Before the Poison (29 page)

I told her that it was, and what I composed. Naturally, she had seen some of the movies I had scored but couldn’t remember any melodies. I told her that meant I had done my job, but that the films wouldn’t have been half as effective without the music.

‘
The Birds
worked,’ she said. ‘Without a musical score, I mean.’

I raised my eyebrows. It was true that
The Birds
had no music, but most people didn’t even notice. It made a good trivia question, a way of separating the bluffers from people who knew what they were talking about. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But that was the point of it, really, wasn’t it? The lack of music
was
the soundtrack, in a way. Or the birds, themselves, were, the sounds they made.’

She thought about that for a moment. ‘Who are your favourites?’ she asked.

‘The classics. Erich Korngold. Max Steiner. Bernard Herrmann. Franz Waxman. And maybe some of the more avant-garde composers who worked with great foreign directors. Toru Takemitsu. Nino Rota.’

‘
La Dolce Vita
,’ said Louise. ‘I love that movie. And the music.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem to know a lot about the subject.’

She turned away, as if embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, and looked at me sideways again. ‘There was a time I went to the movies nearly every day,’ she said. ‘Classics. Hollywood blockbusters. Art house. Foreign movies. The lot. I had no discrimination. It was pretty much my life in those days.’

‘Escapism?’

‘I had a lot to escape from. But tell me more about you, how you work. It must be very exciting.’

As we continued with our small talk, I found myself wondering whether Louise was aware what I knew about her. I imagined that perhaps one of the family solicitors Heather had talked to might have mentioned my name.

Louise gestured towards the grand piano. ‘Is that where you work?’ she asked. She had an Australian accent, but it wasn’t as strident as some I had heard, and she didn’t effect the kind of slang you usually get on TV. Louise was far more soft spoken, and there was a definite English cadence in her educated speech. Her early, formative years with her father, I imagined, along with her own education, perhaps.

‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘I’m working on a piano sonata.’ I don’t know why I told her that.

‘Like this?’

She meant the Schubert B flat, which had just started. ‘I’m not quite up to that standard.’

‘It’s a beautiful piano.’

‘It was your grandmother’s,’ I said, and held my breath. I had no idea what her reaction would be, whether she would be angry or upset, how much she knew, or even whether she cared at all. She was silent for a few moments, thoughtful, sipping her sweet tea. It crossed my mind that she was a very serious young woman. There were frown lines on her brow. I hadn’t seen her smile once yet. ‘You are Louise
Webster
, aren’t you?’

She glared at me defiantly. ‘I’m Louise
King
. I changed my name. It’s all legal.’

‘That’s a version of your mother’s name, isn’t it? There’s been a lot of name-changing in your family.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Someone told me you’d been asking questions about my grandmother. Why are you so interested in her?’

The family solicitors again, I guessed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe because I live in what used to be her house.’

‘Is her ghost haunting it?’

‘Why does everybody ask me that?’

‘It seems the obvious question, I suppose. Though she wasn’t killed here, so there’s no reason why her ghost should linger, is there?’

‘None,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think it is. I hear a lot of noises, that’s all. Old house noises. See things in the shadows.’

‘Have you ever seen
her
?’

I thought of the figure I fancied I saw in the wardrobe mirror and in the sewing-room chair the other night. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘Me neither. Only the ones inside my head.’

‘You’re haunted?’

She nodded, as if it were a simple answer to an everyday question. ‘What about my grandfather?’ she asked. ‘After all, he’s the one who died here.’

‘I haven’t seen him, either. What made you sell the place?’

‘I need the money. Well, that’s not strictly true. Daddy left me plenty of money. But I didn’t want an old house. I didn’t want it hanging around my neck. It seemed to make most sense to sell it. I hope you’re happy here.’

‘I’m doing all right.’

She put her cup down on the table beside her.

‘More?’

‘No, thanks. I should go.’

‘You’re welcome to stay for something to eat if you want. It’s nothing special. I was just going to cook up some salmon.’

‘Did you catch it yourself?’

‘No, not exactly. Supermarket special. There isn’t any around here.’

‘I don’t know much about nature, except that we need to respect it more.’

‘Me neither.’ But I’m learning, I might have added. ‘Anyway, what about it? Tea?’

‘OK. Thanks. That’s nice of you. No rush. I’m not starving or anything.’

‘How did you get here from Staithes?’

‘I drove. I’m parked in Richmond market square. I walked up here.’

‘Quite a way back. I’ll drive you to town later, after tea, if you want.’

‘Cool. Can I use your toilet?’

I showed her the way to the one at the top of the stairs. While she was gone, I took the salmon out of the fridge and started to prepare it. She must have heard me puttering around in the kitchen, because when she came back down she joined me there and sat at the table, gazing out of the window towards the drystone wall and the woods at the end of the dale. ‘That’s quite the bathroom,’ she said.

It was one of the old kind, with a claw-foot bathtub, gold-plated fittings, high ceilings and blue and white tiles, after the Portuguese fashion. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should imagine it’s been that way for years, probably since the days your grandparents lived here.’

‘It’s very remote,’ she went on. ‘How do you put up with it? I think I’d go batty.’

‘I do go batty sometimes,’ I said, wrapping the mustard-smeared salmon fillets in prosciutto. I glanced up at her. ‘Perhaps that explains why I’m so interested in your grandmother’s story. It helps me put up with being so isolated here.’ I realised as I said this that, in an odd way, Grace was
company
for me, but I didn’t say it out loud because I knew how crazy it sounded.

Louise was watching me work now, as if fascinated by the simple kitchen techniques. I wondered just what kind of life she had lived. I remembered what Heather had told me, and I knew that this slight young girl sitting before me had found her mother and stepfather dead from point-blank shotgun wounds. What kind of damage that inflicts on the psyche I could hardly imagine. She had run wild, so Heather had told me, and that could mean anything – drugs, crime, alcohol, bad company, maybe all of them.

I put on some rice and began to chop vegetables. Louise still watched me, fascinated. When I had done that, I unscrewed the cap from a bottle of red wine and offered her some.

‘I don’t drink,’ she said, shrinking in on herself, as if every cell in her body wanted to reach out and accept. I had seen the signs of alcoholism before, but not in one so young.

‘I suppose I don’t need to, either,’ I said, and put the bottle away, out of sight.

‘I don’t care if you do,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’m not against it or anything.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘No skin off my nose. It’ll do me good to abstain. At least, I’ll wait and have some later with the meal. In the meantime, you said you came to have a look around the old place, so would you like the guided tour? There’s nothing for me to do here while the food’s cooking.’

‘Please,’ she said, and stood up.

Louise paused in the vestibule and stood before the family portrait, at which she had glanced on her way in. ‘That’s my family, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes. Your grandmother and grandfather, and your father.’

Louise nodded. We continued with the tour. The kitchen, living and dining rooms she had already seen, so all there was left, apart from cupboards, was my TV room. She enthused over the large screen, scanned a few of the DVD titles and said, ‘Do you play them just for the music, or do you like the movies?’

‘What a funny question,’ I said, though on reflection it wasn’t, really. ‘Like anyone else, I watch the films, but maybe I’m a bit more aware of the music.’

‘Have you ever gone to see a movie only for the music?’

‘
Star Wars
,’ I said. ‘I’m not a big science-fiction fan, but everybody was talking about it.’

I wasn’t going to show her the empty cellar, so we went upstairs next. When we got to the guest bedroom at the front, over the gallery from mine, she stood and said, almost to herself, ‘This is where it happened.’

I didn’t know whether this was true or not, so I said nothing. If it was true, then it meant I was sleeping in what had been Grace’s bedroom as well as working in her sewing room, and that the room where I thought I had seen a woman’s – Grace’s – figure reflected in the wardrobe mirror had been Ernest’s room, the room where he had died.

We moved on. Louise seemed awed most of all by the sewing room, sitting for a moment in the small armchair. Then she sat at the escritoire. Her hand disappeared underneath it and felt around. A few seconds later, a small hidden drawer sprung open on the bottom left. It was empty.

‘How did you know about that?’ I asked. I had searched for ages and found nothing.

‘Granny Felicity told Dad about it.’

Louise pulled out an Everyman edition of Shelley’s poetry and turned to Grace’s name written neatly on the first page:
Grace Elizabeth Hartnell, 1928
. Then she examined the oil painting of the lime kiln beside which she had stood to observe the house. The signature ‘S. Porter’ was just about visible once you knew where to look for it. She found it, ran her fingers over it, then stood back and took the whole thing in. ‘Her lover,’ she whispered.

‘He’s still alive,’ I said. ‘I’ve met him.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘I know his work. I’m a painter myself. Not terribly good, but I dabble.’

‘We’d better go down and check on the food,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else up here, and the attic’s empty.’

Louise followed me out of the door, with one backward glance at the painting, along the corridor and down the stairs. ‘Thank you,’ she said when we went back into the kitchen.

After a few moments, dinner was ready. I thought the kitchen might be a more relaxed and informal setting than the large dining area, so I set a couple of places at the pine table. I put some coffee on for later and served up the food, then dimmed the lights.

‘What kind of music do you like?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. All sorts, really. I don’t listen to anything much. I liked what you were playing before. And I like violins. Anything with a violin. And cellos. They sound so melancholy.’

I poured myself a glass of wine, put the iPod in the kitchen dock and turned to Sol Gabetta’s recording of the Elgar cello concerto – you couldn’t get much more melancholy than that – and we settled down to eat.

‘That was delicious,’ said Louise as she rested her knife and fork on the empty plate.

‘Thank you. I’m sorry, but there’s no pudding.’

‘That’s all right. I’m quite full enough. I don’t eat very much as a rule. Can we sit in the other room by the fire again?’

‘Of course.’ I put the dinner things in the dishwasher and poured us both a cup of coffee, then we went through to the living room. It was pitch black outside. I threw a few more logs on the fire and closed the curtains before sitting down.

The Elgar had finished, and Louise didn’t seem to care one way or another about having anything in the background, so I didn’t put on any more music. She settled into the armchair and crossed her legs under her. It was a still evening, and the deep silence enveloped and permeated Kilnsgate House. It pushed against my ears like noise-cancelling headphones. All we could hear was the soughing of ashes and knotty logs crackling in the fireplace, the scraping of blown leaves against the flagged patio out the back. After a long pause, during which Louise stared into the flames, which reflected in her dark eyes, she looked up at me and said, ‘This is all very new to me, you know. Meeting people, having dinner and all like real folks do. It’s not easy.’

‘I don’t suppose it is,’ I said. ‘You haven’t had an easy life.’

She shot me a defensive glance. ‘My father was kind to me.’

‘I’m sure he was.’

‘He never talked about it, you know, about his background, his mother, where he came from, about his family over here. Not until the very end.’

‘I’d heard,’ I said. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘I didn’t. Not at first. They told me you were interested, asking questions. That was why I just stood outside and watched. But I wanted to come in. I wanted to see the inside, where she lived, where it happened. I think maybe I can talk to you about it now, if you’re willing to bear with me and listen.’

‘I’m willing. You know I’m interested.’

‘You can have another glass of wine if you want. It doesn’t bother me.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘You might need one.’

I held up my cup of coffee. ‘I’m fine with this for the moment.’

She nodded. ‘Then I’ll begin.’

15

Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), August, 1940. Cape Town

Friday, 16th August, 1940