Dovecote

by Oleson, Anne Britting;

  “He thinks you’re upset with him,” she said, setting the mugs down, black in front of Gwynn, milky at Colin’s empty place. She reached over and piled the empty plates. Gwynn said nothing, watched Penny crumple their napkins into her apron pocket. “I can guess why. He probably didn’t tell you he had an ex-wife.”

  “He said there was a girl. After university.”

  “Ah, me.” Penny shook her head. She had sympathetic brown eyes. “Damn fool. Yes, that girl was me. We lived together for a while, opened the restaurant, got married, woke up one day and realized it wasn’t right. So that was that.”

  “He never mentioned marriage.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t, you know, unless you’d asked him outright. He’s not proud of divorcing. He’s old-fashioned enough to think a marriage should be for life. His parents’ was. My parents’ is, though they still have time to screw it up.” She laughed.

  “People get divorced all the time.” Gwynn felt raw, like she’d been scraped.

  Penny stopped in the midst of gathering the dirty dishes, staring. Her expression was of intense disappointment. “Colin’s not people.”

  The rebuke was firm, and obvious.

  Gwynn felt suddenly ridiculous, and petty. She looked down at her hands, still twisting her napkin into oblivion. Embarrassed, she dropped the pieces on top of the pile of dishes. “I just wish he’d told me,” she mumbled at last. “I told him—about my husband.” She raised her eyes to Penny’s face, where the expression had softened once again to a good-humored kindness. “Did he send you to talk to me?”

  Penny shook her head. “Learning about him, maybe, but you haven’t learned it all yet, if you’d think he’d do that.” Then she relented. “But it’s because he would never ask me to intercede on his behalf—in anything—that I always think I need to. Or that I want to.” She lifted the dishes, looking around the dining room. “We’ve been friends, Col and I, for more than half my life now. I guess I know him as well as any self-respecting sister would. We might not have made it as a married couple, but it’s better this way, you know? And one thing I can tell you about that man, Gwynn. He’s incredibly loyal. Incredibly. If he’s made up his mind you’re worth his effort, he’ll stick by you until the end of time.” She laughed softly and took a step back, glancing over as the man in question came back into the restaurant, pocketing his phone. “And if I’m not mistaken, he thinks you’re worth the effort.” She smiled that open grin again. “I’m glad.” Before she moved away, she leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I’m glad, Gwynn. Take care of him.”

  “I’M SORRY I didn’t tell you,” he said as they slipped out into the lane and turned toward the strand. A wind blew sand at them in the tunnel between the tall houses.

  Just words, Gwynn.

  “I wish you had.” She sighed. “I mean, is there anything else I should know? If this is just a little thing you forgot to mention, what are the big things?” She shook her head, the hair cascading around her face. With a hand she shoved it back and took a deep breath. “What was your phone call?”

  Colin shrugged. “Some work. Later this week. Nothing to worry about this morning.” He reached for her hand, then stopped. “Do you mind? Are you still angry with me?”

  “Yes. No.” It was difficult to explain. “I told you everything. Things I’ve never said to anyone. Then I find this out—a rather important thing you neglected to tell me, the woman you’re sleeping with. I just don’t know.”

  “It’s in the past.”

  “It’s in your past.”

  “Yes.” He stopped, scuffed a foot at the ground. “But a long time in my past. You’re in my future.”

  Gwynn shrugged. She felt disappointed, discouraged. As though the ground, never firm to begin with, was shifting beneath her feet. Again. She watched a pair of gulls wheel overhead; the same pair from Colin’s yard? “I’d just like to be sure there aren’t any more surprises. I don’t want any more surprises in my life.”

  “I’ve got no more surprises, I promise.” He held out a hand. “That’s everything, you know. I have no other wives, no other stories.” He sighed. “Can we go back to the flat? You can ask me anything.”

  But Gwynn shook her head. “I’ve got to get home,” she said without looking at him. “I’ve got work to do for Belinda. I think I should probably just go on home.”

  The words were lifeless things, an excuse dropped between them.

  “All right,” Colin said slowly. He sounded tired. “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you wouldn’t leave it like this. I’d like to fight this out and be done with it.” She wasn’t up to responding. Again the sigh. “I’ll give you a lift back up.”

  “No need. I’ll walk up.” She wanted to be away. She wanted to think.

  “It’s no trouble—and I’d feel better if you’d let me see you home.”

  Gwynn shook her head. “No. There’s really no need.” She took a quick step away, but threw one look back. “I’ll call you.”

  She walked briskly along the narrow street, forcing her shoulders back.

  “Don’t say that. Everyone says that,” he called after her.

  She didn’t answer.

  32

  GWYNN UNLOCKED THE front door and nearly stumbled into the entryway.

  The flow of cool air caught her by surprise. She checked the watch on the inside of her right wrist, puzzled. The fire had long ago gone out, but the draft? Quickly she shut the door, and after half a second’s thought, locked it behind her. The movement of air slowed and stopped, like she’d shut off a faucet, but still it felt cool. Something was still not right. Her neck prickled.

  She was not alone.

  Gwynn stood back to the door, waiting for the feeling to solidify. Was it her great-aunt, making herself known again? She didn’t think so; she had become used to the feeling of what she imagined to be Gwynn Chelton: sad, at times unbearably sad, but not threatening. Right now she found it hard to breathe. There was something menacing in the cottage this afternoon.

  No. She shook herself, steeling her spine. She was being fanciful. She was making things up. It was only the rain, which had begun to fall fitfully, the unrelenting steeliness of the sky and the water, just visible to her left on most of the walk home. Stop it, she ordered herself.

  You shouldn’t have let him in. Gwynn Chelton’s voice. Again she shook herself and hung her coat on the hall tree before heading for the kitchen and tea. Again she looked at her watch: it was tea time, wasn’t it?

  Paul Stokes was sitting in Gwynn Chelton’s wing-backed chair.

  She pulled up short, shocked. Horrified.

  There were muddy footprints leading from the kitchen, across the carpet, to the chair. But the chair wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Stokes had pulled it closer to the window, and now sat, for all the world as if he owned the place, thumbing through Martin Scott’s scrapbook.

  He looked up, his black eyes unfathomable. “You left the gate open.” He placed both of his broad hands on the pages before him.

  “Which gives you the right to come into my house?” she demanded, more shrill than she intended. “I don’t think so.”

  “I believe the ownership is still in question, actually,” he said, closing the scrapbook and rising slowly from the chair. His stocky frame seemed to shrink the sitting room until there was no room for her, no room to breathe.

  “Only you question it,” she corrected. “And until something changes in the probate courts—if anything does, which I sincerely doubt—this is my house. Mine. You need to get out before I call the police.”

  Stokes tossed the book contemptuously onto the table, where it slid halfway before coming to a rest. He smiled in a way that she recognized all too well—but how could she recognized it? She bent quickly and grabbed the scrapbook to her. Martin Scott’s scrapbook, with his photographs of the young Gwynn Chelton. The scrapbook she had hidden upstairs in the dresser. So, she had told herself, that Mary would not find it, the evidence of her father�
��s illicit visit.

  She clutched it now to her chest, her eyes lifting furiously to Stokes’ face. “You broke in here, You searched my things.” The thought of his beefy hands sifting through her belongings made her skin crawl.

  He shrugged, still smiling. “The ownership is still in question.” He turned, pushed the wing-backed chair—Gwynn’s wing-backed chair—a few inches closer to the window. “I like this better over here.”

  “Leave it alone,” she cried. “Get out. Get out.”

  He took a step closer, ran his hand along her arm, where the bruises still lingered. This time it was like a caress. Gwynn shrank back from him. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his red windcheater and pushed past her roughly.

  “See you,” he tossed over his shoulder as he passed into the front hall, “later.”

  She heard the latch at the front door, heard the door open. She did not hear it close. She steeled herself to look into the entryway and saw that he’d left the door wide open behind him Rain was splashing over the sill.

  SHAKING, GWYNN FOLLOWED the muddy footprints into the kitchen.

  The curtain over the tiny window in the garden door fluttered, the pane broken out, shards of glass littering the tiles. The door itself was ajar, much as if, having broken his way into the house, Stokes had been too contemptuous to shut the door after himself. The gate in the stone wall was open as well.

  How had he got around there?

  He had to know a way around.

  Gwynn slammed the door shut. Her shoes crunched on the broken glass. She hurriedly opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself some The bottle clinked against the wineglass and set her teeth on edge.

  She wanted to call someone. The police? Paul Stokes was gone. What would be the point? Perhaps James Simms—perhaps the solicitor could give her some advice? She felt dirty, violated. Stokes had walked into her home, had treated it and her with—there was no other word for it—contempt. The contempt of ownership. That he felt he could do that nauseated her. A violation, she thought again. A willful violation, meant to establish dominance, power. Look what I can do to you. She quickly swept up the glass, pulled out the mop, and wiped up his footprints, erasing his progress across the kitchen floor. In the sitting room, it was more difficult, and she panicked. The hoover took up most of the now-dried mud from the carpet, but she went over it again and again until she could no longer see any trace of his footsteps.

  Gwynn felt the hot angry tears behind her eyelids, and she forced them back. Just another thing to add to the downhill slide the day had suddenly taken. Just another thing.

  She wanted Colin, and despised herself for it. Even if they were to regain their footing, how could she possibly tell him about Paul Stokes’ invasion of her home, of her security? He’d be furious. He’d demand she leave the cottage. Perhaps he’d go after Stokes. Dumbly she poured a bit more wine into the glass. The curtain over the broken window lifted again, fell. How could she not tell him? She’d need him to fix the window. She didn’t know how to glaze. He’d ask about the damage.

  Her hands were still shaking, and she spilled wine on the counter. As she grabbed the sponge to wipe it away, the movement of damp air from the broken window touched her hot cheek. In the days of the construction company, she hadn’t had to know how to fix broken windows; she’d only had to make sure there were windows, and that the people responsible for them were paid. Colin could fix it, if he had glass and tools. But again, that meant she would have to call him, to tell him what had happened. She shrank from having to do that. She shrank from having to speak Paul Stokes’ name. Just that thought brought forth a wave of revulsion. Gwynn leaned over the sink, praying not to be sick.

  33

  THE BOTTLE, BOTH Colin and Martin had told her, was in the cellarway. Tonight, Gwynn decided she needed it. Wrapped in a blanket against the chill, the fire having long since gone out, she felt her way down the stairs, through the sitting room, and into the kitchen. The door was in the wall beyond the counter; she flicked on the overhead light and was momentarily blinded. The fluorescent ring buzzed. She opened the cellar door and could find no light switch there, so she turned back to the cupboard and grabbed the flashlight. The beam showed her the glitter of glass bottles of the shelf at the foot of the steps. A veritable arsenal of drink. Good on you, Gwynn.

  She pulled the blanket tighter about her, navigating the stairs slowly, leaning into the rough stone wall for balance. She reached for the bottle of whisky—the only bottle not covered in a coat of dust—and with a sharp creak, the cellar door closed behind her. She swung around quickly.

  An old house. A drafty house with a broken kitchen window. A house uneven on its foundations after all these years. Gwynn took a steadying breath, collected the whisky bottle, and carefully ascended the stairs.

  The door wouldn’t open.

  Gwynn lifted the latch and shook it. The door would not budge.

  Not another one. The doors to the house, the garden, the dovecote conspired against her.

  A gate that would not close. A door that would not open.

  Gwynn leaned her forehead against the door, trying to think. The blanket slipped from her shoulders. There was no point in pounding, no point in pushing or pulling or shouting. Gull Cottage would not acquiesce. She knew this. Yet a part of her brain fought against it. She tried to picture the latch on the other side, tried to imagine how the door might close itself, latch itself shut. The latch wouldn’t open. It had to be stuck, that was all. She lifted the handle and shook it some more. She leaned her weight into the wood. Nothing. Despite knowing it would do no good, she set the bottle on the step beside her, then kicked at the base of the door. Still nothing. Of course.

  That was that. Gwynn slumped. She was locked in the cellar. No one would hear her if she shouted, pounded. No one until Mary came at eight. Quickly she checked herself, making sure what tomorrow was: Monday. Thank God. Mary came on Monday mornings. At eight. What time was it now? In answer, the mantle clock, far away in the sitting room, rang once. One? Or twelve-thirty. Or one-thirty? She closed her eyes, gripping the flashlight in her sweaty palm. She wished she had thought to look at the travel alarm clock on the bedside table. She wished she had turned on a light, passing through the sitting room. She wished—damn it, Gwynn—that her great-aunt had updated her appliances to include a stove, a microwave, a coffee-maker with an LED clock. Anything.

  The blanket had come to rest at the bottom of the stairs. Gwynn retrieved the whisky bottle, and trod back downstairs, again leaning into the white-washed stone wall, gray now with age and neglect. She wrapped the blanket around her once more and huddled on the second step, her feet firmly on the packed dirt floor. She would not panic. She would wait it out. Mary would come at eight and everything would be all right.

  Gwynn set the flashlight on the step beside her, the beam shining straight up to the low ceiling, where spider webs glistened. She let out a half-laugh. Mary hadn’t cleaned down here in a while, that was certain. She opened the bottle of whisky and sniffed at it. She wouldn’t need it to sleep now. She didn’t really want to sleep, not down here. She sniffed it again. It smelled sharp and peaty, like she thought heather must smell. Slowly she tipped the bottle back and let a tiny bit onto her tongue, where it burned and spread and warmed.

  GWYNN DOZED OFF and on with her head and shoulder against the wall. She jerked awake and nearly tumbled off the stairs in the darkness. She had a sudden attack of vertigo, but she fought it down. She couldn’t see; the blackness was a soft pillow that stuffed her eyes and ears and dulled her senses, but she still knew that her feet were firmly planted on the dirt floor of the cellar. If she fell from her seat on the second step, it would not be far.

  How long had she been down here now? She listened hard for the sound of the mantle clock, but heard nothing. Long enough for the flashlight batteries, the new ones she’d bought at the shops, but who knew how long they’d been on Leah’s shelves?—to weaken and die. Some hours earlier, s
he had shaken the torch in a panic, and once that had worked; though the beam had been faint it had revived. Now it was dead. She didn’t even know where the flashlight had rolled to when she had accidentally knocked it from the stair beside her in the dark.

  Mary was coming at eight, she repeated to herself. The mantra had kept her calm through the night. Eight would not—could not—be so far away now. As soon as she heard Mary’s footsteps in the kitchen overhead, she’d call out, crawl up the stairs and bang on the door. Mary would unlatch it. Mary would let her out. It would be all right.

  The cellar stank of whisky, though. The open bottle, too, had been a casualty in the night, falling from her grip when the flashlight failed, rolling down the last of the stairs, contents splashing out everywhere. Gwynn’s mouth felt fuzzy, as though she’d drunk down the remains of the half-empty bottle, but then again, it never took much with her. She felt headachy, too, but that could be the day, the night, not just the whisky.

  She dozed again and woke to the measured step she’d waited for all night. Dragging the blanket after her, she climbed the stairs by touch and kicked the door.

  “Mary?” she shouted. “Mary?”

  “What on earth—?”

  There was a metallic scrape and the door opened. Mary peered around cautiously, then frowned. Gwynn, exhausted, tumbled out into the kitchen and was only kept from falling by Mary’s strong arms.

  “WHAT ON EARTH were you doing down there?”

  Mary had not even yet shed her heavy coat, though it was unbuttoned, she being interrupted in mid-doff. Now she flicked on the electric kettle on the way by as she ushered Gwynn into the sitting room and saw her onto the sofa.

  The other woman sniffed. Made a face. “Went down for a wee one, did you?”