That Still andWhispering Place

by Kathy Shuker

  There was no moon and it was dark outside, forcing Claire to immediately duck back into the house and grab a torch. She was surprised at herself, at how quickly she had forgotten what living in a small Cornish village was like: the lack of streetlights, the obscurity of the black winter nights. And walking the narrow lane back into the village, she was immediately reminded of the stillness of these evenings in a community of little more than five hundred people. There was the odd bark of a dog, the twitter of a late-settling bird, somebody banging a garden gate closed. She could smell wood smoke in the air. Mains gas didn’t extend to places like this so people burnt wood, coal and oil.

  Claire reached the bridge over the river, turned right to cross it and kept on walking up the hill. The White House and its accompanying vineyard stood on the northern side of the valley, the white-rendered old farmhouse half way up the hillside, looking down on the village below, virtually surrounded by field upon sloping field of vines. If Claire paused and flicked her torch beam that way she could see the vines now, tall and still bushy with growth.

  She reached the turning to the vineyard on her right, but found herself looking to the left instead. The ground on that side of the lane was called Tom’s Acre and had belonged to her father. All her life he had run a nursery there. When he’d retired, not long after she and Neil had moved away, he had sold the land to the Pennymans and she’d heard that the courtyard with its ramshackle old farm buildings had recently been turned into a craft centre. The Pennyman enterprise grew each year, it seemed, carrying all before it.

  She turned away and walked through the car park to the vineyard buildings. The house was further on but a bright light shone in the winery, its open double doors shedding the glow in an arc across the yard. Voices sounded inside. Claire approached the edge of the doorway and looked in. She could see leaves and stems strewn on the floor, odd grapes too, broken and bleeding. Her nose filled with the sharp, fruity smell of grape juice. Of course, it was October and they had been harvesting. That meant long hours and weary backs and they would be working late. It wasn’t the best time to visit.

  A jet of water sprayed on the ground in front of her and she jumped aside with a yelp of surprise as it splashed her and ran pell-mell down the slope into the broken gravel of the yard.

  ‘Sorry.’ The hosepipe was switched off and a man appeared in the doorway, the nozzle still in his hand. He stared at her, frowning. ‘Claire? It is you. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were there. I was just washing down. Are you OK?’

  ‘Hi Tim. I’m fine, thanks.’ She glanced down at her jeans but they were barely damp. ‘Just took me by surprise.’

  She smiled warily. Tim was Neil’s younger brother, a bit introspective sometimes but he was all right. Once upon a time they’d been friends. He threw the hosepipe down and, after a blink of hesitation, leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek.

  ‘I got a text from Neil,’ he said, ‘saying you were here. I wasn’t sure if he was joking.’

  ‘No, no joke.’ She looked him over. ‘Short hair Tim? I nearly didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘We decided it was about time he lost the hippy look.’

  Julia had joined them. Her wiry frame was covered in juice-stained dungarees which looked too big for her, her short hair now more steely grey than brown. She produced a strained smile. ‘Hello Claire. Long time, no see.’

  ‘Hi Julia.’

  Julia jerked her head in her brother’s direction. ‘The earrings and leather jewellery frightened the punters. They had to go. I hadn’t heard you were over. Where are you staying?’

  ‘I’m renting Woodbine Cottage, down on Dark Lane.’

  Tim frowned. ‘That’s somewhere by old Eddie isn’t it?’

  ‘Right next door. The last house before the woods.’

  ‘You’re renting?’ said Julia, frowning.

  ‘Yes, just until…’

  ‘Who is it?’ The voice was authoritative and female. A small, slightly stooped woman came forward, her steps stiff, her eyes keen. She frowned heavily. ‘Oh, it’s you, Claire.’ She managed to make her sound like an illness.

  ‘Hello Eve. I see I’ve chosen a bad time but I wanted to see you.’

  Eve had aged since Claire had seen her last: the skin of her face sagged more and she had shrunk. The gimlet eyes were as sharp as ever though.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Eve sniffed disdainfully. ‘If you’re going to tell me that you’ve come back, I already know. Neil rang me.’

  ‘Come back?’ Julia exchanged a look with Timothy. ‘You mean, like, permanently?’

  Claire nodded. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the divorce. We’re waiting on the sale of the house. When I get my share of the money, I’m hoping to buy somewhere.’

  ‘And yet you were so keen to go,’ said Eve, her lip curling. ‘Taking the family with you.’

  ‘That’s not true, Eve. I wasn’t keen to go. I was confused and desperate. So was Neil. That’s why he suggested it.’

  Eve made a derisive noise and fixed her flinty gaze on her daughter-in-law. Claire stared back, unflinching.

  No-one else spoke.

  Julia shifted uncomfortably. ‘I suppose Laura’s at Oxford now?’ she asked loudly.

  Claire pulled her eyes from Eve and smiled. ‘Yes. She started a couple of weeks ago.’ Again there was silence. ‘Anyway…I can see you're busy. The harvest is late isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’ Eve was already moving stiffly away towards the house. ‘You never showed any interest in it before. Come and see me before you go, Tim.’

  Julia waited pointedly until Eve was out of earshot.

  ‘You’re right: the harvest is late. We had a good, sunny autumn so we held back. We’ve only just finished.’ She glanced towards the sky. ‘Just as well since they’ve forecast rain for tonight.’

  Claire nodded, fidgeted. ‘Right… well, I’ll be off then.’

  ‘Claire?’ Julia flicked Tim another look. ‘Have you heard about the Craft Yard? Only the builders found a couple of things belonging to your dad when they were doing the conversions. If you’ll just wait, I’ll get them for you.’

  She hurried to the office next door, leaving Claire alone with Tim. He rammed his hands in his pockets and shifted the gravel with the toe of his shoe. She cast about for something to say.

  ‘Have you seen Neil recently?’

  ‘In the summer. He came over and helped with the stall at the fête.’

  There was another awkward silence.

  ‘And you?’ she said. ‘Are you still with Monica?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re out of date, Claire. Monica’s ancient history. I’ve had another girlfriend since then. And that finished months ago too.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Hey, you know me,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’m not the settling kind.’

  She saw him study her face speculatively, a smile teasing at his mouth, a mischievous glint in his eye.

  ‘You know, you should take a look at the Craft Yard,’ he said. ‘Jane’s got a unit there.’

  Her mouth fell open. He’d caught her out and he knew it.

  ‘Do you mean Jane Sawdy?’ she said. ‘I didn’t know she was back in the village.’

  ‘A few months ago. She’s living in her mother’s house out on the road to Lostwithiel. Her mother died a while back.’ He produced that taunting smile again. ‘I take it you two have never made up then?’

  Julia’s return saved her the need to reply. She handed Claire a plastic carrier bag. ‘There’s a watch in there and a few other odds and ends. I thought you’d want to have them.’

  ‘Thanks. I do.’

  Claire raised the bag in a half-hearted gesture and gratefully said her farewells. Julia managed a smile. Tim just nodded. She walked briskly away, suspected that she was being watched, was sure she was being talked about.

  Reaching the bridge, she stopped to lean on the rough stone wall and look down into the river, though it was
much too dark to see anything. The breeze rustled the trees along the river banks and sent a flurry of falling leaves drifting past her and down onto the water below.

  She took a few slow breaths, then turned for home, relieved. She had negotiated her first hurdle.

  *

  Julia finished her last check in the winery, came outside and turned to lock the door. It was after nine now and pitch dark, not a single star in sight. Standing here she was out of range of the light sensor on the barn restaurant and she stayed there, happy to be enveloped by the night. She looked down the valley towards the village. Illuminated windows showed the extent of the straggling settlement either side of the river and made a faint halo of light. Pale smoke drifted up from a chimney here and there and a tawny owl hooted somewhere below her, sounding absurdly loud in the stillness. A car engine started and lights flashed on the road towards Penmarna. It looked peaceful, a village at rest.

  But Julia didn’t feel peaceful. Her mind was occupied with Claire, her thoughts automatically flicking back through the years: Claire the curious and overactive kid, then Claire, the gangly-limbed teenager, enthusiastic, funny, stubborn, independent, awkward. Brave even.

  ‘You all right there?’

  She recognised her husband’s smoke-gravelled voice and turned as he came alongside.

  ‘Just enjoying the quiet.’ She hesitated. ‘And I was thinking about Claire.’

  Phil grunted in a non-committal way.

  ‘Are you surprised she’s back?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. She was born and bred here. You don’t get it out of your system as easy as that. Can you imagine leaving?’

  She frowned and shook her head. ‘You off to the pub?’

  ‘Just for a pint. Won’t be late.’ He leaned across to kiss her then strode off, torch in hand, though she was sure he’d know the way blindfold.

  Her thoughts returned to Claire. Julia’s father had found her once in the lower part of the vineyard with a toad sitting, glassy-eyed, on her hand. ‘She’s like a Gerald Durrell with curls,’ he’d joked, slightly disconcerted. If she saw something interesting, she always had to follow it, be it a moth, a beetle, a mouse, even ants. She was dogged about things, persistent.

  Julia was ill at ease. In many ways, she liked her sister-in-law, always had. She even liked the way she stood up to Eve. But she didn’t feel good about the woman being here. It might not be her fault, but trouble seemed to follow Claire around like a shadow. And now, with Jane back in Bohenna too, Julia couldn’t shake off the fear that Claire’s return was like putting a light to a tinderbox.

  Chapter 2

  The rain that had been forecast arrived later that night, heavy and persistent, and the late sunny days of summer seemed to be washed away with it in the space of a few short hours, along with the last tenacious petals of the asters and geraniums. By morning, the rain had stopped but the mild balmy air of a Cornish autumn held a thick veil of moisture and Claire looked out of her front cottage window onto a clinging white mist. She knew these mists of old; here in the river valley, trapped between the woods, it might last all day.

  She turned away. Walking back to the kitchen past the sideboard, she automatically stroked a finger across the frame of a photograph of Gilly. The girl was grinning broadly, eyes shining. Claire’s gaze shifted to the only other photograph: Laura, not quite looking at the camera, a shy smile tugging at her lips. She paused, wondering how her elder daughter was doing in Oxford, worrying about her as she habitually did. Further along the cupboard top was the crumpled receipt she had scribbled a phone number on the night before and she picked it up and looked at it as if she might see something new there, some wisdom that would indicate what she should do about it. The Vintage and Collectible unit in the Craft Yard was advertising for help. She really needed a job - her meagre savings weren’t going to go very far - but the vineyard was the last place she wanted to work. She’d only written it down out of desperation.

  She poured milk over a bowl of cereal and sat to eat it at the tiny table crammed into a corner of the kitchen. There was no dining room. The cottage was small and dark, two up, two down, with a tiny afterthought bathroom built on the back. Showing her round with a breezy, disinterested air, the estate agent had turned her nose up at the musty smell, had tried to talk persuasively of the larger, more modern - and more expensive - semi the agency had available higher up the valley side.

  ‘Unless you particularly want to be near the river?’ she’d added, doubtfully.

  Did Claire want to be near the river? Not especially, given that a significant tract of woodland separated her from it. But she didn’t want to rent the modern semi either, not when it was a stone’s throw from the last house she’d shared with Neil. In any case, this tiny little cottage, with its lichen covered thatch and damp cob walls, was all she could afford. There was no way she was going to go asking Neil for money. And Woodbine Cottage had simply been left unoccupied and shut up for too long. She knew about cob walls because she had grown up in a cob house. They were like living things, they needed air to let them breathe. Otherwise the place was fine: it had a telephone line and a television aerial and it had been reasonably decorated in a neutral way. It could be made into a comfortable home for a while.

  Her father’s belongings lay on the table where she had abandoned them the night before: as well as the watch, there were a couple of ball point pens and an old pocket diary. She picked up the watch with her free hand as she ate, handling it for a moment, remembering. It was hardly surprising it had been left behind. Her father never wore the thing, said he hated the feel of it on his wrist and he kept his own hours anyway. Not that he wore any kind of jewellery, not even his wedding ring which he complained irritated him and which he regularly removed and left lying around. Claire wondered where that had ended up and smiled. In a flower pot maybe.

  ‘It shows what you think of our marriage if you won’t wear my ring,’ Sally, Claire’s mother, used to say peevishly. Then he’d apologise, try to explain, but Sally, an incomer and restless, wanting excitement and change, had never been cut out for life in Bohenna. She had never been likely to be content - as her husband was - exclaiming each year at the wonder of the clematis rambling over the fence or the beauty of the wildflowers in the hedgerows. It wasn’t the ring - or the lack of it - which had made her leave.

  The cereal finished, Claire sat, staring into space, her thoughts now on her meeting at the vineyard and the news that Jane was living back in Bohenna. It had been on her mind off and on ever since.

  She got up suddenly, walked back into the living room and pulled a photograph album out of a drawer of the sideboard. She flipped through the pages of snaps, then paused and took the album across to the window. Here was a photo of ‘the gang’ when they were teenagers: Neil, Tim, Julia, Phil and Jane. She hadn’t looked at these pictures in years. The one below included Fiona too, Jane’s scatter-brained cousin who sometimes came to stay with her. How young we were, she thought, how naïve. She shook her head, smiling ruefully. And yet we thought we knew everything.

  Over the page was one of Claire by herself, sitting on the famous horizontal branch over the river where the rope swing hung - their favourite hang-out. Tim must have taken it because it was a good shot and no-one else took decent pictures. Photography had been a bit of a hobby of his. Claire was posing, balancing casually but precariously as if a fall onto the stony river bed below didn’t concern her a jot. Long skinny limbs, curly blonde hair shaggy and untidy, jeans rolled up below her knees, nose in the air. Cocky. Was that really the same person? She barely recognised herself. She was forty-two now. Where had all that self-assurance gone?

  She turned a page. And here was Jane, her class-mate and best friend, leaning against the trunk of the same tree. Jane could have been a model. She had the looks for it: the soft, swinging dark hair, the large limpid eyes and a grace none of her contemporaries could match. She and Claire had been chalk and cheese but it had worked…for a while any
way. Jane had been quiet, introspective, moody even. She had been smart and academic too and she’d gone away to university and had never returned to Bohenna.

  Now she was back and running a unit at the Craft Yard which was odd: Jane had never been into crafts. I take it you two have never made up then? Tim knew very well that they’d never made up.

  Claire closed the album and watched Eddie hoeing his front garden, cutting through the top soil, turning weeds over. He had barely exchanged five words with her since she’d moved in. He didn’t want company, he had made that clear; he wanted to be left alone. She could hear his television sometimes - he was deaf and he had the sound turned up - and that only seemed to emphasise how alone she was. It was proving a challenge, living by herself after all these years.

  A few minutes later she eased her trainers on, grabbed her jacket and went out.

  *

  Claire paused at the entrance to the old yard. The once dilapidated farm buildings the old nursery had inherited now had new windows, doors and security lights and the uneven yard had been relaid with fake stone slabs and was eerily smooth. Hand-painted wooden signs hung beside each door and tubs of plants were dotted here and there - the only nod to its previous life as a nursery. Claire wondered what her father would have made of this modern theme park. Nothing, probably, because he had been more pragmatic than she was. At least the place is being used, he’d probably have said.

  There were eight units in all, arranged around three sides of the yard. One was empty but the rest were occupied: wood-turning, stained-glass, fabric crafts, paintings and pottery. Two of them had nothing to do with crafts: the Vintage and Collectible unit and one called Natural Healing.

  V and C - the initials were intertwined on the sign - was the first unit on her left and she wandered across to look in the window. The display held a couple of old enamel advertising signs, a big Victorian kitchen chair draped with a patchwork quilt, an inlaid chest of drawers and a low shelf unit with a selection of glazed pottery. It had been nicely done - better than she had expected - but the interior beyond looked dark and cluttered. She noticed a thick-set woman looking at her from behind a desk near the entrance and she turned away.