So Marigold had to let Jo go on, sucking up to William.
‘Ever explored the cellars?’ William asked. Jo shook her head. ‘According to Troutie, a lot of the life of The Sanctuary happened down there, when she was a kitchen drudge.’
‘Including the parlour-maid hanging herself in the game room?’
‘Troutie found her. In her cap and apron – makes it worse, doesn’t it? Come on, I’m going down to get some wine. I’ll give you a quick tour.’
In the basement, he opened the doors of the stone-cold rooms, which had been the kitchen, scullery, game room, larders and servants’ hall.
‘When we were children, Matthew and I used to come down here to scare ourselves. These cellars had bad memories for Troutie. She told us to stay away, so of course we came. I saw a ghost here once.’
‘I thought there were no ghosts at The Sanctuary.’
‘No, honest. Right here in the kitchen. Through that high window the sun came swirling down in a wide beam of dust.’ His eyes followed the memory down from the grimy half window under the vaulted brick ceiling. ‘I saw something. Tall. White. Too tall. Thought I saw it, I suppose; it must have been the floating light, but I was petrified.’ He could feel again the helpless terror, the shock that obliterated reason.
‘What did you do?’
‘Screamed and ran.’
‘Who to?’
‘My mother.’
Jo stood with her hands in the pockets of her plaid trousers, leaning against a stone shelf, waiting.
William turned round to her and said bitterly, ‘I should have gone to Troutie.’
He took a step towards Jo, then stood back with his arms folded, and dropped his chin.
‘Mother was busy. She was putting up camp beds. It was wartime, you know, and we were going to have evacuees. I was terrified – sick with terror. In fact, I was sick, on the floor. She stood and looked at it and then looked at me. She didn’t know how to cope with it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Cleaned up the sick, like she told me. No, Jo.’ He lifted his head to see her reaction, afraid he had told too much. ‘Don’t misjudge. She couldn’t cope. She could never cope with emotions, or people needing things from her. But it wasn’t her fault. Her mother had shredded her confidence, kept her at home because she was the only one left, but always as a second best.’
Jo stood against the shelf, taking this in uncritically, but he said defensively, ‘I suppose it wasn’t Geraldine’s fault either. She’d lost her beloved son. She was a tyrant, but she cherished this place. She tried to follow the ideals of Beatrice and Walter, and she needed Sylvia to help her.’
‘She ruined her chance of love,’ Jo said sadly.
‘And do you know something? My mother never told me anything about that, ever. That’s how badly she was crippled.’
‘So she took it out on you.’
‘No, it wasn’t that.’ William felt tormented. The loyal excuses came out with more difficulty, and were strangled by the truth. ‘But she had nothing to give. Nothing, nothing, Jo, do you hear?’ He was shouting, but nobody could hear through these dense underground walls. ‘I never had a mother. I tried, I looked for every way to make her love me, but she had gone inside herself long ago, and there was no one there for me.’
Jo had come across the room to him, and when she put her arms round him, it felt natural, and so warm and protective that – oh, God, don’t cry, you clown – ‘I – sorry, Jo. I –’
‘It’s all right. Hush, it’s all right. I know, I know …’
He did not take in what she said. It was just the murmuring and the safety, and he was the little boy Billie, with Troutie giving him what his mother never could, only Jo was supple and clean, not squashy and pungent like Troutie. But there was nothing sexual about the embrace of those strong arms, and the high firm breasts. It was so maternal that when she dropped her arms and he stepped back, it was not hastily, but slowly and naturally, and she said, ‘All right now, Will?’ and he said, ‘Thanks.’
Help! What was happening? The avenging demon had turned into a mother – and it was not an act. It wasn’t Jo in that cobwebbed basement kitchen. It had been Marigold, reaching out to the child William with her empty arms. Save us. Jo was losing her grip. Better do something rotten quickly.
The Richardsons were away inspecting a new grandchild, and Jo was feeding their cats. In the bungalow, she automatically had a snoop round. Mrs Richardson’s pillowcase of fabric scraps for her interminable cot quilt, which two grandchildren had already outgrown before it was finished, gave her an idea.
While the cats were feeding with voracious delicacy she picked through the multicoloured scraps and found a piece of rather coarse oatmeal linen, part of something like an old-fashioned child’s smock.
She took it back to her cottage and cut it into a square, which she carefully hemmed with tiny stitches, as if it might be a man’s handkerchief sewn by a woman long ago. In one corner, she embroidered the name ‘Jock’, then she tore the handkerchief convincingly into three frayed pieces, so as not to look too perfect. Two of the pieces she put on her fire. The third, with part of the name on it, she dirtied up a bit and took to The Sanctuary.
‘Have you got a moment?’ Jo asked William when he came home and found her putting a steak and kidney pie together for weekend guests.
She took him to the end door of the library and stopped in the space between the outer and inner door.
‘Did you know about this?’ She put her hand on a painted wood panel.
‘About what?’
She edged a blunt kitchen knife into a crack in the wood, and prised open a tiny door. ‘It’s like a little hiding hole.’ She turned her bright-painted beam on him. ‘I just discovered it.’
‘Anything inside?’
‘I didn’t look.’
She was discreet. You had to give her that. William put his hand into the shallow space. Nothing there but a scrap of cloth. He brought it out and smoothed it. ‘My God.’ He showed it to Jo. ‘My mother must have put this in there.’
‘Is that the name of her – the man she loved?’
‘Looks like it. Jock. She must have hidden it here after he’d gone, because this was the room where they met secretly.’
‘That’s romantic.’ Jo looked at him mistily through those extravagant black eyelashes.
‘Her favourite room.’ William shut the little door and put the piece of cloth into his pocket. ‘When she died here …’ He had wanted to tell Jo this since he had confided in her in the underground kitchen. ‘I found myself distraught. It didn’t matter any more that she hadn’t been the mother I wanted. For the first time, I was able to see her life from her point of view, and I was so desperately sorry for her.’
Curious. He had often talked to Dottie about Sylvia, whom she had diagnosed long ago as the ‘not-good-enough mother’, responsible for William’s ‘Peter Pan syndrome’; but he had never before talked to anyone outside the family, except Ruth, who knew a lot, since she had grown up with them.
Ruth had always been his good friend and confidante, but he did not see much of her these days. She had the baby at home, and its idiotic mother, of course, but – oh, Lord, he hadn’t thought of this – might she feel that Jo was edging her out?
William went through the water meadows in search of her. The back door of Ruth’s house was open, so he went in, as he always did. The draining-board was piled with dishes. Someone was playing loud music in the sitting-room. Ruth’s husband George was sitting by the window with his bad leg up, reading the paper.
Ruth was sorting and folding a mountain of clothes in a laundry basket.
‘Want some tea?’
She did not move towards the kettle, so he said, ‘No, thanks,’ and started to help her fold.
‘Not like that.’ She took the blue jeans from him. ‘They’re not pyjamas, Will.’
‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ he said. ‘Everything all right?’
&n
bsp; ‘Of course.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling, where the baby was crying in a particularly nasty way, and someone was clumping about. ‘This place is like market day, that’s all. I did give Dorothy a couple of mornings last week. Does she want me to come up at the weekend? Is that why you came?’
‘I came to see you, silly. But if you could spare a bit of time, we’ve got three couples coming tomorrow, and I know Dottie would like some help in the kitchen.’
‘Where’s Jo then?’
‘Well – she’s already done some of the food, I think. She’ll come back if she’s needed, but I thought it would be nice to have you.’
‘I’m very busy, Will.’
She had never said that before. Bringing up her children, helping with her grandmother, looking after George – she had never been too busy to come to The Sanctuary.
‘Only because you want to do everything here yourself,’ George put in from behind the paper. ‘We can do a lot of this stuff. You go on up and give Dorothy a hand.’
‘They don’t need me and Jo.’
‘Ruth.’ William snatched baby garments away and held her hands. ‘I want you.’
‘Perhaps another time.’ She picked up the baby clothes.
George said, ‘Ruth,’ mildly, but as if they’d talked about this before.
William said lamely, ‘Well … come up soon. I want to show you something.’
‘I might, if I get time.’ She did not ask what he had to show her, so he did not tell her about the poignant discovery of the relic of Jock.
Ruth was changing. What was wrong? In the old days, if she had felt edged out by Jo, she would have said so.
Too much was changing. He still had the uncertain feeling that the house was in some ways subtly distancing itself. Instead of being part of them, it was watching them, waiting for something. How could he heal the unease? Filling it with people helped, and the weekend went well, although perhaps not quite as easily as usual. The guests left saying they had had a marvellous time, but William did not think they had; or was he putting himself in their places, allotting to them his own inexplicably dissatisfied feeling?
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked Dottie, when they were alone.
‘Don’t always ask me what’s wrong, Will. What’s wrong with you?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel – everything feels, somehow, not quite right.’
‘They all thought it was wonderful. They’re coming back in a couple of weeks.’
‘Oh, it was. It’s just not … the same.’
‘Still in love?’ Dottie asked rather sharply.
‘With you, of course.’
‘Don’t be childish. Are you still fretting for Angela Stern? Is that what’s wrong?’
‘Angela and I aren’t going to see each other any more.’
‘I don’t mind either way. It doesn’t matter.’
Clever Dottie. That attitude might have sent some men haring up to London. With William, it ensured that he would not.
William continued to be vaguely uneasy, and Dottie a little abrupt and scratchy. One evening she swore that she had smelled the death lilies again.
‘It’s your imagination.’ William went up to the bedroom with her. ‘You’ve got it on the brain.’ He moved all over the room. ‘There’s not a trace.’
‘Then I’m going mad.’
She slept in another room. In the morning she agreed that perhaps she had imagined it. A few days later, she made quite a bad mistake in the clinic, misdiagnosing the cause of a child’s hyperactivity, and came home nervous, and upset with herself.
‘You’ve been working too hard.’ William tried to reassure her. ‘You deserve a break.’
‘I deserve nothing. I don’t even deserve my job, if I make such a hash of it.’
About the middle of November, the lowering sun would strike through the pillars of the temple to flood the cat-goddess, who had symbolized to the Egyptians solar warmth and light.
This year, it struck the empty pedestal.
‘Poor Bastet,’ Dorothy said. ‘I do miss her. I used to think she caught the last warmth of the sun, and held it until the next spring. Do you think I could ask Chris to make us another goddess?’
‘Wouldn’t be the same.’
Dorothy said quickly, ‘You didn’t like the hare he made?’ putting criticism into William’s mouth. ‘You don’t think he’s any good.’
‘He couldn’t get the same elegance.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Dottie.’ William grabbed her arm. ‘You’re arguing for the sake of arguing.’
‘What? Yes, so I am. How awful.’
She smiled, and he kissed the smile. ‘Forget the cat.’
‘I can’t.’
‘All right, in the New Year we’ll take a trip. Get Christmas over, then we’ll go to wherever you like – Florence, Siena. I’ll find you another cat.’
‘Shall we? It would be good to get away.’
Good to get away. That had never been a reason for going anywhere. Usually the best part of a trip abroad was coming home.
Dorothy and Jo were painting the library frieze, so that the room could be used at Christmas. When Tessa brought Rob for the weekend she found them both up on ladders.
‘That looks like fun,’ Tessa called up. ‘Can I help?’
‘Takes skill.’ Her mother came down the ladder to embrace them both, while Jo, painting the plaster ferns and swags with an aching arm, fantasized what might happen to a ladder, so that Tessa would fall off and break her neck.
Tessa was going to Norwich with her boss. ‘I’ll try and get down on Sunday night,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, Rob will have to miss school, and I’ll come as soon as I can on Monday. Have you got appointments, Mum? I’ll have to get a train back to London to pick up the car.’
‘Look, Tessa.’ Jo was still at the top of her ladder. ‘I’m going to London on Monday.’ It was hair and eyebrow and eyelash time. ‘I could bring Rob up to your house, and save you the drive. If you trust me.’
‘Trust you? Heavens, you’re a better driver than I am, and certainly better than Chris. He day-dreams. Would you really? I wouldn’t want it to be a nuisance. Rob talks all the time in the car, when he’s not being sick.’
‘You can talk as much as you want,’ Jo called down to Rob, ‘and we’ll stop at the service station and get choc ices.’
‘Freez-O-Pops.’ Rob stood at the bottom of the ladder, foreshortened to a dwarf needing a haircut. ‘Can I climb up? Why not? You come down then, Jo. I want you to see the goats.’
Jo came down and pulled a sweater over her painting overalls. Dorothy was showing Rob and Tessa the tiny secret cupboard between the doors. Rob would not put his hand in there. He backed away with his shoulders hunched. Tessa and her mother were mystified at his fear, so Jo felt pretty sure that he had not told anyone about Charlotte and the dumb waiter.
He did not seem to hold that against her. He went happily out with her to the small paddock, where they put out hay for the donkey and the goats, which was one of Jo’s jobs on these winter afternoons. The pale cream billy goat with flecks of emerald in his eye did not pick up his own hay. He let the donkey take an overflowing jawful, and then pulled swags of it out of the donkey’s mouth.
Rob was delirious. He had not seen the goat do that, so Jo said, ‘I taught him,’ and Rob shrieked with joy and clung round her waist and tried to pull her to the ground. She let him, and they rolled about in the cold wet grass, then jumped up to climb the gate and race to the house round the back paths and the walled garden, for cocoa and marshmallows.
William and Dorothy had people to dinner, so Rob stayed with Jo in the kitchen, until his grandmother took him up to bed in the room next to hers.
‘I’m sorry, Jo.’ She came down. ‘He won’t settle till you go up. Don’t stay long. It’s late.’
Jo could have stayed all night with the little boy. He was a very up-and-down child, but for some reason, he was being blissfully easy. Bec
ause his mother wasn’t here? While Jo sang to him one of the funny repetitive songs from her teaching days, he lay wide-eyed, the sheet under his chin, mouth closed over the outsize teeth, soft and rosy.
Jo had always known that her baby would have been a boy, if the callous treachery of Tessa and Rex had not torn him bloodily from her too soon.
It was weeks since she had thought about her boy. Perhaps because William’s anguish had revived her defeated maternal longings, she felt a powerful love for this skinny little boy in the bed who clutched her hand and said, ‘Another! Another! Sing the fried-potato song.’
He did chatter all the way to London. He told feeble jokes from school, and they sang and played games. Jo was sorry when they turned into Brackett Road and found a parking space near the top of the hill. But going through the gate of number 47 and walking up the path and ringing the bell by the yellow door was breathtaking. At last Marigold was going inside the house where Tessa lived, was going to violate it with her presence and penetrate its charming secrets.
I love your house. Can I see the kitchen? Can I see upstairs?
Go ahead. Forgive the mess (it would be casually immaculate).
On the doorstep, Rob held Jo’s hand and asked, ‘Are you going to stay with us?’
‘No, darling.’
‘I want you to stay!’ He looked up at her anxiously, but when the door opened, he dropped Jo’s hand and rushed at Tessa and clung: ‘Mummy Mummy where you been I missed you Mummy hullo my Mummy!’
‘Thanks so much, Jo.’ Crouching, Tessa smiled up over his agitated, butting head. Her hair was a fall of amber light. ‘Come in and have some coffee.’
‘No thanks.’ Marigold could not go into the house. Although she had been longing to make its intimacies hers, she could hardly take in the details of the red-carpeted hall, the pictures and green plants, Chris’s soft brown hat on a peg, the steep curve of the white stair rail.
Tessa’s face, and her soft enfolding body and caressing hands incited Marigold to such a blinding agony of rage and envy that she could not move forward, could only say something about an appointment and back away, shut the door, stumble down the steps and out of the gate, away from the house where Tessa still had everything.
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