it in; it must be one of the oldest smells in the world, that must.

  What was that glittering on the floor? Oh, the glass. The glass Katherine had broken last night. Miss Dollette had wanted to sweep it up and Mr Taverner had said she was to leave it. It caught the light from the hall; that was why it glittered.

  But what was the dim glow – the faint, shining circle – of golden-green that was forming slowly above it? He began to feel warm; very warm, unnaturally warm, in that house now so cold, but he neither minded this nor was he frightened. It was as if he were entranced, as he stood, holding the door half open, with the silent hall behind him, watching the growing of the two golden-green blurs – larger and larger and larger. Suddenly, they formed.

  Then he saw them: ‘the helpers’ – the rough, rudimentary sketches for human forms; the maliciously smiling ones, the two who had haunted his memory.

  They were not looking towards him; both were stooping, and the male held – o
f all the unexpected things in the world – a dustpan, while the female slowly, unwillingly, was sweeping the broken glass into it. The expression on each brown, flattish face was identical – dislike of the task.

  Even as Wilfred fully realized that they were there, they looked up. The male thing, staring at him from under long black brows, deliberately motioned the female to put down her brush, while he, as deliberately, put down the dustpan. Then, with the implements of their work lying at their sandalled feet, both slowly rose to their full small height, and he saw that they were clothed.

  Both wore robes that seemed woven of wheat, at that point in its ripening when the green is almost, but not completely, changed to gold; while barley and oats, fully ripened, jutted from bosom and loins in a decorative pattern, as if growing; and the glossy black head of each was crowned with the flowers that grow in the harvest fields: poppies, and cornflowers and marguerites.

  He saw that they were changed in another way, too: their malicious smiles had vanished; and, as they stared at him out of their round, black eyes, the sullen look brought by their work also disappeared. They stood motionless, their hands at their sides. Then, slowly, in a way that made him think of children proud of their robes and new honours, each inclined a head towards him in greeting, and both smiled. The smile, almost, of children. (Almost, not quite. Something unknown, something he could not define, lingered.) Their smiles were so warm that his heart moved towards the pair in tenderness and wonder, and he smiled in return.

  They had gone. The room was dark again: the glow vanished, as though it had never been. Only the scent of straw lingered in the air.

  He was suddenly terrified. He slammed the door on the darkness and its inconceivable vision, and turned desperately to face whatever else might be coming towards him through the silent house. He stood for a second or two, staring wildly at the gold-white walls . . . and then the front door bell rang, loudly and imperiously.

  He started towards it. Of course! They had come back. He would open it to Mr Taverner in his white coat and Miss Dollette in the old-fashioned cape-coat she wore to go shopping . . . Katherine! All wet, with streaming red hair darkened by the sea . . . oh, no . . .