by Toby Litt
On the doorstep were Matthew and Gracie. He was in his tweedy farmer’s outfit. She was wearing the wifey equivalent.
‘Good morning,’ they said. ‘May we come in?’
‘We’re not really up yet,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Look,’ said Matthew, ‘Jeane… This is a little difficult to explain. I know you know about the house – what a special place it is. But I don’t think you realize what a special time this is.’
‘Midsummer’s Eve,’ said Gracie. ‘Tomorrow is Midsummer’s Eve.’
‘Yes,’ said Matthew, clearly annoyed with her for interrupting. ‘And as the turning point of the year, it’s a very important day.’
‘And night,’ said Gracie.
‘Please shut up,’ said Matthew to her. She did. ‘I will be direct – we need to be in your house for Midsummer’s Eve. We want to perform certain rituals. We are prepared to pay…’ He then named an amount of money I couldn’t believe.
‘No,’ I said.
He doubled the sum of money.
‘This is our house,’ I said. ‘And you freaks are never coming in it again.’
‘Oh yes we fucking well are,’ said Matthew.
‘Bitch,’ said Gracie.
Matthew was about to raise his hands against me when I saw a green figure over his shoulder.
‘Leave them,’ said Robert Mew. ‘Leave them now.’
Matthew and Gracie turned around to face him.
‘Ah,’ Matthew said, ‘the protector.’
‘The lady of the house has asked you to leave,’ said Robert. ‘Please go.’
Matthew walked up to Robert. Matthew was a couple of inches taller. ‘I could kill you,’ he said. ‘Maybe I will.’
Matthew made a grab for Robert’s throat – and, in a blur of movement, Robert stepped aside and, before I knew it, had Matthew in an armlock.
‘You will go,’ Robert said. ‘And you will not come back.’
‘We will go,’ said Gracie.
Robert released Matthew, and we watched as they got into their car and drove away.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘It’s all right,’ Robert replied. ‘Nothing.’
‘You really are our protector,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be working at this time.’
‘Ah,’ said Robert, already walking away into the trees. ‘If you won’t let me have that second man…’
‘You can,’ I said. ‘You can bring your son.’
‘Thank you,’ called Robert, and then passed out of sight.
Chapter 48.
When he got up, I didn’t tell Peter about Matthew and Gracie. I knew if I did, he wouldn’t leave the house, and I very much needed to be on my own.
After Peter had had a few sips of tea and woken up a bit, I told I was thinking about weaning Mary. ‘We will need to get some formula,’ I said. ‘They don’t have any in the shop.’
‘Can’t they order some?’ Peter asked.
‘I thought you could take Jack to the supermarket,’ I said. ‘This morning.’
Peter looked at me a little suspiciously.
‘This afternoon,’ he said. ‘I need to know you’re all right.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘If you do it this morning, you can feed her her lunch.’
‘I’ll go this afternoon,’ Peter said. I could tell there was no changing his mind.
Matthew and Gracie’s visit made me realize I still hadn’t looked at their copy of Hidden Histories. I went upstairs and quickly got dressed. The time on Peter’s watch was well past nine.
Past nine, and Mr. Gatward hadn’t come. He had always been so punctual that I found this a bit worrying.
Today I was planning to get him to talk me through what Lilian had written in her book. I was sure there would be some hint about how I should go on – something about fire.
I took Hidden Histories with me into the parlor and eagerly began to read.
The pink Post-It notes, when I went through them, were on the pages relating to the New House. I read what was written beside them. At first there was little I didn’t already know. There was a bit more about Lilian’s trip abroad. She had gone to Louvain, Paris, Venice, Rome. The ambassadors in those places had sent reports back about her. She met many of the most important alchemists of her time. The most interesting bit was this: ‘One of these, a young French Catholic nobleman named Paul de Joyeuse, became her close companion. They journeyed together through France and Spain. Paul was a brilliant and handsome young man, almost exactly the same age as Elizabeth. They were rumoured to have been wedded in a secret ceremony, although no evidence of this has ever been found. It does seem likely, though, from reports by local government agents watching the Jonson family that Paul de Joyeuse paid Elizabeth a return visit some time in 1588.’
It was ten o’clock when I finished, and Mr. Gatward still hadn’t arrived.
I phoned his number – and no-one answered.
‘He must be on his way,’ Peter said.
‘Perhaps he’s had a fall,’ I said. ‘I should go and see if he’s all right.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Peter.
I thought about this for a moment, but I realized I needed to deal with this myself. The visit from Matthew and Gracie had given me a real sense of urgency.
‘I won’t be long,’ I said.
I ignored the speed limit, driving to the village. The day was bright and blustery. I jerked to a halt outside Mr. Gatward’s cottage then went straight up to the door.
I knocked loudly, several times. I called to him through the letterbox. Defeated, I turned to look around.
The two boys were flying a kite on the common. It was very windy. The weather was turning. Their kite was high up. How much less exciting than really flying, I thought as I started towards them.
‘Hello,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Can I help you?’
The door to the cottage next door to Mr. Gatward’s was open. A man about my age with short red hair was standing in it.
‘Good morning,’ I said, and explained who I was and who I was looking for.
‘Haven’t seen him, I’m afraid.’
‘Do you normally?’ I asked. ‘I think he might have had a fall.’
‘He made a bit of a racket in the middle of the night,’ said the man. ‘Nothing since then.’
A woman appeared behind the man.
‘I’m Sarah,’ she said. ‘And this is Teddy.’ We shook hands. Her perfume – Poison, I think – was very strong. Teddy still wasn’t cracking a smile.
‘I saw your boy playing with Archie and Harold yesterday,’ she said. ‘I hope they weren’t too rough.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, then told her I’d been expecting Mr. Gatward, and that I was worried something had happened to him.
‘I’ll get the key,’ said Sarah. ‘He doesn’t usually lock it, though.’
She was again out in a moment.
Sarah led me round the side of the house and into Mr. Gatward’s back garden. She unlocked the conservatory door and we went in the house. ‘Andrew!’ she shouted.
The books in the back room were in a real mess. We had to climb over them to get through.
‘Oh dear,’ said Sarah. ‘This doesn’t look good.’
‘It was late, was it?’ I asked. ‘The disturbance you heard last night?’
‘It woke me up,’ Sarah said. ‘We usually go to bed around half eleven. Oh, look.’
One room might have been an accident – they might just have toppled over – but the front room was the same.
‘He must have been burgled,’ said Sarah.
We went upstairs. His bedroom was empty – a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a single bed, an alarm clock. A glass tumbler had been knocked over and was lying on the floor. The carpet didn’t look damp. The brown duvet was pushed back, as if someone had just got out.
‘That’s scary,’ said Sarah.
I picked the glass up and put it back on the bedside table. This room didn’t have a book in it.
At least he gave himself some time off, I thought. Then I remembered how Mr. Gatward always was at the desk in the attic – one book at a time. And hadn’t he referred to Lilian’s book as ‘bedtime reading’?
I checked around but Lilian’s book wasn’t there.
A quick look into a neat little bathroom, and we were done.
‘Shall we call the police?’ Sarah asked.
‘Let’s just make sure,’ I said. ‘Mr. Gatward booked a cab for nine.’
‘That’ll be Mike,’ Sarah said.
We locked up the back door and hurried round to Sarah’s house again. I stood with her in their very low ceilinged country kitchen as she phoned Mike. She had his number up on a corkboard – a grubby card with a picture of a taxi. Anytime Cars, they were called.
‘He says he came at nine but Andrew wasn’t here,’ said Sarah. ‘He waited ten minutes, tried the shop, then left.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I thought I might want to speak to Mike myself. ‘Can I take his number?’ I asked.
Sarah copied it down on the back of a brown envelope.
‘Thanks,’ I said, shoving it in my back pocket. ‘I think you should call the police now. Let’s hope it turns out all right.’
‘I’m sure it will,’ said Sarah, though she didn’t look convinced.
As I drove back, I tried to think what might have happened to Mr. Gatward. I suspected Matthew and Gracie might have something to do with it – they were the only people I could think of who were obsessively interested in both our house and in the village historian. If they felt Midsummer’s Eve was such an important time, perhaps they had been forced to take action. After all, Gracie had seen Mr. Gatward holding Lilian’s book.
I remembered seeing something about this in Hidden Histories – just after the bit about Lilian and Paul de Joyeuse. It hadn’t seemed important before I knew Mr. Gatward had gone missing.
A few raindrops fell onto the windscreen as I turned through the gates and down the drive. The shadows of the trees all around me felt darker than usual.
The other possibility I had to consider was that Mr. Gatward had just taken the book and made a run for it. You didn’t know how anyone would react if they discovered the secret of eternal life. Maybe he’d disappeared, intending to set up his own experiment somewhere. That didn’t seem very likely, however. He knew he’d be missed at nine o’clock sharp but hadn’t made any excuse. One phonecall would have bought him a couple of days. And why would he make a mess of his own house?
Mr. Gatward had said he’d guard Lilian’s book with his life. Maybe that’s just what he was doing.
It was around eleven o’clock when I hurried back into the hall. Things were just as I’d left them. Peter handed Mary over to me, but I knew there was no point trying a feed – she wouldn’t be hungry. Instead, I told Peter I needed to see if Mr. Gatward had left any clue to his disappearance – then I took Mary and the copy of Hidden Histories up into the attic library.
It didn’t take me a second to find the passage about Lilian’s notebook. Mr. Gatward was writing about the portrait in the parlor. He mentioned her beauty, then spoke of how intelligent she looked.
I could hear his voice on the page. I did hope he was safe.
Mr. Gatward ended his description by saying, ‘If only she could open up her notebook to us, if only we could turn those long hidden pages, what secrets of Elizabeth’s alchemical life might be revealed!’
I felt so stupid. I had seen what Mr. Gatward had longed for, and I hadn’t been able to understand any of it.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I had worked some things out. And Mr. Gatward was always insisting I was ahead of him, and that I understood more than I knew. But what did I understand? I understood that I had to open the door of the fire room, and in order to do that I needed a key shaped like a flame. If this was hidden behind a fire sign – Sagittarius – it was probably in the roof of the hall. Midsummer’s Eve was important. I needed to get the door open before then. Perhaps I could persuade Peter to go now.
I headed downstairs, only to face another interruption. It was P.C. Holler an. There can’t have been that much crime in the village, not that he was going to bother investigating.
‘Mrs. Jonson,’ said P.C. Hollerhan, then started to ask me a lot of questions about why I thought Mr. Gatward was missing. Without mentioning Lilian’s book, I told P.C. Hollerhan most of the basics – my arrangement to see Mr. Gatward at nine.
‘On a Saturday?’ the policeman asked.
‘He didn’t want to stop his research,’ I said. ‘He was very excited by what he’d discovered.’
‘And that was…?’
‘Something about land acquisition in 1581,’ I said.
P.C. Hollerhan looked at his boots, which weren’t as shiny as they should have been.
‘I’m impressed by your concern for Mr. Gatward, but I’m afraid we can’t deal with this as missing persons until twenty-four hours have passed.’
‘What if he’s been kidnapped?’ I blurted out.
‘Why would anyone want to kidnap Mr. Gatward?’ P.C. Hollerhan asked.
I thought about mentioning Matthew and Gracie, but I knew that would get me into trouble. P.C. Hollerhan wasn’t going to risk losing out on his swims, and extras.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was a burglary that went wrong.’
‘If Mr. Gatward hasn’t turned up by the middle of tomorrow, we’ll take it seriously. But I’m sure he’ll be back. He probably just forgot your appointment.’ P.C. Hollerhan smiled. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve taken down the offending item.’ It took me a moment to realize he meant the satellite dish.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we take the law quite seriously.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ P.C. Hollerhan replied.
And that was all the help we were going to get from him.
Chapter 49.
Peter finally loaded Jack into the car around one o’clock. As he was strapping himself in to the front seat, I noticed the wound on Jack’s elbow – it was nearly healed.
‘Look at that,’ I said to Peter.
But Peter wouldn’t admit it was unusual.
‘You’re a tough one, aren’t you?’ he said to Jack.
‘Nobody heals that fast,’ I said. But he just wouldn’t listen.
‘You sure you don’t want me to take Mary, too?’ Peter asked.
‘No,’ I said, ‘if she’s outside the house, she’ll just get hungry.’
He seemed reluctant to leave. Jack was sitting in the passenger seat, fiddling with the volume on the radio.
I went back inside with Mary, listening to the sound of the engine driving off.
I looked up at the hall ceiling. Should I go up there now? What if Peter forgot something and came back? That would be the end of me. I could phone in an hour, check he was at the supermarket, then take half an hour to explore.
For the moment, I went into the kitchen and fetched the keys for the cellar and the Air door. Those were the only ones I needed, so I left the others behind – a bad mistake.
‘You’re going to enjoy this,’ I said to Mary.
I took her down into the cellar, carefully locking the door after us. Even if Peter came back, he couldn’t suddenly interrupt.
When I opened the Air door, the room looked its usual boring self.
I placed Mary on the floor, just outside the door, then stepped onto the bricks – which fell away beneath me, and rose above me, and expanded further and faster than before.
I was left hanging there as the room expanded until it was a vast sphere the size of… I don’t know what. I’d never seen an open space that big – not even Tate Modern.
‘Smaller,’ I said, scared. ‘Much, much smaller.’
Straight away the room began to contract. It went back to how it had been the first time.
‘Smaller,’ I said.
Obligingly, it made itself a space about the size of the upstairs living room.
‘Than
k you,’ I said, and went to pick Mary up.
I knew she would fly with me, that she’d be able to fly all by herself, but I still felt terribly nervy when I first took her up into the air with me. What if she weighed me down? What if we fell together?
But it was as I’d hoped it would be – and before I knew it, Mary was floating along side me, giggling her head off. Her laughter echoed off the hard brick walls. She kicked her legs and waved her arms. This was the best fun ever. I knew she’d love it. She was so unbelievably loud – that can be the only explanation as to why I didn’t hear them come in upstairs, didn’t hear them try the cellar door.
I tried to stop. After five minutes I took Mary out of the room, which closed up behind us. But she started to bawl.
‘Five minutes more,’ I said. ‘Just five.’
The room returned to the sensible size it had been. I kept hold of Mary. Ten feet off the ground. Laughing, laughing – both of us. Her hand in my hand, thank God.
That’s how we were when the grille clanged back and Peter’s head stuck up out of the hole. I saw the back of his head.
‘Don’t look round,’ I shouted, starting to grab Mary. ‘Don’t look!’
But he did – he did.
The room didn’t contract gradually as it had before. It snapped back to usual size before I’d even started to fall.
I had been lying flat, Mary out to my left.
As I started to fall – as Peter began to shout ‘Mary!’ – I started to pull Mary towards me.
I remember her face. The terror in her face. I don’t think it was the falling scared her, I think it was the walls suddenly coming in so close.
We were only five feet off the floor, but it was a hard brick floor.
I yanked Mary by the arm, pulling her closer.
Peter was a growing blur to the side of what I could see.
Mary was almost on my chest.
I felt the floor smack against the back of my head. It was like being hit by cricket bat.
I felt my teeth crack.
I felt a heavy shape land on my chest.