by Mary Stewart
So much I saw before Mrs Trapp set my cases down and hurried ahead of me towards a door covered with faded baize which was set back under the rise of the staircase.
‘This way. Wait a minute while I put the light on. The passage is a bit dark if you don’t know the way. Mind that rug, it’s a bit torn. It’ll be cosier in the kitchen. If I’d ’a known you were coming today I could have got the sitting-room done out, but first things first, so the bedroom’s all done, and I must say it needed it, with your aunty being in bed there for a bit before she went to hospital.’
‘It’s very good of you—’ I was beginning again, but she cut me short.
‘As if we could let you come all this way, and to a strange house, and not have a fire lit and the bed aired! As soon as we heard there was a Miss Ramsey coming to live, I said to Jessamy, he’s my son, we’d better get straight up there and get things sorted out a bit for her, poor soul, or she won’t sleep easy, the way things have been left. I mean, Miss Ramsey, the place is clean enough, that goes without saying, but it’s been neglected lately, and you can see it. Here we are, the kettle’s just nicely on the boil.’
The kettle looked, indeed, as if it had been on the boil for some time, but whatever the tea was like, I would be grateful for it. They say that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive: on the way down in the train I had been drifting in a dream, or rather, towards the fulfilment of a dream. A house of my own, a garden, a wood to the very door; the picture Cousin Geillis had drawn for me years ago, lighted by sunshine, and filled with flowers. I had not paused to consider that the reality, on this sunless September day, would be very different. I was only thankful that the solicitors’ forethought had sent Mrs Trapp to make some kind of preparation for my coming.
She was busying herself with pot and kettle. There seemed to be supplies; she lifted an old-fashioned caddy down from the mantelpiece and spooned out the tea. A milk bottle, half empty, stood on the table.
‘Soon be brewed,’ she was saying. ‘Would you like a biscuit, or a bit of toast, maybe? No? Then you won’t mind if I have one myself? I brought a packet in.’
Beside the milk bottle was a quarter-pound of butter, still in its wrapping, but partly used. A bowl full of sugar, a loaf, also half used, and a packet of biscuits, lay beside them. She took a biscuit, and, munching, began to pour tea.
‘There now, if I didn’t forget what I should have said straight away, how sorry I was about your poor aunty …’
‘My cousin.’
‘What?’
‘She wasn’t my aunt. Miss Saxon was my mother’s cousin. I always called her Cousin Geillis.’
‘Oh. Well, yes. There now. A very nice lady she was, and always very good to me. I did what I could looking after her. They say you need good neighbours in the country.’ A smile, as if I should understand her readily. She had very pretty teeth. She chatted on, munching biscuits. She took three spoonsful of sugar in her tea. I drank mine, and looked around me.
It was a big kitchen, old-fashioned but well enough planned, and, after the vicarage kitchen, a delight. Instead of our vast black Eagle range there was a cream-coloured Aga, nestling under the old mantelpiece as if it had been built with the house. This would not, I guessed, be the original kitchen; no eighteenth-century servants would have been pampered with this light and pleasant room. One window – the one with the dead plants – faced north. Another gave on the woodland beside the house; I could see little beyond a tangle of elderberry and rowan overhanging what looked liked a shed roof and a tall chimney. The old wash-house, perhaps? Possibly the original kitchen lay that way, concealed by bushes, and functioning now as scullery and outbuildings.
Opposite the fireplace was a tall dresser with rows of pretty plates in white and powder-blue, with cups to match hanging along the front of the shelves. The new fashion for built-in kitchen units and ‘worktops’ had not reached so far into the wilds, it appeared. The big table in the middle of the room gave all the working space necessary, and there was another long table under the window, cluttered, now, with various boxes and jars, and a pile of books which had presumably been lifted down from a hanging shelf beside the window.
‘I was just cleaning some of the bookshelves down. It’s funny, isn’t it, how they do collect the dirt?’ Mrs Trapp set her cup down and got to her feet. ‘And now you’ll want to see your room.’
With all the air of a hostess, she ushered me out of the kitchen and back along the passage to the baize door. She swung my two cases up as if they weighed nothing, talked down my protest, waited while I gathered up handbag and coat, then led the way upstairs. She trod – curiously lightfooted on those thick legs – along the wide landing that ran the width of the hall. To either side of the landing, at the head of a shallow rise of three steps, was a door. She opened the one on the right. Beyond it lay a small, square lobby, with a window facing us, and doors to left and right. She opened the door on the left, and showed me into a bedroom.
After what I had seen downstairs, the bedroom was a surprise. It was a big room with two tall windows giving on the back, or south side of the house. In each was a wide window seat, set in the depth of the wall. The fireplace was delicate, with pretty flowered tiles. A bow-fronted chest did duty as a dressing-table, and a deep cupboard beside the fireplace stood open, showing the hanging-room of a big wardrobe. The bed was double, and high. The carpet was a soft green, linking the room, as it were, with the woods outside. By one of the windows was an easy chair.
A lovely room. True, the carpet was faded near the windows, the curtains had shrunk a little, and the fabric had begun to go rotten where the sun had caught it. There was a patch of damp in one corner, just below the cornice, and the faded wallpaper had begun to peel there. But the room was clean. It smelt fresh, and one of the windows was open at the top.
‘The bathroom’s next door,’ said Mrs Trapp.
She crossed to the nearest window and gave the curtain a twitch. I was reminded of the lace curtain at the lodge, and wondered who was there in her absence. But she was eyeing me, so I gave her what she was waiting for.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said, warmly. ‘I know I shall love being here. Thank you very much for getting it so nice for me, Mrs Trapp.’
‘I told you, we couldn’t let you come in, the way it was. Not much done downstairs, there wasn’t time. But the bed’s well aired and the bathroom’s done, too. Want to see it?’
‘Later, thank you.’ I was wondering – and wondering how to ask – what payment she expected for the work she had done. Possibly, if they had asked her to clean for me, the solicitors might have seen to it.
I put a harmless question.
‘If you live at the lodge it’s an awfully long way to come up, isn’t it? Do you have a car?’
‘I’ve a bicycle, but there’s a short cut through the woods. I come that way, usually.’
‘I gather you’ve been keeping an eye on the place since my cousin was taken ill? Did you work for Miss Saxon?’
‘Off and on. She liked her lonesomeness. But come spring I usually gave her a hand with the cleaning. Do you want to see the rest now?’
‘I’ll unpack first, I think. But perhaps, before you go, you’ll show me where all the kitchen things are, and how to cope with the stove?’
‘All right, miss. But you don’t need to bother about the stove. That’s all set for the night, and I’ll be up in the morning. And you don’t need to worry about your supper, neither. There’s something cooking in the oven, and I’ll leave the bread and that for you, no bother, no need to worry about the rationing, there’s always plenty to be got hereabouts, when you’ve known the folks as long as I have, and your aunty Wasn’t one for letting her cupboards go empty.’
‘It’s terribly good of you. I did bring as much as I could, but until I get to know about shops and registering for rations and so on—’
‘I can tell you where to go, and you can be sure you’ll get treated right, when they know you’ve got Miss
Saxon’s place.’ She followed me down the stairs. ‘That’s it, then, miss, I’ll let you get yourself sorted out now, but I’ll be up first thing tomorrow, and I’ll fetch the milk, and something for your dinner, too, so just you rest easy, and we’ll soon get the house readied up between us.’
‘You’re very kind.’ I hesitated. But it had to be said. I neither wanted, nor could afford, daily help in the house. ‘Mrs Trapp, it’s terribly good of you, but you really mustn’t bother about me. I know I’ll need all the advice I can get, about shops and rations and things, till I get myself organised. But as for helping with the house, I – well, I plan to look after things myself. I’m quite used to it, and in fact, honestly, I prefer it. Like my cousin, I like my lonesomeness.’ I gave her a smile. ‘But I’m really very grateful for what you’ve done, and of course I’ll be very glad if you’ll help me out from time to time, the way you did Miss Saxon.’
It happened again, the scarlet flush rising swiftly up her neck and right over her face. And this time, with a curious inner lurch of nerves, I recognised it, and knew why it had so disconcerted me, and why my dealings with her so far had been timid to the point of misgiving. I had seen someone blush like that before. My chief tormentor at the convent, in anger, or in contempt when she had managed to make me cry, had looked like that. And the blue eyes, fixed like a doll’s eyes in the suffused face, had looked just the same.
Through it she smiled, the white teeth flashing. ‘Well, of course, it’s just as you like, Miss Ramsey. But almost the last thing your aunty said to me before they took her to hospital was, “Agnes dear, this being such a big, roomy house and all, wouldn’t it be great if you’d move in with me, and look after me right here.”’ The flush receded. She smiled again, charmingly. ‘And that’s just what we was planning to do, Jessamy and me, when she took ill and died. But it’s all different now, isn’t it?’
I was. not, repeat not, eight years old, and this was not the Führer of the third form. I was the owner of Thornyhold, standing in her own front hall talking to the hired help. But I had to clear my throat before I could say, cheerfully and I hoped firmly: ‘Yes. It’s all different now. Thank you again, Mrs Trapp, and goodbye.’
7
Back in my bedroom, and alone, I heaved a case on to one of the window seats, and started to take out the things. I was thinking hard, and not very comfortably. The first thing I must do, I thought, was get in touch with Martin and Martin, Cousin Geillis’s firm of solicitors, and find out if – and how much – I owed Mrs Trapp. At least, with the firm’s backing, there could be no trouble there …
Trouble? I took a pull at myself. In the face of an angry flush, a passing resemblance, I must not regress to the fearful, bullied child I had once been. And why should there be trouble? I was not an elderly, sick lady who needed a housekeeper. I was young and strong, and had kept house myself for years. Kept it successfully in a much less attractive and convenient house. I was quite capable of telling Agnes Trapp, thank you for past services, and here’s the money, and I’ll let you know when I want you again. As for her preposterous suggestion that she should move in with me …
And there was the reason, surely, for the dismay and anger she had shown? It had been a shock, and a dash to her hopes of a comfortable future, to find a young and vigorous ‘cousin’ on the doorstep. She had expected an elderly woman, Cousin Geillis’s contemporary, who would possibly welcome the offer of a live-in housekeeper and a man-about-the-place. Cousin Geillis, who ‘liked her lonesomeness’, must have felt pretty ill before she could have made such a suggestion. If, indeed, she ever had.
That was ridiculous, too. Of course she had. What need was there for the woman to lie? Agnes Trapp was a good neighbour, country-style, which meant that she was used to letting herself in and out of her neighbour’s house at will, and giving a hand if and when it was needed. One didn’t lock one’s door in those days in the country.
And that was another thing. Surely, after Cousin Geillis had been taken to hospital, the house would be locked up. So presumably Mrs Trapp had a key. Something else I would have to be firm about. It seemed, I thought, as I heaved the first armful of clothing from my case to the bed, as if it was going to be more difficult than I had imagined to have my own house, and to have it to myself.
I did not hurry over my unpacking. Perhaps subconsciously I was hoping that Mrs Trapp would have gone before I went downstairs again, and that anything else that needed to be said could be said tomorrow. And it might well be, I thought to myself, as I folded my clothes or hung them away, that I would be very glad of her help with the rest of the house. She had done this room quite beautifully. There were clean papers in the drawers, and on the base of the wardrobe cupboard. The sheets were linen, immaculately ironed, and smelling of lavender, and a couple of bulges showed where the hot water bottles, now almost cold, had been put to air the bed. (For the old, sick lady to take to?) There was a candlestick beside the bed, with matches laid near. I smiled as I saw it; the feeling that I had stepped back in time was very strong. But the bed-head light worked when I tried it. The candle was a precaution, no more.
The bathroom, next to the bedroom, took me straight back into the twentieth century. It, too, was spotless, white and gleaming, and outside the window the clouds had packed away to show a clear sky of evening beyond the trees. I opened it and leaned out, but before I could do more than get an impression of colour in a flood of green, and the remote glimmer of water, I heard from below me and to one side the sound of a door closing. I craned further. Away to the left I caught a movement. There was a path skirting the house, leading presumably from the back door to a side gate that gave on Mrs Trapp’s path through the woods. Mrs Trapp herself came into view. In each hand was a bulging carrier bag. She hurried down the path and out of sight.
Peace had come back and with it pleasure. I went lightly downstairs to the kitchen. Any more exploring could wait till morning. It had been a long day. I would have supper early, and go to bed in that lovely room. I looked, but briefly, into the kitchen drawers and cupboards, located enough in the way of crockery and cutlery for my evening meal, then lifted Mrs Trapp’s casserole from the oven and raised the lid. It smelled very good. I took a spoon and tasted it. Delicious. Beside it on the oven shelf was a large potato wrapped in foil. Yes, a good neighbour. We should see.
‘Well, Cousin Geillis, thank you for everything,’ I said, and sat down to my first meal in my own house.
Afterwards, country or no country, I locked up.
I found I had been right about the old kitchen. The back door opened straight out of it, through a small porch where coats hung, and sticks and umbrellas stood with a row of shoes and gumboots. The old kitchen was a square, flagged room, dismal in the weak light of an unshaded electric bulb. Two small windows, blurred with cobwebs, would even by day give very little light. One wall was almost filled by a vast, rusting range. No furniture beyond a couple of tall built-in cupboards and a deal table covered with peeling oilcloth and laden with piles of old newspapers and cardboard boxes and other forgotten debris. An earthenware sink under one window. A couple of buckets and a chipped enamel jug. A watering-can and a stiff garden broom.
There was no key in the lock of the back door. Presumably this was the one that Mrs Trapp held. But the door had a couple of very adequate bolts. I shot them home firmly, and went to bed.
* * *
The silence woke me. At first, when I opened my eyes on blackness, I thought I must still be asleep, so used had I become to nights lit by the dirty orange glow of sodium lamps and the intermittent snarling glare of the pit’s traffic. Now even the wind had died. There was no sound of rain, no movement of the trees. Slowly, as I lay with open eyes, the darkness dissolved into shapes of varying blackness; the room was a cave of blackness with the faint oblongs of the uncurtained windows showing indigo. I could see no stars. A long way away a train whistled, emphasising the emptiness of the night. From somewhere nearer, but still far enough, came the
whining bark of a dog; not the steady bark of the chained watch-dog, but some dog, I thought, urgently asking for something; to be let in, to be let out, to be fed, to be freed. It stopped abruptly and the silence returned.
To be broken by a much nearer, much fainter, and more disturbing sound even than the dog’s misery. Just above my head I could hear a scratching, scrabbling, tapping noise that must mean some small inhabitant of the roof. I lay quite still, listening. Bats? I knew nothing about them, but imagined them as silent creatures, hanging in their shelter. In any case, surely they would be out in the night, and flying. If swifts or starlings or other birds nested in the roof, they would be gone long ago. Mice? Too spasmodic, too faint. It could not, I told myself firmly, be rats. It could not. I loved animals with all my soul, but I did not desire a close acquaintance with rats.
It was not busy enough for rats. In fact, it was an oddly comfortable sound. It was company. I slept.
8
I went exploring next morning, as soon as I had finished breakfast.
It was a strange experience. Nothing in the house yet, apart from the few things disposed in the bedroom, seemed to belong to me. I felt as if I ought to knock on the doors.
As I had guessed, the door at the rear of the hall led to the drawing-room, which was large enough and well enough proportioned to deserve the name. Mrs Trapp had done no cleaning here, and it was apparent that Cousin Geillis had not used the room for some time; dust lay everywhere, and the cretonnes of the armchairs were crumpled. The room was comfortably furnished, with easy chairs and sofa, a couple of occasional tables, a big breakfront bookcase and a baby grand piano. There were pretty china ornaments on the mantelpiece, and in a shelved alcove beside the fireplace. The pictures were water colours, rather faded, since the room faced south and on good days the light would be brilliant. French windows opened on the garden, and another window faced west. The room was directly below my bedroom, and slightly larger; I guessed that my bathroom had been taken off the recess below which Cousin Geillis’s piano stood.