Through my dingy linen curtain, I spot the figure’s burning cigarette. As if guided by a wind to my back, I unlock the front door.
In the basement, I cut another line and try to force it up my callused nostril. There’s a quick, sharp pain and I sneeze, painting my twelfth canvas in blood and mucus and snot. The voicemails continue to mock me, but the deafening thunderclaps of my heart nearly drown out the voices, along with the sound of my front door opening, closing, the deadbolts clicking.
I’m getting dizzy, chewing meth, my nostrils no longer an option. The taste is sour and revolting but I swallow anyway, and the cellophane wrapper is empty now, and the world goes upside down and my cell phone bursts into flames, jagged plastic shards steaming hot in my palm, melting, merging with flesh. Yet the voices remain.
I press my ear to the earthen floor where I’ve pulled up the floorboards. Something rustles under the soil. Above me, footsteps cross the living room before coming to a stop in front of the basement door.
The Tapping at Cranburgh Grange
Felice Picano
I’m not at all certain how it was that we came to that particular village in that shire. Later on, Martin thought that it had been a bus tour we’d taken. We’d stopped at the village inn for lunch or tea and after we’d gotten back onto the bus, we’d already decided we had to return to the spot. We did return annually after that, taking rooms in the inn for first two, then three nights, then for almost two weeks: his entire vacation from work.
I recalled well, actually we recalled, that we were immediately drawn to the house among all the others. Naturally, we’d passed it on every trip we’d made to the village and every stay in the inn; we’d had to pass it since it was on the road between the railway and the inn, the largest, the handsomest, and altogether the most substantial house. But this last particular trip and stay, we had the misfortune of having rain for two and a half days straight. Hardly torrential rains, but steady enough that you heard it day and night, awake and asleep, and it rained—if not particularly hard—still it rained so steadily and regularly that it seemed at times to have never not rained ever in that village.
The local people took the rain for granted: it was “ordinary spring” to them. They dressed for it; at times even rather elaborately, wearing long capes, or multiple capes with hoods for their eyes. So, after the rain, we had but a single night left before we must leave again, and as the rain had for a minute stopped being regular, it was I who suggested we go for a lengthy walk in the village before our supper. We were both desperate to get out of doors, or at least away from the inn and its taproom regulars and the few attempts at entertainments they offered. There was something suggesting an actual part-afternoon of sun with a possible sunset if we could only get outside.
So that’s what we did, traipsing through the village and then out the eastern end of it, and we didn’t stop traipsing for at least one and a half hours. It was Martin who said he needed a rest, and frankly, so did I. We stopped at a friendly enough looking wall built on two levels, one clearly meant for a seat, the other a back rest, and that was when we really saw the house for the first time, before us. The tall, wrought iron gate was open, which it never had been before, and that was something of an invitation, so after a minute or so of Should we? Dare we? We did. We entered onto the curved gravel auto approach and there was the house so instantly present, it was almost as though it had leapt to meet us halfway. Even more inviting, in the door, and stuck askew presumably by the wind, was the crucial sign reading “To Let.”
Naturally that called for a further inspection of the premises, at least what could be obtained from the exterior alone, since we knocked and rang and there was no response within, so we obliged. It was on the far west wing ell that we found the magnificent sunset starting, so barmily beautiful over such a lovely landscape that we leant against the bottom of what appeared to be the dining room’s locked casement windows and watched and didn’t breathe a word. Once it had set and a little breeze arose, we set off without a word back to the inn, arriving at nightfall. But we passed and I—at least for the first time— noticed along the way, the sign in the office window not five doors away reading: W.R. Sheriff—Realtor—Solicitor: Local Properties. “That’s where we shall be tomorrow morning at ten sharp,” Martin said, and I replied that he sounded masterful when he was determined.
“Well, yes,” Ms. Sheriff, for it turned out the solicitor was a woman, said, “It has been vacant several years. But always constantly and well taken care of,” she quickly amended. “As to why it’s only now put up to let? Well, that’s because the house is part of a messy, and much contested, will probation, and at least four of the contesters finally agreed that as the place is habitable, it might as well be of use in covering the incessant legal fees they are paying out.”
Ms. Sheriff then showed us photographs of the exterior and interior of the house that appeared to have been taken, if not when the place was first built, then shortly thereafter when residential photography first came into vogue: “Some decades after the Napoleonic Wars and before the Civil War in your own country,” was as precisely as she could date it.
“Two of the daguerreotypes show women in hoop skirts,” Martin pointed out. “Surely that must date it.” The woman he had pointed to seemed to be not quite brunette, and of a very fine figure with a strong-featured face.
“That might actually be the second wife of the owner/builder,” the realtor opined. “The first was a sickly thing, but when she passed, he met this one and she it was who became mistress of Cranberry Grange for decades, outliving her husband and I believe, all three of their children. The house then passed to a relatively distant cousin of his, a fellow who traveled the world for the National Geographical Society. After that, the house was lived in only sporadically, and sometimes only on holidays, when hordes of guests would arrive.”
I could see Martin’s eyes light up when she spoke of the explorer owner heir, and I have to admit, my own grew large and even a bit moist at the mention of the house’s name. Who wouldn’t want to live in a Cranberry Grange? But, of course, the name would turn out to be slightly incorrect, as was much else we were first told about the house. On that we both agreed. We couldn’t have both heard incorrectly. Not that it was purposefully misleading, I don’t think. At least not until much later on.
As I said before, we were leaving that mid-afternoon, and so we were quickly settled into her elderly Volvo station wagon and smartly driven to the house. The double front doors were thrust open and a few windows thrown ajar—“Remember how the widow disparaged the second house in The Spoils of Poynton?” Martin asked me, and I answered, “Not a double-door in the place!”
“Well, here, there’s several,” Ms. Sheriff proudly replied.
Some interior doors were racked open noisily and we got a very rushed tour of the place. This, however, was enough to confirm that it had indeed been the dining room that looked out upon the sunset, that a breakfast room opposite looked due east, that a little library on the first floor was matched by a sewing room upstairs and by a clothes-drying room with multiple skylights on the third half-floor. One parlor on the ground floor had become a bedroom, perhaps for the original owner’s wife in her dotage. Upstairs were six other ones, with a large and modern-ish (ca. 1910?) bathing salon with a number of water closets scattered about, also later additions. Like the bathing facilities, the kitchen which had originally been a separate room off the rear of the house (Ms. Sheriff: “Kitchen fires were so common then!”) was also modernized, possibly forty years later, but looked quite passably useful. Mud rooms, club rooms, gun rooms, and who know what other smaller rooms opened out from odd angled corners at all three floors. But the fireplaces were now more or less ornamental as there was a central heating system.
“We couldn’t possibly take it for the next six months, since I’d require that long to wrap up my work in the ‘States,” Martin said. Then Ms. Sheriff told us the annual rent and suggested he might want t
o pay down now to hold the place for when it was we wanted it. So, at her office, he arranged to do just that, writing out a check for half a year, even if we came later. I just nodded. When Martin wants something…
As it turned out, we were back in the village and moved into the house less than four months later. The minute Martin mentioned retirement, his partners eagerly thanked him for his service and offered to buy him out. I’m not certain whether he was pleased or not by their abruptness, but I pointed out that we wanted to go and so we would. Our own place in the ‘States we left with a caretaker and with our married children coming and going. Suddenly, there we were, inside the grand old Regency manse, high above the stream and with fields spread out below, unpacking our silver and clothing and knick-knacks.
Ms. Sheriff had mentioned the two people who’d cared for the place while it was vacant and we soon met them: a bit more than middle-aged but still quite presentable woman named Mrs. Ethel Grack, and her son, oddly named Dmitry, a strapping lad of about thirty, movie star handsome in that blond Slavic manner but a bit slow on the uptake. Both loved the old house and its grounds and they tended to them kindly and generously with their time and attentions. They slept in the Dower Cottage at the eastern end of the grounds. Martin once remarked, “If only they were equally devoted to those who leased the place.” Two girls from the village of indeterminate relationship to the Gracks also came weekly to keep the place spotless.
We’d been ensconced very comfortably indeed when two events occurred almost simultaneously to alter our stability. First, at breakfast, Martin asked if he might change bedrooms with me. I rather liked the view from the corner windows of the room that I’d decided upon—after he’d chosen his own first—and so I suppose I was less than a hundred percent charitable when I asked whatever for. “Because I can hear the leak from my room. You can’t hear it from your room, can you?” he asked.
This startling piece of information elicited from me the rather inane remark, “Leak? What leak?” His answer to this was that he had begun hearing a leak in one of the sinks in one of the half baths or powder rooms but had been unable to locate it. And yes, he’d put Dmitry on the case, and he’d not found the source of the sound either, partly because Dmitry claimed not to hear it himself; another sign of his somewhat dimwittedness, Martin believed.
Not a moment after this conversation, the un-heeding Dmitry appeared at the breakfast table to say that we had visitors. Might he let them in? We had finished breakfast, and in sailed Wilhelmina Sheriff and an elderly gentleman who was clearly some cleric or other. They sat themselves down at our welcoming table and helped themselves to what was left of the coffee and Mrs. Grack’s excellent scones, chattering all the while.
The gist of their talk was that the church held twice a year fairs of local produce, flowers, goods and locally made crafts, and the village looked forward to it greatly, as did the neighboring villages in the shire. “St. Botolph’s Day Fair is a crucial event for our village people and it is in the greatest danger at this time,” the aged Parson said, with feeling.
I was waiting for them to hit us up for a donation, and I could all but see Martin calculating what he could give. But Wilhelmina clarified: “It’s the grounds, you see. The church and its manor house both have questionable drainage. I’m sure you haven’t failed to notice a large round barreled lorry outside it, as workmen come and go clearing it up.”
“A tedious process,” the parson added. “We don’t know how long they’ll be there.”
In fact, we had noticed the truck only the day before during our afternoon walk. Before we could say another word, the cleric spoke up again, “Historically, Cranburgh Grange provided the grounds for the bi-annual fair until quite recently. It was always held here, on the front and south facing lawn. There are sepia-graphs of the event. It was, after all, the grandest house in the shire.” Wilhelmina merely nodded and downed more scone and preserves. Before I could ask, “Cranburgh? Not Cranberry?” The parson explained that the fair had been moved to the church grounds only in the past few years, once the mansion’s heirs declared the property out of bounds. He assured us that if we allowed it, the fair would all be set up, operated and managed, and then taken apart again by his staff and volunteers. Afterwards, one would never even notice it had been here. All we need do is step out at any time during the fair, receive some refreshment, and be thanked for our largesse.
That sounded completely reasonable to Martin, and as I had no rational opposition, the motion was carried then and there. Only as they were leaving did I say to Wilhemina, “Cranburgh?” to which the parson replied, “Yes, of course, named after Lord and Lady Cranburgh. It was the builder’s second wife who began the St. Botolph’s Day event in her lifetime: Lady Sofia Cranburgh.” Then they were gone.
We were to hear a great deal more of this one-time paragon of the shire. Once it became generally known in the village that we’d agreed to open the grounds of the Grange (we continued to call it “Cranberry” among ourselves) for the fair, as in years past, it seemed that we had suddenly gained status, and more importantly, new friends. Sam Westin, the fellow who ran the post office and general office and stationers next to Ms. Sheriff’s office, greeted us like long lost cousins as we took our daily walk. “You know, of course, that the Grange has its own post box within,” he assured us, all but twinkling with amity as he handed us the keys. “At no charge, naturally.” He then foisted some leaflets or other apparently from previous decades upon us, and assured us that his eldest daughter Elspeth’s hand-embroidered aprons and napery were the star crafts of past fairs.
Not to be outdone, Mrs. Anthony Page, the owner of the little bakery across the lane, sent out a boy to fetch us in and plied us with strawberry jam oat cakes she’d just taken out of the oven. “T’was Lady Sofia Cranburgh who first appreciated us common folk for our arts and crafts a century nigh, as every one of us knows,” she said. “Why, I’ll be baking for a day and half beforehand, and even so I’ll be out of goodies by mid-afternoon.”
The more we heard, the more we became interested in this first and longest in-residence woman of what we’d already come to think of as our house. A few days later, I had the opportunity to learn even more. Martin still had business he must attend to and when phones and faxes and e-mails were not enough, he had to go into London himself. I drove him to the station of the narrow-gauge rail extension at what might be considered the main town of the shire, a local line that connected up to an express line. While there, I noticed a lending library and stepped in and expressed an interest in the house. What I was able to scan and then borrow after some paperwork, was a sort of homegrown history of the shire for the past half millennium by an enthusiastic amateur, with Lady Sofia Cranburgh prominent in the 19th Century chapter. Her virtues were apparently so many, so widespread, and so—after a while—unctuously narrated, that I simply took the thing out for a small fee, intending Martin to peruse it. I thought, especially, that he’d be tickled to see one of the photographs we’d been shown, repeated in the text, this time definitely naming Lady Sofia Cranburgh as the sitter.
“According to this volume, Lady Sofia was an unparalleled paragon of taste, generosity and breeding,” Martin declared after tea one afternoon, when we were taking our post prandial walk about the property. I agreed, saying that I’d heard similar encomiums from virtually everyone in the village or surrounding area, including an otherwise surly auto garage fellow who had changed the tires on our rented car. “Then I’m afraid you have rather sizable shoes to fill,” Martin concluded. I told him I would do no such thing but rather rely on his own good works and would merely be a hanger-on. I knew his fiduciary business in London had gone exceedingly well, and we’d extended our lease on Cranburgh Grange for another annum.
The St Botolph’s Fair day was a gorgeous one, picture perfect, and both Martin and I were thrilled to see how wonderfully the front and larger south-side lawns looked as a fair ground. It was charming, naturally, with old fashioned boot
hs of deal and other lightwood and so gaily done up—the cake stalls, the tombola, the jam racks, the duck race for the children, the curiosities booth (of questionable antiquities)—that I said to one villager, “If she were here, Lady Sofia would approve,” and she replied, “Oh, I do hope so. We do it all for her,” speaking of the long dead woman in the present tense which I thought quite odd.
The afternoon would have been perfect if Martin hadn’t gone off for a longish time with one of the plumbing engineers who was all but resident at the church grounds, just when he was needed to make a little speech. So, it was left to me to stumble through it. When he reappeared and I chided him, he merely said, “Well, they are professionals, aren’t they? I’m certain they’ll find the damned leak.”
I was surprised to hear that he was still bothered by the sound since I now slept in his previous bedroom and still had never heard it at all. I was about to discuss it when Elspeth Westin and her parents appeared and made us a gift of some lovely café curtains she’d embroidered especially for the Grange’s breakfast nook. That occasioned other craftspeople to come forward and simply inundate us with their works as signs of their appreciation. “No wonder Lady Sofia wanted the fair. We needn’t buy household goods for a year,” I said. However, Martin assured me, that these gifts signified that the givers wanted to be invited to tea or luncheon and so now I had that to look forward to.
Luckily Mrs. Grack was neither upset nor surprised and later remarked, “Tw’as a staple of the Lady Cee to hold little repasts for the village women. She was loved so….” She then aided me in putting together a menu for the first of these affairs which I admit would have baffled me to do on my own.
It was during the second such tea that the “professional” plumbers came by the house and went all about it with Martin looking for the leak. They found nothing but declared they would return some evening when everyone was out and it was quiet. That took place two days later and was productive of the following statement: “We tried out every inch of piping in the place, previously wrapping them all in linen for hidden leaks and, as a result, there is no leak to show. Not one leak at all,” adding, I thought, unnecessarily, “Unlike the damned parson’s edifices which haven’t a sound pipe among the lot.”
The Half That You See Page 15