Wildfell

by Sam Baker

For a full migraine she’d need stronger pills. But these would take the edge off the aftermath. Stronger pills … Helen’s sense of ease slipped away. On the worktop beside her bag lay a dead packet, each of its sixteen plastic pips squashed flat. She squeezed each one anyway, one after the other, heart sinking further with each pip. Empty. Every single one of them. Shit. She closed her eyes and felt the room lurch as the nausea of the night before washed back. This had nothing to do with side effects. In her hurry to leave, she’d forgotten to get a new prescription. Without it …

  Helen downed two aspirin, took a third for luck, and leaned against the huge butler’s sink. She counted down from ten, trying to imagine her next attack without the drugs. If she was lucky it might be weeks away.

  If she wasn’t …

  Using what little daylight remained, Helen began a tour of the house. It wasn’t necessary, logically she knew that; but she’d been doing it almost as long as she could remember. It was a stupid ritual. One of many she’d adopted over the years. Whether for luck, safety, or as some sort of offering to a god she didn’t believe in, she wasn’t sure. Art had mocked her for it often enough. ‘What do you plan to do,’ he’d asked once, ‘if you find a psychopath lurking under the bed?’ She’d bitten back her first retort and just shrugged. She didn’t have an answer then and she didn’t have one now, but she looked anyway. Everyone had their decompression rituals.

  Doors, windows, under beds, were hers.

  Shuddering, she pushed Art from her mind. She’d feel better once she’d checked the locks, she always did.

  As she passed the door that led to the pantry, a noise stopped her. She froze on the spot, listening intently. There it was again. Small but insistent, growing gradually louder … A scraping, like a branch on a windowpane, or fingernails on a blackboard. Leaning on the handle, Helen pushed open the door and jumped back. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t a mangy black tom glaring at her from the middle of the pantry floor, hackles up in fury. The room was dank and smelled of mould, the result of endless drizzle seeping through the missing diamond of the lead window that the cat had obviously used to break and enter.

  The two faced off.

  ‘Stay, if you want,’ Helen said after several seconds in which it became clear that the cat had no plans to back down. Her voice sounded louder than she’d expected and they both jumped.

  Eye contact broken, the cat hissed, showing yellow fangs, and darted towards the window.

  Beside the pantry, a second door led through to several outhouses, the nearest of which doubled as a utility room. Beyond was a courtyard. In one corner, below tiles that obviously leaked, was a carriage. It had probably been a prized possession once. Today it was a ghost, rendered pale by decades of bird shit from pigeons in the rafters above. An arch through the rear of the courtyard led to a walled garden with a lychgate gate onto the Dales. At least, according to the letting agents’ details.

  She’d seen pictures of Wildfell before she arrived, of course. The courtyard garden, a couple of ostentatious family rooms. It looked big, which didn’t matter, and remote, which did. She wanted somewhere she was unlikely to be bothered by neighbours. But now she was here and in, and could see the house in all its ruined glory, it was vast. Far larger than she knew what to do with. More run-down than she’d been told. And far closer to civilisation than the letting agent had let on, situated on the cusp of the moors and the Dales. Estate agents lied, it seemed, and so did photographs.

  The red-brick Elizabethan frontage was built on to something even more ancient. According to the details, it had been a prep school in the post-war period; a boarding school for boys up to thirteen, which shut for undisclosed reasons. In the eighties it tried – and failed – to become a conference centre. In the early nineties it shut again. Though the agent didn’t say so, she suspected it had been shut on-and-off ever since. Family dispute, was all he said when she asked why the house didn’t just get sold to developers. Certainly, he had seemed peculiarly keen to let it to a single woman in search of somewhere quiet to work.

  Dusk was falling as she locked the door to the outhouse, feeling its flimsy lock rattle in a way that cranked her anxiety up another notch. Then she retraced her steps to the entrance hall. Like everything else in the house it was huge and faded, several doors leading off.

  A vast dining room with a mahogany table that would seat twenty at a squeeze. A study with walls lined with antelope heads. A billiard room with a table torn to reveal a heavy slab of slate beneath rotting baize. A red ball sat alone at the side. Helen slung it into the pocket as she passed and it fell through the threadbare net, landing with a crash that made her jump, before rolling away across the marbled floor. The air of abandonment was even more apparent in the drawing room, where a chandelier, two sofas and five chairs were all shrouded under sheets. A huge, gloomy portrait of an imperious man in breeches and knee boots glared down from above the fireplace. The hairs on her arms rose, as if the temperature had dropped a degree or two when she walked in. Not damp like the pantry, more … chill. Wrapping her arms around herself, Helen rubbed at them in a futile attempt to warm up. Then she checked the windows. They were all shut. She pulled the curtains anyway, drab and heavy with dust. Anything to obscure the gloom outside.

  The house seemed endless. Big rooms giving on to smaller rooms giving on to staircases, which in their turn gave on to a hidden underworld of servants’ pantries and store cupboards that Helen decided to ignore, bolting the door firmly top and bottom when she returned to ground level. Upstairs were bedrooms; her own, chosen late the previous night by default, no better or worse than any of the others. It was huge, its ceiling so bowed she feared it might fall in at any moment. As she paced its floor, her boots squeaked on utilitarian grey-blue carpet, at odds with the rest of the bedroom furniture, an assortment of hideous hand-me-downs from elderly relatives who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  With the light fading, Helen flicked the switch and a bulb flickered to half-life, barely concealed by a too-small panelled lampshade. In the darkening window, her reflection watched her make her inventory; black eyes sunk in a pale face that seemed to hover against the gloom, until she snuffed it out with the flimsy curtains. An old dark wood chest of drawers stood in one corner, two careless coffee rings interlocking on its surface. A wardrobe with a bevelled oval mirror between its double doors almost matched the chest of drawers, but not quite. Against the end wall sat the bed, little more than a single, in which she’d woken that morning.

  Above it hung a portrait of a boy of about seven with blond ringlets and velvet knickerbockers, standing on a windswept moor with a long, low outcrop of rock behind him. The boy was smiling, a beam so full that Helen almost looked over her shoulder to see who he was looking at.

  Visiting the servants’ floor above just long enough to confirm it was empty, Helen locked the door that led to it and every other bedroom door that had a bolt or a key. The more of the house she could shut down, the less daunted she’d feel.

  At the end of the corridor, she stopped on the threshold of a smaller drawing room, its windows overlooking the forecourt. The room was tiny by comparison, its furniture relatively sparse, just a sagging armchair and rotting sofa made almost decent by a huge Indian throw. A threadbare Turkish rug hid most of the carpet. Over the fireplace was another painting of the same boy, a year or two older, in knee boots, his smile replaced by a scowl. In spite of the painting, the room felt, if not good, then calm. Wandering back out on to the landing, Helen decided not to lock it.

  Satisfied the house was secure, she returned to the kitchen and set about unpacking her shopping. What had she been thinking, buying so much stuff? She’d gone intending to stock up on store-cupboard essentials: coffee, tea, milk, bread. A bottle of vodka. Now this. She’d even bought running kit from the sports shop next to the supermarket. That, at least, might be useful.

  It was only as she lifted the last two bags from their soggy resting place on the hall floor that s
he noticed what was left of a note. It lay where her feet must have trampled it when she came in. The pale blue writing paper was good quality; the sort intended for proper letters; the kind that came with matching envelopes, and an unheeded lesson in the art of thank-you letters from a well-meaning relative. This sheet, though, had been folded in half, edges aligned. The words Mademoiselle Graham barely legible in unfamiliar handwriting. Biro, not ink. Just as well, given how soggy the paper was.

  Eyeing the letter, Helen felt the knot in her stomach tighten again. Nobody in her world had handwriting that neat. Nobody she knew sent handwritten, hand-delivered notes instead of emails. Come to think of it, nobody called her Mademoiselle Graham. Nobody called her Mademoiselle anything. Clearing a space on the cluttered kitchen table, and smoothing the paper flat, Helen strained to make out blurred words scarcely a shade darker than the paper.

  Dear Mademoiselle Graham,

  I hope you are settling in well to our beautiful village. On the first Thursday of every month we have a ‘social’ at The Bull public house. As I gather from a friend at the letting agency that you will be with us for some time, we thought you might like to join us next Thursday and get to know your neighbours. We are a friendly bunch!

  You will be welcome any time from 6.30 p.m. You’ll find The Bull on the right as you enter the village from the direction of Wildfell. You can’t miss it!

  Looking forward to meeting you.

  Yours,

  Margaret Millward, Mrs

  Balling the wet note, Helen hurled it at the sink.

  You can’t miss it!? She could and she would.

  There’s always one, she thought, slamming tins and packets randomly on to shelves. Always. It’s the law. Wherever you are in the world, whatever you’re doing, every town/settlement/encampment has a self-appointed busybody who makes it their business to winkle you out. Although they call it ‘making you welcome’.

  Worse, according to what remained of the address, this one ran the local shop, which meant she’d have to run the gauntlet whenever she needed a pint of milk.

  Helen made a mental note to start drinking her tea black.

  Back in the kitchen, she fished around inside the Sainsbury’s bags until she found what she needed and headed upstairs to the bathroom. No Formica here, just an enormous cast-iron bath supported on lion’s feet and brass taps that would have cost a fortune in Paris unless you had a lucky break in a brocante. Above the loo there was a window that looked over the lichen-clad slate roof of an outhouse, probably the pantry or an as-yet-undiscovered utility room. She didn’t remember opening the window; but then she scarcely remembered anything of the past few days.

  Peering at herself in a fly-specked mirror, Helen examined her face more closely. So ghostly pale as to be almost translucent, freckles fading, just the faintest hint of broken veins lining her nose; shadows, the baggage of endless nights of insomnia, circling already dark eyes. She was in there somewhere. Right now, it was hard to say where. Her long hair was a bedraggled mess; ends split and highlights growing back to their original reddish-brown. She’d never liked blonde, but Art did. And, well … she no longer had to please Art.

  Helen flinched.

  Tearing open the box of hair dye, she mixed the dye and developer in the tray provided, spread it evenly through her hair with a plastic comb, stumbling at each knot, then sat on the loo seat counting off fifteen minutes by her watch.

  When her time was up, she unhooked the rubber shower attachment from the tap and shucked off her jumper, stopping briefly to look at the bruises braceleting her upper arm. They were fading now, yellowing at the edges, blurry orange in the middle. Wind blew in through the window and she shuddered.

  With the dye rinsed off, she slid the nail scissors from their packet and began to cut; cautiously at first, then more confidently. Hardly expert, but it would do. By the time she’d finished nearly six inches were gone. Her wavy hair now stopped just below her shoulders. At a glance she looked almost like someone she recognised.

  3

  It was haunted, so they said. The big house. It was definitely haunted. Well, so those who believed in such things said, and even those who didn’t partake of old wives’ tales knew someone who knew someone who’d seen something where the lychgate met the Dales at dusk. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light and an ale or two too many. Everyone in the village had an opinion, and everyone agreed you had to be an outsider or stupid or have money to burn, probably all three, to rent an Elizabethan wreck no one with two legs had inhabited in years.

  The gossip had started before the woman’s taxi pulled away that first night. Not that Gil saw the taxi or even knew there’d been one until he dropped into The Bull for his pint and a ploughman’s. He had better things to do with his time than stand in the window twitching his curtains. And besides, there were enough in this village to do that for him.

  Truth be told, it got on his nerves. The constant minding everyone else’s business for them instead of looking to your own. It was getting on his nerves now … Well, Margaret Millward was as she served him in the General Stores. The Times for news, Mirror for the cricket (plus he had a soft spot for a good tab), the Post out of loyalty, the Mail, well, just because … He knew he could have got them all online hours earlier but he liked the sense of occasion, the heft and rustle of a paper with his morning coffee. A pint of semi-skimmed and a jar of instant balanced precariously on top of his pile of papers. He’d need twenty B&H from behind the counter. Logic said if he bought one pack at a time he could only smoke one pack at a time. Logic was flawed like that.

  ‘Arrived two days ago,’ Margaret Millward was saying as she rang up the cans of beans and frozen fish fingers of the woman two ahead of him. ‘Keighley radio cars … So she must have caught the train to there. Going to need a car if she’s planning on staying long. You can’t get far round here without your own transport, mess they’ve made of the buses.’

  Revolted by the gossip as he was, Gil couldn’t help being impressed by Mrs Millward’s powers of deduction. Thirty years at the wordface of local journalism, and the village grapevine – of which Margaret Millward and her husband, Mike, who owned The Stores, were both root and branch – could still teach him a thing or two. Even with the steady flow of tourist traffic there was barely a face passing through she didn’t clock.

  Missed her vocation, Gil thought idly. Or maybe she hadn’t.

  ‘Could be just another walker,’ the fish-finger buyer was saying as she rummaged for a scrawled-on ten-pound note. ‘Couldn’t move for them in The Bull last night. Even with the weather turning. Boots and rucksacks and those stupid poles.’

  ‘Why take the big house?’

  ‘A rich walker then. More money than sense, that’s for sure.’

  Gil recognised the woman’s face but he couldn’t place her. He’d seen her in town though, over the years; had two girls slightly younger than his, he knew that much. Remembered her from some PTA cheese-and-wine thing Jan had bullied him into. Pretty sure they’d never spoken. Neighbours had been Jan’s remit.

  ‘Bet she’s gone in a week. Would have thought the rooms at The Bull would be a bit comfier than that old wreck.’

  ‘She’ll stay,’ Mrs Millward said confidently. ‘She paid up front in lieu of a deposit. You’re not going to walk away from that kind of money, are you? Gwen went in to give it a bit of a once-over on Monday. Said you could feel the damp right through to your bones. And the dust … well. Part of the furniture, it’s been there that long. Not to mention the atmosphere. Awful quiet, Gwen said, just the house going about its business, you know how they do, them old houses. Wouldn’t catch me up there on my tod in the middle of the night, thank you very much.’

  She shuddered theatrically.

  ‘That’s just an old wives’ tale though, isn’t it?’ said the woman, looking less certain than she sounded. ‘Nothing about a bad atmosphere that a good airing can’t cure.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Margaret s
aid. ‘There’s something about that place that can’t be shifted with a bit of an airing. There’s plenty that’s tried.’

  The woman made a noise that could have been assent or disgruntlement, Gil wasn’t sure.

  ‘Had to make do with a bit of a vacuum, Gwen said. Well, it would be. Damp, I mean. Been empty for years. Decent-sized place though. Terrible waste, if you ask me.’

  No one did, Gil noticed, but that didn’t stop her.

  ‘People today, they’re spoilt. A place hasn’t got as many bathrooms as bedrooms, they’re not interested. Someone should gut it, turn it into flats. That’d sort it.

  ‘Two pound thirty-four love,’ she said, without breaking off her monologue to serve the customer before Gil. There was no disputing this one was a walker. His two-pound-thirty-four’s worth of boiled sweets and bottled water should have been clue enough. If not, his hiking boots, cagoule in traffic-stopping orange, green rucksack and ‘stupid pole’ certainly were.

  ‘And how are you today, Mr Markham?’ Margaret put on her best voice, as if Gil hadn’t been listening to her regular one for the past five minutes.

  ‘Not bad, thanks. And it’s Gil,’ said Gil, as he had repeatedly since he moved back to the village where he’d been born. He dumped his shopping on the counter, the barricade from behind which – day in, day out – Margaret Millward held court.

  ‘Twenty B&H?’ she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Please.’ He nodded.

  ‘Matches?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘What a place to stay,’ Margaret Millward continued as she handed both over. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  No, Gil wanted to say. It really doesn’t.

  That was the problem with the village. One of many, in Gil’s opinion. More with every passing day. God only knew how Jan had put up with it all those years. But then, she hadn’t, had she? Or she’d still be here. Only now, two weeks into his retirement, was Gil finally beginning to understand why. Strange, if you thought about it, given how long he’d lived here. Although living here was a bit of an exaggeration, in light of the hours he worked and the weeks he spent in hotels covering conferences and strikes, train wrecks and natural disasters. Owned a place here then. Two cottages knocked into one, with the work overseen by Jan after they moved in … Gil caught an image of Jan, back in the day, pregnant with Karen, bloody great hole in the living-room wall, her and Lyn, six, maybe seven, knee-deep in brick dust, dust-smeared faces split by grins …