The Shell House

by Linda Newbery

  Not quite himself! For once she had got it precisely right. Indeed he was not quite himself, the self she thought she knew. But perhaps he was only beginning to become himself, his true self.

  Outside, at the top of the steps to the garden, he filled his lungs with cool air. It was dusk. Lights from the windows fell on the stone terrace, and a fountain played. Its soft, regular trickle ought to have been soothing, but nothing could soothe him; he had to get away, down the steps, out of sight of the house. Trimmed lawn welcomed his feet, yielding silently to his tread. The cool roughness of cypress leaves brushed his face as he pushed through a row of conifers; the air smelled of grass and damp earth. He closed his eyes as memory surged through him like the delayed after-shock of pain. He felt detached from his body: from his walking feet, his breathing lungs, his mind registering smells and sounds.

  In the lower garden he paused for a moment to listen, facing in the direction of London, thinking of Kent beyond, and the coast, and Alex in his grave (his cold body laid in the ground, his eyes closed for ever, a spade shovelling earth and stones, covering him, burying him, smothering him—unbearable, unbearable) at the edge of the hopfields. People said that you could sometimes hear the guns, even at this distance. Nothing. He was disappointed; listening for Alex in the muted voice of the heavy artillery, he heard only the whirr of moth wings, saw the quick flickering shape of a bat; an owl hooted down in the woods. Nothing else disturbed the silence.

  Silence and nothing. Nothing. It threatened to swallow him, smother him, swirl him away into black depths.

  He lowered his head and walked on across the orchard, down a flight of steps towards the glimmer of water, along the path to the grotto by the silent lake. No-one would follow him down here.

  A sound—the soft plop of a stone into water—alerted him. Another, spinning out of the grotto, dropped in, sending ripples. Edmund dragged himself out of his lethargy to wonder who was in there. A trespasser? A poacher? With a gun or a knife? The hairs on the back of his neck tingled, the instinct for self-preservation stirred from dormancy. But why should he care? He walked closer, keeping his footfalls silent; then, intending to startle, he strode to the front of the building, peering in, expecting a tramp or a local farm-worker after an illicit duck or trout. Funny way to go about it, though, flicking stones . . .

  The person sitting inside made an incoherent sound, a clumsy scrambling movement. In the gloomy light, Edmund made out the broad face and squint eyes of the gardener’s son, the idiot boy.

  ‘It’s all right. You needn’t be afraid,’ Edmund said, relieved.

  The boy made a gargling sound that might have been an attempt at speech. He was large for his age, fourteen or fifteen. Edmund had seen him engaged in simple tasks around the grounds, under the supervision of Baillie senior, moving with slow, ponderous concentration. He was too stupid to attend school, presumably. But should the boy be sitting here in semi-darkness? Was he capable of looking after himself?

  ‘Come on,’ Edmund said, deciding. ‘I’m taking you back up to the cottage.’

  He stepped closer and took the boy’s arm, urging him to his feet. The boy shrank back; Edmund saw the gleam of fear in his eyes. Then he submitted, lurching heavily to his feet. Edmund had no idea whether or not the boy recognized him, or whether he was capable of recognition.

  It was a struggle. The boy was poorly co-ordinated by day, even more so in this half-light. Edmund managed to coax him up the steps, talking to him, encouraging him as he might an elderly or slow-witted dog. When the boy reached the top of the steps, he gave a little chuckle of triumph and leaned for a moment against Edmund. Both touched and repelled by the human warmth, Edmund said briskly, ‘Come on. Let’s get you indoors before it’s dark.’

  They lurched across the orchard together, the boy breathing hard, tripping on the rough grass. When they finally reached the gardener’s cottage behind the stables, he gave Edmund a pleased look as they stood side by side on the doorstep, a look of complete acceptance and trust.

  Baillie came to the door in shirtsleeves, startled to see his employer’s son at this late hour. Looking past him, Edmund saw lamplight, a fire in the grate, and a wooden table set with a teapot and a slab cake. Mrs Baillie got hastily to her feet and bobbed a curtsey.

  ‘I . . . was down by the lake,’ Edmund said, ‘and found the boy in the grotto. I was afraid he might fall in, so I’ve brought him here.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Edmund, sir. That was very kind, I’m sure.’ Baillie grabbed the boy by the sleeve of his tweed jacket and pulled him indoors, ruffling his already untidy hair. ‘Come on in, Joe, you great gossoon! How many times have I told you not to go wandering down there? Thought he’d gone to the stables, to sit with the pony, sir,’ he explained to Edmund. ‘He loves that pony.’ Then, to the boy again, ‘Time you was tucked up in bed! Not roaming about, bothering Mr Edmund. You’ve to be up early for work tomorrow.’

  ‘Does he enjoy his work here?’ Edmund said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Baillie looked at him curiously. ‘He’s never going to find work nowhere else, not being like he is, so he helps me out here with what he can manage. He’s our only one at home now, with Jim in the army. Thank you so much for your letter, sir, after Georgie got killed. It meant a lot to both of us, that did.’ He gestured towards a photograph on the mantelpiece, a broad-smiling Georgie Baillie in uniform.

  Edmund nodded, swallowed. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Joe here’s the only one of the three what’s a bit simple, like,’ Baillie said in a confiding undertone.

  ‘He doesn’t speak?’

  ‘Never has. He makes noises, and some of them we know what he means.’

  Joe had sat in a chair near the fire and was rocking, his arms cuddled round himself, apparently quite happy. He gave little grinning noises at Edmund and his parents, chuckling. Edmund saw, in the warm light of indoors, the face that looked somehow out of focus, the eyes asquint, so that he could never quite tell whether the boy was looking straight at him or over his shoulder.

  ‘I’m very sorry you was troubled, Mr Edmund,’ said Mrs Baillie. ‘I’ll make sure it don’t happen again. Good night, sir.’

  ‘Good night, sir. Much obliged. And—good luck,’ her husband added.

  Edmund nodded; the door was closed. He walked away slowly. For the last fifteen minutes or so he had had contact with another human being, had been taken out of his own preoccupations. The little tableau inside the Baillies’ cottage, the simple supper and the fireside chair, reminded him of the idyll he and Alex had planned for themselves in France. If Mr and Mrs Baillie had invited him to go in and sit down, he would have done so. He felt oddly moved by the glimpse of a family life that was lived in such close proximity to his own. But of course it would never have occurred to them to ask him. He was the young master of Graveney Hall, removed from them by wealth and social position.

  Where to go now? Was there any comfort to be found anywhere?

  ‘You spent the night in the stables? For pity’s sake, boy, what’s got into you?’

  ‘I like it there. I’m very sorry if I spoiled your dinner party.’

  ‘You most assuredly did!’

  They were in the book-lined study, Mr Pearson seated behind his desk, Edmund standing, feeling like a schoolboy again, summoned to account for himself. But his father was not so much stern as dismayed.

  ‘Should I send for a doctor? Should you postpone your return?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, Father.’

  ‘The way you’ve been behaving is hardly normal!’

  ‘I couldn’t stand it last night. The guests. Being polite.’

  Henry Pearson put down his glasses on the leather-topped desk, and rubbed his eyes. ‘Edmund, I know you’re under strain. But snubbing Philippa like that was quite inexcusable.’

  ‘I’m not trying to excuse myself.’

  ‘I insist you apologize before you go back to France. Philippa was extremely upset. Worried for you. Yo
ur mother was hoping . . .’ Henry Pearson sighed, tapped a pen on the blotter. ‘But never mind. What in God’s name induced you to sleep in the stables?’

  ‘It wasn’t in God’s name!’

  Edmund saw impatience and concern struggling for dominance in his father’s expression.

  ‘Must we have this constant quibbling? All right, then—what the devil made you go and sleep in the stables?’

  Edmund laughed. ‘That’s more like it!’

  He could not explain in any way that would make sense to his father. He had stood outside the Baillies’ cottage for some while, undecided, wondering whether to go back to the lake for the solitude he had longed for; but now he wanted not solitude but company. The warmth of another body. Nothing that could be found in the frigid spaciousness of the Hall.

  He had wandered to the stables, without knowing why; he had looked at the scrubbed empty stalls and had mourned for the sleek beautiful horses whose care had required a team of grooms before the outbreak of war. Horse-riding was the one thing Edmund could do far better than Alex. On the fortnight of riding-school drill included in their officer training, Alex—to whom horses were merely a means of transport—had refused to be impressed by Edmund’s ability: ‘Of course, the young master of Graveney Hall would have been born in the saddle and ridden to hounds from the age of five,’ he teased. ‘I suppose you were a daring young thruster in the field? Had your face daubed with fox blood when you were in at the kill?’ The hunting days seemed long ago and the horses were gone: the lovely, spirited creatures had been taken on a bewildering journey across the Channel that even now could provoke Edmund’s pity.

  Hearing a nickering whinny from the far end, he went to investigate. Baillie’s pony, a tubby black creature with eyes that peered through a bushy forelock, lay on its bed of straw, alone in the stables meant for pampered hunters. Its head raised, it was about to brace itself on its forelegs to get to its feet; Edmund let himself in, soothed and stroked it, buried his face in its neck. The pony nuzzled his back. Comforted by its warm animal smell, he settled in the straw next to it, thought for a while, then found, blissfully, that he was no longer thinking, and slept.

  ‘Maybe you’d better go to your room and get some rest,’ his father said now, at a loss as to what to do with him, ‘since it appears we can’t have a sensible conversation.’

  Next afternoon the Reverend Tilley arrived for tea, summoned to find out what was wrong with Edmund.

  Send/Receive

  Greg’s mental snapshot: Tanya in a leather jacket, which she wears unzipped over a cropped vest top. She stands, hands in jeans pockets, leaning back from the hips. Her long hair is pushed back behind her ears, with a strand falling over one eye. She is looking directly at the viewer. Her lips are pressed together in a sardonic half-smile.

  Greg arrived home, panting.

  ‘Is that you, Katy?’ his mum called from the front room.

  ‘No, me. I’m going out again. Came back for the bike.’

  He rang Gizzard’s number. Gizzard was out, of course, it being Saturday night. ‘He’s gone to High Beach with some friends,’ Mrs Guisborough told Greg. ‘There was a group of them going to the pub up there.’

  ‘See you later,’ Greg called to his parents, tripping over his father’s golf bag in the hall and ignoring his mother’s call of ‘Where are you—’

  He had to keep moving, he didn’t much care where to. He pushed away on the bike, cursed it for not being his own, reached the main road and cycled hard, raising a sweat. He wanted mindless pub atmosphere, a few beers, head-banging music, to drive the last couple of hours out of his mind.

  High Beach was a clearing in the forest, set on high ground, with an open hillside plunging into a tree-lined valley: a favourite spot for visitors, picnickers and bikers, with a pub and a summer café. Greg locked the bike and shoved his way into the Forest Tavern. It was packed, as always on a Saturday. A leather-clad biker holding two pint mugs above his head dripped froth down Greg’s sleeve, and smiled at him, amiable, unconcerned: ‘Sorry, mate.’ Hopeless, trying to find Gizzard in this lot. Anyway, they might have gone on somewhere else. Greg gave up trying, bought himself a pint and drank it at the bar. ‘You on your own, then?’ the bloke next to him asked, another biker, twentyish, with a ponytail. He looked Greg up and down, as far as he could manage in the crush.

  ‘Looking for a mate,’ Greg said.

  ‘Well, here I am,’ said Ponytail, with a lascivious grin. ‘Look no farther.’

  ‘Stuff that!’ Greg downed his beer; he’d never finished a pint so quickly. He moved away, out to the door. Bloody queers! God, what was it about him tonight? Was he wearing a pink badge or something?

  What now?

  He went outside. It had been so hot in the pub that the air struck cold at first, but really it was quite a mild night for early October. He didn’t want to go home, but neither did he feel like going on a crawl of all the forest pubs in search of Gizzard; anyway, it wasn’t long till closing. He stood for a few moments by his bike, looking at the cloud-lightened sky and a half-moon above the impenetrable darkness of forest, thinking of Graveney Hall standing beyond on its rise of ground, isolated in moonlight, forbidding. Maybe he should have gone there. Then he heard a yell from across the road: ‘Oi, Frogspawn!’

  It was Gizzard, sitting with two girls on the curved shoulder of trodden grass that looked down the hillside towards the lights of Waltham Abbey below. ‘Thought you must have left the country,’ Gizzard called as Greg walked over. ‘What you up to?’

  ‘Looking for you.’

  ‘Hi, Greg,’ said Sherry/Cherie, giving a rolled-eye look at the other girl.

  Tanya. It would have to be, wouldn’t it? She wore a zipped leather jacket and was cradling a pint mug; she eyed him, aloof and unsmiling. ‘Do Mummy and Daddy let you stay out this late all by yourself?’

  ‘It’s not my bedtime yet,’ Greg said. ‘But any time’s yours, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ooh! Sharp,’ Tanya said. ‘For a schoolboy.’

  ‘Sit down.’ Sherry shuffled up to leave a space between herself and Tanya, and patted the grass. ‘It’s all right, she’s just sharpening her claws.’

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt your cosy threesome,’ Greg said, looking at Gizzard.

  ‘In my dreams,’ said Gizzard. ‘I’m not that lucky.’

  Sherry raised clenched knuckles to his chin. ‘Sex on the brain!’

  ‘And not only on the brain—’ Gizzard pulled her towards him, hands roving octopus-like.

  ‘Gizzard’s always been known for his subtlety and romantic charm,’ Greg remarked.

  Tanya laughed. ‘Better watch, Greg. You might pick up some useful technique. Don’t know why I bothered to come out with these two—gooseberry fool, that’s me. They need me like they need a cold shower.’

  ‘I expect you could pick someone up in the pub if you put your mind to it,’ Greg suggested.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘But now here’s Greg, like the genie of the lamp,’ Sherry said, shoving Gizzard aside. ‘Chance for you to win your bet, Tan?’

  ‘Oh?’ said Greg.

  Tanya looked at him archly. ‘You’ll find out if you’re lucky.’

  ‘When you’ve finished sniping,’ Gizzard said, ‘I was about to ask if anyone wants a refill while I’m getting a beer in for my mate Greg.’ They all had glasses from the pub, but only Gizzard’s was empty.

  ‘Cheers,’ Greg said.

  ‘Why do you let him call you names all the time?’ Tanya asked, when Gizzard had crossed the road.

  ‘Greg is my name.’

  ‘Clever! I meant Frogspawn, Dungheap, Cowpat—all those things.’

  ‘Gives him a chance to show off his verbal ingenuity,’ Greg said. ‘Anyway, you ever tried stopping him?’

  ‘Sit down if you’re staying,’ Sherry said. ‘I’m getting neck-ache craning up at you.’

  Greg sat, and Tanya moved in. ‘So, why are you out on your own on a Saturda
y night?’ she asked, shuffling up to him. ‘What’s happened to St Ursula—at home polishing her halo?’

  Greg almost asked, ‘Who?’ before remembering his lie to Gizzard. ‘Oh, that. Bit of an on-off thing.’

  ‘Which at the moment?’ Tanya asked.

  ‘Off.’

  ‘You mean you dumped her at a party?’

  Sherry giggled. ‘I’m not sure Tan’s going to forgive you for that.’

  ‘I might,’ Tanya said, ‘depending how things turn out.’

  Greg’s mother woke him with a mug of tea.

  ‘You were late last night,’ she remarked, opening her curtains. ‘This morning, rather. Where did you get to?’

  It was a second or two before Greg tuned in; then, remembering, he felt hot and cold prickles all over. Would she be able to tell by looking at him? He pulled his duvet up to his chin.

  ‘Oh, nowhere much. Met up with Gizzard and some friends.’

  ‘And?’ She picked up his jeans from the floor and folded them over a chair.

  ‘Had a couple of drinks. Hung around a bit after.’

  ‘Was Jordan with you?’

  Oh, God. Jordan.

  ‘No, only for the swimming meet. Why d’you ask?’ He peered at her suspiciously.

  ‘His father rang, very late. Said Jordan came home for his bike—just like you did—then went off again without saying where. He was a bit worried, his dad, I mean.’

  ‘What time was this, when he phoned?’

  ‘Gone midnight—I’d already gone to bed. I assumed Jordan was with you, so I told him that. I’d have checked when you came in, only I’d dozed off by then.’

  Greg sat up blearily and swallowed some tea. ‘How’m I supposed to know where he went? I’m not his keeper, am I? Went to the pub with the swim team, most like.’

  ‘His dad said he seemed upset.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he lost his race, that’s why.’

  His mother gave him a shrewd look. ‘Have you fallen out with him or something?’

  ‘No! Why would I?’