Deep Water, Thin Ice (4 page)

‘So she was Simon’s wife?’ Sarah was saying now with a frown.

‘That’s right, but she still uses her maiden name. She’s a classical singer, known for singing sacred and baroque music apparently. Was even on one of the BBC proms a couple of years ago. Here, I can show you a picture of her.’ He got up and walked out into the hall. When he came back he had a CD in his hand and gave it to his mother and stood, leaning over her shoulder as she stared at the cover photograph. ‘See. Only wears her hair up like that for concerts as far as I can tell. But she made a fool of herself a few weeks ago and hasn’t appeared in public since. She’s completely gone to pieces since Simon died, left London and bolted down here.’

‘Her nose isn’t quite straight is it?’ Sarah remarked a little disdainfully. ‘Striking I suppose but not what I’d call attractive.’

‘What she looks like isn’t really important,’ Theo said dismissively, walking back to his seat and throwing the CD on the table. ‘What’s important is that since Simon inherited Hillen Hall from Aunt Felicity, now he’s dead, Alexandra Munroe is the only heir to his estate.’

‘Really? Are you sure? Aren’t there any children?’

‘Not a one. And certainly I’m sure. I’ve made it my business to find out.’

Sarah nodded slowly. ‘So you think she’s going to live here?’

‘Yes. For the time being anyway.’

Her shoulders sagged.

‘You’re disappointed?’ Theo asked.

‘Well yes, aren’t you? I suppose I thought that when Felicity died, that somehow the hall would come back to us. It’s not as though Simon ever showed any interest in it. I thought that maybe Simon would…’ Her voice drifted off.

‘What? Give it back? I rather hoped he might too. But it was foolish of us mother.’

‘I suppose so. But it should never have been his, should it Theo? And now she’s got it. And even if she wanted to sell it, we couldn’t afford it.’

‘Maybe we could.’

Sarah frowned.

‘How? Even in the state it’s in now, it’d still be worth a fortune. Sea and river views, land, all that history to the house; have you seen the prices houses like that go for round here Theo? Don’t think I haven’t looked. I don’t have any money…and you spend yours like water.’ She leaned forward and stared at him as if willing him to contradict her.

Theo shrugged, a smile playing across his lips.

‘I might have the means,’ he said. ‘There are all sorts of ways to pay for something. I suspect, in her case, there may be something she wants more than money.’

*

The bathroom, which stood next door to Alex’s chosen bedroom, was as clean as she could make it but it was still a mess. The floor was covered in cracking cork tiles and the elderly shower produced a tiny trickle of water. The oil tank which fired the boiler was empty though at least the immersion heater worked. Alex sank back into the bath of sudsy hot water, closed her eyes and tried to ignore the patches of black on the tile grout. She was too tired to care anyway, exhausted from another bad night punctuated by vivid and upsetting dreams. The outstanding issues surrounding Simon’s death lingered tauntingly at the back of her mind and wouldn’t let her rest. How naïve, she thought, to think that I could leave them behind in London along with my furniture. Some mornings she felt so oppressed by it all that she didn’t even bother to get up.

In her bedroom - the only other room she’d thoroughly cleaned - she’d put a large framed photograph of Simon on top of the chest of drawers and in front of it she’d laid the casket containing his ashes. His cello in its case was propped up against the wall alongside. Every time she passed it images of Simon came to mind: his signature curly hair flopping up and down when he conducted; the way he ran the end of a pencil round his lips when he was sitting at the piano, composing; the intense way he played the cello, especially when he needed to work something out of his system. It had often been easier to tell what mood Simon was in by the kind of music he played than by what he said – or didn’t. She touched the casket every time she passed and often talked to him too. Victoria might think it macabre but Alex found it comforting.

After a long soak in the bath, Alex slipped on her dressing gown and drifted down to the kitchen. She put the kettle on to make a mug of tea and opened the fridge. It was bare and she remembered that she’d finished the last of the stale bread the day before; she’d been putting off going shopping for days. Half an hour later - wearing the dark glasses which had become habitual for trips outside since that disastrous concert - she drove down to the village for the first time.

Kellaford Bridge was perched on the higher ground between two rivers, with just one access road over the old Roman bridge from the east. To the west, the River Grenloe was silted up and slow and meandered through marshy ground before trickling over a sand and gravel bar down into the harbour; hidden beyond scrubby woodland, it was largely forgotten. To the east of the village, the River Kella was a busy waterway, especially in summer, and wound down from the southern slopes of Dartmoor, cut a deep valley parallel to the road in, and was tidal for nearly two miles inland. It swelled out by the sea into a bowl-shaped harbour flanked on one side by a quay and a large car park. Alex parked the car and went in search of food.

In a small square set back from the front behind a pub and a hotel, she found The Stores, a long, narrow shop laid out as a mini-supermarket. There, eyed with frank curiosity by the woman behind the counter, she stocked up with food, toiletries and cleaning things and retreated back to her car. Before getting in she wandered to the harbour wall and looked out over the water where moored boats were rising on the tide. The sound of rubbing and scraping drifted down from a sailboat sitting on a huge cradle at the chandlers further up river and the halyards on the boats in the harbour pinged melodically in the breeze. At the largest of three floating jetties a small, brightly-painted flat-bottomed passenger boat was moored, its decorative bunting dancing in the breeze. A couple of people were just getting on and an old, slightly bowed man stood on the pontoon, a battered peaked cap on his head, watching.

‘We’ll be leaving for Suth’ll in a couple of minutes if y’want to go,’ shouted the ferry skipper when he saw her watching. She quickly shook her head and turned away.

Back at the Hall, putting the shopping away, Alex noticed that her hands and knees were shaking. Then she caught sight of herself in a mirror in the rear lobby and stared at her reflection in dismay. The face that looked back at her was pinched and pale. Her clear blue eyes were dimmed by puffy eyelids above and smudgy hollows below. Her long dark hair, always slightly wayward, had a lank, flat look. She was gaunt more than slim. She’d never thought of herself as pretty but now she looked awful.

‘Oh God,’ she murmured. ‘What are you doing to yourself Alex?’

*

‘You’re as stubborn as a…as a whole beach full of donkeys,’ Victoria had once exclaimed in exasperation when Alex was a child. As an image the young Alex had found it hard to picture. Victoria had never taken her daughters on beach holidays; she believed in ‘educational trips’. Still, there was some truth in the statement though it wasn’t entirely fair. Alex could be obstinate, but her mother always brought out the worst in her. Victoria, dogmatic and certain of her own opinions, completely failed to understand her elder daughter whose imaginative and artistic disposition was so at odds with her own. So in response to her mother’s constant and often high-handed attempts to make her conform, Alex progressively dug her heels in and the battle lines became permanently drawn.

But it was Alex’s stubbornness which now started to bring her round. The image of what she had become shocked her so much that it brought her up short. Haunted as she was, she had too much self-respect to allow herself to crumble in this way. And if she had inherited nothing else from Victoria, she had at least acquired her work ethic. She needed to occupy herself; she needed a focus. And the obvious place to start was with the house: it needed attention and it was emotionally undemanding.

She started with the kitchen and utility room, clearing the cupboards of half-used sticky jars and bottles and throwing packets of congealed washing powder into bin bags along with rusty cans of polish and sprays, scrubbing cupboards and washing out dozens of mouldy wine and beer bottles. Next she worked on the snug, a room about four metres square with a ring-marked wooden table at the back and a window to the front. Two tidy easy chairs sat either side of a small inglenook fireplace housing a wood-burning stove. After cleaning it she re-laid the stove with kindling and wood from one of the cobwebby stone stores to the rear of the house. With a newly connected phone line she arranged internet access and then used her laptop to order a new washing machine. The present one shook and sounded like an elderly plane about to take off; it left her washing sodden. At the same time she ordered new mattresses and pillows for the beds, preferring not to think about what lived in the old ones.

The following week she began on the sitting room, pushing aside the furniture which was beyond repair and cleaning up what appeared to be worth keeping. She vacuumed the threadbare carpet, washed the woodwork and cleaned out the fireplace. It had the potential to be a beautiful room, she thought, redecorated and with new furniture. Against its back wall stood a handsome long case clock with a mellow walnut front, the finest piece of furniture in the house, an anachronism given the condition and quality of the rest. The case was simple and unadorned, the hood topped with a simple straight cornice. It was a craftsman’s piece with a warm patina to the wood, a glowing brass dial and a silvered chapter ring. Alex lovingly dusted and polished it but the mechanism wasn’t working. At the centre of the dial was a keyhole but the key was missing. She searched for it in vain and then gave up. It was a shame; the house was echoing around her and a ticking clock would be a kind of company.

The renewed activity started to work. She got a little stronger, had more energy and was eating better. She drove down to the village again for shopping and it was easier. A couple of days later, standing at her bedroom window, she saw a woman walking up the hill, a basket looped over one arm, disappearing into a dip of ground and then reappearing only briefly before passing out of sight, presumably heading for the small gabled house on the road up to the Hall. According to the solicitor The Lodge used to belong to the estate but had been sold off years before along with much else. Four acres of land Hillen Hall had now, more or less, which sounded a lot the solicitor had said, but really just meant the immediate garden and ‘the park’ – the rambling ground around the house on all sides. And clearly there was a footpath over it down to the village.

May came in, grey and damp. On the first fine morning, Alex stood looking out of her bedroom window at the sea, blue and broken only by the white sail of a yacht. It had been a particularly bad night. She’d dreamt of Simon again, falling under the train and calling her name. He kept calling her and she couldn’t get there; she could see him but there seemed to be an invisible barrier which stopped her from reaching him. Even now, his voice still seemed to echo in her head and a shiver made her hug her arms tight around her body for comfort. She turned away, grabbed a cotton sweater and the dark glasses and went out, desperate to clear her head.

A ten-minute walk from the rusty wrought iron gate in the front garden wall, over an overgrown shale path, brought her past the churchyard and the village hall with its mound of grass and car park to the edge of the village square. To her right was a small children’s playground and beyond it a new estate of modern houses. Straight ahead, a rising path between buildings brought her out by the harbour.

She leaned on the harbour wall and looked out. The sandy floor of the harbour had been deserted by the tide and was ridged and damp. A gull was asleep, standing on one leg on the back of a tilted dinghy. To the right of the harbour mouth three massive stones stood at odd angles out of the water. On a previous visit she’d heard a yachtsman on the quay refer to them as The Dancing Bears. It was hard to see why.

She turned and wandered aimlessly along the road away from the harbour, past a line of terraced fishermen’s cottages, labelled Harbour Row, then a large detached house set back in a leafy garden. Where the gritty road petered out into a footpath between trees, she saw a sign which read:
To Longcombe Beach
and restlessly followed it.

*

It was mid-afternoon by the time Alex returned along the harbour road. Her jeans were torn at both knees and down one shin, and blood had seeped into the fabric which stuck to her skin in places. Her hands were grazed too and she had sand in her hair. She limped a little as she walked.

A woman stood at the gate of the detached house as she passed and called her name in a kind but insistent voice. ‘Miss Munroe? Miss Munroe?’ Alex stopped and turned. The house had an elegant, Georgian front, narrow but tall, with windows let into the roof, a lovingly tended garden, and a hanging sign which read
Captain’s Cottage: B and B.
The woman had opened the gate and was beckoning her. She was wearing yellow rubber ankle boots and large green gardening gloves.

‘Are you all right dear?’ she repeated as Alex approached. ‘You’ve obviously had a fall. Can I clean up those scratches for you?’ With the back of a glove, she pushed a curly lock of grey hair back from her face, leaving a dirty smudge of soil behind.