House of Shadows

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Completely doolally,’ Margaret puts in, just in case I’ve missed the point. ‘There’s no evidence for that whatsoever.’

  ‘You did ask,’ Philippa says defensively as I sit there, trying to take it all in.

  ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?’ But that’s not quite true, is it? Angie did tell me I’d been behaving ‘strangely’ when she came to see me in hospital. She said I wasn’t myself, and that I was obsessed, but she didn’t say anything about any bones.

  ‘Well, like Ma says, we rather hoped you wouldn’t remember what with everything else that’s happened. Plus, it seemed a teeny bit tactless to draw the story to your attention again.’

  ‘Why?’

  Philippa glances at her parents and then back at me with a shrug. ‘Because the ghost is supposed to haunt the tower. That’s where she jumped.’

  Pippin is waiting outside my door when I open it. She is there every day. She seems fascinated by me, but she fears me still. It has been four days now and I haven’t been able to get close to her. Still, I try again, rubbing my thumb against my fingers in what I hope is an enticing manner.

  ‘Good girl, Pippin. Come on, you’re a good dog. I won’t hurt you.’

  I hold my breath as she wriggles forward on her belly. ‘That’s it,’ I say encouragingly. ‘Good girl.’ She’s getting closer and closer. ‘Good dog,’ I praise her, being very careful not to move, although my leg is protesting. It feels like a huge step when she touches her nose to my hand before losing her nerve and skittering away. I sigh.

  ‘Come on then.’ I know she will follow me. She watches as Mary examines my gait as I walk up and down the corridors. I know my way to the yellow drawing room and the kitchen and the dining room now, and she trails me, a small, distrustful shadow.

  I am quickly bored by my routine but Mary isn’t ready to let me go outside yet. ‘A few more days,’ she says. ‘It’s not like you haven’t got masses of room to walk inside. Not many of my patients have their own long gallery!’

  ‘I can’t use the long gallery,’ I grumble. ‘I’ll scare the visitors.’

  ‘You’re not short of a corridor or two either,’ she says firmly. ‘No going outside until I say so.’

  I wonder what I did with myself all day. I do have a vague memory of Angie telling me that I spent some time researching the family history for a new display at the Visitor Centre, but I find no papers or notes in my room. Perhaps I put everything on the iPad?

  I keep flipping open the cover in the hope that I will remember the password, but the screen just blinks infuriatingly back at me. Philippa told me Felix’s birthday and Michael’s, and I have tried various combinations, but when the iPad told me I was running out of chances I decided I should leave it for now. I’m still hoping my memory will come back, although there’s little sign of it yet. However hard I strain to remember, it’s like pummelling a dark, spongy wall. I can’t break through it.

  It would be helpful to have the notes I made before, but there’s nothing to stop me from starting again, is there? I know there is a library in the Hall, lined with glass-fronted shelves; there must be a history in there somewhere.

  I could look up Edmund Vavasour, I think. And whether he had a wife called Isabel.

  I haven’t ‘remembered’ anything more of her, but I have been thinking of her a lot. My memories, or fantasies, or whatever they are, of her life are jewel bright against the blank blackness of the rest of my mind. I think a lot about what Philippa said, about how obsessed I was by the Askerby ghost. The ghost who jumped from the tower just as I did. I long to talk to someone but I don’t dare, especially not now I know that the entire family thought I was ‘doolally’. I can’t risk them thinking that again, but perhaps I can find out for myself if Edmund and Isabel were real people or just figments of my imagination. I will ask Jasper if I can use the library tonight.

  But I have something more important to do first.

  Last night there was a nasty little scene in the yellow drawing room. I’d told Fiona that I was still struggling with steep stairs and asked if Felix had to spend so much time in the nursery. I thought that perhaps Angie could bring him down to see me, but instead Fiona told her to bring him to the drawing room.

  ‘He’ll behave better if we’re all here,’ she said, when Angie ushered in a mutinous Felix. It was the only warning I had.

  Told to sit next to his mother, Felix’s face darkened, and his bottom lip jutted out. ‘I won’t! I don’t want to. She’s not my mummy!’ he said, glaring at me.

  I dug my fingernails into my palms. ‘Please, don’t force him,’ I said to Angie, who was looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Felix, stop being so silly,’ Fiona said sharply, but he had burst into tears.

  ‘I want Mummy!’ he sobbed, and my heart cracked for him. ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  ‘You’re his mother,’ Margaret snapped. ‘Don’t just sit there gormlessly. Do something!’

  ‘I will do something,’ I said levelly, ‘but not here, with everyone watching him. Let him go,’ I said to Fiona, who was trying to get hold of Felix. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him or wrestle him onto the sofa beside me. ‘This isn’t helping.’

  Now I pause with my hand on the banister. My leg throbs at the prospect of the climb but I set my teeth. Bad leg or no, it is time Felix and I got to know each other.

  I’ve dressed carefully, trying to decide which clothes look the most worn and comfortable and will at least smell familiar to Felix. I chose jeans again in the end, with a T-shirt and a soft cardigan. I can’t be sure, but they felt right when I put them on.

  Angie opens the door to the nursery and can’t quite hide the dismay that races over her face at the sight of me.

  ‘I don’t know if this is a good idea, Kate,’ she says in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder at Felix. ‘I can’t bear the thought of him being hurt again.’

  I’m conscious of a flash of irritation. What does she think I’m going to do to Felix? I shouldn’t have to beg Angie for permission to see my own son, should I? But then I feel ashamed. Angie has been caring for Felix, making sure he is warm and fed and safe, while I have been denying that I am his mother. Which of us has more right to decide what he should have to do?

  But I need to do this.

  ‘Just half an hour,’ I say, keeping my own voice level. ‘I won’t upset him, I promise.’

  She doesn’t like it, but in the end tells Felix that she is going to get some milk. ‘I won’t be long,’ she says to him. ‘Be a good boy for Angie.’

  I know she doesn’t want to leave Felix with me, but when it comes down to it, I am his mother. I don’t want to have to pull rank, and I hope this isn’t going to affect our friendship, but I can’t talk to Felix with her hovering over me.

  I try to offer a reassuring smile as she passes me with a dubious glance, and I wait until she has gone before slipping into the room without announcement.

  I didn’t really take in much of the nursery the day I came back from hospital, but now I see it’s an airy attic room with dormer windows set into the roof. It’s charming, I suppose, if you’re a fan of Victorian attitudes and like the idea of shutting a child as far away from everybody else as possible. But Felix has toys and books and Angie’s undivided attention. He is warm and clothed and well fed. Plenty of children would be grateful to live in such conditions.

  Something to eat, clean water to drink, some schooling, is that so much to ask? The words echo in my head. My father. The memory wavers, solidifies. I have an impression of bone-crushing heat, the rasp of insects. I was sitting on the steps of a veranda of some kind. A paraffin lamp hissed into the dark and great moths blundered around it. My parents were sitting behind me and scraps of the conversation reached me, muffled by the soupy heat.

  We can’t make exceptions for her.

  She’s never going to fit in.

  The people here have nothing, we have everything.

  We should send her hom
e. My mother will look after her.

  The memory catches me unawares, like a blow beneath the ribs, a jab that snags the breath in my throat. I have been so focused on trying to remember something about Felix or my life at Askerby that I have forgotten I had a life before that. My parents: my father with a grey-flecked beard and an intent gaze, and my mother with her severely beautiful face, her long hair pulled back in a plait that hung down her back. I remember them now, in sturdy sandals and cheesecloth shirts, earnest and passionate but always somehow detached, as if they felt guilty about giving me love and attention unless every single child in the world could have the same.

  And I, I did not deserve to be loved, I remember feeling that. There were so many desperate children out there; why should I be luckier than them? I had a roof over my head, I had food to eat, I had all the advantages that were an inescapable part of being a white, middle-class Westerner. I could not expect to be loved, too. That would be unfair. I understood that from a very early age.

  I feel ridiculously shaky. After all this time waiting to remember something of myself, now it feels overwhelming. I don’t know whether to be overjoyed at the chink in my memory, or dismayed at the lurking resentment I obviously still feel towards my parents. But this is good news: if my life up to now is a jigsaw puzzle missing most of its pieces, my parents are surely a corner piece, and who knows what other memories are waiting to push in after them? My mind is churning, and I need some time alone to sort out my thoughts, but I am in the nursery now, and Felix has seen me. I can’t turn around and leave now.

  I force the jostling emotions to the back of my mind and focus on the small boy in front of me. His expression has closed at the sight of me, and his eyes, those Vavasour blue eyes, are dark with suspicion.

  ‘Hello, Felix,’ I say.

  His mouth tightens. ‘You’re not my mummy,’ he says in the same bleak voice he used yesterday. No child should sound like that, and I feel a wash of guilt. If my fall from the tower hurt me, it damaged Felix more. If I could remember, I would know how to comfort him, but I don’t. I can only be honest.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I look like her, but I don’t seem right. I understand that.’ I prop my stick against a chair and lower myself awkwardly to the floor beside him. My leg protests and I suck in a breath at the stab of pain, but I cannot have this conversation looming over him. When I am down, I settle my leg as comfortably as I can. I make no move to touch Felix.

  He gives me a hard, suspicious look and returns to playing with his train, but I can tell that he is very aware of me.

  ‘The thing is, Felix, I fell and hurt my head. I don’t remember anything.’

  He scowls, but he is listening.

  ‘Do you remember what you had for supper last night?’

  ‘Sausages,’ he says grudgingly after a moment.

  ‘Do you like sausages?’

  Felix isn’t sure where this is going. I can see him turning the question round in his head, trying to work out if it is a trick or not. ‘Yes,’ he says eventually.

  ‘I don’t know if I like sausages or not,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember anything about my life before I was in hospital. I don’t remember who I was or what I was doing. I don’t remember you,’ I tell him honestly. ‘When you say I’m not your mummy, that’s how it feels to me, too. So I won’t make you say that I am. I know you feel that your real mummy has gone away and that I’ve taken her place, but I want her, too. I need you to help me find her again. Will you help me to do that?’

  His small face is screwed up. He is perilously close to tears again, but he’s holding on. He is brave, this boy of mine, if mine he is. He turns the wheels on his train. ‘I don’t know how,’ he mutters.

  ‘I don’t know either,’ I admit. ‘Everyone else will tell you I’m your mummy, but you’ll know and I’ll know that isn’t true until I can remember, and until I feel right to you. It’s like a secret that only you and I know.’ I’m not sure if Felix is following this or not, but he seems to be listening. ‘We won’t bother arguing with everybody, but we’ll know the truth,’ I tell him. ‘That means that we don’t need to pretend with each other, but we can be nice to each other, and we can get to know each other, like we’ve never met before. What do you think?’

  I hope I don’t sound too eager. Felix isn’t sure and I don’t blame him. If I am struggling to make sense of the world without a memory, how much more disturbing is it for a child to be faced with someone who looks like his mother but who feels all wrong?

  But Felix is thinking about it; that is something. He takes his time, running the train absently over the carpet. ‘Okay,’ is all he says at last, and I realize that I have been holding my breath. It whooshes out of me, and I put a hand on the floor to steady myself. Okay. It isn’t much, but for now it is enough.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Now what? It feels as though a big hurdle has been jumped, but I’m not sure what to do next. I glance around the nursery. There are lots of books, including a pile on the floor beside me.

  ‘Do you like stories?’

  Felix nods, still uncertain.

  I pull a selection towards me and try to settle my leg into a more comfortable position. There is one about a steam engine called Frank, brightly coloured and appealing. I notice the train in Felix’s hand. I show him the book. ‘What about this one?’

  A stricken expression flashes across his face. ‘What is it?’ I say, concerned. ‘Don’t you like this one?’

  Another nod. His mouth is pressed together to stop it wobbling. A four-year-old shouldn’t have to stop himself crying. ‘Felix,’ I say gently. ‘Is this a book Mummy reads to you?’

  He won’t look at me, but his head bobs down and up.

  ‘Do you want me to read something else?’

  A long pause. ‘You read it,’ he whispers.

  It feels as if a great fist has closed around my chest and is squeezing hard. Felix doesn’t touch me, but when I open the book he moves a little closer so that he can look at the pictures, and as I read, my mind shimmers. I recall a place, sounds.

  Michael, pulling a book out of a carrier bag. ‘Look what I bought Felix! I loved this as a kid.’

  Me laughing, flicking through the book. ‘He’s only six weeks old! I don’t think he’ll be reading for a while.’

  ‘You’re never too young for books. I’m going to read him to sleep.’

  Michael – the same evening, or later? – with Felix propped in the crook of his arm, holding the book in his other hand, turning the pages awkwardly, making all the voices different, a squeaky one, a gruff one, while the baby looked up at him with opaque dark eyes.

  Michael breaking off, a tic going beside his eye.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, catching a grimace.

  ‘I’ve had a pig of a headache all day. Have you got any paracetamol?’

  Me, popping pills out of the foil packet, putting my hand under the water to make sure it was cold before I filled the glass. Frowning. Something I didn’t want to name was squirming queasily in my belly. ‘You’re getting a lot of these headaches,’ I said as I gave Michael the glass. ‘Perhaps you should go and see a doctor.’

  ‘I can’t bother the doctor with a headache,’ he said, tossing back the capsules. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Go on.’ Felix’s voice jerks me back to the present and my hands tremble as I turn the page. The words dance sickeningly in front of my eyes and I blink slowly to focus.

  Michael. Michael. At last. My throat is jammed with emotion: relief, love, grief. Michael, lanky and floppy-haired like Jasper, but with such warmth in his eyes. Michael with the swift smile that transformed his serious expression. How could I have forgotten him? And now that I have remembered him, how can he be gone?

  ‘Why have you stopped reading?’ Felix asks with an accusing look.

  ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ I pull myself together with difficulty. How can I possibly explain to him? That squeezed feeling is crushing my ribs, and I strug
gle to breathe.

  Tentatively I probe my mind, like feeling a sore tooth with a tongue. Is there anything else? How we met, the first time we kissed, the smell of his skin . . . ? But all I find is that fragment, poking brilliantly through the shrouds over my memory.

  Michael. The thought of him is a dagger-bright shard of pain, but at least I remember him. I remember the intensity of feeling as I watched him read to our son, the dreadful premonition of what those headaches meant. But everything else – how we met, how we lived and how we loved, how he died – all that is gone.

  I glance down at the small boy beside me, trying to connect him to the baby in my memory. There’s still a block, but now that I have started to remember, the rest will come. I will remember, I vow. I am his mother, and together we will find our way back to how we were.

  Taking a breath, I fix my eyes on the book once more. ‘When Frank had puffed his way to the top of the hill . . .’

  Angie comes back before the half-hour is up, ‘just to see how you’re getting on’. She has obviously been worrying about Felix and I can tell that she is surprised – or should that be disappointed? – when she sees him sitting quietly beside me.

  Felix glances up as she comes in and offers her a wide smile but he doesn’t move from my side, and I see Angie’s face tighten just a little. I wonder if she has been expecting him to run to her, to choose her over me, and my elation at having remembered Michael and made some progress with Felix fades into a trickle of apprehension. Angie is my only friend, and I’m grateful to her for looking after Felix so well, but I can’t help remembering how happy she was while I was safely away in hospital. I don’t want her to resent me for coming home and trying to reconnect with my son.