“Take a look at it – it’ll explain even more.” Mary rolled her eyes. “Rob had hard work beaten into him from a very young age but he was also told that if he worked hard he could have pretty much anything he wanted. Charlie – his dad – made him go to work for Mountford Construction the minute he left school. He let him take over six years ago and then gave him this place as a gift when he made his first million by all accounts.”
“So he didn’t just pick it up as a derelict site, then?” asked Martha, startled, thinking back to what she had originally been told.
“Oh no – it was run down and unoccupied but not derelict. And it’s belonged to the Mountfords for years as far as I know. It was really Rob’s baby over the past while though – first thing he ever did as a hobby actually. Got him out of old Charlie’s hair for a while. Poor Rob still lives at home and I think he’s under pressure to find a Mrs Mountford. I think Charlie’s pushing for little Mountford heirs and heiresses as well!”
“Oh dear heavens,” laughed Martha. “I guess I was lucky he didn’t produce a ring and a vicar then!”
“Too right!” laughed Mary. “Bless him, he’ll get the message eventually. Just don’t go sending him any mixed ones.”
Martha sat upright. “He won’t get any mixed messages from me, trust me!”
“Keep it that way!”
“I will.”
“Oh, Mary, I forgot this.” She pulled the envelope with Alison’s baby-sitting money in it out of her pocket. “Alison was ushered into his Land Rover before I got a chance to give it to her.”
Mary waved the envelope away. “No need to worry about it,” she said. “Mr M took care of the baby-sitting bill.”
Martha groaned. “Dammit! I’ll have to pay him back now. Letting him pay for Reuben’s baby-sitter would never do!”
Laughing at Mary’s puzzled expression, she explained Rob’s difficulty with both the name and gender of her daughter.
“Speaking of little boys actually,” she said then, as she walked Mary around the side of the cottage to leave, “maybe you can fill me in on something.”
“What’s that now?”
“Well, there was an old lady in the pub last night . . .” Martha thought that she saw Mary stiffen slightly. “She made a point of coming up to me to tell me there was a little boy in the house – what was all that about?”
Mary sighed. “That’ll be poor old Lil Flynn. Tends to be a bit fond of the sauce, poor old thing. Used to be a seamstress, lives out on the marshes. I wouldn’t pay her any attention.”
“But what did she mean? She singled me out to tell me that?” Martha had a feeling that Mary knew exactly what Lil Flynn meant.
“Nothing to worry about,” said Mary. “Oh listen – there’s Ruby awake!”
Martha thought that Mary looked somewhat relieved by the interruption.
“I’d better head off then,” said Mary. “You’re sure you’re both alright?”
“We’re both fine,” said Martha reassuringly.
“Right then. I’ll see you both in the morning!”
With a wave, Mary turned and walked down the driveway, leaving Martha watching her, and feeling that she was missing something.
Chapter 12
Eyrie Farm,
Shipton Abbey,
Norfolk,
England
May 25th, 1953
Dear Caroline,
Many thanks for your kind letter of May 1st last. I understand that you do not wish to receive any more letters from me because of our particular family situation and appreciate that you are praying for my immortal soul and that of Marion. Thank you for returning my previous letters to me, so now I have a complete record of everything that has happened to us here in Norfolk.
I understand, Caroline, that it’s not you saying that you don’t want to hear from me, that it’s Reverend Mother who as we know from our schooldays is a right old battleaxe, as they say here in Shipton. I can say that to you now because I won’t post any more of my letters to you, not even this one, but I will keep them in case some day you will be able to read them without fear of harming your own immortal soul by association. I can also mention another thing now, which I didn’t before because I was ashamed to, but indeed you must have put two and two together yourself and realised that I haven’t been to Mass since we came here. I know that normally that’s a mortal sin but Mammy says it’s all right as I am caring for a sick person. I hope she is right. I should have asked you before as you could have asked the nuns about it.
Well, to turn to everyday matters, things have been quiet here since last I wrote. Marion never again referred to that day she ran away and neither did Mr Mountford, although as he hasn’t called again I fear that we have made a show of ourselves and he is sure to turf us out on our ears before long. I don’t know what we would do in that case. Would we go home and then Marion would have to go to the nuns, or would we stay here in England and try to find somewhere to live?
Now that the weather is better, I have dug myself a little piece of ground at the back of the house and planted some onions and some other seeds that I got in the village. I’m not sure why, as we will be home by the time they are ready to be harvested, but it was lovely to be outside here with the smell of the sea in the air and the lovely warm summer beginning. The digging and hoeing made me see that time is passing and soon the baby will be here.
I wonder what Daddy will tell us to do afterwards? Has he arranged maybe to have the baby adopted in England or will we bring it back to Ireland to have it adopted there and then myself and Marion can go home, say that we’ve been staying with an aunt or something like that? I am full of questions these days. Thinking about them keeps my mind from what I should be doing, which is studying for my Leaving Certificate.
Marion has decided that she wants to keep the baby and return home. She tells me now that the father is an actor in the Gaiety Theatre and she wants to live in sin with him and cause a great scandal. I am blue in the face telling her that the baby will have to go to live with a deserving family, a couple who can’t have babies maybe, and who will love it. It makes me sad to think of that. I am so tired of telling Marion these things that I have stopped and just stay quiet when she tells one of her tales. I have learned that she might not be telling the truth. Next week the father might be a circus acrobat.
She is a dab hand with the scissors these days. Thank God she hasn’t threatened to harm the baby again but we needed to have haircuts in these past weeks and I cut hers short, like the new fashion. It was her turn to cut mine and I asked her just to trim the ends but what did she do? She didn’t even cut the whole thing short, she just cut one side to my ear and left the other to my shoulder! She laughed herself sick, and danced around holding the scissors out of my reach before she put it somewhere I couldn’t find it. I looked a right eejit, standing there with my hair short on one side, and long on the other. Then she got bored and went to bed and left me there. I had to search high and low for the scissors and then when I found it I had to try to cut my hair short at the back and on the side that she hadn’t chopped. I still look stupid, with my hair short at my ears and uneven. I can’t even tie it up because it’s not long enough. I wish Mammy were here, Caroline, so she could give me a hug and look after me and send Marion to her room. She’s the only person who can get through to her when she gets her moods. And I’m tired of being the mammy here in the cottage. I want to go home.
May God be with you,
Lily
Chapter 13
June 30th
Much to Martha’s surprise, it was only just over a week before Rob’s Land Rover crunched over the gravel driveway and he arrived to start work in Ruby’s room. He and Martha hadn’t spoken since the night of their so-called date and he had given no indication to her that he was arriving at all.
Martha was working in her study, Ruby at the crèche, when he arrived and let himself in the front door and up the stairs without
a word. Martha heard the door unlock and open and froze at her desk, hearing the footsteps head upstairs. Nervously, she popped her head out the study door and crept down the hallway to peer up the stairs. On spotting the huge dusty footprints making a trail in the door and upward, however, she soon realised who it was in her house and quietly let herself back into the study without acknowledging him. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to him.
On top of everything else, she was exhausted. Ruby’s teething was keeping her awake for at least an hour every night on top of the numerous trips in and out of her room each night to replace her soother. Martha was deeply regretting ever giving her one in the first place. She hadn’t seemed to need it half as much in London.
There was something that was puzzling Martha far more, however. Something odd was happening to the soothers she had taken to lining up on Ruby’s bedside table at night-time so that they were easily to hand in the dark. What bothered Martha was where she was finding the discarded ones. In London, they had always fallen within a short radius of the cot, or rolled underneath to gather dust. Here, however, she kept finding them hidden behind the picture of the hare that she was using to hide the exposed brick of the chimney-breast. And last night, she was sure she’d only used three of the stash of five. When she’d gone in to tidy up that morning, however, she’d found only one left on the bedside table. Three were scattered around the cot and one behind the picture.
Martha gazed out her study window trying to figure out just what Ruby was doing that meant the soothers ended up behind the picture. She was also trying to remember going up to her a fourth time to give her the last soother. Her only theory was that there must be a slant on the floor near the cot, though it didn’t look like it, and somehow the soothers sometimes rolled over to the chimney-breast. Well, it wasn’t like Ruby was putting them there herself so that had to be the reason. In that case, however, she’d hear them on the monitor hitting the floor – then again she was so tired at the moment that when she did sleep, it was deep and dream-filled. Sometimes she was sure she heard Ruby crying in the night and would stumble out of bed, still asleep, and across the landing into the dim room to find her in a sound slumber, her stars and moons circling the walls silently.
The scratching in the wall hadn’t abated either – if anything it was worse, and certainly more frequent. Ruby seemed to sleep right through it, but Martha lay awake, night after night, for hours, hearing it come over the monitor. It would start as a faint tapping noise, sounding more like scratching after a while – then it would die out, sometimes for hours on end, only to suddenly come back stronger than before.
Martha’s skin felt tight with tiredness and her eyes were red and puffy. Truth be told, the house was starting to bring her down. It was bright and friendly in the daytime when she looked around her at the pale yellow walls of her study, decorated with photographs of Ruby and framed shots of places where Martha had been – a black and white shot of the Piazza Navona in Rome, and her favourite – a shot of the copy of Michelangelo’s David outside the Medici Palace in Florence.
Since that night of the storm, however, she had found herself less comfortable in the cottage, aware of every creak and groan of a floorboard, tuned in to noises at night-time that wouldn’t have bothered her previously. She realised that the house was beginning to make her feel stressed of all things, and that she was investing a lot of time and energy into reassuring herself that noises meant nothing.
She heard a thump from above her and flinched in her chair. Rob had clearly dropped something up there. Martha felt strangely reassured that yes, there was another person in the house, and yes, that thump had been caused by something actually falling and if she went upstairs and looked, there would be something that had physically landed on the floor. For the last three nights she had heard again the creaking in Ruby’s room that sounded like footsteps. Martha knew that there was nothing there but couldn’t help but be unnerved by what sounded exactly like another person entering the room and crossing over to roughly where the cot was situated. There was no doubt about it but Hawthorn Cottage – or Eyrie Farm as she found herself calling it more often – was a very different place at night to what it was during the day.
She had just made up her mind to go upstairs and offer Rob Mountford a cup of tea when she heard him thump back down the stairs and out the front door, slamming it as he went. Moments later, the Land Rover revved and she heard the crackle of gravel as he drove down the lane. He hadn’t returned by the time she went to pick Ruby up from Lullabies after a fruitless morning. Nor by the time she drove back from the village, having picked up some shopping.
By seven, as she took Ruby’s bottles from the steriliser, Martha conceded that nothing more would be done that day on investigating the scratching or the replastering of the wall. She made up the bottles, gathered up the little collection of soothers for the night and made her way upstairs, leaving Ruby playing happily on her playmat.
Ruby’s room was surprisingly untouched, despite the obligatory set of footprints, an open toolbox and a bag of plaster. Martha set things up for the night, pulled down the blackout blind and turned on the moon and stars lamp. She sighed at the mess and then left the room, pulling the door shut behind her. She stepped out into the gloom of the landing and then stopped dead as she heard a noise from behind her.
It was a series of light thumps as opposed to the usual creaks. It sounded for all the world like . . . no . . . that was impossible. Martha caught her breath. The sound she heard sounded like little footsteps. They went in quick succession – one, two, three, four, five of them – and then stopped for a moment before beginning again, sounding as though they were going in the opposite direction. Five again, and then they stopped. Martha was frozen. She kept listening, her hand still on the door-handle. It was the last noise that unnerved her most of all. She had heard Ruby drop her soother a thousand times, and there it was again. The unmistakable click as the plastic hit the floor.
Martha’s stomach dropped and immediately intense goose-bumps sprang up all over her body, goose-bumps that were so hard they hurt. She was unable to move. Had she really just heard what she thought she’d heard? Her blood turned cold for a moment and then suddenly a huge rush of heat flooded through her entire body. She couldn’t get it out of her head that what she had just heard was a small child run across the room and then back again, dropping the soother along the way.
Martha let go of the door-handle as if it were hot and walked with quick steps toward the stairs. She didn’t want to run. To run would be almost to admit that she’d heard what she thought she’d heard, but she couldn’t have. Martha knew that it couldn’t have been the footsteps of a child, it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t get the image from her mind, however, and flew down the stairs and back to the brightness of the living room where Ruby played contentedly on her playmat. She lay there in her babygro, half an eye on the muted TV and half on a Paddington Bear she was chewing which really had too many detachable pieces for a seven-month-old.
Martha closed the living-room door firmly behind her and gathered her baby in her arms before sitting down on the armchair under the window where a patch of sun shone in. She craved the brightness after the gloom upstairs. She tried to think logically. What on earth had just happened? What had she heard? She took a deep breath. The soother hitting the ground was easily explained – she had been studying Rob Mountford’s mess as she had put down the soothers on the small side table. One could have rolled, settled itself close to the edge of the table and teetered there before falling to the ground. All of that was logical. What she couldn’t for the life of her figure out was the sound – the trotting footsteps over and back.
Martha held Ruby close to her as she heated her bedtime bottle and turned the TV to a repeat of Open All Hours as she fed her daughter. She forced herself to focus on the screen and block everything else out of her mind but time and again the sound played back in her head. Little footsteps, little feet . .
. No. It couldn’t be, and that was that.
Ruby slept in her arms through a couple of hours of mindless sitcoms that Martha barely watched. By the time they were over she realised the baby was sweating from her mother’s body heat and knew it wasn’t fair to hold on to her any longer, much as she didn’t want to let her go.
She kept her eyes down as she climbed the stairs – partly to watch her footing, partly because she didn’t want to look up. The landing above was dim and gloomy and Martha shivered as she reached the top of the stairs, keeping her eyes focused on the sleeping Ruby. She didn’t admit it to herself but she was afraid to look around her, afraid of what she might see. She felt the goose-bumps return as she stopped outside the bedroom door and then took a deep breath as she nudged it open with her elbow and stepped in. She raised her head to look, finally.
The room was exactly as she had left it – the low lighting, the blanket pulled back in preparation for the sleeping child. Martha laid Ruby down gently and pulled a single layer of her blankets over her for comfort. Her daughter immediately began to snuffle and turn her head from side to side. Martha knew that she had come to the moment she had been dreading. She turned to the side table and went to pick up a soother. Her heart sank as she counted how many were there. Four.
She glanced at the ground nearby. There was no sign of the fifth soother at her feet, or under the cot, or anywhere within the vicinity of the small table. Steeling herself, she looked behind the hare picture. Nothing. Where had it gone? Martha took a deep breath and took the cover from the teat of a pink soother. She turned back to the cot and placed the soother in Ruby’s mouth. The child immediately settled. Martha bent and kissed her clammy brow and then, as she raised herself, she froze. It was difficult to make anything out in the dimly lit room but, with her head turned slightly to the right, she could see it – the small blue plastic rim of the fifth soother, dropped right in the middle of Rob Mountford’s tools, in front of the bricked-up fireplace.
The Dead Summer Page 8