The Knotted House

by Ruth Skrine

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes love, I’m OK. I’ve had a lovely evening, thank you.’ Her words are slurred and I feel quite warm towards her.

  Back upstairs I begin to load the lift with dirties meaning to send them down to the kitchen and deal with them in the morning. A step sounds behind me and there is Quentin, a finger on his lips. ‘She has gone, hasn’t she?’

  ‘You don’t need to whisper. No sound carries through the walls, only up and down the lift shaft.’

  ‘If she comes back I’ll say I forgot to take those newspaper reports of the trial. I’d like to see them sometime, but not now.’

  He puts his arms round me. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a misery all week. Let me make it up to you.’

  I say nothing as he leads me to the sofa. I am not really drunk, just slightly unsteady. His presence is comfortable. But again I tense up when his hands begin to stray.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘what is this all about?’

  ‘I feel so bad about down there.’

  ‘It’s nice. Let me show you.’

  His touch is confident, different from my ex-husband’s clumsy groping. I feel myself begin to melt. He makes no movement to go back towards the painful place.

  ‘Umm, that’s better,’ he murmurs. He presses against me and I am surprised to find I like the feeling. I am falling and rising up a slope at the same time. It is an old feeling, but scary with someone else so close beside me. I open my eyes for a moment, but Quentin has his shut, an absorbed look on his face. Retreating behind my own eyelids I have toppled over the other side without realising what was happening. I am clinging to him, overwhelmed with happiness and love. He kisses me gently.

  ‘That wasn’t so awful, was it?’

  ‘It was lovely. I didn’t think I could do that. I don’t even feel guilty.’

  ‘Why should you? It’s normal – what men and women do.’ He is smiling down at me. ‘You looked lovely as you came.’

  So he had opened his eyes and peeped at me, as I had at him. He kisses me again. ‘Would you like me to stay with you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ My body is re-entering the confines of the house and the walls are looking at me, judging me. I want his protection. At the same time I need to be alone to digest the thing that has happened to me.

  ‘I’ll see you up to bed.’ We go upstairs together. He starts to take off his clothes to get in beside me.

  ‘You’ll be more comfortable in your own bed. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘I would really like to stay, but perhaps you’re not ready for that yet?’ He looks down at me. ‘You may be happier alone tonight. We won’t rush things but one day I would like to fall asleep beside you.’

  How perfectly he senses my every mood. He sits on the edge of my bed and bends to kiss me. I reach up and put my arms round his neck. ‘There’ll be other nights.’

  After he has gone I get out to shut and lock the door, though I know the horrors are in my mind and no key can keep them out. I lie down, repeating his words over and over again. ‘It’s normal, it’s normal.’ But I leave my bedside light on for the whole night.

  ***

  The man from the auction rooms looks like an undertaker in his dark suit with a waistcoat. He even has a watch and chain, like one of the ancestors. He refuses coffee and wants to start at once. Following me from room to room with his pen and clipboard his eyes dart about, landing with precision on the most valuable objects. In the dining room his hand runs over the top of the mahogany table before he turns each of the chairs up to check for woodworm. He grunts by the sideboard and stops in front of the grandfather clock.

  ‘That’s not for sale.’ My anxiety gives me courage to disturb his concentration.

  ‘Pity.’ He goes closer and scans the face, then opens the front to look at the weights. ‘Pity,’ he says again, ‘it’s a good one.’

  On the next floor he shows interest in my mother’s chest of drawers, the one piece of furniture that Briony particularly wants. When I say that is not for sale either he looks like a disappointed child whose hopes have been cruelly raised and dashed. When we reach the nursery he exclaims over the davenport, saying it should fetch well over a thousand pounds, perhaps nearer two.

  I used to sit there to draw pictures for my grandmother. She kept all sorts of treasures in the drawers. If I had been good, she would open one of them and produce a sweet. More often she would extract one of her little notebooks and read some of the improving words she had copied out in her spindly hand, collected from the inside of greetings cards. Or she would produce a story about a girl who was good and had gone to heaven, or one who had to be punished because she was bad.

  We reach the attic where he finds nothing to interest him. He says he needs to go round again on his own before he can recommend a reserve price for each item. While he is doing this I go back to the nursery and stand looking at the desk. The person who raised my mother had been someone who believed herself a servant of a wrathful god. That must have been so hard. To me, my grandmother’s censure had been tempered by a sweet spoiling that warmed some emptiness inside me. But I realise with a jolt that Briony was right. My mother was crippled by a force too strong for her. Perhaps, because she couldn’t risk upsetting Briony or having an argument with her own mother, the only person she could shout at safely was me. I smile at the thought that I could be useful to her in that way. The memory of her raised voice begins to feel like a sort of compliment.

  I flick the lid of the desk open, hoping it has been emptied. No such luck: papers, stubs of pencils, pieces of sealing wax and goodness knows what else are crammed into every inch of space. A bit of dirty lace pokes through the jumble. When I go to pull it out, the tip of a pair of pointed nail scissors, the one with ornate handles that my grandmother always used, catches my finger. I suck the blood and go to find a plaster in the kitchen cupboard. The auctioneer joins me there but again refuses my offer of tea or coffee, telling me he will send a van for the important pieces next week.

  ***

  The pressure is on and I am drowning in things. Kneeling on the floor I am surrounded by half-filled cardboard boxes and overflowing drawers. From that angle I can picture the room as it had been before my grandmother moved in. My bed had its head under the window and Briony’s cot stood against the wall. I remember how my father used to come in to give us cuddles before we went to sleep. I need help and think of Susan. Sorting my grandmother’s things could take up so much of her energy that there is none left for the rest of the house – and its secrets.

  Susan arrives within minutes of my phone call, breathless and happy, as if she had been waiting for me to ring. Climbing the stairs, her need to poke and pry into my life exudes from her fingertips and eager eyes. ‘Where shall I start?’ she asks. ‘From the top down?’

  Given a chance she will be in the loft before I can stop her. ‘I’m trying to empty the furniture that’s going to the salesroom next week. My grandmother’s things are defeating me.’

  ‘But your mother and I sorted them out soon after she died.’

  ‘Only her clothes. All her papers and things are still crammed into the little desk and the chest. There’s so much stuff: sewing things, bits of string and odd materials that she kept in case they would be useful. It’s all jumbled with her notebooks and odd stockings.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She looks into the room and blinks.

  ‘I think I can throw most of it away but what about the sewing box and buttons?’

  ‘Don’t you want them?’

  ‘No, I’ve got my own and the one Mummy used all her life.’

  ‘What about Briony?’

  ‘She has her own.’

  ‘Well, I could use one of them.’

  One of them. I know in my gut that she wants my mother’s. I am damned if she is going to have that. Hastily I bend to pick up my grandmother’s wicker basket. ‘Would you like this one? And the buttons and all the odd zips and bits of ribbon? Maybe you could
take some of the notebooks, too. I don’t like to put them out for the dustmen.’

  ‘I’ll take what I can. I don’t know about the notebooks. She was a great one for collecting sayings but words are so personal. I think it’s better to collect one’s own.’

  Sometimes Susan surprises me with a flash of wisdom. ‘Is it all right to throw them away?’ I ask.

  ‘Why not? I’ll help you. Let’s tear them up so they can’t be read by strangers, then we can throw them out without worrying.’

  Once we get going it is easy: sheets of papers, old invoices, chequebook stubs, and then the notebooks. We flip the pages, words and more words: lists of things to do, names and addresses, thoughts and scraps of poetry and prayers. Kneeling on the floor we tear the sheets out of the books in bundles that are thin enough to rip across with one pull, throwing the remains into a large cardboard box. Our hands are racing to see who can tear more quickly. We start to laugh, slightly hysterical, revelling in our destruction like a couple of children. I hold my fingers high over the box and allow the pieces to flutter down like confetti. Lifting a pile of catalogues I see the prayer book that my grandmother carried to church every Sunday. My hands freeze in mid-air as my breath catches between my teeth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Susan’s voice reaches me from some other world. I don’t answer but manage to lower my hands. Steeling every nerve of my body, I pick up the book, taking care not to touch the gold cross on the front. Gingerly I flick the pages. At the front it is inscribed, “To Darling Wilhelmina for her confirmation, from her loving mother.”

  ‘Do you want to keep that?’ Susan asks.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t get rid of it yet.’ I put it on the table by the bed where it had always lived. My bedside table had been in exactly the same place, with my Mickey Mouse clock and my fairy light. My father had given me the clock for my sixth birthday. I don’t know where the fairy light came from. Those treasures never made it to my room on the top floor. I haven’t thought of them for thirty years.

  Susan straightens her back. ‘We need a break. I’ll go and get the cake I made this morning. We’ll have it with a cup of tea.’

  I am so tired I can’t do another thing. ‘Can you take the rest of these things? I really must get rid of them but I need to rest now.’ Please God let her go and leave me in peace.

  ‘Of course. I’ll sort them out at home. What I can’t use I’ll send to the jumble.’

  A wave of gratitude sweeps over me and I throw my arms round her. ‘Thank you. You’ve no idea what a help you have been.’

  We carry the boxes into her house and return to collapse in my warm kitchen with tea and slices of her cake. My guard relaxes and I am about to confide in her when she interrupts. ‘How’s Quentin?’

  Her question startles me, I had been thinking about my mother. ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘I think…’ she stops, and I look at her. ‘I’m not sure. Are you getting too fond of him?’

  ‘I’m fond of him.’ I wish she would mind her own business. ‘What is too fond?’

  ‘He’s still married. I’m worried you may get hurt.’

  ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘I know dear, but you‘re not very experienced. I think he’s not very trustworthy where women are concerned.’

  Why does she have to give me unasked for advice? I was feeling so warm towards her but now she has spoilt it all. ‘I’ll be all right,’ I say, hoping to close the subject.

  But she has to have the last word. ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

  I yawn and stretch. ‘I must have a bath. This clearing out is such a dusty business.’ I get up from the table and she rises reluctantly.

  ‘Just tell me as soon as you would like some more help.’

  I thank her and can hardly wait until I can shut the front door firmly behind her back.

  In the nursery I turn on the light and pull the curtains across the windows, trying to picture my clock and light again, but instead I feel the davenport looking at me. The inlay on the little doors at the top becomes two unblinking eyes. The serpentine edge grins like a bad-tempered mouth. My gaze is drawn to the prayer book by the bed. As I stare at it the edges begin to blur. The taste in my mouth reminds me of looking at Henry’s portrait. The gold cross on the front stands out from the rest of the cover, a three-dimensional instrument of torture. The outline of a face is forming behind it. I rub my eyes, but the phantom is solidifying. Wisps of hair stick to the skull. A shiny protuberance, the beginning of a determined nose, rises in the centre. Dark shadows mark the sockets where the eyes will appear at any moment.

  Turning I run, leaping up the stairs two at a time. In my room I clutch the little boy to my chest and wait till my breathing is easier. Then I put him in my pocket, as I had done all those years before, press my lips together and force myself to the loft stairs. I will sort the trunk to the very bottom and damn well stop my mind playing tricks. Whatever else it contains, whatever secrets lurk among the faded papers, waiting to jump out at me, they cannot be as bad as the memories that assailed me in the nursery.

  Spreading a dustsheet on the boards I take out each item in turn. The blocks for the bookplates must be scrapped, the inventories and wills can go to the local archives. The photographs are more difficult. Briony and Aunt Beth must take any they want. I am nearly done when my eye is caught by a notebook with a soft leather jacket. On the front there is a yellowing label, lifting at the corners: “Memoir of Henry Smedley of Oakdene, found among his papers at his death 1853”.

  The man who founded our house penned these very words. As I pore over the hand-written document I forget my determination to sort out every document. Even the thing in the nursery, that could have been a ghost, is driven from my mind. His writing is not easy to read in the dim light of the loft, especially as he forms some of his Ss like Fs.

  The record starts with a lament that his father had left no such record. He seems to have divided his holidays between his grandparents on his mother’s side – her father had been a wine merchant – and a Smedley aunt in the country. Within the first few pages he is writing about the bullying he was subjected to at school. At Oxford he received a slight that made a deep impression on him. When he dared to disagree with one of the other,

  “Gentleman commoners,” he had been asked, “How does the grandson of a wine merchant presume to argue with a gentleman?” From that point on the record feels increasingly bitter, as if his whole life had become a tortuous struggle to prove the man wrong. I skip on again looking for some mention of the house and find it quite soon. “My grandmother induced me to build the new house, one mile up the valley from the old Oakdene manor. I was under immense obligations to her for her care of me. As she offered to go half the expense of the house I could not but consent, although I thought the action premature. I had spent little time there and knew neither the country nor the neighbours well.”

  So Henry didn’t really want to build it. I rub my eyes again. The words produce an uneasy feeling inside me, but it is not the panic that had gripped me as I looked at the prayer book. I skip through some more pages but can find nothing that throws any light on the family duty to Jake.

  Disappointed, I carry the volume down the steps and put it next to Duncan’s record by my bed. Then I have my delayed bath and go to knock on Quentin’s door.

  We have a cosy evening. I don’t say anything about the face in the nursery but tell him instead about the second memoir. He listens politely but is more interested in cooking me a meal, then cuddling me in the way that he knows I like. He doesn’t seem in any hurry to go further. That suits me just fine. Susan knows nothing about him – she can have no idea how safe he makes me feel.

  Chapter 11

  Beth arrives three days after the valuable furniture has been carted off to the salesroom. As I hear her tyres scrunch on the gravel in the courtyard I feel lighter, as if the air I breathe reaches right down to the soles of my feet, giving my step a
bounce. The homecoming of a real Smedley will bring the place to life again. Her hug is surprisingly strong considering her small frame. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ My heart is pounding with excitement.

  She searches my face. I used to squirm under my mother’s scrutiny but there is no condemnation in Beth’s eyes.

  Inside she glances round, taking in the absent furniture and the grime that has been revealed, with a matter-of-fact expression. Only as she looks to the end of the hall, where the clock had been, does she comment. ‘I thought you were going to keep it?’

  ‘I was, but I changed my mind. They said we would get a good price for it, and the tick had begun to annoy me. I was tired of having my life measured out in seconds.’ She nods her approval. ‘I have decided to keep what my mother called her ‘by-me’ instead; he barely glanced at that.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ We climb the stairs as she tells me about it. ‘That piece is not an antique. Your father had it specially made to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. It is one of the few pieces of furniture he didn’t inherit with the house.’

  ‘What about her chest of drawers? Briony said he gave that to my mother as a wedding present.’

  ‘It was already a family heirloom. He persuaded a cousin to hand it back, so he could give it to her.’

  That sounds a bit mean. ‘Couldn’t he afford anything new?’

  ‘He was only just starting his practice and I think he had done the cousin some sort of medical favour.’

  We stand and look at the by-me. It had been made to stand between two beds. A small sheet of glass protects the mahogany top above a central shelf with a drawer below. The carpenter designed the cupboard at the bottom to hold a chamber pot though I never remember seeing one there. Once, my mother lined it with an old blanket and the cat produced three kittens right there by their beds. All the compartments can be reached from both sides, including the drawer, which goes right through allowing a mix of contents. Now, in my mother’s room, it stands against a wall. The jumble of dried up hand cream, old batteries, broken watches and keys to fit long-departed suitcases belonged to her alone.