The Unquiet House

by Alison Littlewood

  Aggie thought about the tight look on Clarence’s face, his head shaved just like the children who were no relation at all, and she thought, No, I don’t suppose he is. She almost missed her mother’s next words. ‘It’s time we were going.’

  ‘Oh – do we have to?’

  ‘Never mind do we ’ave to. You’ve to be up early tomorrer to feed t’ critters, remember? Now say thank you to Mrs Hollingworth.’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ their hostess said. She had appeared close by her mother’s shoulder; Aggie wasn’t sure when. ‘A jolly good thing you have your keys,’ she added, and Aggie’s mother stared at her back as she led the way into the hall, the palms of her hands already brushing at each other as they went.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Aggie was in Mire House again, but she knew that she was dreaming because the new Mrs Hollingworth was standing in the hallway, talking and talking, all fur stole and ostrich feathers, but she couldn’t hear a sound. The woman didn’t even appear to see her as she went to the stairs and started up them. Her steps made no sound either, as if she didn’t have any weight. When she put her hand on the rail, running it along the polished wood, she felt nothing under her fingers. It was as if she were made of air.

  When she’d started to ascend it had been light in the house but as she climbed night was falling, quick and sudden. There was something wrong about the shadows but somehow she didn’t feel afraid and that was wrong too, as if something was numbing her, stopping her from feeling. But then it occurred to her that if she could feel, if she could only see, she would not be here; she would turn and run away, as far and as fast as she could.

  Now she couldn’t go back. She had to find the boy. She hadn’t seen him but she knew he was here and that any moment she would turn a corner and see a flash of his golden hair.

  There were many doors but she knew the one she had to take and she knew before opening it the room inside would be dark. The window was lined with black paper, as if the daylight was something that needed to be kept out. She squinted, allowing her eyes to adjust. There was a dresser that hadn’t been here before. She stepped forward and saw a picture sitting on it, a pretty young woman in a lacy dress, smiling a broad smile.

  She heard a soft rustling and turned to the cupboard set into the wall. In another moment she was standing in front of it and the door was open in front of her. She couldn’t see what lay inside. It was darker than anything she’d known, even the expression on the woman’s face when she’d grasped her hands in her cold dead fingers—

  No. She stepped forward into the space and when she was inside she quickly turned and closed the door. The dark remained but now there was a sound too: the soft breathiness of a child. She waited, but he did not jump out at her. ‘I found you, Tom,’ she said. ‘I know you’re there.’

  The darkness had a presence. It ate her words. She pressed her lips together. What she wanted to do was run, but she no longer felt sure there was a door behind her. If she turned and put out a hand and felt only a solid wall beneath her fingers she knew she would lose her mind. She closed her eyes and found it didn’t make any difference. Better to wait, she thought. Better not to know, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Then he spoke. ‘She didn’t have a baby,’ he said, quite clearly, and then silence filled the space once more.

  ‘Tom, is that you? What do you mean?’ Aggie swallowed. Her throat was dry. She shuffled forward, expecting to find boxes or clothes, but there was nothing. Then she flailed and brushed past something after all; there was a bowl or a dish and it upset when she touched it, setting up a loud clatter. The smell grew stronger, chemical and nasty, and there was something cold and wet on her fingers. She snatched them back.

  She took another step and felt for the boy, up high, and then lower, where he might be crouching in the dark, his head bent, not covered in golden curls but shorn and bald and with lice crawling all over it …

  There was nothing there. Nothing there at all except the dark that was waiting, and she jerked awake and she bit her lip to smother her cry.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The boys looked entirely different in daylight. It wasn’t their clothes – it was even more obvious now that Hal and Tom had never had a first-hand coat in their lives – but their faces. Their expressions were bright, no anxiety or trouble in them, and Tom was even smiling. It had been several days since the party and their hair was starting to grow back. Soon Arthur might not stand out so much any longer. Tom’s looked like straw beginning to emerge from the ground and she reached out and rubbed it, feeling the soft prickle on her fingers. For a moment she remembered her dream and she almost expected him to disappear, but he turned to her and grinned.

  ‘Where’re we off to, then?’ he said, and they all waited for her answer. She was suddenly glad she had called for them at Mire House. Inside it had been all shadows and harsh perfume and brittle manners; now they were standing in the lane, swallowing the cold air, all grins and teeth. Even Arthur looked relieved to be outside.

  She carried three small wicker baskets and two of the bags she had sewn. She had taken them from the pile that was waiting to be finished; they didn’t yet have the patches of paper sewn on that would bear a soldier’s name. She passed them around.

  ‘We’re off nutting,’ she said. She pointed towards the opening that let onto the river path, away to the side of the garden. ‘There are hazels in that hedge. We’re off to pick ’em.’

  Hal spoke. ‘I dun’t know what they look like.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll show you what’s to do.’

  Tom’s face was threatening to crease into a frown: he evidently didn’t think her plan very exciting. But then he looked back towards the house before turning to her and smiling.

  She led the way towards the path and as soon as they reached it, it was as if they had escaped. They ran ahead of her, swiping at nettles with their hands, some kind of show of bravado, until Arthur yelped and gripped his palm.

  ‘Well, don’t touch them then,’ Aggie said. She bent and showed him the leathery dock leaves growing beneath. ‘Scrunch this up and rub it on. It’ll make it better.’ He pulled a face but rubbed on the sap anyway, scrubbing as if he could scrape away the bumps.

  ‘He’s an idiot,’ a voice said at her ear and she looked around to see Clarence. The boy’s face was screwed up with scorn.

  ‘Now that’s not nice.’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Aggie said. ‘I’ll not ’ave things o’ that kind said in my ’earing, understand? ’Specially not between family.’ She knew at once she’d said the wrong thing. Arthur’s eyes narrowed while Clarence gawped.

  ‘He’s not my family,’ Clarence said.

  Arthur did not reply.

  ‘But your uncle is his uncle, so—’

  ‘He’ll never be family. My uncle should never have got married again. If he had been nicer to my aunt instead—’

  Aggie blinked. ‘Whatever makes you say that?’

  ‘They won’t get away with it,’ the boy said, not looking at her. He was staring over the wall.

  ‘Clarence?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Arthur said in a low voice. ‘Please can we go now? The others are getting ahead.’

  She saw that he was right. ‘Let’s go on a bit, up towards t’ river. That’s where t’ nuts are.’

  Clarence didn’t move at first, but as she started to walk she heard him trailing behind her. He was kicking at the grass. Arthur was ahead of her and she couldn’t see his face, only his hair.

  Then he half-turned and she heard his voice, little more than a whisper. ‘Sorry. He doesn’t like my aunt, that’s all. She – well, she isn’t very nice to him.’ He paused. ‘She calls him “that awful child”. I don’t think she especially likes children. I wanted to go to Aunt Lizzie’s, but she just got married and my mother didn’t think much of it – I heard her say she’d married low. She thought I’d be
better off with Aunt Antonia.’ He pulled a face.

  Aggie frowned. It didn’t seem likely that Antonia Hollingworth was particularly motherly, but all the same, she couldn’t get Clarence’s look out of her mind; not so much his fixed expression, but the way he had stared out over the wall and across at the slope rising away in that particular direction; as if he had been looking directly at the graveyard.

  As she walked, she let her misgivings melt away. The path was still vibrantly green even though summer had passed, and the hazels were there, their generous leaves looking almost as if they were tumbling down the plant instead of growing upwards. She pushed the greenery aside and examined the nuts. She shook the tree, setting up a fine rustle, and the boys peered in, three heads close together, one a short distance away. She ignored the thought of lice and pointed. ‘See, they’re best when they’re falling off.’ She picked some up and put them in her bag. ‘We’ll pickle ’em. You can give some to— You can take some back to the ’ouse, when they’re done.’

  Tom giggled. ‘I bet I can get more n’ you. Bet I can get more n’ anyone.’ He set to work, yanking away the nuts and twigs all together and stuffing them into his bag. He separated one, peering dubiously at the green husk before putting it to his lips, then he changed his mind and dropped that into the bag, then grinned at her. She laughed. They stood in a wide-spaced line, working at the small trees. The boys were pale but the sun was in their faces and the air freshened their cheeks. They didn’t appear to be thinking about being so far from home, or about Mire House or families or anything at all.

  Tom was the nearest. He turned to her. ‘She in’t watchin us today,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  He grasped the plant by two sturdy branches and leaned back, swinging on them. Then he straightened and looked out over the top of the wall. They could still see right across the grounds of Mire House to the slope opposite where a yew tree stood, louring and dark. She could see under its branches, well enough to know that the bench was empty. Good, she thought.

  ‘She din’t ’ave a baby,’ he murmured.

  ‘What did you say?’

  He yanked a hazelnut from the tree as Aggie shook off the sudden chill. It must be gossip, something he’d picked up from Clarence or Arthur, or maybe both of them. She picked a nut too, and stared at it for a moment before letting it fall into her bag, thinking of swallowing the dry, cloying thing.

  ‘She were watchin’, before.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He kept his eyes fixed on the tree as he plucked at the foliage with his fingers. The others had drifted away. Hal and Arthur were bunched together, their shoulders shaking; she heard stifled laughter.

  ‘I saw ’er out o’ t’ window.’

  ‘What window?’ It sounded like an accusation and she tried to soften it with a smile. Time stretched out, suspended between them.

  ‘Saw ’er a few times. Seen ’er talkin’ to ’im.’ He gestured towards Clarence, who was bent close to the tree. His cheeks were pink and he looked as if he was trying to give the impression he was engaged on his task, while the others laughed. ‘Dunno what she said. ’E wouldn’t tell me.’

  Aggie froze.

  Then he said, ‘She ’ad a soldier wiv ’er, last time.’

  Everything stopped. Aggie’s eyes widened, looking out at the yew tree’s darkness. Then she grabbed the boy’s shoulder and pulled him around to face her. His mouth clamped into a surly line. He met her gaze and she tried to see what was hiding in his eyes: amusement, perhaps, or cruelty, or childish glee. She couldn’t make it out, and then she did: it was fear.

  She took a step back and let her hands fall to her side. The bag slipped from her fingers and nuts spilled from it, rolling across the path.

  ‘It’s all right. I don’t think ’e was real. I think ’e were like ’er.’

  ‘You didn’t see anyone,’ she said. ‘You didn’t see anyone because she in’t real. And if you din’t see ’er, you din’t see no soldier either.’ She leaned in close. The others had stopped what they were doing and even Clarence’s eyes were fixed on her. She took a deep breath. ‘There in’t any lady,’ she said. ‘She in’t there. An’ there in’t a soldier either, not round ’ere. They’re all gone.’ She immediately regretted her choice of words.

  ‘She is real. I saw ’er. Ower there.’ He pointed towards the graveyard. ‘An she did ’ave someone wiv ’er. She ’ad ’er ’and on ’is shoulder, an’ then she went away an’ ’e did too.’

  She couldn’t speak. She looked away from him, forcing herself to take deep breaths. She opened her mouth to deny his words once more – you saw nothing – but instead she found herself asking, ‘What uniform?’

  ‘Eh?’

  She was suddenly blinking away tears, furious at herself for allowing them to come, to let herself be taken in. He was a liar, a nasty little liar, and that was all. But it didn’t stop her from repeating the words: ‘I said, what uniform was ’e wearing?’ She said it in a low voice, so that the others couldn’t hear. They would only laugh at her. That was probably their whole purpose, to laugh – they must have dreamed this up between them, nothing but silly playacting, a fine joke, and she had fallen for it like the fool she was.

  She put a hand to her dress, the left side, just below her shoulder blade. ‘What kind of a soldier? The uniform – were there wings on it, just here, or—?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Or nothing? Was there—?’

  ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I dun’t like you no more.’ He thrust something towards her – the bag he’d been holding, full of prickly twigs – and he pushed past, heading towards the others. When he reached them they turned and ran, all together, uncaring of the nettles thrashing against their legs.

  Aggie stood alone on the path and looked down at the bag. The stitching was coming unravelled. It had never been meant for twigs and rough little hands, to be pulled around in country hedgerows. She stared at the loose threads. She knew her mother would tut over it as she unpicked the work. Then she’d steadily sew it up again before taking the thin square of paper that would bear a young man’s name and stitching it to the front.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The water pump was coated in a thin layer of ice that disintegrated under Aggie’s fingers. They were already nipped and pink with cold and her nose was running as she started to pump water into the trough. That wasn’t frozen, but it would be soon; winter was almost here. She paused, letting the water’s airy coughing subside. The brief low of cattle came from the fold and there was the harsher, nearer complaint of a goose. The sky was like milk, the sun not yet peering over the outbuildings, and frost coated everything.

  On other days her brother would have done this, thrown down straw from the hayloft and measured out feed. Today her father had gone out early and so it was up to her. She had heard his heavy step before she’d risen, then the scrape of the door on flagstones in the kitchen below. The wood must have swollen. She wasn’t sure how quickly it would turn colder – the BBC had stopped the weather forecast in case it might help an invasion – but she didn’t think it would be long. Then the world would freeze, covered over in snow that smothered everything – the grass for the animals, the yard between the barn and stables, the fields. It would freeze the water on her nightstand and the insides of the windows and the cloths on the sink, if they weren’t properly dried and hung. It would touch the world with silver and folk from the village would trample along the lane to the church and call it beautiful. She grimaced. It was all very well for those who didn’t have a farm. Easy to enjoy winter’s beauty for those whose hands weren’t growing numb with cold.

  She missed her brother. He was somewhere on the Belgian– French border with the British Expeditionary Force, miles and miles away, somewhere he’d probably never even imagined. She remembered Tom’s words – but of course, the boy was lying. He hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen; he was nothing but a young boy dreaming of soldiers.

 
She knew her father thought of Will all the time and she imagined Eddie’s father did the same. Her dad went about his work just as he always had, but his movements, though sure, had changed. There was something mechanical about them. He no longer smiled. The lines were etching deeper into his face as worry sank into him and his eyes, under the dullness, were full of fear.

  She looked up into the sky. Sometimes planes flew over and she would stop and listen for the air-raid siren, but none ever came. They were cut off from anyone and everything that mattered in the world, and there was no helping it; without her brother, there was too much to be done. The cold clawed its way into her belly. And if he shouldn’t come back?

  She wriggled her shoulders as if she could shake off the thought.

  She ’ad ’er ’and on ’is shoulder.

  She started pumping water again, harder this time, no longer caring about her hands. She relished the numbness. First the trough, she reminded herself, then the chickens and the geese, then she’d see that the cows were fed and check that her father had seen to the horses, and then she’d dress for church and sing with the others, pray for the souls who were …

  No.

  She straightened and stretched out her back. Of course her brother would return, probably before too much longer. The war would soon be nothing but a memory. Anything else was unimaginable. He would come back and he would tease her the way he always had, and take the heavy loads on his shoulders so that she could go back to helping her mother, not this, being out here in the cold for always and always. And yet – she couldn’t help thinking of the woman standing under the yew tree, her hand on the shoulder of a young man in uniform next to her. She just couldn’t picture his face.