by Diane Janes
When she reached home, she changed out of her gardening clothes, taking a moment to consider the state of her hands and nails. Gardening was hard on the hands, in spite of wearing gloves, but the results were rewarding. Spring had crept through the garden as she worked. She had cleared a good deal of it herself, working relentlessly day after day until the area at the front of the house was transformed: rediscovered flowerbeds formed three sides of a square around the stone sundial, each of them newly planted with rose bushes where nettles had previously held sway. The last of a succession of skips had gone from the drive, which was no longer home to pallets of bricks, roof tiles and other sundry materials which had arrived amid the sound of reversing wagons, then gradually been swallowed up by the house, inside which, though the litter of building work was still scattered about, rooms were beginning to emerge as all but finished. Some were already wearing the various wallpapers she had picked out. The newly installed bathroom suite was surrounded by shiny tiles. It was all coming together and it was all going to be perfect.
Two days later Wendy was putting her gardening tools away when a deep voice behind her said, ‘Before you go, I thought you’d like to see this.’
For a big man, Peter moved remarkably quietly. She had jumped violently on hearing his voice and couldn’t disguise her alarm on discovering that he had followed her into the outbuilding and was only a couple of feet away.
‘Sorry, Mrs Thornton. I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you’d’a heard us coming like.’
‘No … I didn’t hear you, you made me jump.’ Wendy found herself wondering where Kenny and John were.
‘It’s just that I found this. I thought you might like to see it.’
She looked down and saw that he was holding out a framed photograph. ‘Let’s go outside, into the light,’ she suggested, and was relieved when Peter readily complied. Though for heaven’s sake, she told herself, what on earth did she imagine he was going to do with two other men within earshot on the premises? She should not have listened to that crazy Parsons woman from across the road.
When they were both standing in the yard, he handed her the object of supposed interest. It was the size of a postcard, a photograph of a young man, mounted in a cheap wooden frame. Peter had evidently rubbed some of the dust from the glass in order to see what the frame contained, and she used a forefinger to complete the job. It was a black and white photograph: a youth of indeterminate age, leaning on a garden wall, the shot showing him from the waist upwards. He was wearing an open-neck shirt, with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and he had fair, curly hair. Though he was smiling, his eyes were screwed up against the sun. Little could be seen in the background, except the lupins and gladioli growing in the garden behind him. For a moment Wendy wondered if the photograph could have been taken at The Ashes, but she decided it had not, for there was no matching garden wall anywhere. It was impossible to date the picture. Men’s fashions changed so little. That shirt and haircut could have belonged to almost any point in pretty much any time before the 1960s.
‘Where did you find it?’ she asked.
‘I was working up in the attic and I noticed there was a loose floorboard. It sprung up a bit when I stood on the end of it. I was going to nail it back down, thinking it was a trip hazard, like. Only then I saw that there wasn’t no nails in the other end neither. It was just a little section of board, see, what could be lifted out completely. The picture was hidden in the gap between the boards and the bedroom ceiling.’
‘I wonder who put it there.’ Wendy held the photograph out for him to take it back, but he shook his head.
‘It’s yours by rights,’ he said. ‘Found in your house.’
‘I suppose it is. Thank you.’
‘S’aright. I suppose someone had their reasons. For hiding it, I mean.’ Peter turned back and entered the house, leaving her holding his treasure trove. As he disappeared up the hall, she heard him start to hum. She recognized the tune as ‘In the Jailhouse Now’ – it was one of his favourites. A sudden shiver ran through her – a phenomenon her mother had always referred to as a goose walking over your grave. It was a funny expression, which made no sense at all, now she stopped to think about it.
She followed him into the house and put the photograph down on the windowsill while she went to wash her hands at the sink. When she was drying her hands, John appeared in the doorway. In spite of the plaster dust in his hair, he could almost have doubled for the Sundance Kid, she thought.
‘All done for the day?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Knocking-off time, is it?’
‘I have to get back in time for Jamie and get started on tea.’
‘Wednesday,’ John said. ‘Steak and kidney pie at my digs.’
‘You know what you’re getting in advance?’
‘It doesn’t change, week by week. Roast on Sundays, bacon, egg and chips on Mondays, chops on Tuesdays, steak and kidney on Wednesdays. Friday is best – fish and chip night.’
Wendy advanced towards the door, conscious that time was passing. ‘That must get a bit boring,’ she said.
‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s all right, Mrs MacIntyre, but she doesn’t have much imagination. I get myself a Chinese sometimes, to ring the changes.’
‘Goodness.’ Wendy glanced at her watch. ‘I need to be off.’
‘See you.’ He stood aside to let her pass.
It only occurred to her as she was walking up the road that she had forgotten to pick up the photograph. She didn’t mention Peter’s discovery that evening, as she thought everyone would be more interested when she actually had the object to show them, but when she went into the kitchen at The Ashes next morning, the photograph had gone. She considered asking if anyone had moved it, but if they all denied it, that could become awkward. It might be interpreted as an accusation. What if Peter had decided to take it as a keepsake of the job? She had initially tried to give it back to him, so he might have assumed that she had left it lying about because she didn’t really want it. It would very likely get him into trouble if she started asking after property which he had removed from the premises. And she wasn’t exactly certain of her ground … had she really left the photograph on the windowsill? She had occasionally put things down in the past, only to find them weeks later somewhere that they shouldn’t have been … And anyway, what did it matter? It was only an old photograph of someone she didn’t know.
I had already bought the tree, its roots wrapped in sacking, in readiness to conceal the freshly dug grave. A tree would deter any future gardeners from disturbing the spot I had chosen. I don’t know how long it takes to happen, but eventually the flesh and internal organs of the body rot away, leaving only the bones. Sometimes I imagined the tree roots, creeping down, winding their way around the rib cage, twisting in and out of the eye sockets, working their way through the skull. The blossom is profuse every spring, as if drawing life from what lies beneath it.
FOUR
July 1980
The builders had started the process of clearing the back garden early on, hacking a way through to what would eventually be the centre of the lawn and burning a load of old floorboards on a bonfire which had lasted three days. As moving day approached, the entire family laboured alongside Wendy to complete the clearance, in order for the newly delivered turf – ‘like lots of giant swiss rolls’, said Katie – to be laid. Wendy was delighted that her initially reluctant brood had become more enthusiastic, now that actually inhabiting the house was an imminent possibility.
On the first Monday of the school summer holidays, The Ashes was filled with industrious noise. Kenny was installing the last of the long-awaited kitchen units (there had been a problem over the delivery of part of the original order), while Peter could be heard proclaiming that it was peach-picking time in Georgia as he installed insulation in the roof space of Tara’s wing. With the turf down and the surrounding beds prepared, Wendy had engaged in an orgy of planting, while Jamie and Katie were released from acting as gar
den labourers and spent the latter part of the afternoon riding their bikes up and down the drive, just as Wendy had envisaged them doing during her first viewing of the house. Tara had spent the day with friends, but she called to check on progress as she made her way home down Green Lane. Tara’s arrival was a reminder that tea would soon be required in Jasmine Close and, calling to the children that it was almost time to go, Wendy put her tools away in the designated shed. She smiled to herself as she walked through the house. It was all turning out just as she had imagined. In a few days’ time they would actually be living here. Not just Peter, but the house itself seemed to be singing. Sunshine flickered around the rooms. The smell of decay had been superseded by fresh paint. She breathed in deeply.
As she crossed the hall she heard Tara’s voice coming from somewhere out of sight upstairs. She didn’t catch what her daughter said but, pausing at the foot of the stairs, she heard John’s reply: ‘Whereabouts in Coventry were you born?’
‘I don’t know. We moved back up here when I was still a baby. I don’t remember anything about living in Coventry at all.’
‘Is that where your dad’s from – Coventry? I knew he wasn’t from round here, but I couldn’t place the accent.’
‘Oh, that’s not my real dad. My mam and dad got divorced. Bruce is my stepfather.’
Wendy placed a hand on the bannister. She was about to call Tara’s name, but something prevented her.
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ John said. ‘My sister, the one who lives in Erdington, she’s divorced. Mind you, she says she won’t get married again. He was a right one, her old man.’
‘When Mam married Bruce, I was bridesmaid,’ said Tara. She laughed. It was a funny, half-hearted kind of laugh.
Wendy was unexpectedly stung with surprise and embarrassment. It was perfectly true, but something in the way Tara had spoken made her second wedding sound vaguely sordid.
John laughed too. ‘A bit funny, being bridesmaid at your own mother’s wedding.’
They both laughed again.
From the foot of the stairs, Wendy called, ‘Tara, is that you?’
‘Hello, Mam.’ Tara’s head came into view above the bannisters on the top landing.
‘I’m just going to wash my hands in the kitchen,’ Wendy said. ‘Then I’ll be ready to go.’
‘Water’s off again, I’m afraid, missis.’ Kenny had come into the hall behind her.
Wendy felt her cheeks flush. She wondered if he had seen her eavesdropping. More sharply than she needed to, she said, ‘Come on, Tara. We may as well go home.’
Partly to get away from Kenny, she walked briskly towards the rear passage, where she found the cellar door standing open. The light was switched on, but when she called ‘Hello’ there was no response. She wondered whether someone had been down there for something and forgotten to turn out the light. Descending half-a-dozen steps brought the main section of the cellar into view. It was interesting, she thought, how much clutter had already accumulated down here, even though they hadn’t moved in. Mostly it was packing material from items which had already been delivered, but there was also an unidentified pile of sacks – or were they dust sheets? She would have to remind Kenny to remove any builders’ stuff before they finally departed.
Peter emerged from the doorway linking the main cellar to the smaller ones. She managed to stifle an exclamation of surprise. Surely she’d heard him singing upstairs only a few minutes ago? It was very unnerving, the way the man could loom up out of nowhere.
‘Aw reet, Mrs Thornton? Did you want summat?’
‘No. I saw the light was on and I wondered if anyone was down here, that was all.’
‘Oh aye. It’s only me.’
‘You won’t forget to take this stuff away before you finish, will you?’ She waved an arm to encompass the various bits and pieces which were scattered about.
‘Oh aye. It’ll all be moved, like. You’ll be wanting to get at the wine rack, likely.’
Wendy laughed. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever use it. We don’t drink that much, so I expect we’ll just keep whatever we need in the kitchen.’
‘It’s a fine auld piece of woodwork.’
‘Yes, yes … it’s nice to keep things as they were originally.’
‘I’m not sure this is where it was originally.’ Peter considered the fixture with the seriousness he applied to all topics. ‘I reckon it’s been moved from one wall to another at some time. You see here …’ He stepped across and indicated a tall, solid strip of wood about six inches wide, which ran horizontally from floor to ceiling at one side of the rack. ‘That’s been put in to make it fit, and over here …’ He pointed to the brickwork of the wall which was at right angles to the rack. ‘That’s the marks of where it used to be.’
Wendy moved a couple of paces closer and peered obediently at the places he was indicating. Sure enough, there were ghostly imprints, reflecting the distinctive shape of shelves which curved in regular semi-circles, intended to accommodate the individual bottles.
‘Goodness, yes, I think you’re right. I wonder why it was moved?’
‘They must ha put the false back in at the same time,’ Peter said. ‘Thing like that would normally be flush against the wall. It must ha been like that originally t’ ha left those marks.’
‘Why would they do that? Put a false back on it?’
Peter considered. ‘I cannae guess,’ he said eventually.
‘Well, I’d never have noticed,’ Wendy said. ‘Anyway, I’d better be getting back.’ She turned awkwardly and mounted the stairs.
She did not refer to the conversation she had overheard between John and her daughter as she and Tara walked back to Jasmine Close, or later when she was alone with Bruce, but it replayed itself uneasily in her mind, troubling her although she would have been hard pressed to explain why.
Wendy had been able to do a great deal in advance of the actual removal men, ensuring that the kitchen was fully functioning, with stocked cupboards and everything in its place before any of the larger items of furniture from Jasmine Close had been unloaded. In the dining room, a new table and chairs, complete with matching sideboard, had already been delivered, so instead of the fish and chip supper eaten among a chaos of boxes which had characterized previous moving days, the family sat down to a properly cooked meal of roast chicken at a table laid with a snowy cloth. To mark the meal as an occasion, Wendy’s silver-plated candelabra formed a centrepiece and two bud vases of freesias (arranged by Katie) stood to either side of it. The best wine glasses (a wedding present from Bruce’s well-heeled aunt) were filled (three with wine, two with raspberry-flavoured pop) and raised to toast future happiness in their new home.
‘I can’t believe we’re actually living here,’ Tara said. ‘I mean, to start with it all seemed utterly preposterous. In fact, when they first started work, everywhere was such a mess that it didn’t look as if anyone would ever be able to live here again.’
‘Well, we are here. And I know we’re going to be happy.’ Wendy glowed in the fulfilment of an ambition achieved.
‘Do you know what would be really useful?’ Bruce said, as they began to clear the table at the end of the meal. ‘A little trolley on wheels. I know we’ll mostly eat in the kitchen, but when we do use the dining room, it wastes a lot of time, carrying everything along the passage to and from the kitchen. It’s not like Jasmine Close, where we could just pass everything through the serving hatch.’
‘That’s a good idea—’ Wendy was never sure afterwards how it happened, but perhaps in half turning to respond to Bruce on her way to the kitchen, she lost her concentration and missed her footing. Maybe she was a little bit unsteady after the wine, but at any rate she felt herself stumble, collided with the doorpost, and in a hopeless attempt to save the tray of wine glasses, ended up sprawling across the hall floor.
Voices came from all directions.
‘What’s that noise? What’s happened?’
‘Look out,
Jamie, don’t tread in that broken glass!’
‘Mam, are you all right?’
For a moment, Wendy was not at all sure. She had come down hard. Tentative movements reassured her that all limbs appeared to be functioning.
Bruce took command. ‘Stand back, you two. Tara, find the dustpan and brush. Wendy, be careful! Don’t try to stand up without me helping. There now, you’ve put your hand down on some glass and cut yourself. Just stay still a minute. Let’s make a safe space for you to get up.’
‘Oh, Bruce! I’m so sorry. Every one of your aunt May’s glasses is broken.’ She could hear her voice shaking, in spite of her attempts to be brave in front of the children.
‘Never mind the glasses, they’re not important. Here now, give me your hands, I’m going to help you get up without leaning or kneeling in all this mess. Katie, go and fetch the first aid kit – oh, damn it, where will it be?’
‘Kitchen cupboard, bottom right,’ Wendy supplied.
‘Damn,’ said Bruce again. ‘No one else knows where anything is in this place.’
Bruce and Tara chivvied Wendy and the younger children away, while they set about clearing up the broken glass. Wendy’s wounds turned out to be superficial. There was only one actual cut, but it was on the ball of her thumb and bled profusely until it was finally stemmed with kitchen roll and then covered with a plaster, eagerly provided by Katie, the appointed first aider for the occasion.
In spite of Bruce’s assiduous care, when Wendy came downstairs next morning, the first thing she noticed was a speck of glass glittering against the skirting board at the foot of the stairs. As she bent down to carefully retrieve it, she saw that there was a dull red stain on the stone-flagged floor nearby. How very peculiar, she thought, to have made a bloodstain on the floor the very first night we moved in – and acquired some bruises.