‘Unfold the handkerchief and place it on your head; yes, as if you were protecting yourself from the sun. This must be done whilst you are comfortably seated, with no sharp objects about your person. Once you have had your fill of the exquisite engraving upon the watch flap, you must place a hand – like so – upon your forehead, ensuring the silk creates a lining between the skin of your skull and your palm – yes, this is necessary, believe me. Do you always wear your wig, may I ask?’
Theodore had been confused as to the sudden change in the man’s instructions those twenty years ago. Then touching the judge’s wig upon his own head, warming his ears, he had understood. With a desire to visit the shops in Grinding whilst taking a break from his dress rehearsal of Mrs. Walkbone and the Case of the Battered Punch Bowl at The Old Burly Theatre, he had forgotten to remove the formidable headpiece. At least he had remembered to wipe away the greasepaint. ‘No,’ had been Theodore’s simple answer.
An unusual occurrence had distracted Theodore and the shop owner; they heard cheering and handclapping emanating from outside. They both looked through the shop window: a brass band had started its pompous tune, the members of it marching in consort down the middle of the gaslight-lined street. At their tail, a besuited gentleman had followed, a disdainful seriousness about him, necessary for his important task of waving a red flag in time with the music. Behind, with the occasional discordant tooted note from its horn, a metal construction similar to a carriage moved of its own accord, a man inside holding a circular object.
‘What in the blazes name is that?’ Theodore had said, consternation in his voice.
‘That sir, is the newest invention being paraded. They call it a horseless carriage. No horses, yet it runs by horse power. Quite the conundrum.’
‘Whatever next,’ Theodore had replied. Returning his attention to the proprietor, he had asked if he would continue, whereupon the man did without hesitation.
‘Prepare to be dazzled and amazed while you gaze upon the inner workings shown in this masterpiece; so much so that you will be mesmerized by the layers of exquisite clockwork and fine jewels set within.
Inevitably you will relax into this concentrated affair, whereupon your hand will begin to slip down, bringing the silk handkerchief with it, so that it may cover your sight, enough to sever the almost mystical attachment which you will have made. Five of your nicest silver coins please.’
Theodore’s present moment returned, despite being enthralled still by the watch cover – the study and the books, the table beside, a feeling of the wing back chair about him. Today would not be the day for self-hypnotism. The watch as a scientific instrument needed to be utilized for a task far more important and useful, he rationalized. He quickly placed the almost paranormal timepiece into his waistcoat pocket, not bothering to button hole the chain.
He returned to the reception room and went to the door, opening it carefully as if it was a delicate thing, and stealthily moved his head into the lobby like some reticent animal, his dark eyes flicking. Satisfied that Pump was out of the way he crept out but froze as the noise of thumping wood kept tally with the beats of his heart. He remembered that he had instructed Brood to knock posts into the ground at the side of the manor house. The staccato ticking of the hallway grandfather clock seemed louder than usual as he listened for a time before walking stiffly to the stairs. He trod up the wooden steps of the creaking staircase as lightly as he was able.
The landing held the reverberant strains of Eleanor singing from the bathroom. As neat as a toothbrush Theodore’s moustache was, and he stroked one side of it before going – without hesitation or indecision of any kind – to the bathroom door.
Pump wobbled into the hall from the cellar doorway with a grin and a pat on the bottom of the bottle he held. He slapped his numb feet onto the floor with a drunken discrimination. His game was to avoid the cracks between the striated marble tiles. Tiring of this, and without quite realizing where his own feet were taking him, he began to climb the hazy, undulating mountain of stairs in the invisible wake of his surly master.
CHAPTER 4
Ravishment
WILLIAM STUBB PULLED shut the door to The Bulldog Fish Tavern bar. After casting an eye across the village green, he began the walk home. The side of the public house with its mottled brickwork, and benches chained like dogs to its base, lived in Daisytrail Lane. As Stubb strode along the lane on his way back to the manor house, he looked up to the afternoon sky. It had collected a few infant clouds but still the day was warm. Cheering and whistling over the way – Stubb nodded as though to a companion – he felt in a fine enough mood; he would go to Thimriddy Fair.
He turned smartly on his heels and walked over the cobblestones that were beside the village green shops, and across the green, until he reached the alley. This would lead him to the field where the fruit and vegetables of the villagers, as well as the competition for the highest and most radiant sunflower, were under scrutiny from the judges.
Eleanor had stepped from the bath, streams of water running the length of her naked body, and had begun to dry herself with a towel, when a draught nipped her skin into pimples: the bathroom door was slowly opening.
Florence had begun wiping a duster over the furniture in the day-room when she paused; a shriek from some other dusty room had caught her attention but, upon continuing her work, she shook her head knowingly. Theodore might be calling her again.
She would often play his silly pastime – pretend to sleep before the swinging watch; overcome boredom at his mumblings and queer exhortations; prepare for the puzzling loss of time. Five minutes always becoming half an hour or more, and she would be left with indistinct memories of labyrinthine layers of embroidered metal. But all of it was worth the trouble for the sake of the money she would receive. Soon Florence would have enough saved for the deposit on a shop and could regain care of her miraculously-born daughter – whom others called illegitimate – who lived with her widowed aunt in Stillstone.
The wrangling in Florence’s innocent mind as to how a young and virgin spinster such as herself could have conceived a child, was always ready to take over her thoughts after Theodore’s music hall entertainment.
She decided it was not the master of the house calling though, or anyone else. More than once she had imagined voices in the manor house or heard her name spoken as if from afar by a gentle ghost.
Brood had finished twining wire around posts to form a fence when, upon rubbing his stiff back to a standing position, fancied he heard a shout. Scanning the first floor windows for a clue to its origin, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Thoughts concerning the utterance were dismissed immediately at the sight of the abundant growths of mottled ivy clinging to the red bricks of a side wall, even strangling a nest of chimney-pots huddled on the pantiles of the manor house. The ivy trails twirled and twisted, some of the leaves larger than a man’s hand. It was time to cut the trailing tendrils back but he would wait until he was asked.
He retrieved a few garden tools and sauntered across the lawn to a corner of the garden, over to his shed almost hidden by enormous lilac bushes. To one side stood a roughly constructed rabbit hutch, the cook’s white-haired pet inside, perfectly still except for its twitching pink-rimmed nose. Mrs. Wickling supplemented the gardener’s food rations with sweets and cakes and, in return, Brood kept the straw clean and fed the animal with dandelion, mallow and clover.
As he neared the shed door his pace quickened for, like a wasp attracted to sugar water, he remembered he had saved the last food item Mrs. Wickling had given him as a treat. He was still pondering on whether to eat his iced cake or to leave the pleasure until the next day. Ducking his head to avoid hitting it on the lintel, he entered the wooden shed. He went straight over to the pastry, lying on a mucky shelf between a tin of cuttings compound and a small bag of fertilizer. Filaments of cirrus passed over the sun briefly, a chaffinch fluttered from the lilac bush and Brood, with his tongue to his lip, mad
e his decision: snatching the cake from the shelf he put it to his nose to sniff its fragrance. Then each bite was taken with urgency, the cake soon devoured with a snuffling passion. He licked his grubby fingers and sucked the icing from the gaps in his teeth, staring without thought at the shed interior.
A wood burning stove sat to one side with a spade and a broom leaning against it. A small window was made smaller still by a calendar, four years old, curled and yellowing at the edges, covering half of it. Brood’s bedding, which lined a quarter of the floor area, lay dishevelled and musty. An attempt at wallpapering the dingy wooden slats of the shed sides (with offcuts pilfered from the summerhouse) had failed shortly after the exercise; the majority of the paper had peeled away and lay in soggy piles around the perimeter.
The gardener was musing on the idea of brewing some tea, to be made on a small table scattered with sugar grains and tea leaves, when he sprang into life from his lethargy. In one swift movement he had taken hold of the spade, swung it as high as the shed ceiling would allow, and brought it down onto a rat, cleaning its whiskers by the stove. The floorboards shook and bottles rattled, and Brood condemned the existence of the creatures. He left the spade on the filthy floor. He would clean up the mess later.
Evening was preparing to be staged. William Stubb arrived home with a vase and a tortoiseshell shoehorn held to his chest. In the hallway, he called out for his wife. There was no reply. He found the cook in the scullery, peeling potatoes by the iron sink. She passed a few friendly remarks before apologizing for her lateness. ‘Got the vegetables from Tablet the grocer in Snoringham this time. The stagecoach needs a good talking to,’ Mrs. Wickling said stiffly.
Ignoring the comment, Stubb said, ‘Have you seen Eleanor?’ The cook’s only reply was a search for nude potatoes in the muddy water.
Stubb met the butler by the hallway mirror. Pump was sullen with his blob of a nose red; it burned from the day’s drinking. He seemed unusually sober. ‘If it wasn’t trouble sir, I would like to have a word,’ he said.
‘Later, Pump. I want to find Mrs. Stubb.’
‘It concerns your wife, sir,’ the butler replied, and he looked furtively about him as if worried he was being overheard.
Neither of them spoke again until they were in the sitting room. The curtains were drawn for the afternoon sun had been hot. ‘Well – I haven’t got all week,’ Stubb started.
Pump sat without permission but before Stubb could remark on it, the butler quietly spoke the words, ‘For what I’ve got to say, sir, I think you’d better sit as well.’
The sitting room door opened with a rattle of the handle and Theodore bustled in. He nodded to his son but, upon seeing the butler who had jumped to his feet, exclaimed, ‘What, you here? Get out.’
Stubb indicated with his hand for Pump to remain. ‘I’m talking to him, father.’
‘No,’ bellowed Theodore, but continued in softer tones, ‘I mean to say, Pump can gossip in his own silly time. I don’t pay him to chat and sit in my chairs.’ He glared at the servant who lowered his head.
Stubb tutted at the obstinacy of his father and asked him: ‘Have you seen Eleanor?’
Staring malevolently at Pump, Theodore’s florid complexion became redder still and with his mouth quivering, he swung around and hurriedly went out, the door closing behind him with a sound as though from a shotgun.
Stubb muttered, ‘What’s upset him this time?’ and he continued with Pump, ‘where is she; where’s my wife?’
The butler pointed his florid nose to his creaking shoes. ‘She’s safe, sir; upstairs.’
Stubb became annoyed. ‘Safe? What the hell is this all about?’
CHAPTER 5
Confrontation
STUBB NIPPED THE legs from a furred spider, one by one. With each fine, tiny limb flicked away, his clenched teeth tightened. The sounds of summer took second place to his senses; his whole being was focused on the task of destroying the arachnid between his fingers. He ground the remainder of the creature into the lawn with his heel and with the displacement of hatred finished, he fell back onto a white garden seat.
Nature slowly pulled the mist from his haunted eyes. The tang of newly-mown grass and the chatter of squabbling sparrows on the sundial temporarily soothed his ruptured emotions.
A bumblebee scored the air; Stubb stiffened his back. Childhood skipped from the lavender, hollered from the weathervane on the summerhouse: the pleasure he had received from killing the very things his father loved. Cabbage whites deprived of their powdery wings and the sound like crunching gravel when woodlice were crushed beneath a tablespoon. The spiteful wonder at earthworms, squirming and wriggling, attempting to untie the knots made in their slippery brown lengths.
It was a beautiful day with colours vibrant and rich. April showers had gone, leaving behind the deep hue of the sky to compete with its own reflection in the pond, where fantailed goldfish nuzzled in between the fronds of water grasses and bulrushes.
‘Tinn–saaal!’ – the call, then a yapping from the sunny heath way beyond.
Stubb sat with drooping eyelids, and palms pressed to his ears. He was unsure as to the course of action he should take. The situation seemed too complex to consider.
A decision: there was no alternative but for him and Eleanor to leave Muchmarsh, go anywhere to escape from Theodore. They could settle in Grinding, or even a town in another county. Surely the skills of carpentry were needed everywhere. It would not take long to awaken his hibernating talents. He was a perfectionist; he loved his craft, adoring every aspect of those coffins he made – the colour and grain of the timber, its tactile quality after being meticulously planed and prepared to a silk finish; the smell of the wood. His dovetails and joints had been beyond compare. Skills of other craftsmen would add more beauty to his works – the engraved filigree lettering on the nameplate, brass hinges set flush, ornate handles in the shapes of stags, galleons, or garlands. Often he had tended them up to the last moment, a coffin slid from under the beeswaxed cloth, leaving his revolving hand polishing no more than the air. Mr. Terps would have his caskets loaded without ceremony, stacked as high as the warped cartwheels would allow without buckling further, cover them with a chequered cloth, and transport them to Mr. Nuckle, or The Smudge Cremation Co-operative five miles north.
Stubb would sometimes mourn their departure and be gripped with resentment, complain bitterly about the insects, those creeping things, boring and chewing, spoiling his creations underground.
Through all of his reverie he had a nagging bundle of conjecture within. He was restless and a promise of a headache crossed his forehead. The sun was a hot compress on his scalp; he decided to go into the house but changed his mind as the portly man with a smirk smearing his face strolled across the lawn towards him. He willed the figure to return but his father advanced without pause.
Stubb shot from his chair with the intention of making a quick departure but Theodore, his voice flat in the heat, called over to him. ‘Stay there, my boy, I’ll have a chat.’
Contempt blemished each word Stubb spoke in return: ‘I have nothing to say. Leave me alone.’
His father reached the wrought iron table and while mopping his temples with a striped handkerchief, sat on the chair that Stubb had vacated. ‘Come now, William. Why don’t you stop posing like a tailor’s dummy and sit down,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure we can come to terms with this little … difference of opinion.’
Stubb ignored the advice and leant his weight on the table, gripping the edge of it. His lip trembled with his vehement reply. ‘Difference of opinion?’ he spluttered, ‘You call abusing my wife a difference of opinion?’
Theodore motioned him to lower his voice and said, ‘You have the matter confused and exaggerated. I have told you as best I can how this silly situation has arisen.’
‘You’ve told me nothing.’
‘My boy, I am afraid that young Eleanor has blown up this whole episode beyond belief; and as for Pump, why the li
ttle termite should stain my character with such incrimination I have no idea. Though we must remember, his faculties are shot; Eleanor’s mental condition is still fragile. If your mother was still alive—’ with this he clasped his hands as though in an act of devotion, ‘—she would rightly condemn you all for being distrustful and ungrateful. I have given you the freedom of the house, fed and cared for you; treated Eleanor as my own. And how am I repaid? False accusations, lies and smutty rumours.’ He intimated a smile, and with deliberation extracted a cigar from the top pocket of his jacket and ran it between the tips of two fingers. Waiting for a reaction to his words he regarded his son from the corners of his eyes.
Stubb was staring hard at the ground. His father had, once again, destroyed the brittle structure of truth that had been constructed. Now all that remained was a mound of jagged possibilities, disjointed and uncomfortable, but then the words of the butler came to mind once more. He formed a sneer. ‘You disgust me. If you weren’t my father—’
Theodore snorted. ‘You would kill me perhaps? Come now, boy, you’re becoming quite melodramatic. Ah, Florence.’
The maid was tiptoeing across the lawn as though afraid she might damage the blades of grass. ‘Your tea, sir,’ she said politely, and placed a wooden tray in the middle of the table.
‘Come closer, my dear – can’t be afraid of uncle now, can we?’ Theodore said, brushing his moustache with a finger. Stubb’s head trembled. Everything seemed unwholesome today.
Florence stood next to Theodore. He rose and with clumsy fingers squeezing her hand, inclined his head to her bonnet and whispered. The maid gasped and from cheekbones to chin, she was suffused with pink. ‘Off you go then,’ Theodore called after her as she hurried away to the manor house. ‘Don’t forget now, will you?’ Florence turned her face back to him with a look of confusion but gave no reply.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 3