The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  Her mouth dry, her legs weak. Christina said, ‘No! I have not.’

  ‘Then this will be a treat.’ Mr Watson was going down a track between bushes. Overarching branches let in scraps of sunshine and the bright shards of light confused the eye. Looking behind her – she hadn’t given up on the policeman – Chrissie realized that they were alone. No one else was going to the gallery.

  ‘Botanists don’t approve of Marianne North’s paintings.’ Mr Watson was talking with his studio voice. ‘They don’t help to identify a species. Can you remember why not?’ Belatedly Chrissie grasped that he was talking to her. Dizzy with mounting apprehension as they went further down the shaded track, she fumbled for the answer.

  ‘A drawing shows just the plant’s structure so that the bottomist can see what it is more easier.’ Sweat trickled down her face.

  ‘Botanist!’ he corrected her. ‘And “easily” not “more easier”.’ He increased his pace, forcing Chrissie to do the same. ‘That is true and not true.’

  This sent Chrissie into a greater flap because she couldn’t see how something was true and a lie. She trotted beside him.

  ‘The location in which a plant is found growing tells us about the environment that it needs in order to flourish. Nearly a century since North was painting, her trees have been chopped down, water has reclaimed land and many plants she captured in her paintings are extinct. So today her work has new value: it depicts vanished flora. I am taking you to a shrine!’

  Chrissie didn’t know what a shrine was, but found the word unsettling because Mr Watson was obviously very excited about it. They rounded a bend in the track and she nearly cried out loud. There was the house with no rooms. She had been here before. She had lied. As they mounted the steps to the porch, her heart tumbled in her chest.

  In the porch Mr Watson showed Chrissie the lady she had thought was real when she came before. He said it was a ‘marble bust of Marianne’: a rude word that ordinarily Chrissie would have sniggered at, but with the locket heavy in her blazer pocket, she did not feel like laughing. The huge room was lighter than it had been on Chrissie’s first visit. Globes suspended from the ceiling spread a gentle illumination over the hundreds of pictures on every wall.

  ‘This is my favourite.’ Mr Watson led her to a corner to the right of the door. ‘Marianne painted this in Australia. Look at that orange. It could be burning! You can see why it’s called the flame tree.’

  Christina had known which picture he was going to point out before he did. The tree with orange flowers. She agreed that it looked like proper fire. He didn’t say that it was the one he had in his drawing room. Far from feeling heat, she had goose pimples.

  ‘Marianne has given us the shape of the tree, the flowers, leaves, the colour of the bark. If a botanist wants more, then he goes to painting number 766. See?’

  Chrissie was interested to discover that all the pictures had numbers. The tree picture was 764. It saved counting.

  ‘Flowers of the Flame Tree. Marianne is exceptional,’ Mr Watson whispered. He let go of Chrissie’s hand and reached towards the painting. He stopped and took her hand again, gripping it tighter.

  Versed in the dramas of her sister’s copies of Jackie magazine, Chrissie hazily considered that Mr Watson loved the lady with the bust. This was why Mrs Watson seemed cross. No. Mrs Watson was cross because Chrissie had stolen her locket.

  In the glass of the frame she caught a flash of red and white and whipped around. She and Mr Watson were opposite the doorway where she had had Addled Brain and seen the lady with the white gobstopper eyes and the cat with the umbrella. Perhaps sensing that he had lost her attention, Mr Watson demanded, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I thought I saw something.’

  ‘We are alone. No one comes. No one appreciates Marianne’s work.’ He pulled a strange face and Chrissie noticed that one of his front teeth was grey. She felt sorry for him. There was no point in being in love with a dead person.

  ‘My dad says I could be a bottom... a botanist. He says I’m to watch what you do.’ Chrissie wanted to cheer Mr Watson up.

  ‘You should always listen to your father.’ Mr Watson didn’t look cheered up. Letting go of her hand he sat down on the high-backed bench facing the flame tree. Patting the seat, he bid her join him. ‘Marianne expressed life. She deserves her place in botanical history.’ He dipped his hand into his case and eased out a sheet of paper.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said, his voice suddenly quiet as if he did after all think someone could hear him. Instinctively Chrissie peered around the bench to the room where she had seen the lady on the floor. Or thought she had.

  ‘Eucalyptus gunnii. You will find an example of this up the path from here. I don’t want you to forget this. Ever.’ He eyed her sternly. Chrissie looked at the drawing. Like the daisy weeks before, it didn’t look like a tree. It was bits of a tree, she now understood this. There was a leaf and there was the trunk.

  ‘Is it to do with guns?’ she ventured at last.

  ‘A gun? Certainly not! The species is named after the renowned collector, Ronald Gunn. In the nineteenth century he sent hundreds of specimens from Tasmania to Kew. Gunn, so therefore gunnii.’

  ‘Did Marianne— er, Mrs North have a plant called after her?’

  ‘She did. Northia was the genus.’ He led her across the gallery. Chrissie gaped at a picture showing brightly coloured trumpets. ‘Nepenthes northiana. The pitcher plant. Marianne painted this in the mountains of Borneo.’ He breathed.

  ‘Do you have a plant named after you?’ If Chrissie had failed to cheer Mr Watson up earlier, it seemed that her question achieved her aim. He became animated.

  ‘Not yet. But I will. Watsonii. Yes, most definitely. But one must wait. You must never ask a botanist to name something after you or you put back the possibility by years. Softly softly... yes.’ His nose made a snuffling sound.

  ‘Will I be able to draw like you?’

  ‘Almost certainly not.’

  Chrissie nodded sagely. The news was a relief.

  ‘This drawing is a map that will lead you to the truth. It’s our secret; keep it safe.’ Abruptly Mr Watson stood up and went through to the smaller chamber. She followed him. There was no one on the floor. She breathed more freely. The strap on Chrissie’s satchel dragged on her shoulder. Gingerly she drifted to the spot on the tiles where, in what had definitely been a dream, the gobstopper lady with white eyes had lain.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mr Watson was sharp.

  ‘I like these tiles.’ Chrissie did like them so it was true. There was a mix of ones with eight sides – octagons, she had learnt at her old school – and squares and oblongs fitted together.

  ‘It’s time to go. Your father will be waiting.’ A fleck of white appeared on Mr Watson’s lip.

  ‘The meter is ticking.’ On a reflex, Chrissie echoed one of her dad’s favourite phrases.

  ‘Everything has a price.’ Mr Watson pushed open the porch door and stepped out into the heat.

  Chrissie’s satchel caught in the closing door and she lost her balance. Something flew in the air and landed with a jingling on the veranda. Too late she understood the sound.

  ‘You dropped this.’ With a grey-toothed smile, Mr Watson held out his hand. In his palm lay the silver locket.

  Chapter Seventeen

  November 2014

  Jackie Makepeace was toting a bottle of Sainsbury’s champagne in a chiller sleeve branded with the Clean Slate logo. Despite this prop of celebration, she had a serious expression and didn’t look, Jack thought with concern, in the mood to celebrate. Stella shut the Kew Gardens file and announced breezily, ‘I’ll get glasses.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Stella, love.’ Jackie placed the bottle on the coffee table, hovering her hand above it as if to stay it. The polished glass table top gave the impression that the bottle was suspended in mid-air.

  ‘We can go through the finer points in the office,’ Stella objected mildly. Jack
guessed that it wouldn’t take much to encourage her to look at the finer points there and then.

  ‘Sit down, Stell.’ Jackie indicated the armchair and joined Jack on the sofa. She unwound her scarf and slipped off her quilted Barbour jacket, folding it on the sofa arm. Jack’s foreboding grew; Jackie always hung up her coat in the hall. ‘Has Tina Banks called you?’ she asked Stella, who remained standing.

  Her question seemed to galvanize Stella. ‘I knew she would cancel the contract. She was cross this morning, I’ve no idea what I did wrong.’ She pushed back her hair and, for Stella, looked flustered. Jack was surprised. Had they fallen out? It was hard to fall out with Stella because she didn’t argue or disagree with people.

  ‘Clients don’t need a reason.’ Stella did a motion in the air as if wiping Tina away like a stain.

  Jackie had the kindly expression that usually reassured Jack. Tonight it did not. Tina Banks came with Stella on dog walks and they met for coffee. Jackie said she was Stella’s best friend, not counting the two of them and a girl – woman – she had been at school with. She often urged him to make an effort with Banks: ‘For Stella’s sake.’

  Stella and Banks were born on the same day in 1966 in Hammersmith Hospital. Like Stella and his mother, Banks was a Leo. Stella dismissed astrology, so Jack hadn’t suggested that sharing a star sign could be a problem. Leos were loyal, confident and generous – like Stella and, he was sure, his mother – but also vain and domineering like Banks. The flash of satisfaction he felt that he had been right was followed by fierce compassion. Tina Banks cancelling would be a blow to Stella. More than anything, Jack hated Stella to be hurt.

  ‘No, lovey. It’s not that.’ Jackie indicated the chair again and this time, clutching the Kew papers, Stella sat down. ‘She hasn’t cancelled,’ Jackie said softly.

  ‘What then?’ Stella asked.

  ‘She hasn’t been in touch, not even a text?’

  ‘No. Was it about the stain in her flat?’ Stella asked. ‘Her dad said he was joking.’

  Jackie said that Stella’s not minding things left the space clear for Jack and her to do the minding for her. From Jackie’s face, Jack could see that she, like him, was minding now.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked Jackie.

  ‘Tina’s sister Michelle called the office asking for Stella.’

  Stella cradled the papers. With a forefinger, she traced the ‘K’ for Kew on the title page.

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this. Michelle said that Tina’s been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It’s too late to do anything because it’s spread to her liver.’

  ‘She was all right yesterday.’ Stella’s finger went over the ‘K’ again. It reminded Jack of Suzie, Stella’s mother, who, when she was agitated, used to tap on a cushion as if touch-typing her speech.

  ‘The only treatment is palliative. She’s been referred to a hospice, but she’s in denial. Keeps saying she’s a “winner” and she’ll beat this. She agreed to go in to let the “meds kick in” and then she claims she’ll be “back on her feet”.’

  Stella stood up. In a toneless voice she said, ‘Tina will sort it.’ The absurdity of her words hung in the air.

  Eventually Jackie said, ‘She’s known for weeks. She didn’t tell anyone because, as I say, she’s insisting that she will survive.’

  ‘She hasn’t been ill,’ Stella stated firmly.

  ‘Ovarian cancer is called the “silent killer”. It creeps up with no warning; you get symptoms when it’s too late. Michelle said that any symptom she had, Tina ignored. They fell out when Michelle used the word “terminal”. Tina’s only speaking to her because Michelle avoids saying cancer and listens to her plans for the company.’

  ‘She’s with the big players now.’ Stella was stern.

  Jack wondered if Stella had misheard ‘palliative’. She must know what it meant. He was unsurprised by Banks’s use of ‘kick in’. The mechanistic certainty implied was Banks’s trademark. The only grey in Banks’s world view was in her logo. Still, he was shocked; like Stella, he did rather think of the short feisty lawyer as able to ‘beat’ anything.

  ‘Stell, Tina won’t get better. She’s dying,’ Jackie said.

  Stella put the papers on the armchair. ‘Tina is a survivor.’

  Jackie darted a look at Jack and he read her thoughts. Stella was also in denial.

  ‘Michelle says that Tina wants to see you.’

  ‘Since she hasn’t cancelled, I’ll clean her office in the morning.’ Stella went to the door. Subject closed. Jack realized he had stopped breathing.

  ‘Tina’s not at the office,’ Jackie said. ‘Like I said, she’s in the hospice, for help with her symptoms. She’s asking to see you, love.’

  ‘Why?’ Stella was listening now.

  ‘Because you’re her friend.’ Jackie was taking a firm approach.

  ‘Where is the hospice?’ Jack tried to help Jackie.

  ‘By Kew Gardens. I did wonder if you might pop in after your first shift there tomorrow morning?’

  When Jack had been in hospital after the One Under case, Stella had sat at his bedside like a wraith, white as a sheet. She had stared at the fluids bag on the rack by his bed unable to speak. Stella operated from the principle that all stains could be eradicated. This news – outside of the binary consideration of dirt and cleaning – would be beyond her comprehension. If he was honest, it was beyond his too.

  Stella turned off the gas fire. ‘I’ll see her when she’s back in the office. Her sister is mistaken. Tina went to a ball this week and was the best at dancing. She wouldn’t want me seeing her in hospital.’

  ‘It’s a hospice, they’re for—’ Jack got a warning look from Jackie.

  ‘Michelle said that she wasn’t well enough to go to the ball.’ Jackie picked up the champagne. ‘I’ll put this in the fridge.’

  Jack heard the fridge door open and shut. Stella stood in the hall as rigid as a guard, Stanley at her feet, tail down.

  Jackie returned from the kitchen and grabbed her jacket and scarf from the sofa.

  ‘See you after I’ve been to Kew Gardens,’ Stella said.

  ‘No hurry.’ Jackie briefly patted Stella’s sleeve.

  Jack didn’t hear if Stella answered their goodnights. The door was closed before they reached the gate. The hall light was off.

  ‘What can we do?’ He leant on the still-warm bonnet of Jackie’s Nissan Juke outside St Peter’s Church.

  ‘Nothing. Stella’s in shock; give her time.’ Jackie chimed in, she grasped the steering wheel in gloved hands. ‘Her world is about to flip upside down; we can only be there for her, keeping everything else normal. Come back to ours?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Fine. He wasn’t fine. Jack pushed off the bonnet. The loss of warmth awakened a desire to go with Jackie and sleep in her spare room. For ever.

  ‘’Night, Jack.’ Jackie leant out of the window and squeezed his arm. ‘You’ve got the Herbarium first thing, that’ll be nice.’

  Jack watched the tail lights of Jackie’s car disappear down Black Lion Lane. He should have gone with her. Jackie belonged to a brighter and cleaner world that he could only look at from the outside. But for one night he might have pretended...

  He took out his phone and, before he could stop himself, texted Stella.

  An hour later, moving in the shadows, Jack was on the towpath by Kew Bridge. He was alert for the held-breath silence of a True Host.

  Chapter Eighteen

  July 1976

  Chrissie climbed up the steps. In the sweltering heat, her legs were leaden. Spangles of light fell across the walls.

  ‘This is William Hooker,’ he called from the landing.

  Chrissie supposed William Hooker was the botanist who, when they had come into the Herbarium minutes earlier, Mr Watson told her had a ‘short temper’ and she must be polite to him. She had been irritated because she was never rude. For the second week in a row they were on a ‘field trip’ (with no fields – she did
n’t count Kew Green). Ordinarily Chrissie would have welcomed this; her dad had described her pictures as grey scribble, but wouldn’t let her stop having lessons, saying, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’ It was another week when she couldn’t return the locket.

  Since Mr Watson had handed the locket back to her last week, he had been extra nice to her. Before they went out, he had given her a larger slice of Mrs Watson’s cake – Mrs Watson having popped out – and sat with her while she ate it. He asked her lots of questions about school. ‘What is your favourite subject?’ ‘How is your Latin?’ Not having ready answers Chrissie had to lie. All the time the silver heart was boring into her and the cake lay heavy in her stomach.

  Chrissie reached the top stair and saw that William Hooker wouldn’t notice if she was rude or not. He was a statue.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I’m not that old, Christina! Hooker has been dead a hundred and eleven years.’

  ‘Oh.’ Chrissie was cross with herself. It was best to wait to hear what Mr Watson said and then to answer. Yet he seemed to know ‘Marianne’. Her arms hung limply. She was fed up with dead plants and dead people. She wished she was playing on the slide under the railway arch in Ravenscourt Park. She didn’t care about getting on in life or moving in circles.

  ‘Hooker was the first Director of Kew Gardens. If you don’t count Joseph Banks. Which we must. Especially as he’s your namesake! What was his son’s name?’

  A test. This always happened in the drawing lessons. They would be going along quite nicely and Chrissie would be copying the brown sprigs when Mr Watson would make her answer something impossible. Fog descended and yet again she was enveloped in panic. ‘Cliff Banks?’ She named her dad.

  ‘I mean William Hooker’s son!’ Spit flew out of Mr Watson’s mouth. He was pointing at another statue. The face had black pinpricks in the eyes and curling stone caterpillars for eyebrows. Chrissie read a plaque beneath him.