by Sylvia Waugh
They went into the sitting-room and sat down. Elsie noted once again her daughter’s failures as a housewife, a room surface-tidy but with dust in the corners and too many books and other paraphernalia lying around.
“You could certainly do with more space,” said Elsie.
“So you keep saying,” said Jennifer, tight-lipped.
Lorna came along later in the afternoon with baby Matthew in his carrycot. The baby was four months old and everybody’s favourite. Albert brought them, but he did not stay. The whole clan gathering could be a bit overpowering.
“I’ll come back for you about half-six,” he said, and made his escape.
Everyone crowded round to admire the baby and persuade him to laugh, his one and only accomplishment so far. He chortled loudly till Elsie called them all to order saying, “Don’t let him get too excited. He shouldn’t be laughing like that at his age. It can’t be good for him.”
To change the subject, Lorna said, “So what do you think about the family moving to Brocklehurst Grove, Gran? It should be an interesting New Year.”
“If I’d had anything to do with it, they would have moved in for Christmas,” said Elsie. “They knew the house was theirs over a week ago. You’d think she’d at least have got the keys and had a look at the place.”
Jennifer said nothing but her face took on a look of silent stubbornness that her mother recognised.
“I don’t think even you could move house in a couple of weeks, Gran,” said Lorna, smiling at her grandmother. “But we could pop in and get the keys on Monday, Mum. The office should still be open then. Christmas Day’s not till Wednesday.”
“No!” said Jennifer sharply. “I don’t want to hear another word about those keys. I’ll collect them in January and not before. There’s plenty to do at Christmas without looking at houses.”
CHAPTER 20
Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove
“AND IF YOU should need any information regarding the contents of the house, for example, you should contact Rothwell and Ramshaw. Their Mr Dobb will be able to help you.”
“Contents?” said Jennifer, looking doubtfully at Tom. She had been expecting to visit an empty house. The surveyor’s report had mentioned the absence of rising damp, the sizes of the various rooms and the fact that the roof appeared to be sound. It had made no reference at all to contents.
“From what I gather,” said Mr Cromarty, looking down at a paper on his desk, “the Mennyms seem to have left a considerable amount of property behind them. It may, of course, have belonged to the original owner, Kate Penshaw, in which case they could have felt that the property went with the house. You will recall that they were formerly Miss Penshaw’s paying guests. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more. Mr Dobb will be the best person to ask.”
As soon as they left the solicitor’s office Jennifer began to work herself into a frenzy of worry.
“I wonder what he meant? What sort of property? If there’s a lot of furniture in there, Tom, it will have to go. I don’t care how old it is or how lovely it is, or anything – I can’t live with other people’s furniture.”
“Nobody says you have to,” said Tom. “If there’s stuff there we don’t want, we’ll get rid of it.”
The next day, a bitterly cold, wet Friday, Tom set off with Jennifer on the trip to Brocklehurst Grove. Anna came along with them. Lorna appeared just as they were setting out, having left Albert to look after Matthew. Ian was at work, Keith was still in bed, and Robert was somewhere in Germany. The winter holiday was not yet over.
Tom made a detour to another bit of suburbia to pick up Elsie. Jennifer moved into the back seat between Lorna and Anna so that her mother could sit in front. It was Elsie who directed Tom onto the road to Brocklehurst Grove. He did not need directions, but she gave them anyway.
“And now,” she said, as they turned into the square, “we are here. Your new home!”
Jennifer looked up at the house, an imposing three-storey building with a broad drive and a large front garden.
“It’s big,” she said.
“You knew that,” said Elsie. “I’ve told you plenty of times.”
Elsie was the only one of the family who had ever been inside Number 5, but that was a very long time ago.
They left the car out in the street, went through the wrought-iron gates and up to the front door. Even from the outside the house did not look empty. Eyes could be peeping from behind those net curtains, thought Jennifer with a shiver. She half-expected someone to come out and challenge them. Tom took the keys from his pocket and selected two that looked as if they would fit the locks. The front door opened and they all crowded in, anxious to escape the cold and damp.
Inside the hall, their first impression was that they were entering a home that was still lived in. They could feel the warmth, in cosy contrast with the bleak weather outside. There were carpets on the floor and up the staircase. A gate-legged table stood beneath a mirror on the wall.
“I feel like an intruder,” said Jennifer as she looked at the closed doors around the hallway. To open them seemed like trespassing.
Her mother had no such qualms. “Let’s press on,” she said. “There’s a lot to see and it will be dark soon.”
Anna put her finger to the light switch and on came the light.
“They haven’t had the electricity switched off!” Lorna exclaimed. “They should have seen to that before they left.”
“Just as well, though,” said Elsie. “It gives us a much better chance to look at things.”
Jennifer said nothing.
They looked into the sitting-room, the room the Mennyms always called the lounge, and were surprised to see that it was completely furnished in a mixture of styles that showed quite clearly that not all of the furniture could have belonged to Kate Penshaw. There was even a fairly modern television set. On various shelves there were books and ornaments. On top of a bureau there was a workbasket with threads and needles in it.
“This is spooky,” said Anna, with a sly look at her mother. “It looks as if they haven’t moved out at all.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Tom. “They’ve definitely moved out. We have all the papers we need to prove it. When we’ve seen the whole house, I’ll ring this Mr Dobb and clear up any queries we might have. One thing at a time. And don’t let’s jump to any conclusions.”
Jennifer opened the breakfast-room door and spotted a mistake that Tulip had made. On the desk in the corner, a table-lamp was still lit. Beside it was an old black telephone.
“I wonder if the phone’s working,” said Anna, following her mother into the room.
“Of course not,” said Jennifer, but Anna picked up the receiver anyway and found that the line was buzzing.
“It is working, Mum, it is,” she said. “Just listen.”
Tom came into the room.
“It’s a funny way to leave a house,” he had to concede. “But we’ll sort it out. I’ll use that phone now and have a word with Mr Dobb. He’ll give us some answers.”
Anna went on ahead to look at the rest of the house. She was the first to go upstairs. Lorna and her grandmother were in the day nursery. There were so many things to look at they hardly knew where to start.
“Mr Dobb?” said Tom.
“Speaking. Can I help you?” said the voice at the other end of the line.
“I’m Tom Gladstone, Jennifer’s husband. We are just looking round Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. We were told that you would be able to answer any queries.”
“Yes?” said the voice.
“You may not know this, but the electricity has not been turned off and the telephone hasn’t been disconnected.”
There was a pause whilst Mr Dobb double-checked with the information in the Mennyms’ letter.
“Ah yes,” he said, “that is quite in order. When you take over the utilities for the house any accounts left over from the previous owner will be settled in full. Feel free to use them in the interim. You have been given explici
t permission to do so.”
“That was nice of them,” said Tom as he put down the phone.
“But we’ll not take advantage,” said Jennifer. “We’ll have the change over made as soon as possible, whether we move in or not.”
Elsie came into the breakfast-room just in time to hear what they were saying.
“What do you mean?” she said. “Of course you’ll be moving in. And quickly. There is no point in leaving the house empty.”
“I only wish it were empty,” said Jennifer. She felt totally bewildered. Her father, from whom she had inherited the fair, wispy hair and the pale blue eyes, would have understood. They had been so alike in many ways, but Jack Layton had died ten years ago. Her mother’s understanding of her daughter went no further than to comment, from time to time, that Jennifer was just like her dad. And that was not intended as a compliment.
They went up the stairs. On the next floor they looked into the big front bedroom, the room that had belonged to Joshua and Vinetta. A dressing-gown was hanging on the inside of the door. There were hairbrushes and combs on the dressing-table.
“This is preposterous,” said Jennifer. “I am beginning to feel like Goldilocks invading the home of the three bears. Let’s go home now. I’ve seen more than enough for one day.”
Anna was already on the top landing. She peeped into the bathroom but could see little in the growing darkness, just enough to identify the bath and the washbasin and to know that this was a room almost identical to the one she had already seen on the floor below. There was no light on this landing. Anna missed the switch which was located between the doors of the bathroom and the room now labelled ‘DOLL-ROOM’. That was the door Anna came to next. In the gloom, she did not see the black letters on the polished wood. She turned the door handle, thinking to go in and switch on the light inside. The door creaked open till it was stopped by an obstruction. By now the room, east-facing and nearly into darkness, was all shades of grey.
Anna looked down to see why the door had ceased to open. She saw, with horror she saw, a woman’s leg and foot, the drapery of a longish skirt. Anna jumped and, staring into the room, was instantly aware of shadowy figures, all seated slouched in crowded chairs, but completely motionless, still as death. She made no attempt to switch on the light. She turned and ran screaming down the stairs.
“Mum, Dad, Mum, Dad, Dad, Dad!” she yelled. “There’s a room full of bodies. Dead bodies. Tons of them, all dead!”
CHAPTER 21
Dead Bodies!
ANNA RAN TO her mother’s arms, shuddering and obviously terrified. Jennifer gave a wondering look at Tom. Dead bodies? Dead bodies? Without a word, Tom ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Anna, still clinging to her mother, yelled after him. “It’s the room at the back, Dad, the one next to the bathroom.”
For a chilling few moments that seemed to last forever they all stood and waited in breathless silence.
Then they heard Tom laugh, a faintly hysterical, relieved laugh. He had turned on the light in the doll-room and seen the strange family of rag dolls.
“It’s all right,” he called. “They aren’t dead people. They aren’t people at all. They are just dolls. Come up and see them.”
Anna, tugging her mother by the hand, led the way. Terror gave way to curiosity. Lorna and her grandmother followed. They all crowded into the doorway of the room full of dolls and what they saw filled them with amazement.
“What does it mean?” said Lorna. She gazed at the doll in the straight-backed carver chair, sitting there with its chin on its chest, its face a fine stocking-stitch, its eyes amber beads. The hair on its head was wiry and threaded with grey. Its arms were folded across its chest.
Elsie looked closely at the grandmother doll, a little old lady of a doll with silver hair and a blue and white checked pinny. The spectacles on the bridge of the fine little nose (stiffened with buckram, thought Elsie, very well made) had slipped askew. Elsie straightened them.
Cautiously, Anna approached the dolls on the settle. The mother doll’s arms were stretched out round her children, but the boy had fallen sideways so that the upper half of his body dangled over the edge. Anna, growing brave, lifted him up and sat him so that he rested against the mother doll.
Elsie looked at Sir Magnus in his armchair. She sleeked back his hair with her hands and neatened the outline of his white moustache. Then she turned her attention to the doll in the bed, lying with arms outstretched over the counterpane, long red hair brushed smoothly onto her shoulders. The green glass eyes glittered where the light caught them. Dolls, clearly dolls, magnificent, with a wealth of detail that in some cases included eyelashes and finger nails, as well as lips so finely stitched they looked almost able to speak.
“They’re wonderful,” said Elsie. “Where on earth have they come from?”
It was Jennifer who first saw the note on the dressing-table. It was in a very large, very conspicuous envelope. Only their wonder at the dolls had delayed them from seeing it earlier. Jennifer picked it up and read the inscription:
* * *
FOR THE NECT OWNERS OF THIS HOUSE
A LETTER PRESERVED FOR FORTY-SEVEN YEARS.
KATE PENSHAW’S DYING WISH
WHICH WE HAVE FAITHFULLY OBSERVED
* * *
“I suppose we should open it,” she said.
She looked at Tom. He took the envelope from her and tore it open. From it he took out a single sheet of paper, older-looking paper, written on in ink. He held it up and read it aloud.
“The dolls in this room,” he read, “are my people. Work of my hands and of my heart. Please, love them. And it is signed ‘Kate Penshaw’.”
“That is beautiful,” said Lorna, “and so are the dolls. Whatever we do, we must take care of them.”
Elsie nodded.
Jennifer looked round the room with mounting horror. This was a totally unexpected situation. She was filled with an awareness of other people living their own lives with their own eccentricities in this house that might one day be her home.
“I can’t,” she said wildly. “I know the message is beautiful and I know the dolls are beautiful, but if loving them means keeping them in this house, I just can’t do it.”
She looked round at them, at the old man in the armchair, the girl in the bed, at the nanny nursing the baby, the children, their mother, the figure with its head on its chest that was clearly meant to be the father, and at the little old woman in the basket chair. They were not as realistic as dummies in shop windows, but somehow they were eerily real. Jennifer steeled herself to say what she felt she must say next.
“I can’t live here,” she said quietly, grasping the back of the one empty chair in the room. “I don’t think I could ever live here.”
Elsie gave her daughter a look of strong disapproval.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said. “Of course you can live here. The dolls will be easily disposed of, if they worry you so much. Good gracious, girl, the place is ready to move into. You could all move here tomorrow if you wanted to. You wouldn’t even need to bring a teaspoon!”
“No!” said Jennifer vehemently. “Definitely no!”
Before Elsie could speak again, Tom intervened.
“Let’s not start any arguments,” he said. “We’ll work something out. I think perhaps we really should go home now and think about it.”
Elsie gave a sniff but said no more. Watched keenly by Anna, she went round all of the dolls, adjusting them in their seats. She scrutinised each one very minutely.
“They are very well made,” she said. “If you don’t want to keep them, you should offer them for sale. I am sure you would get a good price for them. I don’t know how they would rate as antiques, but they can’t be far short and they are so perfect some collector is sure to want them.”
“Grandmother,” said Lorna, outraged. “We can’t possibly sell them. We may be able to sell everything else in the house if we want, but we can’t sell the doll
s. That would be a terrible thing to do. It would be going against the wishes of the dead. Look how wonderful the Mennyms were, keeping the dolls perfect all these years. And they weren’t even family! We have inherited a responsibility.”
“Well, we can’t keep them,” said Jennifer. “Before we can give so much as a thought to living here, the dolls will have to go.”
“I don’t see why we can’t just leave them in this room,” said Lorna. “The house is big enough. You could lock the door and leave them there. You need never look at them again, if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t mind checking on them from time to time, dusting the room and making sure that they come to no harm.”
“Keeping the dolls shut away in this room would hardly be a way of loving them,” said Tom. “They’ve probably been on display somewhere. My guess is that the Mennyms simply stored them in this room when they were leaving.”
“We could always try to sell them to someone who would love them,” said Elsie, shrewd as ever.
“Not sell them – give them,” said Lorna, suddenly inspired. “We must find someone who will love them and care for them, and we must give them away.”
“Hold hard,” said Tom. “Before we make any plans at all, I think I should have another word with Mr Dobb. I don’t suppose he’ll be in the office now. It’s rather late, and I don’t want to use the phone here again. I’ll ring him from home on Monday.”
“And it’s not just the dolls,” said Jennifer. “It’s everything. I don’t want to live with other people’s memories.”
Poor Mennyms! They had been so thorough in their preparations, making sure that their finances were left in order, making sure that their cloth bodies should be seemly in death. But not one of them had given any thought to the impact a house full of things could have on a family of real, live people.
The oversight was strange, but understandable. The Mennyms had come to life in a fully-furnished home. There had been clothes in the wardrobes, furniture and fittings all over the house. Kate Penshaw herself had never moved into an empty house. She had been born, and had lived all her life, at Number 5 Brocklehurst Grove. Memories almost inexhaustible of things she had known and read and seen had been passed on to her creations and embellished by them over the years. Moving into an empty house was simply an area not one of them had ever explored. Appleby’s imagination might have run to such lengths, but she was already dead.