House of Echoes

by Barbara Erskine

  Then he was there – a hand on her arm, a pressure at her shoulder, comforting, guiding, pushing her gently across the room. Another flash of lightning; she could see nothing now but the imprint of the window mullions, thick scarlet brands on her retina.

  Groping, she reached for the bed, dragging off the heavy counterpane with its thick stitching, and throwing it to the floor.

  ‘Luke – find something to put under me.’

  She could see a flickering light appearing in the passage now. Luke was there, the candlestick in his hand. ‘It’s all right, love. I’ve thought of that. I’ve got something.’ His voice came from the doorway. The spare waterproof sheet from Tom’s chest of drawers, then some towels, then he was helping her up into the cool soft sheets. ‘Hang on, sweetheart.’ His hand on her forehead was hot, nervous, unlike the other hand, the cool hand which had guided her to the bed. Her eyes flew open. Luke had put the candle down beside her. He had only just come into the room …

  She turned on her side with a groan as the pain hit her again, curling herself around it, conscious with some distant part of her mind that she could smell roses in the air.

  ‘Luke!’

  ‘I’m here, darling. Pant. Remember, they told you to pant.’ He was pulling the sheet over her.

  ‘You’re going to have to deliver it.’

  ‘I’d already worked that out for myself.’ She could hear the wry tone in his voice.

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘Tom’s asleep. He was completely worn out. Once you’d gone he was settled in seconds, the poor little mite.’ He reached for her hand and clasped it tightly. ‘So, tell me what to do.’

  ‘Boil some water to sterilise some thread and scissors. Then find the baby clothes. They’re stored in the bottom of Tom’s chest. The blankets are there too. Don’t wake him.’ She groaned, clutching his hand. ‘You were there when Tom was born. You saw what went on. I was up the other end, remember?’ She managed a laugh, which ended as a sob.

  ‘I remember.’ Luke scowled. ‘There was a doctor and two midwives and I closed my eyes at the crucial moment.’

  ‘Go. Luke. Get the water going.’ She was drifting away from him again, into a sea of pain.

  She had no idea how long he was gone. It seemed like a month of agony, a few seconds respite – then he was there again with the saucepan and more towels, a pile of shawls and tiny white garments. She turned her head towards the window. It was growing less dark. There hadn’t been a rumble of thunder for a while now and the flashes of lightning were growing less intense, just flickering faintly on the horizon out to sea.

  The smell of the roses was stronger now as Luke moved round the bed to rub her back. She lay still, staring up into the darkness of the shadowy tester, her body relaxed, pain free for a few blessed seconds.

  And then it began to build again. She didn’t remember screaming in the hospital, but then they had given her an epidural.

  The pain, the fear, the awful voice in her head.

  Katherine!

  He was there in the shadows, in his usual place near the window, the tall man with the sad eyes. She hadn’t seen him before. Not so clearly. Not for sure. She reached out her hand to him and smiled. ‘I’ll be all right.’ She mouthed the words, but no sound came out. Not until she screamed again.

  ‘Joss!’ Luke’s voice was suddenly excited, full of awe. ‘I can see its head.’

  It was a boy. Holding him, dried and warmly wrapped, in her arms, Joss looked down at the small head and nestled him against her chin. She looked up at Luke and smiled. ‘Congratulations, doc.’

  He grinned. ‘He looks OK, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s fine.’ The baby was making small contented snuffling noises, his face very red against the white of the blankets. Outside it was full daylight now, the garden cool and cleansed by the rain, lying silent beneath a pall of white mist. Exhausted Joss lay back and closed her eyes. The silence was total. Luke had checked that Tom was all right and found the little boy sleeping peacefully, his thumb in his mouth. With the lights and phone still disconnected he had tiptoed off through the shadows of the early morning house to put the kettle on again – this time for tea.

  The slight pressure on the blanket was so gentle that she hardly noticed it. Smiling as she drifted off to sleep she eased her aching body into a more comfortable angle round the crooked elbow which held her new son and pushed her head deeper into the pillow.

  She was jerked awake by the baby’s sudden squeal.

  ‘What is it? Little one?’ Sitting up she peered down at the tiny face, screwed up now into screams of unhappiness. ‘Oh sweetheart, quiet.’ She stared round the room. The cold had come back. The terrible, all-encompassing cold which was the cold of the tomb. ‘Luke?’ Her voice was lost in the ceiling beams, panic- stricken. ‘Luke?’

  He was there. Somewhere.

  Desperately she held the baby to her. ‘Luke!’

  A boy. Oh sweet Jesus, why couldn’t it have been a girl? She realised suddenly that she was crying. Deep, body-shaking sobs of exhaustion and fear.

  She was still crying when Luke came back with the tray of tea things. ‘Joss, what is it, love? Is something wrong?’

  ‘He’s a boy.’ She was holding the baby tightly against her.

  ‘Of course he’s a boy.’ Luke sat on the bed. ‘Come on, sweetheart. There’s nothing wrong. Jimbo will be here in an hour. I’ll send him straight off for Simon and he can come and give you both a check up. Come on, love, there’s nothing to cry about.’ He leaned forward and touched the baby’s tiny hand. ‘So, what are we going to call him?’

  Joss looked up at him. Her cheeks were still damp with tears, her eyes reddened, her face pale with exhaustion. ‘I’d like to call him Philip.’

  Luke frowned. ‘After your father? Won’t that upset Joe?’

  She nodded miserably.

  ‘Then let’s think of another name to go first. A name that has no complications – then he can have Philip and Joe as his second and third names.’ He smiled.

  ‘Ever the diplomat.’ She regarded him wanly. ‘So. Think of a name.’

  ‘We don’t have to decide at once.’ He looked down at the sleeping infant. ‘Why don’t you rest. Later, when you’re feeling stronger we’ll do some brain storming, OK?’

  He had found the little crib basket, and lined it with sheets. Taking the baby gently from her he laid him in the basket and tucked the blankets round him. ‘There. Rest now, Joss. Everything’s all right. When the phones are back on I will ring Lyn, and Alice and Joe. They’ll all be so excited.’ He stooped and kissed her forehead. Then he tiptoed out of the room.

  In the shadows the anger and fear had begun to build once more.

  20

  ‘Well, you both seem extremely well, considering.’ Simon put away his stethoscope and tucked the baby’s little shirt back down under the blankets. He had examined Joss and the baby and inspected the afterbirth. ‘I suppose I should have expected some kind of rebellious move like this!’ He grinned. ‘Didn’t like the idea of a high-tech birth, you said, if I remember?’

  Joss laughed. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, drinking a cup of tea.

  Simon reached for his own cup.

  ‘I don’t think we need send you to hospital. As far as I can see everything is fine. As I said before if I remember, take it easy, don’t do too much and I will ask the midwife to call later this morning.’ He glanced at the lamp by the bed. ‘Have you got your electricity back yet up here?’

  Joss shook her head. ‘No electricity and no phone. I’m pursuing the primitive birth thing to its ultimate conclusion.’

  ‘I see.’ Simon stood up. ‘You modern women never cease to amaze me. Well. I must go on my rounds. Don’t hesitate to send for me if there are any problems, no matter how small.’

  After he had gone Joss lay back, exhausted, on the pillows. Outside the mist had lifted to leave a beautiful hot day. A sky the colour of cornflowers arched above the gar
den, reflecting in the lake at the end of the lawn. The house was very quiet. Luke had driven over to Janet Goodyear with Tom, hoping she would look after him for a few hours and hoping even more that the Good-years’ phone was working. If ever they had needed Lyn it was now. Stretching, Joss stared up at the tester, then slowly she moved her head on the pillow to look towards the front window. The room was full of sunshine. There was nothing there to frighten her. Luke had thrown open the casement and she could hear the birds and smell the wet freshness of the earth and the grass, mixed with honeysuckle.

  Edgar! She sat bolt upright. Edgar was expecting her. Damn the phone. Sliding off the high bed with a surge of sudden energy she went to the baby’s basket which was standing on the chaise longue near the back window and peered in. He was asleep, the small lids, blue veined, a fringe of dark lashes on the soft cheeks. He had thick dark hair, like her and Luke, and it stood up on the top of his head with every appearance of having the same wild individuality as his father’s. She smiled. Tom had taken one quick look at his new brother and seemingly lost interest. As far as she could see he was none the worse for the traumas of the night. In fact he seemed remarkably cheerful – the more so at the thought of visiting Janet and the basket of kittens at present occupying the prime spot in front of her Aga.

  Slowly and a little painfully Joss made her way downstairs and through the great hall towards the kitchen. Luke had left the post unopened on the kitchen table. Pulling the kettle onto the hot plate Joss opened her first letter while she was waiting for it to boil. It was from David. ‘A few more pieces of the jigsaw,’ he had written in his neat small script. ‘I’ve found a wonderful old book which mentions Belheddon several times.’ Folded into the envelope was a thick wad of photocopied pages. Joss looked up as the kettle began to steam. Putting the letter down she made herself a cup of tea and then, feeling shaky and suddenly very tired she sat down, picking it up again. David went on:

  It was published in 1921 and tells some half dozen stories of mystery and mayhem all set in East Anglia. I remem ber your telling me about John Bennet who disappeared some time at the beginning of the century. Well, the author of this book has the story. It’s weird. Are you sitting comfortably? Then read on …

  David.

  Joss put down the letter and extricated the folded pages. David had photocopied about six and spreading them out in front of her she began to read.

  One of the many legends attached to beautiful Belheddon Hall, an ancient manor house set in lovely rolling parkland on the edge of the sea, concerns the family who lived there within very recent times. Mary Percival inherited the house on the death of her mother in 1884 when she was just twenty years old. A determined and resourceful young woman by all accounts, she resolved to run the huge estate single handed, rejecting all offers for her hand, offers of which as may be imagined, there were many.

  As far as we can gather Mary was an attractive and popular member of the community and when at last she gave her heart it was to the handsome son of a Suffolk clergyman who was practising as a lawyer in Bury, a town some miles from Belheddon. John Bennet was a year her senior and on their marriage abandoned the law in order to help Mary look after the estate. This heavy responsibility he took over completely within a few months as Mary waited for the birth of her first child. Henry John Bennet was born in October 1900 and two years later his sister Lydia Sarah followed.

  As far as is known all was contentment within the Bennet household and the first sign of a problem in the house was noted by the local rector. In his memoirs there are several references to Belheddon Hall and he was called to perform a Service of Exorcism in the house on at least two occasions. He was called to the Hall in the winter of 1902 after servants reported sightings of an apparition, variously described as a knight in armour, a Martian and astonishingly a ‘tripod’ (this was four years after the appearance of the War of the Worlds by Mr H. G. Wells) and a monster foretelling the end of the world. In the course of the next year the Bennets found it impossible to keep servants at the Hall. One after another they left and their replacements departed in similar short order. Only a few months later, in the spring of 1903, tragedy struck the family. Little Henry John died as the result of a terrible accident.

  This is where the mystery begins. There is no record of how or why he died. It was presumably no ordinary childhood malady which carried him off. The shock and horror throughout the county precludes that.

  Joss laid down the sheets of paper and reached for her tea cup thoughtfully. She gazed into the depths of the tea, remembering. She was sitting in the attic, the brilliant blue sky outside the windows, with John Bennet’s diary lying in her lap. The words sprang out at her as they had then.

  So, he claims yet another victim. The boy is dead. Next it will be me.

  She was not at all sure she wanted to go on reading this. Folding the pages she stood up and pushed them into the pocket of her trousers, then picking up the cup she made her way through to the great hall. The room was bright, sunshine flooding in through the rain smudged windows and casting moted beams across the floor. The flowers she had put on the refectory table only yesterday had shed petals all over the black polished oak and there was a dusting of sticky pollen round the silver bowl. With a shiver she glanced around the room and then she headed for the staircase.

  She realised as she looked down into the crib that her heart was thudding with fear. What had she expected? To find something awful had happened to her baby? She gave a smile. He was awake, his little fists waving aimlessly free of his shawl.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ she whispered. Stooping she scooped him up into her arms. Carrying him over to the chair by the window she settled herself comfortably so she could look out over the garden, and slowly she began to unbutton her blouse.

  Ned. The name came to her out of nowhere. Edward. There were no Edwards in her family as far as she could remember. Frowning she tried to picture the family Bible downstairs in the study. And there were certainly none in the Davies family. ‘Edward Philip Joseph Grant.’ She repeated the names to herself out loud. ‘Not a bad handle for a very small chap.’ She dropped a kiss on the fuzz of dark hair.

  When he was once more asleep she went over to sit on the window seat and only then did she pull the photocopied pages from her pocket once more.

  Stories continued to circulate throughout the next few months and must have distressed the bereaved family enormously. Mr and Mrs Bennet became increasingly unsettled and the rector was repeatedly sent for to the Hall. Then at the end of June in that year John Bennet disappeared and despite country-wide attempts to locate him was nowhere to be found.

  No trace of him was ever discovered at the time, but some fifteen years later rumours began to circulate around the Essex-Suffolk borders as to what had really happened.

  An elderly man was reported to have been seen in several different hostelries, claiming to be the missing John Bennet. He looked like a man in his eighties (John Bennet would by now have been about fifty-five, a year older than his wife) with white hair, vacant eyes and a severe nervous twitch. Word of his presence on the Suffolk border of course reached Mary Sarah, living still at Belheddon Hall with her only surviving child, Lydia, now a young lady of sixteen. The demons of Belheddon had, it seemed, been laid to rest after the disappearance of the master of the house. Mary Sarah, it is reported, denounced the man as an impostor and refused to see him. He on his part refused to go to Belheddon Hall and when asked about his life in the intervening years became vague and troubled.

  Nothing more would have been heard of him perhaps, had he not been discovered unconscious on the steps of the church in the village of Lawford. The rector had him carried into the rectory and there he was nursed back to a semblance of life. The story he told the rector was never divulged officially but a housemaid in the rectory said that on several occasions her duties took her into the rector’s study to stoke the fire while the two men were talking. The story the visitor was unravelling fille
d her with horror.

  John Bennet – so the story went, and so he claimed to be – was walking in the garden at Belheddon one evening as dusk was falling when he was confronted by something which had the appearance of a man encased in the armour of yesteryear. The figure, at least seven feet tall, strode towards him, its hands outstretched.

  In turning to flee his foot slipped in the mud at the edge of the lake and he fell awkwardly upon his back. To his terror the apparition stooped over him and proceeded to lift him in the air. Before he knew it he found himself hurled into the water.

  When he surfaced and looked round trying to see his assailant there was no sign of him. The banks of the lake were empty and there was nothing to be seen in the darkness but the outlines of the nearby trees. Swimming to the far bank Bennet, if indeed it was he, climbed out, but his sanity, already unhinged by the death of his only son, had completely deserted him. Instead of making his way to the house and safety, he remembered fumbling for the latch on the gate into a back lane, and running, still dripping with ice cold water into the coming darkness. It was the last thing, or so he claimed, that he remembered, before waking up in the rectory fifteen years later.

  What happened to the man who told this story no one knows. He remained in the rectory for several days, then one night he let himself out into the darkness from which he had emerged and was never seen again.

  Joss let the pages fall into her lap. From where she was sitting she could see the lake across the grass, concentric circles forming on its glassy surface amongst the lilies as fish came up for flies.

  A man in medieval armour? The tin man? She closed her eyes against the glare of the sunlight on the water.

  * * *

  She was awakened by Luke’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Hi. How are you?’ He had brought her a cup of tea which he set down on the small table beside her.