Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  I lowered the paper boat into the water. Holding it there for a few seconds as the scant current tried to steal it from my fingers. I opened my hand and let it go, watching as the boat bounced a little and twisted in the water. I watched as it caught for a moment on something hidden beneath the surface before the pull of the water freed it. Following a bend in the stream, it drifted out of sight.

  A breeze had begun to stir the leaves above me and I added to it with a shuddering breath, drifting among thoughts of a little girl who would never be. I sat as still as a statue; a shadow on the river bank, and lost myself in daydream. The colours changed among the trees as the hours passed, until slowly the light faded and the day swept away.

  Chapter 17 ~ Lacey

  The months had passed and the house next door remained empty. She understood why, nobody wanted to live in a house where someone had met a violent, if accidental death, especially not the local people who had known him. And there were those who still did not think that Albert’s death had been an accident, who still wondered about the woman in the house at the end of the lane.

  She had phoned the police station in the end just to clarify, just to make sure that it was truly all over and she didn’t have to fear another knock at the door. They had told her that, although they could not go into detail, there was evidence in the postmortem results to imply an accident. They had spoken to the Crown Prosecution Service about the fact that Lacey had left the scene of a crime, but because of factors relating to Lacey’s age and vulnerability, they would not be pursuing any further charges.

  It was over in that respect and the routine of Lacey’s days returned to what it was before, with one exception. She didn’t set foot in the house next door, there were no evenings with company, there was no-one to talk to. But she was free and she was glad of it.

  She became accustomed to the silence from the other side of the hedge. Dove Cottage loomed there, vacant and cold and dark. She felt sad about that. A house should be lived in. But no-one wanted it. The seasons changed and Lacey tried to keep track of them but sometimes they got away from her and she became uncertain.

  She knew when it was Halloween, the night when she huddled inside afraid of the banging against the walls and the chants that sounded like banshees to her. The holly on the door of the shop told her when it was Christmas, the bells in the church told her when it was New Year and when it was Sunday. The buds told her when it was spring. And when the flowers started to grow and open she knew that Albert had been gone for a year.

  Not long after that she had heard the truck come up the lane, she had become aware of the movement outside, on the other side of the hedge. She had spied through the branches and seen the car pull up and the pretty, dark haired girl had got out looking like a rabbit caught in headlights. And then last night, she had heard the crying in the garden and had gone to investigate, setting foot in the garden of Albert’s house for the first time since she had seen him lying dead at the foot of his stairs.

  Later, she stood at the window in her spare room, sweeping carefully at old cobwebs with a feather duster, trying her best not to hurt the spiders that were in the process of building new homes. She never liked to hurt anything and figured that she had more than enough room to share. Movement had caught her eye and she looked down to see the young woman. Her shoulders hunched up around her neck and her head down, face hidden by long hair. The woman walked towards the stream, towards the old stable that few were aware of, but Lacey remembered, even though she couldn’t see it from here and rarely ventured down there anymore. Too many memories, too much regret lay there.

  Lacey turned to where Charlie sat cross-legged on the bed, watching her in that quiet way of his, soft brown eyes that always carried a hint of a smile even when his mouth was still.

  “She seems nice, Charlie. I reckon we could’ve done a lot worse for a new neighbour.”

  Lacey turned and walked from the room, dust motes trailing behind her, heading towards the kitchen to put the kettle on. As she passed, she saw Charlie’s eyes move towards the window, where the girl’s shadow had disappeared beneath the trees on the far side of the meadow. He didn’t reply.

  Chapter 18 ~ Rachel

  Darkness had fallen completely in the valley by the time I emerged from beneath the trees. Letting myself into the house I headed straight for the kitchen, I hadn’t eaten since that morning and my energy was dwindling. I was crunching on a biscuit and waiting for the kettle to boil when there was a knock on the door. Brushing crumbs from my mouth and trying to swallow past a dry throat, I opened the door. The old lady from the night before stood against a backdrop of darkness, a purple headscarf tied over cotton wool hair and a fluffy pink dressing gown belted around her ample waist. She held a box of eggs in one hand and there was an awkward smile on her face.

  “I saw you come back.”

  I stared at her for a moment, discarding the expectation of bad news. She offered no further explanation and seemed content to simply stand and watch me, her eyes bright in a weathered face. I endured the silence for as long as I could before growing uncomfortable and asking, “What can I do for you?”

  She shuffled from one foot to the other and appeared unsure of what to say next. Standing in bare feet as she was, she barely reached my shoulders. She glanced downwards, looking at the egg box in her hand. She held them out to me, her eyes wider as though she had suddenly remembered. “Eggs,” she said, “from my chickens. I thought you might like some. I was going to bring them over earlier but then I saw you go out and I couldn’t. I heard the gate squeak when you came back and I wanted to bring them over, in case I forgot tomorrow.”

  There was something in her face then, she looked uncertain and I realised that she reminded me of someone much younger. In those moments she seemed like a child trying desperately to get things right, trying to make a good impression. Fleetingly, I saw myself in the stranger on the doorstep and in that moment I looked at her with different eyes. I took the eggs.

  “I’m Rachel,” I said, and she smiled at me as if I had given her a gift.

  “Lacey,” she told me again. “I live next door, in End Cottage.”

  “Well it’s a little late, I was just about to head to bed.”

  An instant apology fell from her lips and she looked a little forlorn, as if she hadn’t thought of this time of night being associated with sleep. I found myself feeling sad for her, this funny little woman with her bright clothes and wild hair.

  “Perhaps you would like to come over for tea tomorrow afternoon, just to say thank you for the eggs?”

  She looked beyond me into the hallway, her eyes sweeping an arc from the front door to the back, lingering a moment somewhere behind me. As her face turned back to mine she was nodding. “I’d like that,” she said, and there was a sincerity about the way she said it.

  “Is two o’clock okay?”

  She nodded her agreement and smiled up at me, a wide, toothy smile that lifted her face. “I’ll see you then,” she said and raised her hand to wave as, for the second time in twenty-four hours, she said goodbye and walked out of my garden gate into darkness.

  Chapter 19 ~ Rachel

  I spent the morning in my studio, planning, preparing and throwing some paint at a canvas in an attempt to drum up some enthusiasm for work. I painted flowers, abstract and strange, in many colours and when they dried I whitewashed over the whole thing until I was left with what I had started with, a blank canvas. By the time I had cleared up it was almost two o’clock and Lacey was due. I had achieved nothing more than stained hands and lost time.

  I was in the kitchen putting the kettle on when she knocked at the door and I opened it to find her on the doorstep holding a bright pink cake and looking shy. I stood aside to let her in.

  “I made this,” she said, and handed me the cake. She paused on the doorstep, staring at the doorframe and into the hallway beyond. With what seemed to be an effort she pulled her eyes back around to me and stepped cautiously into t
he house.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I said, indicating the cake in my hands as I walked into the kitchen and placed it on the table.

  “Oh it’s nothing. I love to bake, coming over here gave me an excuse really.”

  The cake looked lovely and I told her so as I made the tea. I felt as if I moved like a marionette, stilted and uncomfortable. I wondered what it was that had possessed me to invite Lacey into my house, a woman I knew nothing about other than the fact that we were neighbours. I was beginning to wish I had stayed silent.

  We sat at the table and tried to think of things to say. I had never been particularly good at small talk, it sounded insincere coming from me, as though I didn’t really care for the answers.

  “Have you lived in the village long?” I asked as I poured the tea and tried not to be embarrassed.

  “All my life,” she said. “I was born here, in the same house I live in now. My father was the village doctor for many years until he got sick and died.”

  I remembered the graveyard and the rose bush she had planted and thought that it may have been for him. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to live in the same place for so many years, to never be embraced by new walls or make somewhere your own by washing away the marks of others.

  “What about you, why did you move to the village?”

  It was like a dance, each step faltering and tenuous. She too was making small talk, following my lead but I didn’t know how to answer and the conversation felt false, stagnant. I picked up my cup and took a sip of my too hot tea to buy me a few seconds in which I could think.

  “I moved to Devon because I needed a change really. I was fed up with living in the city and wanted something calmer, something different. All those people were starting to make me feel claustrophobic.”

  Her eyes on me were heavy, questioning, as though she sensed that a lot was being left unsaid.

  “I can’t imagine what it is like to live in a city. Even Exeter, which is fairly small, makes me feel closed in and headachy. I need to look out of my windows and see the trees.”

  Her gaze moved to the window and beyond, to a view that must be so similar to her own, a wall of green from the high hedges of the garden boundary. I cut two slices of cake and enthused about the flavour of it. Lacey beamed at me across the table and looked pleased before we lapsed into an awkward silence and continued eating. I racked my brain for something to say but floundered and came up empty.

  “What do you do?”

  I looked up and found her eyes on me, open and curious and I felt a surge of gratitude for this question. It was easy to answer, it was safe. “I’m an artist, I have an agent back in Birmingham who sells my pictures for me and finds clients so that I can work from anywhere.”

  “You work from here?” There was genuine interest in her voice and she glanced around her, as if looking for evidence.

  “Yes I do. Well, I mean I’m supposed to. I haven’t started work since I moved although everything is set up ready. Would you like to see my studio?” I relaxed a little as I spoke, feeling as though someone was holding up prompt cards in the wings and as a result I knew what to say next. The ground seemed more solid beneath my feet as Lacey nodded and we both stood.

  I led her towards the dining room and turned at the door. She walked slower than me, favouring her right leg, and her eyes were staring at the floor. I watched her come closer and then she did a funny thing, a kind of a hop and step, as if she were stepping over something at the foot of the stairs. She looked up at me and smiled as though nothing was untoward and I thought that maybe she had simply tripped a little.

  We walked into my studio and Lacey gazed around with curiosity at the jumble of colour and bristles and white, white canvas. It looked chaotic and random but I explained to her that even blindfolded I could find any single thing. The air smelled of chemicals and linen and paper, like an old bookshop, a smell that I found warm and inviting. I tried to see it through her eyes but could only see the familiarity that enveloped me every time I stood with a brush in my hand and prepared to create something new.

  I suggested that we take our tea into the living room and I stood back as Lacey turned to leave the room. She did the same thing she had done before at the base of the stairs, the funny movement. Not a trip then. I was curious but I didn’t ask why.

  By the time I had gone back to the kitchen to pour two new cups of tea, Lacey was standing in the middle of the lounge, staring at the walls and spinning slowly as if on a turntable. Her eyes wide as they took in the kaleidoscope of colour and shape from the many canvasses and wall hangings.

  “Some of these are a little bit mad aren’t they? Look at that one,” she spoke in a kind of baffled whisper as she pointed towards one in particular, a mass of red slashes and purple swirls and shook her head. “That’s a bit disturbing if you ask me. I couldn’t have it on my wall,” and then she paused and glanced quickly at me as if something had just occurred to her. “Are any of them yours?”

  I cast my eyes over the walls, thinking of the emotion, the momentum behind each one of the images before me. “All of them.” I could hear the note of apology in my voice and I wondered at it.

  She laughed then, the deep rumbling rush of a river tumbling over a waterfall. It rolled across her like ripples spreading outwards in water. She laughed and everything on her shook, her hair, her cheeks, the underside of her arms. The movement washed over me and swept me away until I laughed too, until we both laughed so much that the reason for it became obsolete. The sound swept away the discomfort of strangers and somewhere amid the laughter we became not quite friends but something close.

  Chapter 20 ~ Lacey

  The church stood against a backdrop of trees, the edges rounded by centuries of inclement weather. The old brown stone looked warm and comforting in the sunshine. Its tower stood strong against the blue sky, a sentinel watching over the dead. With stained glass windows and ancient studded wooden doors it displayed its age and history proudly.

  In a small village like Winscombe, the church became a hive for the local community. Weekly events, jumble sales, children’s days and writing groups were all regularly held there in the small community hall that had been built at the far end of the graveyard. The details would be published in a monthly newsletter and pushed by volunteers through every letter box in the village.

  She always receives one but she never attends anything, she wouldn’t like to see the faces of everyone else when she walked amongst them like an intruder. It was ironic when she thought about it. She had been born here, decades ago, long before the war had come along and taken the young men, changing everybody’s future. Aside from a handful of residents she is probably the oldest in the village and yet she is the outsider, the unknown element. She had long ago given up wishing it could be different.

  She picks her way through the gravestones, flowers in hand and stares down at the place where her parents lay side by side. As always, she places the flowers on her mother’s grave first and tries not to hear the criticism that pours from the ground for her failings as a daughter, then she turns to her father’s grave and begins her usual tirade. She says all of the things she never did when he was alive, talking a little too loudly over the reproach from her mother. She tells him he was a lousy father, that he was cruel, that he had destroyed her life. It is the same every time she comes. She tries to exorcise the ghosts he has left her with.

  Chapter 21 ~ Rachel

  As I walked amongst the gravestones, sketchbook beneath my arm and sunglasses firmly placed over my eyes, I turned my attention to the small details of the church, trying to decide where to begin. On the northern side of the building where the main door stood I saw, half hidden in the shadows beside an archway, a green man carved into the stone.

  Sitting among the oldest gravestones with the grass tickling at my legs, I decided that this was where I would begin. As I gathered the stillness around me and began to draw, the headache that had plagued me on waking began
to release its grip. Earlier that morning, I had turned over in bed and groaned, holding my head as I pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the mattress.

  I couldn’t remember noticing the afternoon turn to evening the previous day. Lacey and I had chatted about nothing much at all, snippets of information about the local area from Lacey and facts about city life from me, with neither of us touching on the personal details of our own lives. I had been surprised at how easy I found it to spend time in Lacey’s company after that initial awkwardness.

  We had progressed from tea to a bottle of wine, which had proved too easy to drink. I was fairly certain that the lion’s share had been mine and my tolerance for alcohol was poor at the best of times. Somehow, after a little while, it had seemed easy to talk about the reason for my tears in the garden.

  I didn’t go into any great detail. I spoke from a place of calm acceptance as though the storm had passed and I was sweeping up the debris. I told her that I had lost my child, and that it would have been her due date. It seemed a simple story when it was broken down like that. She had surprised me by shedding a tear, one solitary droplet that had meandered down her cheek until she reached up and brushed it away with a look of surprise.

  Neither of us had noticed the light ebbing away.

  With some reluctance, Lacey had, a little unsteadily, gotten to her feet and announced that she had to be getting back to Charlie. I hoped that her husband wouldn’t mind her being out so late, but when I voiced that, she corrected me.