Account Rendered & Other Stories

by Marjorie Eccles

  It was undated with many crossings-out and alterations. My dear Zoe, it began, This letter is going to be hard for me to write, but I’ll do my best, hoping it will make up for things I ought to have said to you before. I know I’ve fobbed you off whenever you’ve asked me about family matters, though God knows I’d ho wish to hurt you by doing that, just the opposite. I’ve never been much of a one for talking, as you know, nor have I ever seen any good in raking up the miseries of the past, but I can’t have long to live now, and recent events have made me feel you have a right to know, if only to be prepared for what might come. If the telling seems bald, I hope you’ll forgive that too, lass. I’m not good with written words, either, but here goes.

  It all started with Sophie. Sophie when she was young, the girl in the portrait, not the woman she was when I first met her all those years ago, in London. Or perhaps it went even further back, to Benjamin Temple, her father.

  Sophie, in the plum-coloured velvet hat. Why had Daniel claimed to be as ignorant of her as I was when he must have seen this letter? Of course, it was possible that he might not have seen it, that it had only come to light by an accidental flick of the pages of that folio, I told myself, but despite the warmth from the stove, I shivered and felt the goose pimples rise on my arms.

  But for me the beginning was when I married your grandmother. We met when I was in the RAF, and married a month later, a couple of reckless young kids in wartime. It was a mistake for both of us. When the war was over, I brought her home to Yorkshire, but she couldn’t settle. She hated everything—the climate, the poky house we had to live in, the shortage of money. Life here was too tame for her, but more than any of that, it was me she found fault with. I’d changed, I was no longer the devil-may-care fighter pilot, one of the wild bunch, living for the moment because literally tomorrow we might be dead. She’d fallen in love with a madcap RAF officer scarcely out of his teens, and found herself married to a dull and unambitious bloke who wanted only to forget the war and the horrors of seeing his comrades shot down in flames. I asked nothing more than to spend my life quietly here, making furniture, and I won’t upset you by relating the hell our life became during the two years we were together. She had the Temple genes, she’d inherited her grandfather’s, temper, and I retreated into my shell when I should have tried to understand her more, but

  And that was it. There, at the bottom of the page, the writing stopped, maddeningly, mid-sentence.

  I couldn’t believe this was all there was. What about the rest of it? The minutes ticked by, my coffee stood beside me, stone-cold, while the usual asthmatic wheeze of the longcase clock in the hall heralded the hour. I waited for the ten unmusical bongs that would follow. They echoed eerily through the silent house, and I shivered. I’d have been glad of company, even the dogs, but they’d sprung into Cluny’s car, as usual, the moment they heard the engine start.

  After a while, I knew what I had to do.

  All William’s possessions, all the personal clutter of his daily living that had previously lain around the house, had been cleared away. His clothes, his music, his spectacles, his Fisherman’s Friend lozenges, plus everything in his study, had all disappeared—within a week, Magda had reported. Clearing out personal belongings is a painful task that has to be done when anyone dies, but the speed and the ruthlessness Cluny had employed suggested that either this had been the first move in an immediate decision to leave, or there was, as Magda had suggested, a less acceptable explanation.

  From the hook behind the door, I selected the keys to the attic.

  Forbidden territory up here, only previously visited under William’s supervision, because he’d declared that the narrow stairs were unsafe. But as I looked around, I realized now that this reason had been nothing more than an excuse to keep the place secret. It was like a young boy’s den. Piles of books with titles such as The Boy’s Wonder Book of Science. A box containing a clockwork Hornby train set. An old box Brownie camera, a cricket bat. This new view of my unsentimental old Grandpa, his boyish treasures scattered amongst the sort of detritus that any family with a long occupation of a house and a big attic inevitably accumulates, very nearly unravelled me. I pulled a dust sheet from an old, buttoned chair, minus a few buttons, its rose velvet faded to stripy rust, and sank down on it.

  Somebody had been up here, and recently. The dust on the floor had been disturbed, and in the middle of it was a not very large cardboard box. William’s papers, evidently. I’d expected more.

  I was on my knees, delving into the box, when I thought I heard noises. Faint but distinct, from below. Rubbish, it’s all in the mind, I told myself firmly. All the outside doors were locked, and unless Magda or Cluny had come back much sooner than intended, I was alone. But the sounds were unmistakable, and coming nearer. Footsteps. I held my breath. The hairs on my neck lifted. The knob on the door at the foot of the stairs rattled.

  The footsteps were real, and they were beginning to ascend the attic stairs. Dry-mouthed, I reached out blindly and my hand found something heavy and cold lying abandoned on top of a boxful of discarded kitchen utensils. It was a flat iron, ungainly to heft as a weapon, but I held on to it for dear life. I reckoned I could always throw it if necessary. If I used both hands.

  ‘Hello, anybody there?’

  ‘Daniel!’ Relief made my knees buckle. ‘Oh my God, you scared the wits out of me! You’re the last person I expected to see.’

  He took one look at the flat iron and raised a fending-off hand. ‘Sorry—and I know, I know, you said—early night and all that. But I was locking up before going home and when I saw a light in the attic, the rest of the house in darkness, I thought I’d better investigate.’

  Stupid of me, I should have remembered he had a key, for just such emergencies, and that he often worked until all hours, forgetting time existed.

  ‘What are you doing up here, this time of night?’ he went on. ‘And before you answer—I’d feel a lot safer if you’d put that thing down.’

  I was only too glad to comply. Those poor women who’d once had to iron huge piles of shirts and sheets and starched petticoats with contraptions like this! ‘Good thing you called out. I might have bashed you on the head with it—or broken my wrist. I was just moseying around, that’s all,’ I said, as casually as I could, but thinking quickly. After reading that letter from my grandfather, my earlier intentions not to be alone with Daniel were doing a reverse. For one thing, I wanted to challenge him with why a private letter to me had been hidden in one of his design books. ‘If you haven’t been home, you haven’t eaten yet.’

  ‘Quick thinking.’

  I let that pass. ‘Come downstairs and I’ll get you something.’

  He gave me an old-fashioned look, no doubt suspicious of my sudden change of attitude, but after a curious glance around the attic, he followed me downstairs into the kitchen, sitting at the table while I put on fresh coffee and found some ham in the fridge. Reaching out to the biscuit jar, he took two, comfortably at home in a kitchen where he’d always been welcomed as one of the family. ‘Wonder who first invented chocolate biscuits?’ he mumbled, his mouth full. ‘Hope they got the OBE.’

  ‘Lay off them or you’ll never eat this.’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  He munched away while I sliced the ham thickly to make him a mighty sandwich, not forgetting the mustard he liked. It made me think of other sandwiches I’d made for him, other times like this. Or not quite like this. I’d never before felt uneasy or unsure with Daniel. Betrayed was perhaps a better word.

  I put the plate on the table. ‘Daniel—’ I began after a while.

  ‘Mm, fantastic,’ he said appreciatively, through big bites of the sandwich. ‘Daniel, what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Wasn’t I making mysteries where they didn’t exist? I’d never before had reason to suspect him of anything remotely like dishonesty. Yet that folio of his had been lying open on his desk, and he’d put it away pretty smartly when he saw I’d been loo
king at it. Should I confront him, or let my instinct to trust him take over? I really didn’t know. My judgement where he was concerned seemed to have deserted me totally; mixed-up didn’t begin to describe how I felt.

  I cut him a slice of Magda’s rich, homemade fruitcake, poured coffee, and pushed a mug and the plate across to him. I poured some for myself. I might need sleep tonight, but I needed caffeine more, right at this minute.

  ‘Don’t be infuriating, Zoe. What were you going to say, and what were you doing, poking about in the attic?’

  I ignored the first question and, watching for his reaction, told him about my conversation with Cluny, and her intention to burn all William’s papers and photographs.

  ‘That’s gross! Insensitive, even for Cluny.’

  I said slowly, ‘I don’t believe she sees it like that. I think she’s just a bit obsessed about clearing the decks to get back to Zimbabwe. She didn’t want the picture, either, by the way, even when I told her what it was worth. Magda says it’s guilt compensation.’

  ‘Oh right, yes, Magda.’ He finished the cake, then propped his elbows on the table. ‘Look, Zoe, I’m having this problem . . . There’s not a chance in hell of proving the sort of accusations she’s been throwing around, about Cluny and Baines. Murder—just for this house? The stakes aren’t high enough, for that. All the same, under the drama, Magda’s not really the hysterical type . . .’

  ‘You’re not saying you believe her?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that I get a knot in my guts every time I think about that will. Or non-will, I suppose is nearer the mark. As far as you can ever know anyone, I reckon I knew the Old Man. He could be an old so-and-so, but it’s just so out of character for him to have let Cluny come in for everything, even by default, Zoe, when you were the apple of his eye.’

  I swallowed an iron lump in my throat. ‘He didn’t need to leave me money to show me that. What amazes me is that he didn’t provide for Magda.’ Whatever else, William had always been fair-minded, yet Magda had received not even a token acknowledgement for over fifty years’ loyal and devoted service. She’d never so much as mentioned it, but I wondered how far that had contributed to her suspicions that Cluny and Baines had conspired to destroy the will, and then . . . to get rid of William himself.

  I shuddered, and the silence lengthened as I thought about that, and the letter from him that I’d just read, seeing again the untidiness of it, and the crossings-out. It had looked like a rough draft—

  Yes, I thought, yes!

  William rarely read anything but newspapers, and when he did it wouldn’t be long before his hand reached out for the nearest handy scrap of paper, to sketch a rapid design idea that had just come to him, or to jot down some reminder to himself. Then quite often he’d have a total memory lapse as to where he’d put these notes. They’d turn up on old envelopes, bills, petrol receipts, and once, memorably, on the back of a cheque for several hundred pounds. So why not an unfinished draft of a letter left in a pattern book he happened to be leafing through when the idea of writing it occurred to him? Afterwards forgotten—or even, since it was so obviously of importance to him, left there purposely as being as good a place as any to hide it away from prying eyes, since full pattern books could lie there for months, even years, without being opened. And then he’d died before he could return to finish it. The rest of the letter, if he ever had completed it, could be anywhere—in any one of the books and stuff Cluny had already got rid of, for instance. In which case I might as well forget it.

  I thought about William. Taciturn, keeping his own counsel, stern, even harsh, at times, people thought him uncommunicative, but I knew his other side. If he’d been secretive, he’d had his own good reasons—and in that letter, he’d begun to open his heart and show them to me. If only I could find the rest of it, I thought, I should almost certainly discover the whole truth, including the reason why he’d wanted me to have that portrait. Which might simply have been because it was worth—not a fortune, but certainly a good deal more than any of the other pictures in the house. On the other hand, I was in no doubt now that Sophie, whoever she might have been, had some special significance, other than some real or imagined resemblance to me, that she was part of that family history of ours that I wanted so much to know about. And what, I asked myself, were those ‘recent events’ he’d referred to, which had made him change his mind and decide to talk about the past?

  ‘So,’ Daniel said at last, ‘it’s certain Cluny will be putting Ingshaw on the market?’

  I remembered with a jolt his personal involvement if the house and his business premises were sold. ‘I’m afraid it looks like it. It won’t seem right, no Ingshaw, but it’s no longer my home, anyway. I’m going to start looking for somewhere to live tomorrow, for when I start my new job.’ Commuting to Leeds while living here was a feasible proposition that would enable me to rekindle old friendships, with people who still lived here, at least. My special friend Rebecca worked for an estate agent, whom she was going to marry shortly, and would be able to help me find something I could afford on a salary lower than I’d earned in London.

  I stirred my coffee. ‘I’ve never known exactly how Cluny and Grandpa met.’

  ‘Someone recommended him when she was looking to buy a chair. William took her round the house to show her one or two examples, as he used to do with customers, they got talking—and that was that, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you think it was Baines who did the recommending? If she knew him before, that could be why she’d decided to settle in Yorkshire. It would explain a lot. I mean, why Yorkshire, of all places, if not?’

  But it didn’t explain everything, by any means. The unanswered questions were mounting up. It wasn’t only Magda who was now uneasy about the circumstances of my grandfather’s death.

  * * *

  Why Yorkshire indeed? I wondered again next morning, as I looked out on a dark and miserable day, the bright sky of yesterday veiled by moisture. There was a whisper of rain on the roof tiles, and through the windows the view was grey and desolate. Leaning my forehead against the glass, I gazed across the empty miles of sombre moorland on this side of the house, patch-worked with the low, dry-stone walls that were a relic of sheep-farming days, with outcroppings of dark gritstone jutting from the surface of the thin soil. In winter, when the wind could blow the snow into nine-foot drifts, they might be the only landmarks in miles, a grim prospect. But in childhood summers, beneath the high clouds, when the grass and heather smelt hot and dry, and you lay down under the sun and felt the earth spin on its axis, it had felt like nowhere else in the world. Today, although the out-look was grey with rain, I could still think without regret of that other view from my once-treasured garden flat in Muswell Hill—a sour plot of London earth, narrow and still unattractive, despite my efforts with pots and shrubs. Once full of hopeful intent, which had never materialized. But this, needing no effort on anyone’s part—it was just itself. I shook myself—it was always like this: when I was here, I hated London, and when I was there, well, yes, I’d begun to hate living in London then, too. All the same, would I regret my decision to leave?

  I watched a delivery lorry negotiate the difficult turning from the road into the drive, made narrower by the retaining bank of huge, craggy dark stones that flanked it, before veering to the left, towards the workshop. A car followed it, but drew up outside the house. Two men got out and hurried through the rain to the door. I recognized the one with the clipboard from our schooldays—Mike Priestley, a big, lumpy, happy-go-lucky lad, the one out of the class least likely to. And yet he now ran the town’s most flourishing house agency, he’d smoothed himself out and succeeded in nabbing my very choosy friend Rebecca, who worked for him. He was keeping bad company, though, if the man he was with was who I guessed him to be—Stephen Baines, here as Cluny’s solicitor, if not as her friend.

  Cluny had wasted no time after making her announcement to me last night. Everyone else concerned had been told thi
s morning that she was preparing to sell the house as soon as she could—Magda, who afterwards disappeared tight-lipped, to do some shopping. Mrs Sugden, who wondered what was going to happen to her job. And Daniel. I hadn’t spoken to him yet, but after last night, I already knew what his reaction would be.

  ‘Hi, Zoe!’ Mike said. ‘Long time no see.’ Always one for an original phrase, Mike Priestley, but I smiled and forgave him. I’d always liked him.

  While he and Cluny disappeared for an inspection tour of the house, I was left alone with Baines over the coffee. ‘Another biscuit, Mr Baines?’

  ‘Oh, Stephen, please! No thanks, Zoe.’

  The salukis had run to him when he first appeared, silky tails waving, obviously familiar with him, and he was now rather nervously patting their heads while trying to keep them at arm’s length. He twitched a golden hair or two from his immaculate trouser leg.

  He wasn’t at all as I’d imagined, he was well-dressed, his mousy hair was sharply cut, and he wore glasses with tinted, yellowish lenses and the sort of fancy frames that look as though they’re on upside-down, and a gold signet ring on the little finger of his manicured right hand. Definitely the sort who fancied himself, though why, it was difficult to see.

  Despite the accessories, he came across as dull and quite ordinary and, apart from the assessing looks he cast around from time to time, not at all shifty, or like one with evil intentions. But then, he would, wouldn’t he? What had I expected? A pair of horns and a forked tail? I soon discovered he wasn’t much of a conversationalist though, which made him a very unusual lawyer indeed to my mind. All the same, I tried. ‘How do you like living up here, er, Stephen?’

  ‘Oh, very much, thank you.’

  ‘And where did you practise before you came here?’

  ‘London.’

  I was about to launch in and ask him if that was where he’d met Cluny when I saw a shuttered look come over his face, which told me he was the sort to clam up where personal issues were concerned. I longed to probe further, but I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Perhaps he was more of a lawyer than I’d thought he was. After that, we talked mostly about the weather.