Where the Wild Cherries Grow

by Laura Madeleine

  ‘All right,’ she says easily, turning into a narrow opening with brambles encroaching on either side. A pair of oak trees dapple the light as the tyres crunch on what was once gravel, now thick with weeds. The shade deepens as a building looms before us.

  ‘Here we are,’ Jem says, slowing to a halt. ‘Hallerton House.’

  The pale stonework is streaked and dark with mildew, crumbling at the sills. Most of the windows have been boarded up and the glass in the others is cracked or broken. Part of the roof is missing; a small tree has sprouted between bare rafters. The only thing that looks new is the door, heavy, plain wood with a brassy keyhole. When Hillbrand called this place a dump, I thought he was exaggerating. I thought it would look the way it does in the photograph, shabby yet elegant. I didn’t expect this.

  ‘What happened?’ I murmur.

  Jem leans her chin on the steering wheel, looking up.

  ‘Time,’ she says, not quite so cheerfully. ‘And neglect. This is what happens when people leave. Give it ten years and the trees will have the whole place down.’

  It’ll come down sooner than that, if Mrs Mallory has her way. I try to imagine the place as a holiday camp: no house, just row upon row of chalets, a packed swimming pool, sun-loungers and music blaring and the smell of hot sugar. Now, it’s utterly quiet. The glaring heat of the afternoon is held at bay.

  ‘You’re really going in there?’ Jem says, making a face.

  ‘Yes.’ I try to sound firm, businesslike. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  She slides down in her seat until she can reach into the pocket of her denim shorts. Her legs are as tanned as her face, shins scratched and scuffed all over, right down to her feet, in their open sandals. There’s a ring on one of her toes. I try not to stare.

  ‘Here.’ She drops a pair of keys into my hand. ‘That one opens the front door, that one’s for the study. All the other doors are bolted from the inside.’

  The splutter of the engine breaks the quiet.

  ‘I’ll come back for you in a few hours,’ Jem shouts through the window, over the noise. ‘There’s a path to the village at the end of the garden, but it runs next to the marsh, not a good idea if you don’t know your way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I call after the car, but she’s already wheeling around. She winks in return and then she’s gone, the mud-spattered back bumper disappearing around the corner. Gradually, the noise of the engine disappears into the distance, the scent of petrol fading from the air.

  Alone at Hallerton. For one unnerving moment I’m convinced that this whole bizarre day has been a dream, that any second I’ll wake up in my narrow bed, the London suburbs outside the window.

  I can feel the house. It’s as if something is watching me from behind the shattered glass, from within the stones that have sucked at the seasons. Something that wonders why I’m here, waiting to see if I have the nerve to enter …

  I shrug away the prickling at the back of my neck and march up the steps. It’s just a house. An old dump of a house, like Hillbrand said. The front door is stiff. I have to shove it hard before it bursts open in a flood of stale air and a noise like frantic wings that is swallowed by the silence. I peer inside. Daylight needles its way through the boarded-up windows. I can make out a hallway, stretching off into the gloom, rooms opening to the left and right.

  I leave the door open, for fresh air, I tell myself. In the first room, the floor is thick with dirt and leaves, with chunks of plaster that have fallen away from the ceiling. It must have been grand once. The windows are high, scraps of faded red fabric clinging to the curtain-rail above. The wallpaper has bubbled and peeled away, hanging down in great strips. My footsteps crunch across the floor, absurdly loud.

  At the far end of the hall I come across a second closed door. It must be the study, the place where – according to Mrs Mallory – her father kept the old family papers. She told Hillbrand that it was the only room in decent repair, even though her father never came here more than once a year, to ‘see to business’.

  I try the handle but it rattles uselessly, shut tight. As I bend down to check the keyhole, the light within the room flickers with movement, a shadow crossing the doorway. Someone’s inside.

  For a second I’m frozen with uncertainty, but then I remember the keys. Hurriedly, I fit the second one to the lock. This time the handle turns. I shove the door wide.

  A rushing of feathers, dark shapes leaping in alarm beyond the window. Crows. Only crows. I laugh with relief as they flap off down the garden from their perch on the sill, cawing outrage.

  26th February 1919, Hallerton

  Today I have cleaned and scrubbed and dusted, making the house ready for the dinner party. I want everything to be perfect, for Andrew to see that I am fit and well and able to run the place.

  There is so much to do! We have not received dinner guests here for over a year. Edith and I started by polishing the silverware, whilst Andrew took Timothy to fetch the food. The list I gave them was almost a full page long, but I shall need it all if I am to impress. It is not only a question of hospitality; it is my claim to Hallerton.

  When they returned, they were laden down with food. The war must truly be over if fresh meat, butter and sugar are so readily available again. Timothy was beaming from ear to ear. He had been bought a chocolate bar, for being a good boy, and ran to share a piece with me.

  This afternoon I laughed for the first time in months, as I hoisted Timothy on to my shoulders, so he could dust the pictures in the dining room. Every so often, one of his swipes would send fragments of plaster raining down on to our heads, but he only laughed and spluttered and swiped again. Andrew found us there, giggling. He frowned as though I was doing something wrong, but he said nothing. He only peered critically at the walls, stained with damp, at the mildew on the window frames, the old red curtains, bleached by the sun.

  ‘We’ll keep the lights low,’ he said. ‘The less they can see of this, the better.’

  I think I hated him then. I know this house as well as my own skin. I know its imperfections, its creaking floors and uneven walls, as well as one might know the signs of a hard life on a person’s face; weathered but beloved, nonetheless.

  My anger did not last long. It soon faded into sadness. Timothy does not yet know why Uncle Andrew has invited men for dinner. He does not know that I am preparing to sell his past from under him. Andrew says that he will understand, one day. I am not so sure.

  In the kitchen the food was waiting, spread out on the big table. It has always been my favourite room, the kitchen; when I was a child it was like a fantastical bazaar. The deliverymen would bring crates of oranges and lemons from far away, chocolate from London and wine from Paris. Fishermen from the village would sell us gleaming fish, cold from the North Sea, the dairy would bring churns of cream and freshly made butter, local farmers would bring jars of honey thick with the scent of wild gorse and heather …

  Sometimes, Freddie and Albie would raid the pantry. Once they made me steal a jar of caviar, to see what all the fuss was about. I remember the three of us, scooping it out with our fingers and grimacing at the taste. The stable cats enjoyed it, even if we did not.

  When they were away at school I went to the kitchen on my own. The maids would give me offcuts of pastry to play with, would laugh as I sucked the sugar from sour pink rhubarb in spring or made a mess of myself with ripe berries in summer. They made wonderful things then, especially when my mother had friends to tea. Plump cornucopias, piped full of cream and jam, just begging to be squashed between the teeth. Strawberry turnovers, with pastry that crumbled to nothing. Towering blancmanges that emerged like magic from the copper moulds, before being bedecked with candied flowers, with borage and honeysuckle and roses collected from the gardens, every petal sparkling with sugar.

  In the heat of summer there were ices, and the maids would sweat and toil, filling the freezing machine with ice and rock salt and turning and turning the handle until the custardy mixture turned
firm and blissfully cold. They’d let me scoop a little straight from the pail, before they buried it in ice or took it away to be sculpted.

  Sometimes, Cook herself would let me sit on the work surface beside her so I could watch the dance of activity across the kitchen, surrounded by the smell of baking bread and roasting meat and boiling fruit. She knew full well that my governess would be in a rage when she found me there, but she never cared. She told me that the kitchen was the beating heart of a house, and that if I could appreciate that, I was welcome.

  One by one, we had to let the staff go. The deliveries became smaller, then stopped altogether. The maids departed for other work. Finally Cook was the only one left. She stayed as long as she was able. Now, it is quiet. No movement, no steamed-up windows or clanging pans. Now, it comes down to me. If this kitchen is the heart of the house, I am the blood and must make it beat again.

  So, I have sliced and simmered and whisked and hoped. Before the war, a lifetime ago, I begged Mother to send me to cooking classes in Norwich. They were not exactly what I hoped, taught by a tight-lipped woman who thought that ladies should know how to manage a kitchen, rather than cook in one. But I learned some basic skills there and have tried to remember them.

  I have cooked Dover sole fillets in a sauce made from herbs and butter and lemon. Guinea fowl roasted in a pot with red wine and chestnuts, parsnips baked with honey. A dessert made from rhubarb stewed in Madeira, custard flavoured with golden saffron.

  I was so occupied that I did not hear Edith come into the kitchen. When I finally noticed her, I saw that she was smiling, her pale blue eyes losing the look of concern they so often wore these days. She said she was glad to see me happy. I did not wish to correct her.

  Eventually, she shooed me off to dress for dinner. Andrew caught up with me in the hall, asked me to fetch out Father’s best crystal glasses. There are six of them, paper-thin, engraved with a pattern of leaves and the letter ‘V’. Father once told me they were brought back to Hallerton from Venice over two hundred years ago, by a great-great-uncle who was a sea captain. He only ever used them on the rarest of occasions. I would have left them where they were, but I want Andrew to think well of me, so I smiled and did as he asked.

  I have put on the dress that Mother bought for my coming-out season a year ago, kingfisher-blue tulle. I have never worn it. We received the news of Albie’s death the day before we were due to go to London. He had been granted leave, was supposed to be joining us there to toast my birthday. We were still devastated, all of us, by the loss of Freddie, but I believe my mother was trying to hold herself together, for Albie’s sake. After he died, she did not have the strength any more.

  The dress is too loose now. It made me look like a child, masquerading in adult clothes, which would not do.

  I have not been into Mother’s room since the day they took her away. I couldn’t help lingering at her dressing table, where she used to brush my hair. I took a string of pearls from her drawer, a pair of matching drops for my ears. I suppose we shall have to sell her jewellery, to pay our debts. But not tonight.

  Timothy made a face when I called at his room to say goodnight just now. He is not used to seeing me dressed like this. He clung to my neck when I kissed his forehead.

  ‘You smell like Mama,’ he whispered, and I held him all the tighter. Her perfume still lingers on these pearls, the scent released as they warm against my skin. The loss of her hit me with such force when he said that, it was all I could do to stand. I had to come back here, to try to calm myself by writing. My hands are still shaking, and I fear an attack will come upon me, but our guests are due at any minute. I must be strong, I must show Andrew that he can trust me with my own future.

  I will take a drop or two of the morphine, to compose myself. The bottle is small enough to fit into my pocket. I hope it will see me through the evening.

  June 1969

  The hot afternoon is sliding over the edge of evening by the time I look out of the study window, sweat-stained and dusty. A ‘load of family papers’, Hillbrand said. I was expecting a filing cabinet, maybe an archive box or two. But it isn’t a load; it’s a mountain.

  Decaying boxes fill the room from floor to ceiling, shoved into corners, jammed on to shelves alongside yellowing ledgers. Some of the boxes split when I move them, the seams crumbling to dust and spilling an avalanche of papers. There are receipts and bills and stock certificates, letters and notes and contracts, some of them over a hundred years old. Even a quick glance tells me that they’re a mess. A couple of newer archive boxes sit on a sideboard; they must belong to Mrs Mallory’s father. They mostly contain letters from the local council written over the past ten years, a couple of invoices from builders and locksmiths.

  I scoop another handful of papers from a teetering pile. Is this Hillbrand’s idea of a joke? It’ll take me days to even begin looking through all of this, let alone to find anything useful. Why bother to send me out here, to the middle of nowhere, on the vague possibility there might be some clue about the fate of a long-dead aunt? He must be desperate.

  No, a dry voice at the back of my mind tells me, picturing expensive tailoring, guarded expressions, perfectly lacquered hair; they must be desperate.

  Grimly, I roll up my sleeves and drag out another box, trying not to inhale dust and dead flies. Everyone starts somewhere, I tell myself, picturing that first, fat solicitor’s cheque. It’ll all be worth it.

  An hour later and I uncover a rickety chair from beneath the boxes, the leather seat cracked and crumbling. I lower myself into it with a sigh. As soon as I stop moving the silence returns, slowly at first and then in a rush, sweeping down from the empty rooms, making my ears hum. I must be the only living and breathing human for miles. The hairs stand up on my arms. I rub them back down.

  To be doing something, I tug at one of the desk drawers. It sticks and has to be wiggled open. Inside, it’s the same story. Hundreds of loose sheets, some clipped together, others crumpled at the edges. A page is stuck between the drawer and the wood. I tug it free, ripping the top corner. Sod’s law it’ll be something important.

  I straighten it out. It looks like a bill, hastily scribbled on paper torn from a pad, the name DR B. LEWIS and an address in Saltedge printed at the top of the page. It’s for a visit, for medicine of some kind, dated February 1919.

  A flash at the window makes me jump. One of the crows again. I don’t think they know what to make of my presence. They keep coming to eye me and strut about on the sill and eye me again. Maybe they’ve worked out that humans mean food. Even London pigeons know that and these crows look a lot brighter. I should bring them some bread tomorrow.

  Abruptly, the crow takes off. For a moment the window is empty, but then I realize that I am being watched. Eyes are looking back at me from the glass. A woman, her hair hanging loose, the skin of her face streaked with something dark …

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’ Jem asks as I slide into the passenger seat. ‘Thought I’d killed you for a second there.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I rub at my neck. ‘You just surprised me.’

  Jem snorts and turns the key in the ignition. It takes three attempts to start.

  ‘Sorry, man, should’ve thought. I’d be jumpy as hell after being in that place on my own too.’

  We jolt away from Hallerton, down the shadowed path and on to the road. The warm evening flows over the car like syrup. I take a breath of it, petrol and hot tarmac and drying grass. It all seems so alive.

  ‘It’s just a house,’ I say, trying to sound relaxed, ‘and I’ll have to get used to it. I’m going to be spending a lot of time there over the next few days.’

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  There’s a smear of dirt down one of her cheeks. I wonder if she knows about it. Something tells me that she wouldn’t much care if she did. She smiles and I feel like someone’s cut a rubber band from around my chest.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ I tell her, ‘it is chaos. This whol
e thing might be a waste of time, but I have to look.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For—’ I pull myself up short. I’m tired and starving and my brain feels like it’s been through a mincer. ‘I, um, I’m not sure I’m meant to say. Client confidentiality and that.’

  Jem shrugs. ‘Whatever. But it’s about Emeline, right?’

  The question takes me by surprise. Should I admit it? Feign ignorance?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re the first person who isn’t a handyman to be given the keys to that place in years,’ she says. ‘The only one who ever comes here is old Mr Vane, and the only reason he comes at all is to check the place hasn’t fallen down. He hasn’t lived there for decades. In the village they say it’s because his wife divorced him and took their kids to America, and he couldn’t stand to be there alone. But he’s never sold. Because of Emeline, right?’

  I gape. She’s scratching absently at the mud on her cheek.

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘The whole town knows it, Perch. This isn’t London. If you fart, someone has something to say about it.’

  ‘In that case, do you think there might be someone I can talk to, for a testimonial or something? I’m going to need all the help I can get.’

  We turn a corner and I see buildings, crooked houses and cottages around a tiny village green. I guess this is Saltedge. The heat of the day lingers, but here at least there’s a breeze. It smells strange, like the muddy banks of the Thames and the sea all at the same time.

  Jem swings to a halt outside the village pub. The World’s End, declares the faded sign. She turns off the engine, but makes no attempt to move, tapping her fingers against the warm, bug-spattered metal of the door. I think she’s forgotten my last question until she half-turns her head.

  ‘Asking people here about Emeline isn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She twists her lips into what isn’t quite a smile.

  ‘Small places like this, they tend to hoard their memories. Pass them down, generation to generation like bloody heirlooms. And every year, they embellish them a little more. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the truth begins and the exaggeration ends. Especially when the story is as dramatic as Emeline’s.’