The Door In the Tree

by William Corlett

  ‘That’s your godmother, Steph,’ Phoebe said, transferring the contents of the saucepan into a large bowl. ‘Do you remember Mary?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she does,’ Mary said, shyly.

  ‘Well, she certainly should!’ Phoebe exclaimed, setting cutlery and putting a large loaf of bread on a board in the middle of the table. ‘Without your help, she’d have had a hard job coming into this world.’

  ‘Oh, Stephanie!’ Mary said and she rocked her in her arms. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and tears welled up in her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Phoebe asked, immediately concerned.

  ‘Nothing,’ Mary said, fighting back the tears. ‘We saw a dead badger, that’s all.’

  Phoebe frowned and pushed some stray hairs away from her forehead.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ she exclaimed. ‘How upsetting for you all. But that’s nature, isn’t it? The forest must be full of life and death.’ She shivered. ‘I sometimes feel it all around me. So much life, so much striving to survive, so much hunting and killing.’ Then she shrugged, as though ridding herself of an unpleasant thought. ‘Nature is cruel – if you think death is cruel. But then, in another way, it’s all part of a cycle, isn’t it? I expect, if we only knew where to look, we’d find a baby badger right now, just starting out in life – like Steph here – with everything ahead. I sometimes look at her and I’m . . . overwhelmed with how ready and expectant she is. How tough she is, really.’ She crossed and put an arm round Mary. ‘Don’t be sad. Please.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Mary told her, embarrassed by this unexpected show of affection. ‘Should I put her back in the cot?’

  ‘Yes,’ Phoebe told her. ‘I’ll feed her later.’

  Alice and Jack came in, both of them giggling.

  ‘Uncle Jack, Uncle Jack. What’s yellow and stupid?’ Alice yelled.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ Jack exclaimed, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Thick custard!’ Alice told him and she started to giggle again.

  ‘That’s pathetic, Alice,’ Mary said. ‘It’s also very old.’

  Alice shrugged.

  ‘Uncle Jack hadn’t heard it.’

  ‘Where’s William?’ Phoebe asked.

  ‘Gone to the loo, I expect. I’ll get him,’ Alice said, going out into the hall again and then, a moment later, they all heard her yelling his name at the top of her voice.

  Eventually, when William arrived downstairs, they sat down to lunch. Phoebe had made a thick vegetable stew which she called a ratatouille.

  ‘But I thought you were a vegetable-arian, Phoebe,’ Alice protested.

  ‘It is vegetables!’ Phoebe told her.

  ‘Not it’s not. It’s rat!’ Alice said, giggling again and tucking into her food.

  William and Mary exchanged a pained look.

  ‘She gets like this sometimes,’ William explained.

  ‘Did you have a good walk?’ Jack asked them.

  ‘Yes, OK. We got a bit lost. Did you remember the map, Phoebe?’ William asked.

  ‘I didn’t go into town in the end. I’ll go in tomorrow. Sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ William told her.

  ‘Spot showed us the way home,’ Alice said.

  ‘What did you see? What did you do?’ Jack asked, cutting slices of bread.

  ‘A dead badger,’ Mary told him, quietly. ‘I think we should have buried it,’ she added, addressing the remark to William and Alice.

  ‘We couldn’t. We didn’t have a spade or anything.’

  ‘I don’t like to think of it, just left there,’ Mary insisted.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Mary. I don’t want to think about it,’ Alice told her, glumly.

  ‘Maybe we could, tomorrow,’ William said, thoughtfully.

  ‘What?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Bury it,’ he replied.

  ‘I don’t want to go back there,’ Alice said, looking down and not meeting any of their eyes.

  ‘I think Will’s right,’ Mary said. ‘I vote we bury the poor thing.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Phoebe cut in, looking nervously at Jack. ‘It could be full of disease by now and besides, the natural thing would be to leave it alone. It’ll probably provide food for other creatures.’

  ‘Oh, how disgusting!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘I can’t bear to think of that.’

  ‘Maybe you should become a vegetable-arian, Alice,’ Phoebe said, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Alice pouted and looked down at her plate again. She had a feeling that Phoebe was laughing at her and she didn’t like it.

  ‘You don’t find sausages lying about in the forest,’ she said crossly. ‘And if you did, I’d be the first to eat them.’

  ‘Not raw, Alice?’ William exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, shut up, William,’ his sister exclaimed.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Jack interrupted them. ‘I’ll come with you in the morning and we’ll bury the badger together. How’s that?’

  The children all agreed enthusiastically, but Phoebe shook her head.

  ‘You can count Steph and myself out. I’ve never seen a live badger in the wild so I don’t want to see a dead one, thank you very much.’

  ‘But we mustn’t take too long over it,’ Jack continued. ‘I’ve masses of work to do and, at some time, I’ve got to go into town myself.’

  ‘Have you?’ Phoebe asked him. ‘Can’t I do whatever has to be done?’

  ‘Not unless you want to face the bank manager,’ Jack told her.

  ‘No thank you!’ Phoebe said firmly. ‘If we’re bankrupt, I’d rather you heard the news first.’

  ‘What’s bankrupt?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No money,’ Phoebe said, with feeling.

  ‘Well, we’ve still got some left,’ Jack said, with a grin.

  ‘Some being the operative word,’ Phoebe told him.

  ‘Oh, Uncle Jack, you’re not really bankrupt, are you?’ Mary asked anxiously.

  ‘No!’ Jack said. ‘We’ve still got enough money invested to see us through the building period. Then . . .’ he mimed blowing a trumpet and tooted a fanfare, ‘come next spring, if all goes according to plan, Golden House Country Hotel will open to an eager and appreciative public and we’ll start making a modest, but comfortable, living! Only . . . the plan would be going more smoothly, if I could get the builders back.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Phoebe groaned.

  ‘What builders?’ William asked.

  ‘We had some builders who came and worked on the roof a few weeks ago,’ Phoebe explained.

  ‘Phoebe didn’t like them,’ Jack interrupted her. ‘So I had to let them go.’

  ‘Jack, that’s not true,’ Phoebe protested. ‘There wasn’t any more work for them – we can’t afford them all the time.’

  ‘Well, there’s work for them now . . .’ Jack said.

  ‘Then get them back,’ Phoebe said sharply. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  There was a moment’s silence round the table. The children, sensing tension between Jack and Phoebe, felt awkward and embarrassed.

  ‘I just said,’ Phoebe continued after a moment, ‘that they seemed to spend more time making mugs of tea in the kitchen than actually working . . .’

  ‘They did a wonderful job on the roof,’ Jack argued.

  ‘Yes, that’s true. I give in. Get them back.’

  ‘Did you have to have the whole roof remade, Uncle Jack?’ William asked, trying to change the subject.

  ‘No. We were lucky. All the timbers were sound. We only needed the tiles re-hung. Whoever built this place, built it to last. After you’ve finished eating, I’ll take you on the grand tour and show you what we’ve done.’

  ‘Oooh, yes!’ Alice said, eagerly.

  ‘We’ve discovered all sorts of things,’ Jack said.

  ‘What sort of things?’ William asked, nervously.

  ‘I warn you,’ Phoebe said, ‘you’re letting yourselves in for hours of lec
turing on how the house was built and what every little nook and cranny was probably used for.’

  ‘Nooks and crannies?’ Mary asked, suspiciously. ‘You mean . . . you’ve discovered the secret room, Uncle Jack?’

  William reached with his foot under the table and kicked Mary, so that she gasped with pain.

  ‘Ow! William,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry,’ her brother said, without sounding in the least bit sorry.

  ‘No, we haven’t discovered a secret room or a secret passage,’ Jack said, oblivious of the children’s concern. ‘At least, not yet. Of course, there’s supposed to be one. But then no self-respecting house should be without one. The main part of the house was originally some sort of religious retreat. A place where the monks came for prayer and meditation. There’s supposed to be a secret tunnel that leads from here to the abbey at Llangarren. But I can’t think it’s very likely. Llangarren is five miles the other side of the valley as the crow flies and straight through a solid chunk of mountain! I mean, what would the monks want a secret passage for anyway? They weren’t doing anything wrong, coming on retreat. You only need a secret passage – or a secret room, come to that – if you have something to hide, don’t you?’

  ‘How d’you know about all this anyway?’ William asked him.

  ‘From my friend Miss Prewett, at the local museum. She comes up with all sorts of stories about the place.’

  After they’d finished lunch. Jack took them on the promised tour of the house. To the right of the hall were two big square rooms, with long windows looking out on to the front and side of the house. The doors to these rooms were from the hall on either side of the chimney. Above, were two further identical rooms, with doors off the galleried landing, opposite Phoebe and Jack’s bedroom. These rooms, Jack explained, had been altered from the original Tudor design sometime during the late eighteenth century.

  ‘Towards the end of the Georges. Apparently at that time the house was owned by a gentleman farmer, who saw himself as rather important – a bit stuck up, in fact – and he wanted a bit of modern architecture to show how rich and important he was! Funny to think that Georgian architecture was once ‘modern’, isn’t it? Anyway, he just got the builders to stick on new front and side walls and bung in some of the latest sash windows! All the original Tudor beams are still there, behind the plaster. This front room will eventually be the hotel lounge and the back one will be the bar. Upstairs we’ll make into bedrooms – with a bathroom fitted into each of them . . . I hope! I have yet to perfect the art of plumbing!’

  To the left of the hall, and entered through a door on the same wall as the kitchen door, was a narrow and dark corridor that led into a warren of rooms of all shapes and sizes with oak beams and low ceilings and much smaller windows, some of them with tiny diamond shaped panes of glass between lead bars.

  ‘This is how the other side of the hall would have been originally,’ Jack continued, leading the way. ‘We’re going to open some of these rooms out to make the hotel dining room.’ He showed them a second staircase leading up to other bedrooms. ‘Eventually we’ll move into this area ourselves,’ he told them, ‘so you’d better decide which room you each want.’

  ‘Can we have one each?’ Alice asked quickly. All her life she’d longed for a room of her own.

  ‘You can have your own bathroom as well, if you like – but it costs more!’ Jack joked, and he put an arm round her shoulder.

  ‘But we won’t have to pay,’ she protested. ‘We’re family.’

  ‘OK. You can do the washing up instead!’ Jack told her. Then he paused by another door. ‘And down here,’ he said, opening the door with a flourish and revealing a steep staircase, ‘are the cellars. Come and see?’

  He switched on a light fixed to the side wall and led the way down to a narrow passage, with thick beams supporting the low ceiling. Off this passage were a number of store rooms, filled with piles of junk and rubble.

  ‘Goodness knows what it all is,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve searched through one or two piles and as far as I can see it’s just centuries of accumulated rubbish. Like this, for example:’ and, as he spoke, he raised a battered and rusty bucket. ‘Or this,’ he added, dropping the bucket with a clatter and picking up a mouldering suitcase instead. As he raised it, the lid slowly swung open and a heap of rotting clothes fell out and landed on the floor in a cloud of dust. ‘See what I mean?’ he said, dropping the suitcase once more. ‘These cellars have been used to dump all the junk in that people didn’t want and couldn’t be bothered to dispose of properly. Until now, that is. I’m going to get a skip and keep filling it until this place is clear. There’s something a bit depressing about knowing that you’re living on top of a rubbish dump! One thing’s for sure – there isn’t any treasure down here! Not so you’d notice anyway! That was another of Miss Prewett’s stories. Apparently Golden House got its name because there’s gold hidden here! I’d like to know where! I could certainly use a bit. Anyway, this place will one day be the wine cellar and the boiler room will be down here and I might even have a butler’s pantry, where I can creep away for a quick nip at the brandy, while no one is watching!’

  He led the way further along the dimly lit passage. At the end was another dark wooden door.

  ‘But this,’ he said, turning the iron handle, ‘is the pièce de résistance,’ and swung the door open and beckoned them through.

  They stepped into darkness and, as they did so, the temperature dropped several degrees. The cellar rooms they had been in had been stuffy and warm, but here, suddenly, the air was chill and had a damp edge.

  ‘Wait a minute while I find the switch,’ Jack told them and they saw him feeling along the wall in the dim light that spilled in from the passage behind them.

  ‘Ah!’ he said at last and with a click! a number of overhead lights went on.

  They were standing in a low, vaulted room with a stone flagged floor and square stone pillars that supported the rough, rounded arches of the roof.

  ‘We’re right under the central tower,’ Jack explained in a hushed voice. ‘This is the original medieval building. Maybe at one time it was a crypt. There must once have been a staircase down to here – but I can’t find where it was. There is one curious thing, though – look over here,’ he said, leading them to a far wall. ‘See?’

  He was pointing at a low arch of stones set into the wall with its centre filled in with stone blocks. The top of this arch was no higher than Alice’s knees.

  ‘It looks as if there was once a door here, at a lower level than the rest of the floor – or steps leading down perhaps to another floor below this one. Maybe that’s where the secret passage is supposed to be. What d’you think? – but if so, it’s not exactly secret, is it?’

  But the children were hardly listening to Jack, for they had, all at the same time, seen that there were letters scratched on the stone floor just in front of the arch.

  ‘Hey!’ Jack said, bending down to get a closer look, ‘someone’s been writing on my floor! D’you suppose it’s medieval graffiti? What does it say?’

  Alice crouched down and stared at the roughly scratched letters.

  ‘It says, “The Fang was here”!’ she answered, then she looked up at them.

  ‘The Fang?’ Jack repeated. ‘I’m sure that wasn’t there the last time I came in here. Who on earth is The Fang d’you suppose?’

  Mary shivered and looked over her shoulder. For a moment she felt as if they were being watched from one of the dark corners of the cellar.

  ‘What happened to the rat, Uncle Jack?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘The rat?’ Jack asked, puzzled.

  ‘You remember. When we were here at Christmas, when Stephanie was being born . . . there was a rat.’

  ‘Tell you the truth, I never did see that rat. I thought you and Phoebe made it up. Well it certainly hasn’t been around to my knowledge. What made you think of that?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Well – rats have fang
s, don’t they?’ Mary said.

  Jack grinned.

  ‘You think it popped down here and wrote us a message?’ he said. ‘Must be a very clever rat!’

  But Mary didn’t seem to think the idea funny at all. She frowned and turned away from the message.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Can we go back upstairs now please?’ and she hurried towards the door.

  ‘Oooh,’ Alice said, with a shiver, ‘I’m freezing as well. Aren’t you, Will?’

  But William was already hurrying after Mary, out of the crypt.

  ‘Yes, it is a bit nippy,’ Jack said, walking with Alice to the door and switching off the light. ‘I expect it’ll be just the right temperature for storing wine!’ and he swung the oak door closed behind them.

  6

  The Yew Tree

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING the children retraced their steps up the steep side of the valley, with Spot leading the way. Jack went with them, carrying a garden spade and some pairs of thick gardening gloves.

  ‘I don’t fancy lifting a dead badger with my bare hands,’ he explained.

  After a bit of searching they found once more the broad cleft through the fir forest that Spot had called the Dark and Dreadful Path. Although the day was bright and sunny, the same dismal light filled the place that they remembered from the previous day and the same oppressive atmosphere pervaded everything with its sense of sadness and decay.

  ‘What a dreary bit of the woods,’ Jack said, as he entered the open ride.

  William led the way to where the dead badger still lay, half hidden under the mound of twigs. Spot hung back, with his tail between his legs and his head lowered.

  ‘Poor old chap,’ Jack exclaimed, examining the badger. ‘It looks as though it’s been in a fight. You see, there on the neck, where all the fur is torn. Something pretty big must have attacked it,’ and, as he spoke he looked up, his eyes searching the dense trees that surrounded them.

  ‘Hurry, please, Uncle Jack,’ Alice said, in a small voice. ‘I really hate this bit of the forest.’ And she also stayed back, standing next to Spot, not wanting to enter the clearing.