Holt House

by L. G. Vey

  ‘It’s been very upsetting for you,’ said Ray. ‘I don’t think you should be alone.’

  ‘There’s nobody else, though. But don’t worry about me, dear, I’ll be fine. I’ll soldier on.’

  ‘Listen. My house is being decorated, and I was going to stay in a hotel, but maybe, if you’re all right with it, I could keep you company for a few days instead. Just to get arrangements sorted.’

  ‘Oh, yes please, Raymond, yes please,’ she said, then stood abruptly and shuffled to the sink. She clutched its straight sides as her shoulders shook. He heard her gulping, struggling to suppress her emotions.

  ‘Okay then. That’s settled. No need to worry. I’ll take care of it all.’

  He thought of his mother. She would still be young, compared to Mrs Latch. But he couldn’t help but feel that there was some connection – that helping Mrs Latch would make his mother happy. And Trish, too. All women. All the women that had left him.

  Mrs Latch – Gwen – turned back to him, and gave him a smile. ‘Why don’t you put your bag in the spare room, dear? Get your things sorted. Maybe take a nap. You look tired. And we have lots of time for catching up. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll get lunch on the go.’

  The spare room.

  Where the wardrobe stood.

  *

  I don’t understand women. Why they stay, why they go. I never told Trish what my dad said about us being trouble together. That’s why I couldn’t stand it when she said just about the same thing. Bad apart and worse together, that’s how she put it. Those long stretches out at sea with my job, and then I would come back and want to know what she’d been doing, and she would never tell me. Why wouldn’t she just tell me?

  My mum – if she could have chosen to live, would she have wanted to? I don’t remember much about her. She was ill a lot. In bed, suffering. Who would choose pain over rest?

  Would she have refused to die if I’d asked her to?

  She wasn’t meant to have you, Dad said, over baked beans and toast. The three bar heater in the front room was on full. It must have been a harsh winter, but I don’t remember what was happening outside the window. Her body wasn’t strong enough for one, let alone two. She had to be stitched back together, after having me. I felt so guilty about that, even though I didn’t really know what it meant.

  I thought he was blaming me. Later, I worked out he was busy blaming himself and just dragging me along for the ride.

  That was when I stopped telling him things. Even before the wardrobe.

  If she survived after having me, survived being sewn back after being ripped to pieces, why couldn’t she do it again? Why did she have to leave?

  But Mrs Latch doesn’t leave. She stays. She lives on, without her husband, without anything but this empty house.

  I will never understand why some women leave, and some stay.

  *

  Ray put down the pen and thought about tearing out the page. The words he’d written were so self-centred and ridiculous. He knew he was reading too much into everything, not seeing the world as it really was.

  He looked around him, at the same room where he had stayed as a boy. It looked no different through older eyes. There was a pen and ink drawing of a river winding through trees, plain and unremarkable. There was the small oak dressing table with an oval mirror fixed to it, dusty, reflecting his face back at him. And there was the rocking chair by the window, with a blue folded blanket upon the seat, faded from the sunlight.

  Even though it was so familiar, he still couldn’t remember exactly what had happened there. The closeness of the memory was infuriating. He willed himself to be calm.

  The wardrobe was gone.

  It had been tall, with thick doors and a brass keyhole without a key, and had stood opposite the bed on squat feet that curved outwards. It held his answers. He was certain of it. Ray crossed to the spot where it had stood. Yes, there were marks on the burgundy carpet. Indentations made through time. It had been there, but where had it gone?

  There was a jangle of sound from the hall, demanding attention. The doorbell. He strode out to the landing and began to make his way down the stairs, body tensed, half expecting it to be the police.

  Gwen was already at the door. Ray paused, two steps up from the bottom of the staircase, as she opened it.

  It was the man from the local shop. His face was schooled into an expression of polite sympathy, and he held a large cardboard box. Behind him stood a young lad, dressed in a grey school uniform with a striped tie, askew. He shifted his weight from one laced-up shoe to the other.

  ‘Hello, Trevor,’ said Gwen. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘I thought I’d make your delivery myself this week. Just to say – we heard your news. In the village. There’s a card in the top of the box.’ He held it out. It looked heavy.

  Ray stepped up to the door, beside Gwen, and took it.

  ‘Thanks,’ said the shopkeeper. His expression was comically surprised. ‘I, er…’

  ‘I’m just helping out for a few days,’ Ray told him. ‘Making sure Mrs Latch is okay.’

  ‘Right, that’s great. I’m glad, because the boy and I were worried about her, on her own. Weren’t we, Jimmy?’ The lad nodded, with his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘He’s just been to the doctor, that’s why he’s out of school. But he’ll be right as rain, and back on deliveries next week, as usual. Just let me know if you want to change anything, change amounts, or…’

  Gwen stood there, nodding, her hand on the door handle as the shopkeeper went on, speaking only to Ray. It was strange how easy it was to have a conversation as if Gwen wasn’t there at all, even though it was all about her: her needs, her loss.

  ‘Are you are a relative, then?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ray, ‘I’m a friend of the family.’

  ‘I’ve known Raymond for years,’ said Gwen, suddenly.

  ‘Right. That’s nice. You come up from Portsmouth?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ said Ray.

  Trevor folded his arms over his chest. ‘Two blokes came in the shop yesterday afternoon, just after you’d gone, and said they were looking for someone. They had a photo. I thought it looked like you. They said they’d come up from Portsmouth, and they looked military to me. You Navy?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Takes one to know one. I was Army, myself. So did they catch up with you? I said I’d thought I’d seen you. If they come back, I could point them in this direction.’

  ‘He’s trying to have a few days off from rowdy friends,’ said Gwen. ‘Would you mind not saying anything, Trevor, dear? At least until I feel better. It’s all been a terrible shock.’

  ‘Course,’ said Trevor. ‘You need some peace and quiet, after what’s happened.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Gwen’s voice was no-nonsense. ‘Do you need me to pay up the account?’

  ‘No, no, there’s no rush for that.’

  ‘Goodbye, then.’ She shut the door firmly on Trevor and his son. Ray caught a last glimpse of their bemused faces as they were left on the doorstep. ‘Lunch would be cold already if it had been hot. Right, bring that through to the kitchen and wash up,’ Gwen told him. Her irritation surprised him.

  ‘Right,’ said Ray. ‘Yeah.’ He followed her, and found a spread upon the table. Bread and butter had been cut into neat triangles, and arranged on a green plate. There was corned beef, cut fine, and a few small tomatoes, halved, that looked under-ripe, the edges scalloped into a pattern. Perhaps preparing the spread had been a good distraction from her grief; she seemed determined to keep busy.

  ‘Is there any cheese in that box?’

  He put it on the Welsh dresser, and opened up the flaps. A white envelope sat on top of a range of vegetables and fruits, and something bulky wrapped in greaseproof paper that Ray thought might be sausages. A carton of washing powder and a cake of Imperial Leather were tucked down one side. He delved in, found a block of waxy cheddar, and passed it to Gwen. She took it to the chopping
board by the sink.

  ‘Sit down and start. Hands first, of course.’

  So he washed his hands, then sat and ate, swallowing down slices of corned beef and bread like a starving man.

  *

  After, Gwen said, ‘Go sit in the garden and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. It’s sunny out.’

  She was right. It was quite hot, on the bench, sheltered from the usual spring breeze. Ray looked down the path to the small hole in the fence. He couldn’t escape the feeling that if he got up and looked through it, he would find himself there, spying on the house as usual.

  Gwen brought out the tea and sat next to him. ‘It’s a lovely spot, here.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I feel very much better knowing you’re here.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Could I tell you something, Raymond?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She retrieved the handkerchief again, and pressed it to her lips. ‘Sometimes I’ve thought it might be nice to be alone. I never have been alone, you see. But now I think maybe it wouldn’t suit me after all. I like to have someone to look after.’

  He thought about his time in the woods. ‘Life can be very lonely, I’ve found.’

  ‘Well, you’re very welcome here with me. For as long as you like. We can take care of each other, dear.’ She looked over the garden. ‘Ernie spent a lot of time out here. Well, here, or in the shed. We didn’t talk very much, and I used to think it was like being on my own. It wasn’t, though. He was always nearby.’

  ‘You can be quiet, as a couple, and still be good together, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. That was a helpful thing to say. You’ve grown up, Raymond.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Look at you. How long ago was it?’

  ‘Fifteen years.’

  ‘No! Really? I remember when we first moved into this house, and there wasn’t a garden as such. It just opened up to the wood, was part of the wood. I was so nervous, every night, thinking something was coming to get me. It’s a nasty feeling. Wild animals, leaving their droppings right on the doorstep. So I said – put up a good strong fence. And as soon as it was in place I slept better. It doesn’t do to think too much about these things, really, Raymond.’

  How soothing her voice was, with its meanderings. Ray felt they were reaching a quiet understanding of each other. He risked a question. ‘And do you remember what Ernie was like, back then?’ he said. ‘When you first moved in here? Or when I came to stay? Had he changed a lot since then?’

  She cocked her head, and thought.

  He wanted her to tell him something personal, like he fought in the war and never got over it, or we lost a child and it changed him; any of those would have done, to open that line of conversation. Explained something. All he wanted was to reach for an awareness of who Ernie had really been.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘No, dear. Ernie wasn’t here when you stayed in the spare room.’

  ‘He was,’ said Ray. ‘He was, I remember it.’

  ‘Oh no. But you were young and confused, weren’t you?’ She turned her bright eyes on him. ‘And I wonder if that isn’t just the same now, you coming here, and you don’t seem to quite know what you’re up to, do you? Would it help to tell me what’s going on? Why are people looking for you? What’s this all about? It’s not my business, but I’m happy to listen.’

  ‘I’m…’ It was simpler to show her. He put his cup of tea on the arm of the bench and took the Polaroid of Trish from his shirt pocket. Trish, on the beach, on a hot day frozen in his head.

  Gwen squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, and nodded. ‘Lovely. This is your young lady, is it?’

  ‘That’s my wife, Trish.’

  ‘You, married, already? Aren’t you a bit young for that, or am I getting old? Well, she looks very glamorous.’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  Gwen handed back the Polaroid. ‘Have you had words?’

  He couldn’t bottle it up inside any more. ‘She said she couldn’t, couldn’t stand it when I was away, with my job. Months at sea, and then, when I was back – she said she was scared of how I got. But I never hit her, I swear. I never did. And then – she was gone. But not her things. Everything was left as it was. I woke up, I had a bad head. Too much to drink. We’d had an argument, I think. The house was a mess, things broken, but she just wasn’t there.’

  ‘You afraid for her, dear?’

  ‘I didn’t touch her!’

  ‘No, I mean, she’s out there, on her own, then, isn’t she? And nobody’s heard from her?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s probably gone to a friend’s house. She’s making me pay for shouting at her, I know I shouldn’t shout but sometimes... I waited for her to come back, but after a few days someone called the police, and then it looked bad. That I hadn’t said something before. I didn’t know what to do, I had so much stuff in my head. I just...’

  She patted his hand. ‘Now, now. I know a thing or two about bad tempers, and I know all arguments get smoothed over in the end. She’ll come back and all will be forgiven, you’ll see.’

  ‘But the police... I’m AWOL–’

  ‘They’ll drop it all when they find out what you’ve been through.’

  What did she mean? Was she making a veiled reference to that night, to Mr Latch? ‘In that room upstairs...’ he started.

  ‘Drink your tea, Raymond, and be still, for a little while. You can stay here with me. Breathe in deep. That’s what I do, when I’m thinking too much. That will do you the world of good, too.’ She got up, and returned to the house.

  *

  I never wanted to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt her now.

  *

  There was nothing else to write. Why waste words repeating this stuff? He moved the Polaroid from his pocket to the back of the notebook; it didn’t help any more to have it close. He put it and the pen under the pillow, feeling secretive in the dim light thrown from the bedside lamp, then took the towel from his waist and rubbed his hair dry. The bath had been luxurious after so many weeks of cold washes. The bad thoughts had left him completely while he soaked away his cares. He’d never thought to feel so peaceful again.

  He examined the pyjamas Gwen had left out for him and decided against them, squeamish about the idea that the last person who had worn them was... well. Ray looked at his naked body. He was softer, less toned. He’d thought living in the woods would be exercise enough, but he realised it had been months since he’d done any proper physical training. No drills, no long runs. The structure of the military, that regimented way of life, was drifting away from him.

  Perhaps it was good, to undo what he was.

  He knelt down by the side of the bed and put his palms together, his fingers pointing straight up to the ceiling.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said.

  How strange, to be asking for something. To be in a state of supplication.

  ‘Dear God. Keep them safe.’

  Names. He should be specific. God heard so many entreaties.

  ‘Trish. Keep Trish safe, wherever she is. And Mrs Latch. Gwen. Keep her safe from harm. Thank you.’

  He got into bed and turned off the light, aware of the boy he had been and still was, of the fear that still found him. Then he remembered the right word to finish speaking to God, and to guarantee that God had listened.

  ‘Amen,’ he said.

  *

  Ray mowed the grass twice a week with the ancient Atco mower, at Gwen’s behest. The thin green blades never got the chance to grow.

  The sun was hot in the afternoons, and the birds’ calls sounded lazier, drowsy, to him. He had run out of cigarettes but found he did not miss them much. Gwen offered him a pipe to smoke and the thought of what pipe she meant to give him disturbed him in ways he could not articulate, much like the pyjamas. He turned her down, and she did not seem to mind.

  Still, the occasional feelings of uneasiness provoked by these moments passed, and he enjoyed spending time
in the spare room, doing the chores, providing company. It would be easy to fall into the mistake of thinking that was all he was there for, but the need to know the truth about what had happened to him wouldn’t quite leave him alone. And so his search for the wardrobe continued.

  He had checked every room in the house, including the parlour which never got used and had dust sheets over the furniture. He had even poked into Gwen’s bedroom one morning while she was in the outhouse, but the quilted bedcover and the small China knick-knacks on her dressing table had given him no answers. They all looked as if they had stood there for years.

  So Ray waited.

  He waited for the world to send him a signal. It would not have been a surprise for the doorbell to ring, and for Trish to be on the other side of it, ready to return to their life together, to pick up exactly where they had left off. Such was the soothing power of Gwen’s quiet, unstinting support of him, and her reassurances that all would come good, eventually. In time.

  *

  When the doorbell next rang, it was not Trish.

  Ray stood in the kitchen, behind the door, listening to Gwen’s voice as she spoke to the interloper; it rose in pitch, a little, but he couldn’t detect any annoyance or fear. He stepped into the hall.

  ‘Just for an hour or so,’ said a familiar voice, and Gwen replied, ‘Oh, of course, of course, he can’t be on his own if he’s not feeling the best. Come on in, dear.’

  ‘Thanks very much, you’re a gem,’ said the voice – Trevor, the shopkeeper, that was it, and then the door was opened wide enough to admit the lad, who came in and stood underneath the wall-mounted plates, looking up at them with morose eyes. He was wearing a blue football shirt and white shorts; it was a strange combination with his grey knee-high socks and school shoes.