by Toby Litt
Jack told him the same story, with all the essential details in place.
‘None of them hit you?’ asked Peter.
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘But they came very close.’
Peter picked up one of the stones and carefully examined it. Then he tried to hand it to me. ‘It’s very round,’ he said. ‘Like a marble.’ For some reason, I was horrified by the idea of touching it. ‘I think he probably found a stash of them somewhere.’
‘I did not,’ Jack said, very defiantly. ‘They fell.’
‘Let’s pick them all up,’ said Peter to Jack, trying to turn it into a game. Peter glanced into Jack’s Transformers wastepaper basket. As usual, it was empty.
‘This’ll do,’ Peter said, and handed Mary to me.
Jack, however, was even less keen on touching the stones than I was.
‘Okay,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll do it.’
By the time he was finished, the wastepaper basket was almost full. I could tell by the way Peter held it, tucked under his arm, that the stones weighed quite a lot.
‘They’re all the same size,’ he said.
‘Take them out!’ shouted Jack, getting upset again. ‘Take them out!’
I left Peter to deal with them.
Jack and me were just having a cosy cuddle, with Mary in between us, when there was a sharp rap on the floor.
I turned round to see another of the stones rolling along.
‘It must have fallen off the chest of drawers, or something,’ I said. But I didn’t really believe that.
I led Jack by the hand into the bedroom with the four-poster. At least nothing would fall on our heads while we were sitting on that. Mary was wriggling about, so I started to feed her. Jack usually pretends to be disgusted by this. He says my nipples look yuck and asks why I can’t feed Mary from a bottle, like normal mums. This time, however, he seemed comforted by her little sucking sounds. He lay down beside us on the bed.
‘Does this mean I’ve seen a ghost?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, then tried to make up for sounding so hard. ‘But it’s definitely something very strange.’
‘This is a haunted house,’ Jack said.
I didn’t want to agree, although it was hard to think otherwise. Part of me still thought he’d been playing around with the stones himself. But what about them being identical? Jack would never have the patience to dig through the garden, looking for marble-sized stones. And, even if he’d done that, they’d all still be covered in wet earth, not as pristine as if they’d been washed with soap and water.
‘It’s a very old house,’ I said. ‘And sometimes odd things happen in very old houses.’
There were footfalls up the stairs. Peter came through the door.
‘Mrs. Forster,’ he said, ‘tells me that’s happened before. More than once. And always in that room.’
‘What happened?’ asked Jack.
‘A materialization, she says.’
I gave Peter a look. Jack was mad keen enough on ghosts as it was. I didn’t want Mrs. Forster’s confirmation to really set him off.
‘Why don’t you play downstairs?’ I suggested to Jack. ‘If Mrs. Forster thinks the living room is safe.’
‘And if she doesn’t hoover you to death,’ Peter said, and began making monster-sucking sounds. Jack gave a delighted shriek. He didn’t seem to have been deeply affected by the materialization, or whatever it was.
We all went downstairs. Jack took a couple of books with him. He had darted into his bedroom to fetch them himself. I was glad he wasn’t too terrified to go back in. If he wanted to, we could move him to the spare bedroom – but then he’d be further from us. He’d never slept more than a few feet away. He’d never even been on a sleepover.
Perhaps it was this that made me think about our flat. The new couple would be properly settled in, by now. Although they’d been perfectly nice, I didn’t like to think of them living in our house. I’d always been on the tenant rather than the landlord side of the equation – the minus side. Now, I’d crossed an invisible line. I had become one of the people I used to complain about. But, more than this, I felt sensitive to the new couple’s presence in our old rooms. What would happen to them there? Would they be happy? Would they argue? Would they be haunted by the lives of the people who’d been there before? Would they see the stain in the carpet?
Jack went and sat in the living room, and I began making tea for Peter. He told me that he didn’t want tea. He said he was going out to buy the electronic goods we needed – he needed.
‘Can’t you go tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘You’re not worried about the house, are you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, realising immediately that I did feel more than a bit nervous. ‘Not really. Not as long as you’re back by dark.’
This just made him laugh.
‘We can try the keys out this evening,’ he said.
‘You’re joking,’ I said.
‘Don’t you want to know what’s behind those doors?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But maybe we can wait until we’ve had a day where nothing weird has happened.’
‘I want to know,’ he said. ‘I think it could be full of Michael Francis’s secret diaries, or something like that. What I’ve found, apart from the photo album, hasn’t been personal at all. It’s as if all that stuff has been removed.’
While Peter had been speaking, I had poured out some orange juice. Now I went to take it through to Jack. Mrs. Forster was dusting in the hall. As I came out through the kitchen door, she made a kind of flinching-away movement – and that was enough to tell me she’d been eavesdropping. I decided to be direct.
‘I don’t take kindly to being spied upon,’ I said. ‘If I catch you doing that again, you’ll be dismissed.’
‘You should be careful of the doors,’ she said, nodding towards the cellar. ‘Best to leave them alone. Stick with what you’ve got.’
‘So, you’re not exactly denying that you were listening?’
Peter came out of the kitchen, having heard raised voices.
‘I can help you,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘I can help you understand this place.’
‘What, exactly?’ he asked. I thought he was talking to me.
‘Mrs. Forster was listening to our conversation,’ I replied.
‘I heard that,’ Peter said. ‘What can you help us understand?’
‘How to survive here,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘It’s not as simple as it seems.’
‘If you knew about the stones, why didn’t you tell us?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen next.’
‘Is there anything dangerous here?’ I said. ‘Anything that threatens us – that threatens my children.’
Mrs. Forster didn’t answer.
‘Tell us,’ I said, ‘or you can walk out of here now, and not come back.’
‘This is a lovely place,’ said Mrs. Forster. ‘It’s a perfect home. But there are things I can’t tell you about it. You have to find them out for yourself. I can’t promise that it’ll never hurt you. Anything can happen, depending on how you react.’
‘That’s not much of an answer,’ I said. ‘Peter?’
‘You’re not making a particularly good impression, Mrs. Forster. To be honest, you’re coming across as creepy and interfering. Now, would you like to be a bit more direct?’
‘I would,’ said Mrs. Forster, then burst out crying. I felt bad that she was upset, but she shouldn’t go round trying to frighten us out of our house like that.
‘We’ll talk about this another day,’ Peter told her. ‘When you’ve more calm.’
She nodded, then went back across the hall and into the study.
‘You let her off pretty lightly,’ I said.
‘She’s been working here for years. It must be difficult, seeing new people around the place.’
‘If she wanted, she could quit. Doesn’t look like she needs the money.’
&n
bsp; ‘Perhaps she needs the company.’
‘So she spies on us?’
‘Let’s see what she says.’
I made Peter the tea, anyway, and he stayed to drink it. But then he went off in the car. Jack, always keen on things that go beep and buzz, was happy to go with him.
Chapter 12.
As I’d planned, I took Mary along to discover the village and find out the shop. This also gave me an excuse to get away from Mrs. Forster for a while. To be honest, I was having difficulty coming to terms with everything that had happened. If stones really had fallen from the roof of Jack’s room, out of nowhere, then the world was a much weirder place than I’d ever believed. Shouldn’t I be calling the police? Or running down the road shouting my head off? Instead we were all of us carrying on just as normal. I was going shopping. Did that make me mad? Looking back, I sometimes think so.
Mary and me encountered no tractors on the road, which was wider than the track to Matthew Maddox and Gracie Dearie’s farm. Most of it I was familiar with – flowery hedgerows behind ditches and fields of rape and corn only visible when you went past a gate. But then came a new turn, a short row of thatched cottages, a small church, a pub called The Green Man, and then an open marketplace where the village shop was obvious because it was the only house without net curtains. Everything was picture postcard.
I paused outside the door of the shop. This was an important moment, I knew. I needed to make a good impression on whoever was behind the counter. Making sure I was wearing my brightest smile, I gave the door a push. It didn’t open. Only then did I see the notice: ‘Back in ten minutes.’
It was a long time since I’d seen anything like that. In Tulse Hill, a sign like that would mean ‘Please burgle me now’.
There was a wooden bench on the other side of the marketplace. I pushed Mary across to it, then got her out and sat down to wait. Five minutes passed. Not a soul went by – not even in a car.
I’d fed Mary before we came out, but she was starting to wriggle around. A little drool came out of the corner of her mouth. She opened it wide, and I saw her gummy little cave. I decided I’d better give her a top-up. Better that than have her scream down the shop, and making a bad impression.
I was wearing a loose linen top, a smocky-type thing, and I was able to slip Mary’s head almost completely under it. That was before I undid the flap of the nursing bra. Nothing could be more modest, I swear. But, of course, as soon as I started breastfeeding, the market square turned into Piccadilly Circus.
First of all, a couple of boys came along. The older one was about ten, but it was the younger one who interested me. He looked exactly Jack’s age, with bright yellow hair and freckled cheeks. Both of them dressed in t-shirts, shorts and leather sandals. They wore socks. When they saw what I was doing, they blushed and began to snigger. ‘Did you see her titties?’ I heard the older one say. ‘Yes,’ said the younger. ‘Did not!’ ‘Did!’ When they saw the shop was closed, they sat down on the pavement to wait. Now and again, they looked at me, and the sniggering started again. I smiled at them, but this only made them snigger even more.
Next was an elderly man in a stripey jacket and dark blue trousers with sharp creases. He wore brown brogues. He was very bent over and walked with two sticks. On his head was a straw hat of the sort cricket umpires wear. This, he politely raised when he caught sight of me, after slowly transferring one of the walking sticks to the other hand. It was only then that he caught sight of the baby. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, and quickly turned away. I could tell he was massively embarrassed. Probably his eyes weren’t good enough to see exactly what was, and wasn’t, on display.
Then three teenage girls swished past, all wearing tight t-shirts, pedal pusher jeans and trainers. ‘Oo-oooh,’ said the prettiest of them. ‘Tits out,’ said the tallest. ‘What a slag,’ said the podgiest. They giggled, and kept going.
Finally, an old lady came along. She was tiny, with a grey perm. She wasn’t wearing a coat or pulling a wheelie, so I guessed she might be the shopkeeper.
I was right. When she reached the door, she pulled a key out of her pocket and turned it in the lock. Only then did she say hello to the old man and the young boys – greeting each of them by name, Andrew, Archie and Harold. She also glanced quickly in my direction. Not long enough for me to know whether she approved or disapproved of public breastfeeding.
Mary was still sucking quite hard, so I let her keep going. With any luck, she’d fall asleep on the nipple and – after I’d wiped her mouth – would look perfect when I went into the shop. Also, this would give the embarrassed man a chance to get clear.
He was gone in a couple of minutes, a packet of pipe tobacco in one pocket and something else, probably a bottle of washing-up liquid, in the other. I guessed that he’d hurried his purchases, in hopes of avoiding me. There was no raising of the hat as he hobbled off.
Mary slowed down and stopped. I knew I was only going to be feeding her like this for a few months more, and then I’d never do it again, ever. When I let myself think about it like this, every little tug was a pull at my heart. I felt particularly emotional when other people were negative about what I was doing. It was as if they were criticizing every other choice I made – as a mother. If I’d let myself, I would have started crying then and there.
Instead, I extremely carefully hooked my bra back into place, brought Mary out from under the smock, put the muslin over my shoulder and began to burp her.
All of this was so much less pressured, back in the house, with only Elizabeth to watch us. I had adopted her room as the place where I breastfed, even though the sofa in the living room was more comfortable than the high-backed chairs. I liked to have something interesting to look at, while Mary went about her gluggy business.
I wanted to ask Peter if he could find out something more about who Elizabeth had been, and what she’d done. Part of me, though, was quite keen to discover this for myself. It might take a little longer, but not involving him would bring me closer to the mysterious woman in the picture. What was between us was only between us – that was important.
Right on cue, Mary let out a satisfying little pop of a burp. She’d never been a windy baby. Not like Jack, who would save it all up till he was back in his buggy, then turn himself into a fountain of posset.
The boys came out of the shop, each carrying a paper bag of sweets. They looked like something out of Just William.
I put Mary down in the buggy, tucked her in, and wheeled her across the road. This time, I smiled even harder.
What a feeling it was – to step into that village shop, and to feel you’d gone back in time to a time you’d never really known! The place smelled of sugar and of fresh white bread. Even though a lot of the packaging was up-to-date – upside-down squeezy bottles for pickle and tubes for mustard – it still seemed as if nothing had changed here since the 1960s. It felt a little bit like your granny’s front room, and a little bit like the storybook sweetshop you dreamed of when you were five. There was a row of painted plates up above the old-fashioned counter. I saw a picture of our house in very detailed dark brown, but I didn’t have much time to look at it.
‘You must be Mrs. Jonson,’ said the shopkeeper, the tiny old lady. To serve people, she’d put a pinnie on over her baby blue woolen twin set.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’m Mrs. Willows,’ she said. ‘Welcome to the village.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How did you know it was me?’
‘We’ve known you were coming for weeks. Mrs. Dearie does me some vegetables, so she was in this morning. She told me about your little encounter with Mr. Maddox. And this is Mary, is it?’
Even better than people who remember your children’s names are those who make sure they know them in advance.
‘Yes. She’s three months,’ I said.
‘And you breastfeed her?’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘Just as it should be,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘I did
all my three. Of course, they’ve children of their own now.’
I felt immensely relieved. Mrs. Willows was just the sort of old lady you want to run your village shop. ‘Is there anything you would like?’ she asked.
I realized that, what with worrying about making a good impression, I hadn’t thought of anything to buy.
‘Milk,’ I said, as it was the first thing I thought of.
‘One pint or two?’ said Mrs. Willows.
I bought a few things, not that we really needed them. Already I felt guilty for having gone to the supermarket. In future, I decided, I would do as much of my shopping here as possible.
Mrs. Willows loaded everything carefully into my bag, tins at the bottom, breakables and squashables on top. It was exactly as if she was packing her own shopping.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and paid.
The till rang up with an old-fashioned ker-ching!
‘I look forward to meeting Mr. Jonson,’ said Mrs. Willows.
‘Did you know the other Mr. Jonson well? Who used to live in the house.’
‘Not really,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘Mrs. Forster did all his marketing for him. And he wasn’t one for walks.’
‘Not until he went to the North Pole,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘Indeed.’ Some of her warmth was gone. Perhaps my joke had been in bad taste.
‘Mrs. Forster is very efficient,’ I said.
‘She was always like that,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘I went to school with her, you see.’
It was hard to disguise my shock. Mrs. Willows seemed so unmistakably an old lady. And Mrs. Forster was… Mrs. Forster was Mrs. Forster.
‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Were you in the same year?’
‘No, she was in the year below. It was a very small classroom. We were all in together, really.’
I didn’t know what else to say.
‘We’re glad you let Robert Mew stay on,’ said Mrs. Willows. I guessed that by ‘we’ she meant the village in general. The word was another step towards coldness.
I wanted to ask her about the house. She must have heard about strange goings-on. But now wasn’t the time.