He sat in the cold dining-room. When Winnie was sent tiptoeing in to see if he wanted anything to eat, she found him in his black mourning suit and black cravat, sitting at the table with his arms limply out before him. At his side, turned towards him, was Billie’s chair with the thick cushion. That night, when Winnie tried to sleep, and Rose fought to help her sleep, so that she could escape, she heard the man pacing, up and down the stairs, in and out of the dining-room, back and forth in the hall, pacing, pacing.
The men in black came in the morning. The mother would not come down to see them take the child away. Margery was with her, so Cook sent Winnie to find the Master. He was not at the table in the dining-room. The door of the china cupboard stood open. As Winnie went to shut it, she had to look into the cupboard. In the space round the back corner, the man in his black clothes was hanging by a rope from a hook.
She ran screaming through the house, ran into someone, clutched them, and fainted.
Rose woke with difficulty on the moor, as if she were climbing up out of a pit. Her legs felt like lead. Her arms were wrapped tightly round herself. After she stood up, for quite a long time, they ached from her rigid clutching.
Chapter Eleven
It was not surprising that one of the Americans was ill. ‘A virus,’ she called it, but Rose knew better. She was sick herself, sick with longing for the days when nothing much happened, and she was an ordinary child who had never known sorrow or fear. When her father said he was going on an overnight trip, she surprised him by asking if she could come too.
She avoided Mr Vingo. She wanted to tell him about her last ghastly journey into the past, but she did not want to run the risk of hearing the tune, or of being summoned by the horse, ever again. Let him find another messenger. The only thing she did for Favour – well, it was for herself really – was to go to the annexe kitchen and look again at the impenetrable stain on the new floor tile. It was under the table, under the window, where Winnie had put the rug back down over the stain she could not scrub out of the wood floor.
So. She had found another clue, for what that was worth. There was nothing she could do about it now. The stain had been made years and years ago, and had somehow been able to penetrate through from under the tile. She had also confirmed what she already knew: that the house had a bad effect on people. Even the dressmaker had hinted at it, and the Master had been so unhappy even before the child was killed. Was the child fated to be killed, because of the house? Was that what it could do to people? Had Michael died in the end, or Mr Carter upstairs with the terrible wound? Would that nice American woman die of pneumonia if she didn’t get out of that room she called her safe haven?
She recovered. She and her friend got into their car and drove away towards Scotland. Rose and her father left right after them, and Rose was glad to get away. She would try to be nicer to him, like when they used to go on trips when she was an innocent child, more willing to listen to his lectures and to laugh at his jokes, which you were never sure were jokes.
Mollie wanted them to take her car, but he refused.
‘The Master wants to drive his car.’ Rose said. She had decided to call him that.
They started noisily off in his old car to drive the two hundred miles to the food factory where he was to discuss his report on tinned soups and frozen meat pies. The car rattled and was draughty and uncomfortable, but it reminded Rose of days gone by when she was too small to see through the windscreen unless she sat on a cushion, so she was content.
She slept during the journey.
‘You need to go away for a holiday,’ her father said.
‘I live in a holiday place.’
‘Other people are having holidays there. You’re working.’
‘I often think I’m having a better time than they are. I have enough time off to ride, or go to the beach. I like work.’ She looked at her bare arm and flexed it to see how the biceps muscle was developing.
‘You’re just like your mother.’
‘Good.’
They had quite a nice time. He was better company on the road. They stayed in a hotel that was not nearly as nice as Wood Briar, and had a rotten dinner there with a man from the factory. He and Rose’s father discussed the pros and cons of 1,000 milligrams of sodium per chicken pie, and the relative risks of monosodium glutamate versus disodium guanylate as flavour enhancers for soup. It was humdrum and safe.
Over the coffee, the man from the factory said earnestly, ‘Now, I suppose we’ll have to talk about sensory merits and defects.’
‘What’s that?’ Rose asked.
‘Smell and taste.’
‘I’d have thought you’d want to know about that first,’ Rose said. ‘I mean, whatever is in the soup, people aren’t going to buy it if they don’t like the taste.’
‘Good point.’ The man nodded seriously. ‘Have you ever tried any of our soups?’
‘We mostly make our own at the hotel, but we use your tomato sometimes on Sunday nights.’
Her father tutted. ‘It contains 2.5 grams of sugar per serving.’
‘You and Mr Lancaster have drunk three glasses of wine.’ Rose had had half a glass herself, with soda. ‘That’s got far more sugar than a little innocent cream of tomato soup.’
‘Good for you, Rose,’ Mr Lancaster said admiringly. ‘Bright kid you’ve got there, Philip. She’s quite special.’
‘Don’t let that put you off,’ Philip Wood said, to hide the fact that he was pleased. ‘She’s very ordinary really, aren’t you, my Rose?’
Oh, my Daddy, if you only knew …
While he was at the factory meeting next day, Rose walked down to the town park to sit on a bench in the sun and read, and enjoy the feeling of having nothing to do.
On the artificial lake, children were throwing bread for the ducks, and two small boys prodded with sticks at a toy sailboat, trying to make it cross the water against the breeze. Old ladies dragged small dogs away from the smells they wanted to smell. A skinny old man in trousers belted with string did his rounds of the waste baskets. Mothers pushed babies about. One woman had twins in a tandem pushchair, face to face, bashing at each other while she talked with a friend.
A lumpish, awkward young man with thick eyebrows and a ragged moustache walked aimlessly past Rose. He went round and round the small park. He wore grubby jeans and a torn T-shirt and had a rather lost air of having nothing to do and nowhere to go. The fourth or fifth time he passed her, he stopped and came back to her bench, lifting his soft moustache in a smile, half eager, half uncertain.
‘Nice day.’
She looked up, then went on reading.
‘I said, “Nice day.”’ The eyebrows growing close together at the top of his nose would have looked fierce, if the rest of his face had been stronger. ‘Please will you look up?’
‘Why?’
‘I want to see if I was right.’
‘I’m not somebody you know, if that’s what you mean.’ She looked up.
He gazed at her rather sadly. ‘I think you are.’
‘I don’t know you.’ And I don’t want to know you now, she thought. She needed to be alone, resting with her book, away from the complications of home.
He was muttering to himself as he sat down on the bench, too close to her. ‘Beauty and strength,’ he whispered. ‘Grace without vi’lence …’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know.’
Safer not to answer.
‘How long you been hearing the tune?’
‘Go away.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘don’t put me on. I know who you are, see?’
‘Who am I, then?’
‘One of us.’
Oh God. She knew there had been other messengers, but she wasn’t prepared to meet one.
‘The tune,’ he said. ‘How long have you – you know?’
She shifted away from him.
‘With me, it was at about your age. Crazy about horses I was, for some reason, though I
’d never been nearer to one than a police horse I once patted in London, or going to the races with Dad. We was living in Newcome then, before Dad left. When I found the grey horse, see, it was like finding a whole new world that had been waiting for me and where I really counted for something. Since I lost all that, nothing’s gone right. Said goodbye to a couple of jobs through daydreaming, but when you’ve got that beautiful wise white spirit to dream about …’
He turned to her with a pathetic, pleading look of failure that Rose could not bear. She shut her book and stood up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
As she turned to walk away, she was knocked over by a mighty rush of wind, and a thunder of hoofs galloped over her, with the beat of her crime: deny, deny, deny.
She was lying on the ground because her ankle had turned on the rough ground, and she had tripped over her long skirt.
‘Where are you?’ A woman’s voice. ‘Where are you, Lilian?’
‘Out here, Aunt Beth.’ Lilian sat up and rubbed her ankle. ‘I came out to see where you’re going to plant the orchard, and my silly ankle turned.’
‘Oh dear, not again.’ Lilian’s Aunt Beth was standing in the back doorway of a brand new brick house. There was no ivy, but Rose knew it was the annexe as it had originally been, about a hundred years ago, when the house was built. ‘Get up off the damp grass and come indoors. Your mother will be angry with me if I let you catch cold.’
‘Yes, they’ve got to take care of me,’ Lilian thought smugly. ‘Because I am delicate.’
She got up and brushed herself off with a hand in a scratchy lace mitten. She wore a long green dress with a lot of unnecessary frills and ornaments. It was bunched up behind over many flounced petticoats, which made it difficult to move freely. On her head was a bonnet, tied with wide ribbons under the chin. From within Lilian’s bonnet, Rose looked out to see not only no garden or sheds behind the brand new house, but no larger house next door. Where the Wood Briar Hotel was to be her home a hundred years later, there was just a large field with buttercups and black and white cows in it.
‘Come along, dear. We’ll have some refreshment. I want to show you the new fabric for the settee.’
They went through into the front room. Lilian’s Aunt Beth wore an apricot dress, the same colour as her piled-up hair, the skirt rising into a high bustle at the back, with ruffles round it. With her bosom pushed up and also ruffled, and her bottom sticking out, she looked like a strutting pigeon. She was beautiful and graceful and kind, and Rose was praying that nothing terrible was going to happen to her. She had a strong feeling that this scene she had travelled into was going to be crucial, and that some final clue would be found here that would explain the lasting unhappiness in the house.
The front room was quite elaborate, with plump new furniture, a gilt framed mirror over the marble mantelpiece, a wealth of ornaments, long brocade curtains. Beth seemed very happy here, and talked as if she loved and admired her husband Ronald, who was away on business for a few days, which was why Lilian was here, to keep Beth company.
Poor company, Rose thought. Lilian was rather silly and nervous. She felt strange in the new house, because she had liked Beth and Ronald’s old poky house in the village, in which she had spent many happy childhood days. She did not want to be grown up. She hung her head and blushed when spoken to, and was frightened of Beth’s little pug dog, and would not drink a small glass of sweet madeira wine with the shortcake.
When Beth took her out for a walk on the sandy path through the dunes across the road to where they could look out over the sea, Lilian kept stumbling in her little button boots, and asking when they could turn back, and squealing every time the pug raced back to them, and flapping her hands at the seagulls.
‘Once,’ she told Beth, ‘we were on deck on the Channel steamer, and an enormous savage gull swooped down and snatched a cake out of my hand.’
Beth laughed. ‘What did you do?’
‘I fainted,’ Lilian said proudly.
‘Well, don’t faint now. Just come through this gap, and then we can see the beautiful shining sea. Isn’t it the grandest, loveliest sight in the world? Oh, I’m so glad I live here, Lily! Smell that wonderful air.’
Lilian sniffed delicately. Beth threw back her head, and the sea wind pulled her apricot hair from under her hat and blew it round her radiant face. ‘Look at those fishing boats out there, making for the harbour. One of them must be Joe’s. He’s the fisherman I told you about. I see him sometimes when I go to visit his sick mother in the village. He’s –’ She giggled and bent her head to confide in Lilian. ‘Well, he’s a little sweet on me, you know. He came to see me yesterday after Ronald left, but of course I had to tell him that wouldn’t do.’
‘Oh, that’s romantic,’ Lilian said soppily, putting her head and bonnet on one side and staring dreamily at the sea, which she didn’t much care for.
‘Hush, Lilian. It could never be. I love my husband, and he’s a very jealous man. If he ever knew anything about Joe … Oh goodness, that reminds me. Joe left his jacket behind when he came to the house, and I put it in the parlour cupboard. I must get it back to him before Ronald comes home.’
‘Won’t you keep it for a sentimental keepsake, Aunt Beth?’
‘Oh no, child. You don’t understand anything about marriage. You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘You can say that again,’ Rose thought. Lilian did not know much about anything. It was a curious experience to inhabit such an empty head.
‘Perhaps tomorrow you could take it down to his mother’s cottage for me,’ Beth suggested.
‘I’ll be too tired. Let’s go back,’ said whiny Lilian. ‘My ankle hurts.’
They were in the parlour playing cards when there was a clatter of hoofs on the road outside, and they looked out of the window to see Beth’s husband Ronald jump out of the station cab. He ran up the path, and when they heard the front door bang shut, Beth moved instinctively to the cupboard and stood against the door.
When Ronald came in, his eyes were wild and his hair disordered. He did not look at Lilian, or speak to her. He shut the door and said angrily to Beth, ‘Well, it didn’t take much time, did it?’
‘What do you mean? Why are you back so soon? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but I hadn’t expected you back for two days.’
‘Of course not. So it didn’t take long to invite that – that – for God’s sake, Beth – a common fisherman!’
‘I didn’t invite him. He came with a message from his mother. Don’t get in such a state. Look, you’re upsetting poor Lily. Calm down, dear.’ Beth tried to soothe him, but Ronald was blazing with rage.
‘That’s not what I heard. Oh yes, I wasn’t long in Newcome before a busybody gossip sought me out to tell me what all the world knew – except me, the betrayed husband. How long has this been going on? How long was he here yesterday?’
‘He didn’t come in. He just – he just came to the door.’ Although she had nothing to hide, Beth began to stammer and lie from fear. Under a chair, the pug growled. Lilian stood by the window transfixed, looking from one to the other, and wishing she could faint.
‘In our own house!’
‘Don’t spoil it, Ronald. I love this house. I want it to stay happy.’
‘Happy? This house will never be happy again.’
‘Ronald!’ she cried in horror.
‘Come here. Come here and tell me the truth.’
He looked so threatening that Beth still stood by the cupboard door, unable to move. Ronald strode across the room, knocking down the card table. ‘What are you hiding there?’ The pug growled again and leaped at his leg as he pushed Beth roughly away from the cupboard and flung open the door. He picked up a heavy dark blue jacket and threw it disgustedly on to the new flowered carpet. It brought a damp smell of the sea into the stuffy, overcrowded room.
‘So he never came into the house!’
‘Don’t, don’t – if he did, I told him to go.�
� Beth was crying. ‘Help me, Lilian. You know what’s true … Ronald, please believe me. Oh, why can’t I reach you? I love you, only you. Lily, tell him – help me!’
‘Don’t drag the child into this.’ Ronald was standing dangerously still, staring at Beth with cold eyes, full of pain and hatred. ‘Leave the room, Lilian.’
‘No, stay,’ Beth begged, but although Rose struggled to put some guts into her, cowardly Lilian was glad to escape from the room.
In the hall, she tried to make herself faint, a talent she had cultivated, to get attention. She cast herself on to the sofa, moaning weakly.
Get back in there and help Beth, you fool, Rose urged, but Lilian only cried feebly for help, and held her breath to make herself dizzy.
Rose woke with Lilian’s feeble moans fading in her ears. She was lying on the grass of the little park with the sun on her face. The young man with the moustache was gone. The woman with the tandem twins was still talking to her friend, whose child leaned steeply sideways at the end of her arm, trying to pull her away.
Rose went back to the hotel. She packed her bag and waited in the hall for her father.
‘Don’t you want lunch?’ he asked.
‘Let’s get a sandwich on the road. I want to get back.’
‘Don’t bother asking me how the meeting went,’ he said when they were in the car.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ Rose was brooding.
‘Because I’ll tell you anyway. Triumph of P. Wood. They couldn’t argue their case. Their chemists were bluffing. They take the minestrone off the market within six months, and the turkey pie will go too, unless they sharpen up that soggy wet crust.’
Rose was too distracted to tell him that she rather liked the sodden pastry soaked with gravy at the bottom of a pie.
At home, she told her mother, ‘The Master and I had a smashing time.’
‘No fights?’
‘No.’
‘Honestly?’
‘When I lie, you don’t believe me. When I tell the truth, you don’t believe me either.’ From the kitchen window, Rose saw Mr Vingo at the laundry line, hanging out a pair of swimming trunks shaped like a bucket, and went outside to talk to him.
The Messenger Page 12