The House by the Brook

by The House by the Brook (retail) (epub)

  ‘Well done, Violet! I didn’t even hear you coming. Now, if you can hide in the wardrobe for ten whole minutes without a sound, while I catch someone else, I’ll give you ten shillings.

  She held a note temptingly in front of Violet’s face and at once the girl stepped into the wardrobe and allowed Effie to turn the key on her with only the slightest qualm. Then the door opened and Effie said. ‘Better idea. First call to your Auntie Jennie, then go and hide.’

  ‘Still for ten shillings?’

  ‘Of course.’ She handed the note to the overjoyed girl.

  Looking over the banister. Effie almost shouted in her delight when Jennie came into the hall alone. The night was chill and she had obviously decided to come inside to warm up as she went straight to the fire and held her hands close to the flames.

  ‘Jennie, come here, quick,’ Violet called. Then, giggling, she ran into her room and stepped into the wardrobe. Again Effie closed and locked the door.

  Jennie went up the stairs and looked in her niece’s bedroom but it was empty. She was smiling. Violet loved playing hide and seek. Behind her the door closed and the key turned, and on the landing Effie opened a bottle containing petrol.

  *

  With no sign of Rhodri at any of his usual haunts, Ivor, Geoff and Marie returned to the house. Ernie and the twins were feeding the fire with the pile of wood the twins and Rhodri had collected, hoping to keep it going into the evening for the promised supper of baked potatoes.

  ‘There’s no sign of Rhodri.’ Marie sounded worried. ‘Where can he be?’

  ‘And you were told not to light the fire until we were all ready,’ Geoff said to the boys.

  ‘We didn’t. Someone else did. It’s not fair,’ Roger complained.

  ‘Where’s Violet?’ Ivor asked then.

  ‘In the house with Jennie,’ Ernie told her. ‘They were feeling cold.’

  They all went inside, surprised to find the room empty. Upstairs Effie held off from pouring the petrol and unlocked the bedroom door, behind which Jennie was banging and calling. ‘Damn,’ she muttered. ‘Why did they have to come back now?’ She needed a few minutes for the fire to take hold if her plan was to work.

  In the living room, as Jennie joined them explaining that the bedroom door had stuck, Ivor saw the drawing Violet had done of Effie.

  ‘How d’you know this woman?’ he asked Marie. ‘What’s her picture doing here?’

  Marie looked at it and smiled. ‘Violet is good at getting a likeness, isn’t she?’ She held the sketch for Jennie to see. ‘That woman comes into the shop occasionally but she never buys, just looks and chats and leaves.’

  ‘There are a few who do that. Nosy-parkering, we call it.’

  ‘I know this woman and I don’t think she was interested in clothes,’ Ivor said.

  ‘Your new love, is she?’ Marie hissed, hoping the twins wouldn’t hear.

  ‘You’re my only love. And this woman is seriously – perhaps dangerously – odd.’

  Quietly, so as not to alarm Marie, Ivor whispered to Geoff to go and telephone for the police. She might be a harmless unhappy woman, but her lies about her ability to drive and her inexplicable interest in his family came to the fore and he felt a chill fear envelop him.

  Jennie explained about the aborted game of hide and seek and both Marie and Ivor began calling Violet’s name, running through the house into every room. But in the wardrobe Violet covered her giggles with her hands and pressed the ten shilling note against her face.

  They all went outside, calling Violet with increasing alarm, except Jennie, who decided to stay in the house in case either Violet or Rhodri came back. This time it was Effie who called her, a whisper that could have been the voice of a child. ‘Auntie Jennie, come and find me.’

  ‘Come on, Violet. This isn’t the time for games. We’re all worried about your grandfather. Come out and we’ll play later, after we’ve seen the fireworks.’

  As if on cue, the sound of distant fireworks filled the air. There had been a few spasmodic bursts, but suddenly the sky was illuminated with a moving picture of bright colours and the display intensified as more and more filled the night air with colour and sound as garden parties joined in. The sharp cracks and loud bangs, the sibilant hisses, the wails and whooshes of the varied displays, and the accompanying shouts of entranced children broke the silence of the night. Children squealed in delicious alarm as the entertainment increased, looking around them, convinced they were at the very centre of the annual extravaganza.

  Locked in the wardrobe, Violet heard the excitement and, aware that she was missing the display, she began knocking on the wardrobe door, demanding to be let out. Holding the ten shilling note in her hand, she called to her captor, offering it back to be allowed to take part in the fun. Hearing her calls, the voice raised in alarm, Jennie ran to the bedroom, and at once Effie closed and locked the door.

  The petrol dripped faster and faster on to the landing floor where she had thrown a few screwed-up pieces of paper, and slowly edged towards the bedroom door. Throwing down the empty bottle, Effie took out a box of matches.

  *

  Outside, Ivor looked around in agitation. ‘Where is she? What has Effie done?’

  ‘Where are the police?’ Geoff muttered anxiously. ‘I’ll go and call them again.’

  Unaware of the urgency of the search for their sister, Roger and Royston carried out potatoes and pushed them into the edges of the now fiercely burning bonfire.

  *

  Jennie saw the stream of liquid moving inexorably closer, creeping under the door towards them as she struggled to release Violet from her prison. There was no sign of the key and she tried to force her fingers into the edge of the door, but to no avail. There was a washstand with a bowl and jug on its marble surface and she smashed the jug, using a broken edge to try to break open the door.

  Failing to force the wardrobe door and with Violet beginning to panic, her shouts turning to screams, Jennie threw the bowl at the window. It was Roger who heard the smashing sound, which, on such a night, might have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been directly below and seen the missile land near his feet. He looked up and saw Jennie at the window. He called Ivor, who ran at once and looked up at the window where Jennie was shouting for help.

  ‘There’s petrol! And I can’t open the wardrobe door,’ she screamed. Before Ivor could ask why she needed to she added, ‘Violet is locked in there. Get us out quick!’

  Ivor told Marie to get wet blankets and ran up the stairs. There, on the landing, stood Effie. She held a match in one hand and she struck it as Ivor was halfway up. In her haste she snapped it and, drawing another, she held it close to the box.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. Your child and Jennie’s child have to die. I had my baby stolen and it was Jennie who stole Bill from me. You didn’t care. You’ll all suffer like I did. Then you’ll know.’

  Ivor had stopped just a few feet from her. His only chance was to talk her out of striking the match. Below, Geoff had returned from the telephone box and had seen what was happening. He climbed a ladder and entered the bedroom where Jennie and Violet were held. He tried to open the wardrobe door with tools he carried and the sound reached Effie. As she scraped the match against the rough side of the box the sound seemed inordinately loud in the chaos of the evening. There was a momentary hesitation as she glanced back at him, and Ivor leaped at her, the match mercifully failing to create a flame.

  To the accompaniment of the continuing fireworks display, a police car arrived and four constables got out. Subduing Effie was easy. Ivor had held her face down close to the petrol with which she had planned to kill his daughter and Jennie, her arms crossed behind her back, and he hadn’t allowed her an inch of movement. He was panting not with exertion, but with imagination racing to what might have happened, and also how he might have avoided it.

  ‘It was Rhodri who did it.’ Effie kept repeating. ‘He’s mad. He burns buildings, not me. He planned this
and I was trying to save them.’

  *

  Over the following days they learned that Effie had intended for Rhodri to be blamed for the fire – but he had an alibi. Fearing that his weakness might render him unable to resist the one night of the year when fires were permissible, he had signed himself into hospital for safety.

  Jennie went home with Ernie, who had arrived in time to see the police arresting a still protesting Effie.

  ‘I’m so thankful that you weren’t harmed,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to see the doctor immediately though, to make sure no harm was done to you or the baby.’

  ‘I don’t know what will happen to me, Ernie,’ Jennie said tearfully, ‘but I do know that I want this child. To have coped with so much and still be there makes me realize how badly she wants to be born. If that sounds like fanciful nonsense I don’t care. I want this child, whatever you decide.’

  ‘I want it too. I’m looking forward to caring for her, giving her my time, which was something I couldn’t do for Bill.’

  She held her breath, waiting for the rest of his words with anxiety.

  ‘In public we’ll be the devoted, happy couple but in private we’ll be polite and pleasant to each other but nothing more. Do you understand? I can never forgive you for the way you behaved. And I don’t want Bill to have anything to do with either of us. Or the child.’

  Assuring him she understood, she risked putting her hand in his and was relieved to feel his fingers grasping her own. His attitude was understandable, she had hurt him in such a terrible way, but she had the feeling that it wouldn’t last. ‘I do know how lucky I am, Ernie, dear. I’ll never do anything to make you regret taking me back. I could have died in that house and it’s as though I’ve been given a second chance. From today, I’ll do everything I can to make every moment of your life a happy one.’ She felt his fingers tighten around her own and knew that, despite all that had happened, they would be all right.

  No one wanted to sleep at the house, where the smell of petrol pervaded every room and they had put the fire out for fear of the fumes igniting. Marie and the three children went back to Geoff’s shop. Ivor stood and watched them all go before settling to sleep on the couch with the doors open and the fire reduced to wet ashes. It was an analogy for his life, he thought, staring at the sodden coals and dead ashes.

  The following day he went to work, and after leaving the office at five thirty he went to see his father. Rhodri was free to leave, but until the police had finished their examination and Badgers Brook had been properly cleaned Marie felt unable to return to the house where attempted murders had taken place, so he had been invited to stay with the others in Geoff’s storeroom.

  ‘I’ve been very stupid, Dad,’ Ivor said, as he walked Rhodri to where a taxi waited for them.

  ‘I’m stupid,’ Rhodri said amiably, ‘but not all the time, only now and again. Just now I feel happy to be going home to Marie and the boys and Violet.’ He turned to face his son and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? Geoff’s always got room for one more.’

  Although it was not what he had intended, Ivor got in beside his father, who looked out of the window, pointing to things like an excited child. There was no hesitation as Geoff invited them inside.

  ‘There might be a bit of a squeeze if you want to sleep here, mind,’ he said to Ivor. ‘Although you could sleep on a chair in my room.’ He stared at him as he spoke, as though wanting to say more. Perhaps to tell Ivor he slept there alone, in case he was still in any doubt.

  ‘I’d better get back to my room. I brought nothing with me and I’ll need a change of clothing for tomorrow.’

  Geoff smiled. ‘Marie’s always telling me how particular you are about your clothes. Never the same shirt twice and all that.’

  ‘I never had to worry about clean clothes. Marie made sure they were always there when I needed them. Now I use a laundry and she wouldn’t be impressed.’ He looked at Geoff then. ‘I’ve been so rigid about so many things, and in most of them I’ve been wrong.’

  ‘Not about clean clothes though?’ Geoff grinned.

  ‘No, but just everything else.’ Half turned away from the man who had been such a good friend, he said. ‘It’s impossible to explain how worthless and unlovable a childhood like mine can make you feel. You have to experience it to know. I sound self-pitying but I wasn’t like that. I refused to accept the life I’d been given and fought against it. As a twelve-year-old, coping with it the only way I knew how, I ran away. I invented a past and built the kind of life I imagined I’d been born to, pretended my parents were not really mine, that I was adopted, or stolen, anything to free me from the anguish of my situation.’

  ‘And Marie? Didn’t she deserve the truth?’ Geoff asked softly.

  ‘By then it was the truth.’

  Marie came out and invited him to stay and share their meal. ‘It’s baked potatoes,’ she said. ‘After the disappointment of yesterday’s bonfire, that’s the only thing I can put right.’

  After a questioning glance at Geoff, he agreed.

  ‘The rest will settle,’ Geoff said, ‘once the house is cleared of the smell. I’ll help clean it, buy a new wardrobe for Violet, a new rug to freshen it up.’

  ‘I don’t think Badgers Brook wants any of us to go back there,’ Marie said. In surprise Ivor asked, ‘Not for a while? Or not ever?’

  ‘Not ever.’

  ‘If it’s because of me, I promise I’ll stay away. I don’t want to – I want to come back more than you’ll ever know – but if it helps I’ll stay away.’

  Geoff coughed to remind them he was there, then he said, ‘I’ll see to our supper but I think you two ought to go somewhere and talk.’

  It was to Badgers Brook they went, to the house that once again looked sad and unwelcoming. The warmth that had been nothing to do with the amount of heat had gone. They stood in the cold room where Ivor had spent the previous night, and when Marie shivered Ivor took off his coat and wrapped it around her. He didn’t take his arms away but tightened them around her until she raised her face to his and they began to smile. A tentative smile at first but relaxing into an acceptance of their reviving love.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Ivor asked softly.

  ‘Talk to me. Tell me your thoughts, your fears, your hopes and dreams.’

  Guiding her to the settee he sat beside her. ‘To begin with, I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you for a moment. I left because I believed it would protect you from an illness threatening me. If my health didn’t deteriorate in front of you there seemed a slight chance that what you didn’t know couldn’t harm you or affect our darling Violet. I thought that seeing me becoming sick would somehow be a catalyst. Oh, Marie, I was so afraid for Violet.’ His arms tightened and he pulled her closer. ‘After meeting my father again, I saw the past as though through a mirror and feared what I saw there. Believing it would all recur unless I left you and kept you in ignorance of it. My mother’s apparent fascination with fire and my father’s confusion. Running away seemed the only protection I could offer you.’

  ‘And now? Have we a future?’

  ‘Will you forgive my stupidity?’

  Marie stood and walked around the room, touching the walls, feeling no comfort. The coldness and the dank, unloved atmosphere made her feel like a stranger there. ‘I think the house has had enough of us. It was a haven when we needed one but now it’s worked its magic, we’ve sorted out our problems and Badgers Brook wants us gone.’

  ‘There’ll be other houses.’ He stepped towards her and she didn’t move away, or resist as his arms claimed her, holding her close.

  ‘It seems we’re on the move again,’ he whispered. ‘But as long as we’re together, all six of us, it doesn’t matter where we live.’ There was no response. ‘Are we?’ he asked, touching her cheek with his lips. ‘Are we together?’

  ‘For always.’

  ALSO OUT NOW

  A Girl Called Hope

  Read the seco
nd novel in the Badgers Brook series

  Find out more

  First published in United Kingdom in 2004 by Severn House Publishers Ltd

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  57 Shepherds Lane

  Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2004 by Grace Thompson

  The moral right of Grace Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781910859278

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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