The Unquiet House

by Alison Littlewood

  She realised she was just standing there, still holding the tablecloth, and she glanced over her shoulder before sinking to the floor and pulling it back into place behind her. The boy let out a stifled giggle and she was glad at once that she had done it, no matter how silly she would feel if she were caught.

  ‘You’re that lass.’ His accent was broad Sheffield.

  ‘I am that.’ She smiled, though she doubted he could see it in the dim light.

  ‘You posh?’

  ‘Not really.’ His words made her want to giggle too, as if she were a child again.

  ‘She’s posh.’

  Aggie’s eyes adjusted and she could see him more clearly; she saw the face he pulled. It didn’t belong on the face of a little boy and she wondered how old he was; she had assumed he was about eight or nine, but there was a hard expression in his eyes. She wondered if that was a sign of being from the city or parted from his mother, or if it was something else.

  ‘I don’ like ’er,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s a shame. She might grow on you.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘At least you’re safe here now, aren’t you? Your mother must be very glad, knowing you’re safe.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘And it is nice here, you know. It’s colder now, but it’s pretty in summer. There’s fields and skylarks and hedgerows and flowers and all sorts. You’ll see. Maybe she’ll take you nutting, or she could bring you to see our chickens if you want. We’ve horses too, and pigs, and—’

  ‘I want me mam.’

  She realised from the boy’s voice that he was close to tears. ‘Oh – hush, it’ll be all right. You’ll settle in, you’ll see. The school’s nice. Me brother went there – you’ll like it. There’ll be games.’

  He tilted his head and she waited for him to speak. When he did, his voice was hopeful. ‘Can you play sardines?’ he asked.

  *

  There were four of them: Tom, Hal, Arthur and Clarence. The one she’d found under the table was Tom. The sight of them made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much their shorn heads as the fact that only Arthur’s hair remained. He sat a little apart from the others, looking just as a little boy should, his dark fringe complementing his ruddy cheeks. In contrast, the others’ eyes looked huge and their heads too big for their bodies. In the case of Hal and Tom, perhaps they were too big – her mother would have said they were skinny as rats in winter. They all wore shirts and grey pullies, but the quality and condition differed. Clarence, like Arthur, had clothes that looked like new, but his head too was shaved, an odd contrast with his pale eyelashes. His eyes were dull with resentment. She thought she could guess which of them all was Mrs Hollingworth’s nephew.

  She found herself looking at Clarence’s head, all its curves and bumps and depressions, and then the sight felt too intimate and she looked away. Hal shuffled and she saw a picked-at scab half hidden in his eyebrow and a bald patch the size of a sixpence on his crown.

  Never used so much insect powder in my life.

  She forced herself not to grimace.

  They were sitting on the stairs, near the top of the flight, and despite their number the house felt empty. The corridor faded away, each doorway forming its own dark well. It reminded her of something she couldn’t quite bring to mind and then she thought of the dark slabs of stone ranked on a hillside and she pushed the thought away.

  Hal stretched out one hand towards Tom, palm upwards, as if he were about to have his fortune told. The lines on his skin were too distinct, as if the recent scrubbing hadn’t been quite enough to remove the dirt.

  ‘I were s’pposed to bring cake,’ Tom said. ‘Well I ’aven’t. Get thee own. Anyhow, we’re playin’ sardines now.’

  Hal pulled back his lips from his teeth, making Aggie think of the skull just beneath his skin. It looked almost feral.

  ‘I’ll get us some,’ Arthur said, ‘afterwards.’

  ‘Aye. She’ll not shout at thee, hairy.’

  Arthur wrinkled his nose. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure. But you’ve tried and Hal daren’t, and Clarence certainly can’t go.’

  Clarence’s expression tightened; it looked almost like hatred.

  Aggie spoke quickly. ‘That cake were rubbish anyway. I’ve tried it.’

  Hal shrugged but he let his hand fall and they were silent once again. She glanced around the landing. Sardines, Tom had said, but she knew already that she couldn’t enter any of those rooms. She should never have left the soirée. She certainly couldn’t snoop around, peering into wardrobes or under beds, trying to find a place to hide. She didn’t know why she’d even considered it.

  Tom turned to her and he smiled. It made him look different again, younger and more vulnerable, and she saw that his two front teeth were broken; she imagined if Mrs Hollingworth had seen those teeth she never would have taken him in. Without the golden curls his eyes looked less bright, almost grey rather than blue, as if the colour had drained from him, or been stolen somehow. And here he was in this loveless house, out of reach of everything he had ever known.

  She gave him a smile. ‘We could play something else.’

  His lips turned down. ‘I like sardines,’ he said. ‘I played sardines wiv me mam.’

  Aggie felt herself sinking. For a moment, it felt as if she might keep sagging deeper into the stairs until they closed over her head and the house took her. Why on earth had she said she’d play with them? And at that very moment the music drifting up the stairs grew in volume. She hadn’t heard the drawing room door open but then she heard the stamp of feet on carpet, lively and rhythmic: so they’d decided to dance after all, now that she was away from everything. Still, at least dancing would keep them occupied. They wouldn’t notice she was gone, not for a while yet. No one would know, and anyway, she had been in this house before they even knew it existed, hadn’t she? She should have known every last part of it.

  She drew a deep breath and said, ‘All right, I’ll be the sardine. The rest of you go down a few steps, to the corner. You can count to fifty there. You can count to fifty, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Arthur said.

  Tom sniffed. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘P’raps you’d better do it all t’ same. Just in case.’ He glanced around at the darkened doorways. He didn’t look afraid. ‘I’ll go first.’

  She didn’t want to get into a discussion about why he didn’t trust the others and so she shuffled down a few steps and sat. The three boys perched below her, one with his dark hair, the others just skin and bone, and she caught the faint tang of the insect powder Mrs Hollingworth had spoken of.

  Hal’s hair hadn’t been trimmed properly and he kept rubbing at the tufts as he turned towards the wall and closed his eyes. Clarence peered up at her through eyelashes that looked too long, almost feminine, against his angular skull.

  She remembered she was supposed to be counting and she started to whisper the numbers just as the music from the drawing room gave way from ‘There’s a New Apple Tree’ to ‘Mama, I Want to Make Rhythm’. It reminded her of what this evening should have been. How odd, now, to be hiding on the stairs with these urchins.

  Tom’s footsteps tapped away along the corridor. It sounded as if he was heading towards the front of the house and she counted a little louder so that the others wouldn’t hear. A door opened and closed, and then there was nothing but her counting: ‘Forty-nine … fifty,’ and she opened her eyes on forty-nine to make sure the others weren’t peeking.

  Hal was turned to the wall and Arthur’s eyes were scrunched so tightly closed that creases radiated across his skin. Clarence was holding his hands across his face: had he just moved, as she looked at him? She wasn’t sure.

  ‘All right,’ she said, a little too brightly. ‘Time to go looking. Just one game, mind, then I’ll have to go.’

  Arthur looked around the landing. ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘Anyone could see where anyone else goes.’ He looked up at her. ‘Why don’t you go fi
rst? One at a time. We’ll count again.’

  After a moment, she nodded. It would make the game longer but he was right, if someone didn’t go first there would barely be a game at all. She forced a smile and pushed herself to her feet. ‘Cover your eyes then,’ she said.

  He did, replacing his hands and bending his head into his knees. With a glare, Clarence followed suit: Hal had turned back to the wall again. Aggie hurried around the top of the landing and towards the doors at the front of the house. They all looked the same, the panelled wood pushed closed against intrusion. She didn’t know which one she should take. She wondered what Mrs Hollingworth was doing now; she would surely never imagine one of her guests was up here, doing this. She pushed open the nearest door and stuck her head into the gap.

  Everything was pitch-black. She willed the light to stretch from the corridor and into the room, but of course it didn’t help. She pushed the door wider. She thought she could see a darker place which must be blackout curtains and the nearer hulking form of a bed. A trace of perfume hung in the air, something exotic that smelled expensive, much finer than the lily-of-the-valley her mum sometimes wore.

  She couldn’t imagine Tom coming in here, but she heard a breathy voice behind her counting thirty-two, thirty-three, and she slipped inside before she could consider it. She didn’t know how the boys had reached those numbers already – they’d probably raced through them. Perhaps they couldn’t count after all. She could still see little but a few blocky shapes against the wall, and then there was movement and she caught her breath, her hand rushing to her heart. ‘Tom?’

  She stepped forward and almost laughed. The moving shape was her. The thing she’d seen was a mirror. She tiptoed across the room, hoping no one could hear her in the room below. The music sounded louder than ever and yet distant too, almost ghostly. She didn’t like it. She imagined her mother’s horrified face if she was caught; she’d never be able to ‘hold her head up’.

  There was a wardrobe in the corner, an obvious hiding place. When she opened it the smell of mothballs spilled out; inside, it was full to bursting. She couldn’t resist putting out a hand and running it over the velvets and silks, the fine lace, the softness of fur. There was surely no room for a child in a wardrobe such as this.

  The others must have finished counting by now. She took one last look around – she was becoming a little more used to the dark – then hurried out of the room and into the next. It was smaller than the first but it too held a large bedstead and had a dark slab where the window should be. Other than that, she couldn’t make out any other furnishings – perhaps it wasn’t an important room. As she stepped into it she saw there was a narrow fireplace and nothing more. Perhaps Tom had been cleverer than she thought, deliberately stomping in this direction before tiptoeing away elsewhere. As she turned, though, she saw there was somewhere else to hide after all; there was another door, this one a little narrow, set into the wall near the first.

  There was a scramble of feet on the landing. Coming, ready or not.

  The door handle was cool under her fingertips and it opened onto blank darkness. She swallowed and stepped inside.

  She knew at once that someone was there, but she wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t see a thing, even when she raised a hand in front of her face. No, there really was nothing. She held her breath and listened for the sound of someone else’s breathing. It struck her how ridiculous she must look if Tom was in here crouched in the dark, and he could see her but she couldn’t see him. She was no longer sure he was in here, though. She had been so sure when she’d seen the door, but now she didn’t like it. It was as if she could be anywhere at all.

  A faint noise came, not the giggle she was expecting – hoping for – but an awkward swallowing sound.

  ‘Tom?’ she whispered. ‘I found you.’ It sounded more like a question than a statement. She had to bite her lip to keep from shrieking as someone grasped her around her waist.

  ‘I fought you was ’er,’ he said. ‘I didn’t fink it was you.’

  She found his shoulder and patted it. ‘Quiet, Tom. They’ll hear you.’

  He hushed so quickly that she wondered what on earth she’d said. Fear was pouring from him like that scent from his shorn head, which was stronger in here, chemical and unpleasant. She could feel that the space was small and she put out a hand, pawing at the air, finding what felt like a shelf.

  ‘You shhh,’ Tom said, and she stifled a giggle.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Mrs Hollingworth’s still downstairs. You can hear the music, can’t you?’ But she realised that she couldn’t hear it any more, everything was silent, as if they had been cut off from everyone.

  ‘Not ’er,’ he said. ‘I thought it were that other ’un. The one you was with before.’

  ‘You mean tonight? My mum?’

  She felt him shake his head. ‘Not tonight. The other day, when I got ’ere. When you saw us in t’ garden. She were there then. She was behind you, watchin’ us.’

  Something inside her went cold. ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘That ’un what wears black. An’ a thing ower ’er ’ead.’

  Aggie could not answer. She tried to breathe quietly through her mouth so that he wouldn’t hear the way she was gulping at the air.

  ‘I seen her after, an’ all – looking ower t’ wall from t’ chu’ch.’

  She leaned in closer. ‘It’s all right, Tom. No one will harm you.’

  ‘She might.’

  ‘No. Shush.’ She straightened. Soon the others would come and they’d laugh at him, at them both; at the game they were playing.

  ‘She dun’t like me. I dun’t think she likes the others, neither.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  ‘My – even my mam dun’t like me. She sent us away.’

  ‘Oh, now – shh, Tom. You know that’s not true. She only wanted to keep you safe.’

  He paused. ‘Does that other ’un want to keep us safe, an’ all? She was wavin’ us ower, last time I saw ’er. Arthur said she was lookin’ at ’im but I dun’t know. I reckon she wanted us all to go wiv ’er.’

  Aggie patted his shoulder. ‘I’m sure she does want to keep you safe, Tom. Quite sure. There’s no need to be afraid, is there? You can – you can go to Mrs Hollingworth. Or you can always run in here and hide.’ She smiled. ‘You can always do that.’

  Then the door opened and three shapes were standing there and she almost screamed for the second time in the last five minutes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘I fell in love with the place at once, of course,’ Mrs Hollingworth was saying. ‘One just felt so at home. And one couldn’t possibly stay in town. So much safer here, and being able to provide a refuge for some of the children – why, one has to do what one can for them. The little devils.’ Her voice tailed off into shrill laughter.

  Aggie shrank back against the wall as she tiptoed down the stairs. Below her, Mrs Hollingworth was emerging from the drawing room, her bejewelled arm curling around the door. She had her back turned and was talking to someone still inside. Then she stepped out and waved Mr and Mrs Ackroyd from the fishmonger’s out of the room.

  ‘Ah, wait a moment. There, I’ll close the door behind you.’ She did, and went towards the light switch, jingle-jangling with her arm, and she reached out and everything went dark.

  Aggie moved quickly, easing behind them as Mrs Holling-worth laughed and apologised her way past her guests to let them out. She had never had cause to be grateful to the blackout before – though as she thought of it she had a brief flash of running into a warm figure in the dark – and then it was gone. She stood by the drawing room door as Mrs Hollingworth came back. She could hear her slapping her hands together as if bidding good riddance to bad rubbish and she realised she was going to switch on the light and see her standing there and that she would probably scream.

  ‘I’ll get it, Mrs Hollingworth,’ she said, and snapped on the light.


  The woman’s mouth fell open. Her lipstick had bled into fine crimson lines about her lips. ‘Why, I—’

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ Aggie said in her for-the-vicar voice. ‘I just stepped out to check I had my key in my coat pocket. I had an awful feeling I’d come out without it.’

  ‘Why, funny girl. You gave me a shocking start.’

  ‘My father might lock up, you know. A terrible nuisance.’ Aggie dropped into a quick curtsey before turning and entering the drawing room. Music swelled around her, lifting her at once. It was in full swing. Mrs Smith from the bakery was red-faced and laughing, waving an empty wineglass, watching while some of the older ladies swung each other around by the arms in some semblance of dancing. She grinned; she couldn’t help it. Now it looked like a party. A man was there – it must be the mysterious Mr Hollingworth – and he was holding out his hand to Mrs Pinchbeck, so gentlemanly; his focus shifted to Aggie and he winked and she knew she was going to dance after all, not now perhaps, but soon. The music was already in her feet, making them tap.

  Then her mother bustled towards her. ‘There you are, Ag,’ she said. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘I was—’ Aggie sighed. ‘I was talking to the children.’ It wasn’t an untruth; there was no need to tell her she’d been wandering into the bedrooms.

  ‘Oh. You saw the nephews, then?’ Her mother was tight-lipped.

  ‘I saw one. Arthur, isn’t it? Arthur Hollingworth, I suppose.’

  ‘Arthur Dean. It’s her sister’s child. I don’t suppose you saw t’ other, then.’

  ‘What other?’

  ‘Clarence. I ’eard Mr Ackroyd askin’ Mr Hollingworth about it, an’ he said his first wife’s nephew’s come too, ’er sister’s child – Clarence Mitchell, it is – with ’im still bein’ Mr ’Ollingworth’s relation, an’ needin’ to get out o’ London an’ all. An’ then I saw t’ look his second wife gave ’im when ’e talked about ’im. I dun’t suppose that ’un’s ’avin’ any kind o’ time of it.’ She looked around, twisting her lip. The music was spinning to a close and she straightened and grasped Aggie’s arm.