by Barbara Vine
A film was on next and the film was The Fiancée.
I was on the point of turning it off. Black and white is disappointing when you're used to colour and I'd picked up the remote to switch off when I saw the name Gilda Brent come up on the screen, well below the stars, John Mills, Googie Withers, Bernard Miles. Coincidence, I thought, but it wasn't really. I expect all her films come up on TV from time to time, only I never noticed them before Stella told me her name.
The story was set in World War II and it was about a woman turning up at a great mansion in the country, the kind of place only aristocratic people live in, and telling the couple who own it she's their dead son's fiancée that he got engaged to just before he was killed on a bombing raid over Germany. Googie Withers was the fiancée and John Mills the son who turns out not to be dead after all. Gilda Brent was his sister, a suspicious-minded girl who thinks the fiancée is a fraud from the first time she meets her.
She must have been about twenty-five when it was. made and she was very good-looking. But I was reminded of what I'd first thought when I saw the drawing on the cigarette card. It wasn't a face to remember, it was a face to be confused about, and it changed a lot as she spoke and moved and the way the light fell on her, so that sometimes she looked like Joan Crawford but sometimes like Veronica Lake or even Valerie Hobson. I don't know about her acting ability. Ned says you didn't have to be able to act if you were in films in those days. Her voice was one of those voices they all had, upper class, clear, ringing, and if you heard a woman speaking like that now you'd cast up your eyes.
It was something to tell Stella about next morning but by the time I'd seen to Gracie and got Arthur into his chair it was past nine and she was on her way to the hospital for her radiotherapy. Stella is dying, there's no hope of saving her life, but her breathing problems can be relieved, and though she keeps saying there's no point any more and to let it go, she still has Pauline drive her into Bury once a fortnight.
Unlike Lena, I don't snoop around the residents’ rooms while they're out. Half of them, certainly the ones who still have their faculties like Sidney and Lois, and yes, Stella, would get their children to move them elsewhere if they knew about Lena reading their letters and looking in their address books. But when I picked up Stella's breakfast tray, the linen napkin with the tiniest trace of lipstick on it fell off on to the floor. I bent to pick it up and saw something white under the bed.
It was a screwed-up piece of paper. Maybe it had been there for days or maybe only hours. Mary's a good cleaner when it comes to surfaces but not too great on sweeping under things. I shouldn't have read what was written on the paper, should I? I mean I shouldn't have looked, because I could scarcely read a word of it. And that's really why I looked and went on looking, scrutinizing it, because at first I didn't think it was English or even written in the kind of letters we make. It was more a pattern than a piece of writing, a photo of a piece of lace or a child's squiggles seen in a mirror. The only words I could make out, and that with difficulty, were ‘Gilda’ and something that might, or might not, have been ‘disappeared’.
I screwed it up again and threw it in the waste basket. Sharon caught up with me as I was leaving the room and said to watch out for Lena because she was in one of her foul moods.
‘She's not getting Edith's money like she thought she was,’ Sharon said. ‘Not any of it. Edith left it all to Action Aid and the Lord Whisky Sanctuary.’
Lena fetched Stella back a bit before lunchtime. She gave me one of her grins that aren't smiles. When she was a child people didn't take their kids to dentists much, which is why she never had a brace and her upper teeth stick out.
‘Lady Newland's been moaning all the way back about my driving,’ she said. ‘Much too fast for her ladyship, apparently.’
She says these things in a comedienne's voice and with a bright smile, as if that makes every offensive remark all right. Stella was tired, but she had some spirit left. She sat down in the lounge, looked up at Lena and said,
‘I am not the widow of a knight or a baronet.’
‘You what?’
‘I'd prefer you to call me Mrs Newland, but since that seems too difficult or too formal, Stella will do.’
It took courage for her to say it and the effort made her breathless. Lena looked at her open-mouthed.
‘We're all on first name terms here, I hope. Mrs, indeed. That would be too formal these days. Oh, definitely. You have to go with the flow, Stella, remember that, you have to go with the flow.’
Stella didn't cry until Lena had gone and then it wasn't noisy crying, just a tear from each eye running down her cheeks. I sat down beside her, in such a way as to shield her from Maud's view. Maud was by the french window, craning her neck to get a good look and an earful if possible. So I whispered. Stella isn't hard of hearing but Maud is.
‘You don't want to let her get you down. She's crabby because she hasn't come into Edith's money.’
Stella tried to smile. ‘Did she expect to? Oh, dear. It's not her, Jenny, it's – well, I'm tired and sometimes – sometimes I feel bad about things.’
‘This'll cheer you up,’ I said.
On the way in that morning, walking across the grass from the parking place to the back door, I'd found a four-leaved clover. For the first time for days it wasn't raining. I'm like Mum, when I walk over a field or through grass anywhere I always look down at the clover in the hope of spotting a four-leaved one. They're not as uncommon as you might think. I found one back in July and gave it to Ned to bring him luck with the film he was making in France. He wore it in his buttonhole till it was dried up and unrecognizable. But this time I'd done what I often do, pressed the triune leaf between two bits of paper. I'd meant to keep it for myself but Stella's need was greater than mine.
‘What is it, Genevieve? A shamrock?’
‘It's a four-leaved clover and about the best luck-bringer you can think of.’
‘Better than spotted dogs?’ she said.
‘Much better.’ I'm used to being teased about my protection beliefs and I don't mind. I don't suppose you do mind if you're confident your faith can't be shaken. ‘You put it inside a book and press it and it'll last for years.’
She was smart today, the way she especially is when she has to go out somewhere. Her generation dressed up to go to the shops, let alone for a hospital appointment in town. She had on a flowered dress and jacket and pearls round her neck, fine pale stockings and cream-coloured court shoes. Lena in her green cardigan over a shocking pink track-suit – why are track-suits and shell-suits always pink or purple or emerald green? – wouldn't have liked that much.
Stella seemed indifferent to the four-leaved clover but she was tired and she'd been through a lot that morning, so I found the book she was reading and slipped it inside like a bookmark. I thought she'd want a sleep but when I'd put a blanket over her knees and was halfway to the door she put out her hand and said,
‘No, Jenny, stay with me a while. Tell me, did you watch the film last night?’
‘The Fiancée?’ I said. ‘I wanted to see what Gilda Brent was like. It wasn't very good, was it?’
‘I didn't watch. It was so late.’ She corrected herself. ‘That's not the real reason. I saw it years ago, when it was first made. And then again, at a cinema with her. With Gilda, I mean. She used to like me to go to the pictures with her and see her in her films. I don't think I could face it now. Well, I wouldn't even try.’ The little laugh she gave had a tinny sound. ‘I couldn't bear to see her.’
I sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You said she was dead. What did she die of?’
I thought she wasn't going to answer, she took so long about it. First she hung her head and put one hand up to her forehead. But she took that hand down with the other hand and forced it into her lap as if putting it up there had been a sign of weakness. Her chin went up and I thought her lips quivered a little before she spoke.
‘She died in a car crash.’
‘What, soon after she stopped making films?’
‘Years and years after that,’ Stella said. ‘You notice I said she died in a car crash, not of a car crash. I don't know quite how she died.’
I was bewildered and must have shown it. ‘I shouldn't have told you that, Genevieve. You mustn't repeat it to anyone at all. You won't tell anyone, will you?’
‘Who can I tell?’ I said. My world isn't exactly full of people who are longing to know how some obscure old film actress met her end. ‘I don't know anyone to tell.’
‘No. I suppose that's why I've told you as much as I have. But that – friend of yours, the television man?’
It's unpleasant the way we have no control over our blushes. My face felt fiery. ‘I won't say anything to Ned.’
‘Good. That's sweet of you. I know I can trust you, Jenny. I'd like to tell you things about my life, I will tell you one day, but I have to be allowed to choose what I tell. Do you understand?’
It was that ‘one day’ that struck me. Stella wasn't going to have a ‘one day’ and part of her mind knew it as well as I did. But I suppose we're so in the habit of talking about what we'll do ‘one day’ and ‘next year’ and ‘sometime’ that when a limit's been put on our lives we forget we haven't a future. She changed the subject quite abruptly.
‘You haven't been to an estate agent, have you?’
I said I wouldn't do that unless she asked me.
‘No. Of course you wouldn't. It's just that so much is taken out of one's hands in here and so many people treat one as if one is in one's second childhood. I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised to find my house was already on the market and droves of people making offers.’ My face must have shown her how unjust she was being. She put out her hand and touched mine. ‘No, you're different from the rest of them, Genevieve. You wouldn't do that.’
‘And Richard is different,’ I said.
She seemed surprised. ‘You're right. He is.’
‘Stella, I'll go to an estate agent any time you like,’ I said, ‘but as for droves of people making offers – it's been empty for all those years, it's very dirty, it's quite dilapidated looking. It'll be quite hard to sell the way it is.’
The tired look came back. ‘Do you mean it's going to need repairing and redecorating?’
‘It's going to need cleaning up first.’ I don't know why I said it, I don't know why I made the offer. It's not as if I like that kind of work or am much good at it. The most likely explanation is that I saw it as a way of spending my day off that was not sitting at home wishing I was with Ned in Norwich and reproaching myself for having scruples. ‘Would you like me to clean your house, Stella?’
The 13th. Not the best of days to undertake any enterprise. Mum's wedding to Ron was on the 13th and look what happened to that marriage. But I didn't have much choice, my day off fell on that day, and anyway I couldn't think what could go wrong – a fatal attitude when it comes to ignoring signs and portents, as anyone in our family will tell you.
I set off early for Molucca, just after eight, and along with the spray polish and sink cleaner and cloths I had the sense to take the Dustette with me. It works on a battery which was essential in a place where the electricity was turned off. Mike gave it to me last Christmas and I said it was lovely, taking care not to point out that it was him put most of the mud on the carpets and made the crumbs at mealtimes. As it turned out, taking a Dustette and two J-cloths to clean up Stella's house was like trying to climb Everest in a pair of trainers and carrying a can of Coke.
It wasn't a nice day but grey and windy, though maybe it would have been worse to have had the sun pouring in to show up more of that dust. I don't know what dust is, what is it, that fine grey powdery stuff? It's not something you ever see anywhere else. I mean, it's not crumbs or hairs or fluff, it's not lint off your clothes or fur off animals, it's not ash or iron filings or wood shavings. It's dust and it's made of nothing and comes from nowhere to cover everything everywhere. I suppose that if all the people in the world died of some plague and just the buildings were left, in time they'd be hidden under a layer of dust.
I started in the living room. I opened the window, which was no easy task in itself, and I shook the rugs out on to the grass. It was like the desert storm in Lawrence of Arabia. The oil painting of Stella when young I dusted carefully with a soft cloth, removing the grey film which had dulled the pink of her dress and the gleam of her pearls. I worked on all the furniture, shaking my cloth out of the window. By the time I'd dusted all the surfaces and brushed the upholstery, got all the dirt on to the carpet, and sucked it all up, the battery had run out on the Dustette.
Something I hadn't noticed the first time was that there was a deep dent in the wall facing the fireplace, as if it had been struck a blow hard enough to tear the wallpaper. And when I got the silver polish out and started cleaning the silver. I saw that there was a dent in one of the bowls. It looked as if someone had once thrown the bowl at the wall, damaging both. I cleaned all the silver until I couldn't bear the smell of the cleaner any longer or the feel of the grainy pink powder on my hands.
The kitchen and the bathroom should have been easier than the living rooms because they had no carpets. But they had no hot water either, and I hadn't the means of heating it. Still, I managed to get the worst off the sink and the basin and half-shifted the ring round the bath. The windows were easier because the stuff to clean them comes out of a bottle, not a cold trickle from a tap.
At twelve I stopped for a bit and ate the sandwiches I'd brought with me. Though I'd failed before, this time I could clearly see Middleton Hall far away in the distance beyond the brown ploughed fields and the white goose fields. It made me think about Stella and wonder what went on in her head, what was the reason for being so mysterious about Gilda Brent and what she'd meant about telling me everything ‘one day’. Gilda had been to this house once, she'd said, and had died in a car crash. Was that why Stella didn't like going out in cars and hated fast driving, because of the way Gilda had died?
All the women in our family see ghosts from time to time. Mum has seen most. She regularly sees the Man in the Grey Suit who walks across the bedroom that's above the saloon bar. The Thundering Legion was once the courthouse and jail and a murderer spent his last night of liberty there, pacing that room, before being sent to the Assizes and hanged. Janis saw her friend's spaniel and touched him a week after the dog had been put down, and as for my nan, in the days when she worked for Mr Thorn's father at the Hall, she saw the Brown Lady twice, on three occasions heard the voice that calls out, ‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ and smelt the gunpowder smell untold times. That was why I wouldn't have been surprised to have turned round from that window and seen Gilda Brent standing there. She'd have been grey like the dust, grey like she was in the black-and-white film, and maybe wearing the long evening dress in which she'd looked so beautiful in The Fiancée, an off-the-shoulder gown with a draped bodice and the skirt a sweep of trailing chiffon, her long blonde hair grey and her face, that was like so many different film-stars’ faces, carved in marble.
I turned and there was no one there. And I had to admit the house didn't have that feel about it, that unmistakable, haunted feel when you sense all the time that someone is watching you and where the air is full of tiny whisperings and unexplained sounds. All I felt about Stella's house was that it was waiting for something. Perhaps only for someone to live in it. I went into the bedroom and started cleaning in there, with a broom and a dustpan and brush this time. After I'd got the worst of the dust swept up, I took down the curtains. There was nothing to be done with those curtains but take them home with me and see if I could get them clean or if they'd fall to pieces in the wash.
Between the door to the furnished bedroom and the door to one of the empty bedrooms was an airing cupboard. The linen inside felt damp but it wasn't growing mould. I knew I'd have to come back and finish, it was impossible to get it all done that day, so I took out a pair of sheets and four
pillowcases and spread them out on chairs in front of the window for the sun to air them – if we got any sun. Then I stripped the bed and put the bedclothes in a pillowcase to take home with me and wash.
Down in the kitchen again, I wondered what Mike would say if he saw it. The thought made me laugh to myself because Mike is a regular fusspot about things like that. He'd probably start on that kitchen straightaway, prising out chipped tiles and screwing on loose handles.
The first time I was there I hadn't looked inside the fridge. Its door was shut. If you go away and leave a fridge with the power turned off you should always leave the door open or the dampness inside will grow mould. When that happens, no matter how much you clean and air it, the mouldy smell never goes away. I opened the door and looked inside, prepared for the worst.
Mould had been there and a fungus like grey velvet but that was long ago. Nothing remained now but dust, more dust that covered shapeless lumps of what had once been food but which now couldn't be identified as more than a branch of something, a wedge of something. Except for one item on which the dust didn't lie: a bottle of champagne. Bollinger, the real stuff, with gold paper round its top and that sort of gold net they decorate the bottles with. It was lying on one of the shelves among the grey ghosts of food as if it had been put there to chill, but the celebration, or whatever it had been bought for, had never taken place.
Opening the broom cupboard I noticed something else I hadn't seen when I'd been there the first time. There was a row of cuphooks on the back wall and on every hook hung a key, six in all. Some must have fitted the locks on interior doors. The biggest fitted the back-door lock and another slightly smaller one the door into the garage. I unlocked that door and went into the garage to have a look at the red car.
There it rested on its flat tyres. It wasn't locked and there was no key in the ignition. I opened the driver's door and got in, leaned across the driving seat and had a look round. The side pockets were bare and the glove compartment was empty. Nothing was on the back seat and nothing on the floor. When Stella told me that Gilda Brent had died in a car crash I'd had an idea it might have been in this car, I'd thought that perhaps she'd crashed this car and after that someone close to her had never wanted to see it again and got Stella to store it. But the only marks on the car weren't the sort a crash makes. They were burn marks. The car was dusty, coated in a layer of dust that had never been disturbed since it was put in there, but when I wiped that away I could see that the bodywork was singed all over the boot and around it and above the rear wheels. Its red paint was blackened and in the worst parts bubbled so that in places it had flaked off to show the grey metal underneath.