Dovecote

by Oleson, Anne Britting;

  With that, he wheeled away from the table, knocking over the remainder of his pint. By the time Gwynn had jerked away from the beer flooding across the wood and looked up, he had disappeared through the swinging door beside the hearth. The woman who had taken his place at the taps met her eyes for just a moment, then looked away again, quickly.

  “I’LL JUST SEE you across the way,” Colin said, letting the pub door close behind them on a wave of raucous laughter.

  “No need.”

  He apparently felt no need to answer. Across the road and up the path, the front window glowed softly with lamplight. Had she left the light on? Gwynn couldn’t remember. She turned abruptly to the right and headed downhill.

  “What is it?” Colin asked. Hands thrust into the pockets of his heavy coat, he shortened his steps to hers.

  “I need to walk that off.” Had she left the light on? She refused to look back over her shoulder.

  At the foot of the hill, the intersection. They crossed the road, followed the footpath to the estuary. The tide was just below high; the darkness smelled of brine. She leaned against the low wall, breathing deeply. Colin stood a few feet away, looking down at the water, hands still in pockets.

  “That went well,” she said at last.

  Colin’s laugh was short, sharp. “Line’s drawn.”

  Somewhere on the other side of the estuary, a gull cried.

  “I had to try.” She felt close to tears. “I haven’t felt that kind of anger in years. That kind of hatred.”

  “Strong word,” Colin said slowly. “It’s not personal. He’d feel the same way about anyone else who had inherited.” He sighed. “But you had to try.”

  “You knew how it was going to turn out.” Biting her lip, Gwynn turned her back on the water. Back down at the intersection, the street lamp near the call box flickered.

  “Known the man all my life.” Colin shrugged. “People stay true.”

  For some reason Gwynn resisted this indictment. “But is he right? Have I taken away from someone who’s more deserving? He might have had a point. I’m an interloper. He spent his life with her, as he said. Helping—”

  “No. Mrs. Chelton didn’t want his help any more than she wanted it from the rest of us.”

  “But you kept coming back—”

  “And he didn’t.” Colin still gazed down at the tide below. Tides which remained as true as the people of his acquaintance. “Don’t be fooled.”

  “What are you saying?”

  His profile was in shadow. He tipped his head, considering. “If there’s anyone more deserving, it wouldn’t be him. In all the years I did work for Mrs. Chelton, I never once saw him cross the road for her. Never heard of him doing it, either.” He fell silent for a moment. “If Mrs. Chelton had left the property to the one who cared for her, she would have left it to Mary Tennant, is all. If there is anyone more deserving, it’s Mary. The things she did for Mrs. Chelton, without question, without thanks—she’d be the one.”

  Mary Tennant would be the first to say Colin Moore had been the one, Gwynn knew instinctively. Above them wisps of cloud against the night sky obscured the stars. She stared upward anyway, hoping for a glimpse of a familiar constellation. She always navigated by the stars, and right now, standing in a strange village in a strange country, she was lost.

  “So Paul Stokes hasn’t a case?”

  Colin shook his head. “I don’t think he does.” Which doesn’t mean he won’t try. The words hung silently between them. Gwynn sighed and pushed away from the wall.

  “I’ll walk you up,” Colin said.

  “No need.”

  He laughed.

  Through the intersection, up the hill, up the path to the tiny stone terrace. On the stoop before the door lay a dead dove, its eye staring blankly upwards.

  8

  SHE SLEPT LATE.

  The morning was reaching in through the windows with long gray fingers as she turned over under the flowered duvet to see the time. She heard again the sound of the wood stove door—the sound which she knew had awakened her—and for a moment felt her breath catch. Then she remembered: Colin, his jaw hard and his eyes adamant, insisting that he would sleep on the couch.

  “I don’t need protecting,” she had protested.

  “The dove,” he had said. “It’s not right.”

  It wasn’t. She had had trouble falling asleep herself, tangled up in the duvet, trying to get comfortable first on one side and then the other. And now, having slept in, well past nine in the morning, she heard her guest—her protector?—moving about downstairs. She scrambled to her feet, found her slippers, and pounded down the stairs.

  It wasn’t Colin; it was Mary. The extra blankets Gwynn had brought down for him were folded carefully at the end of the sofa. The fire burned warmly, extra wood in the basket beside it. Mary had set her a breakfast tray on the coffee table.

  “Tea or coffee?” Mary now asked, glancing sideways at Gwynn’s sweatshirt and flannel sleep pants, and her tousled hair.

  Gwynn flushed, sinking down on the sofa. “Tea, I guess,” she mumbled. The pillow lay on top of the pile of blankets; she picked it up and crushed it against her chest. “Thanks.”

  Mary bustled out and back in again; she must have had the water boiling already.

  “It’s not what you think,” Gwynn said, letting her hair fall across her face to hide her warm cheeks as she took a sip from her teacup.

  “I don’t have to think anything,” Mary replied tartly, gathering up the spare blankets and holding out a hand for the pillow. “He was still sleeping when I let myself in this morning. On the sofa. Downstairs. In the sitting room.” She crossed to the foot of the stairs. “Fully clothed.” She sounded disapproving.

  AFTER SHE WASHED and dressed, Gwynn began the task of cleaning out the upstairs. Master bedroom first, with Mary’s help. She opened the wardrobe upon the hangers full of dresses, dark shoes lined up in neat rows beneath them.

  “Can we donate?” she asked Mary. “Is there someplace that can take these things?”

  Mary nodded. “Oxfam. We can have Colin come by for them this afternoon if you like.” Her look might have been arch.

  She had brought boxes with her this morning, which were quickly filled. She had also carried a bin bag upstairs, and what they deemed unusable to others they tossed into it. It was warm dusty work, despite the general gloominess of the day. Mary sniffed frequently as they cleared away the remnants of Gwynn Chelton’s life, though whether from the dust or mournfulness over the gradual eradication of her former employer, it was difficult to tell. Easier not to ask.

  By ten, Mary had completed a vicious and thorough hoovering of the carpet, and the corners, and had taken down the curtains to bring them to the cleaners.

  “Mind you stay away from the front window tonight in your nightdress. Don’t give them anything more to talk about over to the Child.” She nodded in the direction of the pub, and let out what might have been construed as a chuckle.

  “You know about that?” Gwynn asked, mortified.

  “Oh, everybody does.” Mary waved it away. On the way by with the vacuum cleaner, she paused to pat Gwynn on the shoulder, much as one would a child or a puppy. “Don’t even worry about it. The lines are drawn, but you’re on the side of the angels.” She thumped away down the stairs.

  The lines are drawn. Those had been Colin’s words. Shortly before they’d found the dead dove.

  Gwynn’s neck prickled.

  IN THE AFTERNOON, she called the taxi company and asked for a ride into town. There she bought new sheets, a duvet, and cover, and some curtains—all in a lighter, colorful pattern.

  She would not be that other Gwynn. She would lighten the place up.

  Maybe she would take a lover.

  The thought made her almost laugh aloud, handing her bank card to the sales associate.

  AFTER SHE HAD made the bed, she sat on its edge and looked across the room at the empty wardrobe, the empty dresser. Even the
top of the dresser had been cleaned off, divested of combs, hairpins, a hand mirror with a broken handle. Gwynn had chosen to keep the small greet metal music box, which tinkled a tune she did not recognize when she lifted the cover; it was empty, save for a single gold wedding band. She left that in there.

  There had been no photographs: none in small frames or tucked into the edge of the mirror. Not even hidden away in a drawer with nightdresses and underthings. Nothing. No husband, no parents, no picture of her great-aunt as a younger woman. No wedding photo. Gwynn hadn’t really thought about it as they worked, so intent had she been on the task she shared with Mary. Now, considering, it seemed odd. When there were no photographs, it was almost as though there had been no life. Again Gwynn was struck by the feeling of emptiness, of desolation.

  Almost idly, she opened the drawer of the nightstand next to her. They hadn’t thought to clear this out—perhaps it was the singleness of the drawer, the smallness of it. Nestled inside was a pair of reading glasses, plastic-framed. Underneath them, a folded sheet of paper with her—and her great-aunt’s—name written on it. For only a moment she was jolted: but the ink was old, faded, and the hand that had incised the name was spiky and unfamiliar.

  With a finger, she nudged the glasses aside to look more closely at the single word. Gwynn. Her hand was shaking as she lifted the paper; it felt brittle, and the crease was so worn as to make her nervous just opening it up.

  Dovecote. T

  Just the one word and the initial. She flipped back to the name. Both words written on the yellowed page with such force that they seemed carved.

  A message. But of what? And from whom? Obviously it was of such importance that her great-aunt had kept it when she seemed to have kept so little else. Gwynn held the paper gingerly in her fingers, trying to make sense of it. But the two words and the letter gave no further clue.

  DOVECOTE. SHE HAD heard the doves the other day, out in the garden.

  There had been a dead dove on the step.

  “Is there a dovecote around here anywhere?” she asked Mary when she next appeared for her morning work.

  Mary frowned. “A dovecote?”

  “Does anyone around here keep doves?”

  The thing that she had noticed about Mary was that she didn’t dismiss a question out of hand, but gave it careful consideration. Of course, her answers were often guarded, as though she were playing some sort of verbal hide-and-seek. “Now, I can’t think of anyone who does. Why would you ask?”

  Gwynn suddenly didn’t want to mention the note she had found; her great-aunt had kept it, and kept it secret, all that time, and it seemed wrong to bring it out into the open this morning. Instead she said, “I just thought I heard doves. The other afternoon. When I was oiling the gate in the back garden.”

  The back garden. The rusted gate. Damn it. Caught up in working on the illustrations, she hadn’t thought to go check; she wondered how long it took for penetrating oil to evaporate.

  Mary was busy with her broom, brow still knitted together. Today she wore a flowered bib apron—very much like those from the shops—over her dress, her hair pulled back into a tight braided bun at the back of her head.

  “I don’t think anyone keeps them around here,” Mary replied slowly, without looking up. “Not anymore.”

  An opening. A test, to see whether Gwynn would rise to the bait.

  “But someone used to.”

  Mary nodded, still not raising her head. Her hands tightened on the broom handle. “I’d heard Mrs. Chelton’s husband used to.” Her voice held that suspicious tone that was beginning to become a familiar part of their conversation. “Out back. Beyond the wall.”

  Gwynn pondered the information. “He’s been dead for years.”

  Again the single nod. “More than fifty, I would say.”

  Gwynn poured herself a cup of coffee from the press—thank God Mary had shown her how to use it properly—and gathered the mail to take it into the dining room. Once there she tossed it onto the table, uninterested, and sat, looking out the front window at the grey sky. Neither did she pick up a pencil. Gwynn Chelton’s husband had been dead for more than fifty years; those doves she had heard were not his. Could not have been his.

  Out back, beyond the wall. Beyond the gate which would not open. Beyond the brambles which reasserted themselves as soon as she fought them back.

  Gwynn. Dovecote. T

  “Mary?” she called after a few minutes.

  There was an answer, though she could not make out the words. Probably Mary was cleaning the oven, or the refrigerator, or under the sink.

  “What was my great-aunt’s husband’s name?”

  There was a muffled clatter, and an equally muffled exclamation. Then footsteps as Mary looked through from the sitting room.

  “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  “Mr. Chelton. What was his given name?”

  Mary appeared to be thinking hard, trying to remember.

  “Thomas, I think,” she said finally. “Thomas. But they called him Tommy.”

  THAT EXPLAINED THE T.

  In a way, she thought later, once again drawn to take the faded note out of the drawer, that took a bit of romance out of it. She had to admit that, for the few hours between discovery and information, she had dreamed up a number of scenarios. A note, kept in a bedside drawer for years, the bedside drawer of a woman long widowed: perhaps she had, after all, taken a lover. Perhaps this was a note slipped under a door, through a mail slot, left in a hymnal at church—to arrange a tryst.

  Gwynn smiled ruefully to herself. A lover’s tryst, outside the walls of the garden. The fantasy had all sorts of Edenic overtones. There was deep romance to it.

  All for nought. The note was obviously from the other Gwynn’s husband. T—Thomas—Tommy. Now Gwynn turned the paper over in her hand, gingerly, not wanting to tear it where it had grown thin along the fold. Nothing else was written on it. So what had it meant? Tommy had kept doves. Somewhere. Outside the garden wall, as there was no room for, nor any evidence of, a dovecote within. But the note wouldn’t be an invitation to a lover’s tryst when the pair of them were married, living under the same roof. He wouldn’t have had to make an appointment with his own wife.

  Gwynn folded the paper back over, so her own name, in that pointed script, stared back up at her. The downward strokes were so strong they nearly scarred the paper. Perhaps Tom had left the note on the table, to let his wife know where he was when she returned from some errand in the village. Yet that didn’t seem a suitable explanation, either. Not with the name carved into the front, and the rest of the message hidden until the paper was unfolded.

  No. There was an intent here she didn’t understand. Dovecote. It struck Gwynn as more of a command. There was nothing of the I’m up there if you want me about it.

  There was something stronger.

  Something nastier.

  Gwynn thought of the crying of the doves she had heard out back. Then she remembered—even heard it again in her imagination—the very human sobbing.

  The paper suddenly felt hot in her hands, as though it were burning. Gwynn gasped and dropped it to the floor.

  The gate in the rear garden still refused to open. The brambles had grown up again.

  9

  “I NEED YOUR help,” she said to Colin over the phone.

  “Okay.” He was waiting. Perhaps it was a genetic trait, she thought, the inability to make small talk. He had it. Mary had it. But then, they were only related by marriage. Son of her husband’s cousin, or something like that.

  “There’s a gate in the back garden.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “I can’t get it open.” Gwynn realized that her palm, wrapped around the telephone, was sweating. “I’ve tried penetrating oil, but it didn’t help. The thing’s rusted shut.”

  “Maybe you’re not meant to go through it.”

  It took her a moment to realize he was serious.

  “Can you help me ge
t it open, or not?” she demanded.

  There was a long pause.

  “Likely I could,” he said finally. “If you really think we should.”

  “Great,” she said, trying to keep the peevishness from her voice. “When would that work for you?”

  “I’ve got a couple of small jobs to tend to this afternoon. I could probably stop by before the gig. Three-ish?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  She hung up the phone, and heard a muffled crash from upstairs.

  GWYNN COULDN’T STICK to her drawing all afternoon. Her mind kept wandering, and her eyes did, too, looking out at Eyewell Lane, down the hill to the intersection where the red call box stood sentinel, under its dying streetlight. The afternoon was still gloomy—this had been the gloomiest week in October that she could remember, but then again, she had never spent a week in October here. She had not even known here existed until the unexpected arrival of the registered letter from the solicitor.

  Discouraged, she threw down her pencil, which skittered across the tabletop and fell to the floor. She’d simply have to finish the miniature another time, because it wasn’t happening right now. She pulled her desk diary toward her, more for something to do than to really look at it: she already knew what it said about when Belinda wanted the preliminary pen-and-ink drawings. At this rate, she’d never meet the deadline, and her second career would be finished before it had even begun.

  She was still staring at the diary, unseeing, when the movement of the truck outside the window, as it slid to the curb, caught her eye. Almost at the same time, the clock in the dining room chimed a quarter. The door of the cab opened, and Colin Moore slid out, his eyes scanning the front of the cottage. When he saw her in the window, he raised a hand in greeting, then he stopped, his expression clouding slightly. He reached into the bed of the truck to pull out a toolbox and headed up the path toward the tiny terrace.