House of Echoes (15 page)

‘You see, under the great hall. A flint undercroft, built of the same stuff as the church.’ He was spluttering with excitement. ‘And the carving, here, on the key stone and the corbels, see?’ He beamed at her. ‘You have a treasure here, Mrs Grant, a real treasure. This vault has been here if I’m right for six or seven hundred years.’

‘Seven hundred?’ Joss stared at him, her fear subsiding as his enthusiasm increased. She hugged herself against the chill.

He nodded, patting the wall. ‘May I bring a colleague to see this? And someone from the Historic Buildings department? It is quite wonderful. And here, all along!’

She smiled. ‘Of course you may. How exciting. You may have to bring out a new edition of your book.’

He laughed. ‘How accurately you read my thoughts, my dear. I’m a silly old fool, I know. I get so carried away, but it is so
exciting. It’s suddenly seeing history before you – the bones of history – the actual fabric within which events took place.’

‘Would this have been a cellar then?’ Joss glanced over her shoulder.

‘Maybe. An undercroft, a storeroom, even a well chamber.’ He laughed, staring round. ‘But no well.’

‘The well is in the courtyard.’ She was edging back towards the stairs, trying to draw him away from his wall. ‘Why don’t we go up, Mr Andrews. It’s so cold down here. You can always come back.’

He was stricken. ‘How selfish of me. I’m sorry, my dear. You do look cold. Of course we must go.’ He cast one last longing glance back at his vaulting and followed her to the staircase.

Lyn and Tom were still deeply engrossed in cooking supper when at last she waved Gerald Andrews down the drive, so, reaching for her coat, Joss opened the back door and went out into the dusk. Beyond the lake a small gate in the hedge led out into the lane. A few hundred yards’ walk led up to the back of the field from where she could look down on the estuary and out towards the dark sea. She stood for several minutes, her hands in her pockets, looking down at the water then with a shiver she turned back into the lane, which with its thickly tangled hedges was more sheltered. Slowly she walked back, savouring the sweetness of the smell of spring flowers and wet earth and sodden bark after the salt sharp tang nearer the sea. From here she could see the silhouette of the church tower, and now and then, from a higher point on the bank the roofs of the Hall. In the deep shade between the hedge banks it was cold and damp and she shivered again, hurrying to get back.

As she let herself in through the wicket gate by the rowan tree she saw a boy standing by the lake. He had his back to her and he seemed to be standing staring down into the water. ‘Sammy?’ Her whisper was choked with fear. ‘Sammy!’ This time it was a shout. The boy did not turn. He did not seem to hear her. Running now, she crossed the lawn, round thickets of elder and winter dead hawthorn shrouded in ivy, and burst out on the bank of the lake near the little landing stage.

There was no one to be seen.

‘Sammy!’ Her cry put up a heron which had been standing motionless in the shallows on the far side of the water. With an
angry harsh cry it lifted laboriously into the evening sky and skimmed the hedge out of sight.

‘Sammy,’ she whispered again. But he was gone. If a real child had been playing by the water the heron would have flown away long before she arrived on the scene.

She put her hand to her side with a small grimace. Her desperate run across the grass had given her a stitch. Frowning with pain she doubled over for a minute, then slowly she began to walk back towards the house.

Lyn and Tom were in the kitchen. Tom’s face, covered in chocolate, betrayed the fact that they had now reached the stage of preparing the pudding.

‘You OK?’ Lyn glanced at Joss as Tom ran to her and gave her knees a sticky hug.

Joss grimaced. ‘A bit of a stitch. Silly.’

‘Go and sit down by the fire. I’ll bring you another cup of tea.’ Lyn slid her baking tins into the oven. ‘Go on. Off with you.’

The fire in the study was almost out. Bending down wearily Joss threw on some logs and a shovel of coal, then she picked up David’s notes and sat down in the old armchair. Her back was aching now too and she felt inordinately tired.

When Lyn came in half an hour later with a cup of tea she was fast asleep. For a minute Lyn stood staring down at her, then with a shrug she turned away. She did not leave the tea.

‘Luke!’ Joss’s cry turned into a gasp as a violent cramp tore her out of her sleep. ‘Luke, the baby! Something’s wrong.’ Miserably hugging her stomach she slipped to her knees on the carpet. ‘Luke!’

There was a hand on her shoulder. Gentle, caressing, he was there. Sobbing she reached up to grip his knuckles. The lightest touch across her back, fingers rubbing her shoulders. She could smell roses. Where had Luke found roses at this time of year? Her hand groped for his. There was no one there. Shocked, she stared round, another kind of fear flooding icily through her as she realised the room was empty. ‘Luke!’ Her voice rose to a shriek.

‘Joss? Were you calling?’ The door was pushed open and Lyn put her head round it. ‘Joss? Oh God! What’s the matter?’

Luke drove her to the hospital. His face was white and Joss kept noticing the smear of oil across his left cheek. She smiled
fondly. Poor Luke. He was always being dragged away from his precious car.

The pains had stopped now. All she felt was a strangely overwhelming tiredness. She could hardly move. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. Even her fear for the baby couldn’t keep her awake.

She was vaguely aware of being wheeled in a chair from the car to a lift, and of being put into bed then she was lost in velvety blackness. Twice she woke up. The first time Simon Fraser was there, sitting at her bedside, holding her wrist. He smiled, his sandy hair flopping round his face, his glasses reflecting distorted images of the side ward where they had put her. ‘Hello there.’ He leaned forward. ‘Welcome back to planet Earth. How are you feeling?’

‘My baby –?’

‘Still there.’ He grinned. ‘You’re going up for a scan a bit later, just to make sure all is well. Rest now, Joss.’

When she woke again Luke was there. The smear was gone from his face and he was wearing a clean shirt, but he was as pale and strained as before. ‘Joss, darling. How are you feeling?’

‘Is the baby all right?’ Her mouth felt like sandpaper. Her voice was husky.

‘Yes, it’s fine.’ He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. ‘What happened? Did you fall?’

She shook her head slowly, feeling the coarse cotton of the pillow slip abrading her hair. ‘No. I was asleep.’ She had run across the lawn, she remembered that. It had given her a stitch. Then someone had been there, in the study with her. Someone had touched her. Not Luke. Not Lyn. The touch had not been frightening; it was as if someone had been trying to comfort her, to help. She drew her brows together, trying desperately to remember but already she was feeling sleepy again. ‘I can’t stay awake.’ Her mouth refused to form the words properly.

Luke’s face was swimming, suddenly huge, close to hers. ‘I’ll leave you now. You must sleep. I’ll come back later.’ She felt the touch of his lips, but already she was slipping back into the dark.

Later they took her to another ward. Someone smeared her stomach with jelly and ran something cold and hard across it.

‘There you are. Can you see the screen, dear? There. The little mite is all safe, curled up out of harm’s way. See?’

Joss peered obediently at the flickering blurred screen beside the bed. She could not make out anything, but her relief at the radiographer’s words was enormous. ‘Is it all right? Can you tell?’

‘It’s fine. Absolutely fine.’ The woman was wiping her stomach with tissues and pulling down her gown. ‘You’re going to have a beautiful June baby.’

Already they were pulling back the curtains, wheeling her away, bringing in the next patient.

Simon Fraser was waiting for her when they brought her back to her bed. ‘I had to visit another couple of patients, so I thought I’d look in on you again. How are you feeling?’

‘Better.’ Joss eased herself up on her pillows.

‘Good.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Home, then rest for a couple of weeks. I’ve spoken to your sister. She says she can cope with everything. Is that right?’

Joss laughed weakly. ‘She’s very good at coping.’

‘Good. You’ve got to make up your mind to rest, Joss. I mean that.’

When she got home she found that the whole family had been suborned. She was firmly escorted to bed and there, she discovered, she had to stay even when Sotheby’s came to collect the wine from the cellar for the auction.

They told her about it that evening. ‘You should have seen the care they took packing it all up. It was treated like gold dust. They said the labels and capsules had to be kept in as good condition as possible. I hardly dared breathe as I watched them.’ Luke sat down on the bed after he and Lyn and Tom came up when the van had finally left. ‘It could be our bail money, Joss. When he examined it the man from Sotheby’s said it looked good. The cellar conditions are perfect. So, here’s hoping the auction goes well.’

It was something to distract her. And so was the return of David a few days later.

‘Books. Articles. A letter from your new publisher!’ He tipped an armful of things onto the bed and then hauled himself up onto the counterpane next to her.

‘My new publisher?’ She stared at him, hardly daring to hope.

He nodded, clearly delighted. ‘He liked your outline and the chapters you sent him. I think he’s given you a few suggestions in the letter and made one or two notes which he thinks will be
helpful. And he’s prepared to give you a contract and a small advance. No –’ He raised his hand to forestall her excitement. ‘It won’t be enough to retile the roof, but it is a start. And it means you have a perfect excuse to lie here in bed composing wonderful prose and be waited on hand and foot by Luke and Lyn while that baby of yours gets bigger.’

Joss laughed. ‘Well, I hope he gets bigger soon. At the moment I’m flat as a pancake. If I hadn’t seen that scan I might have wondered if he was still there.’

‘He isa
he
, is he?’

‘I don’t know. That was a figure of speech. And a dreadfully sexist one at that.’ She smiled. ‘Sister thought it would be a boy, though. She said boys always give more trouble than girls, the way they mean to go on.’

‘And that’s not sexist, I suppose?’

‘No. That’s observation.’ She was opening the letter David had dropped on the bed. The one with the Hibberds’ colophon.

‘It’s from Robert Cassie himself,’ David put in, watching her face. ‘He was enormously intrigued to hear you were going to set it in this house.’

‘Three thousand pounds, David! He’s going to pay me three thousand pounds!’ She waved the letter at him. ‘You say that’s not much? It’s a fortune! Lyn! Look at this!’ Her sister had just appeared in the doorway with a tea tray.

Tom had scrambled after her. He ran across the room and tried to climb up onto the high bed. ‘Mummy carry Tom,’ he announced, wriggling down amongst her books and papers, and bouncing on the duvet.

‘You mind your little brother, old son,’ David said. He picked up the child and sat him on his knee. ‘Or sister, though heaven forbid that a girl should be so unprincipled as to threaten to arrive early.’ He laughed as Joss leaned forward to smack him.

Joss lay back on the pillows after they had all gone downstairs, Robert Cassie’s letter in her hand, and reread it for the tenth time. A contract. An advance against royalties and an option on her next book; her next book when she had hardly started this one!

Her eyes strayed to the Amstrad which Luke had carried upstairs for her and set up on the table by the window. She had made a lot of progress on the book, her enforced bedrest giving her all the time she needed to get the story down. It was galloping
through her brain so quickly she couldn’t keep up with it, the adventures coming thick and fast. Later she would get up and put on her dressing gown and sit at the table in the window watching the dusk creep in across the garden whilst beneath her fingers Richard hid in the newly built haystack beneath a huge summer moon.

When Luke looked in, half an hour later, she was asleep, the letter still in her hand. He took it gently and read it with a smile then quietly he sat down next to the bed looking at her. Her face, still thin and tired, but rested by sleep, was extraordinarily beautiful, even sexy in the shaded lamp light. He bent forward and kissed her lightly, so as not to wake her.

Behind him outside the window, a bird flapped suddenly against the glass, tossed by the wind, and as suddenly it had gone. The curtain blew inwards and he shivered as he felt the cold draught penetrating deep into the room. Standing up he went and peered out. It was black outside and all he could see was the reflection of the lamp behind him. With a shudder he pulled the curtains across.

He stood for a moment looking down at Joss. There was a slight smile on her face now and her cheeks had flushed with a little colour. On the pillow beside her lay a rose bud. It was white, the petals slightly tinged with pink. He stared at it. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? Leaning across he picked it up and looked at it. It felt very cold, as though it had just been brought in from the garden. David. David must have brought it for her. He frowned angrily then, throwing it down on the bedside table, he walked purposefully out of the room.

‘H
ow can he have gone back to London?’ Joss sat up in bed, her elbow on the pillow, and stared at Lyn. ‘Why?’ Lyn shrugged. ‘I think he and Luke had words about something.’ She was stacking coffee cups onto her tray.

‘What do you mean they had words?’ Joss frowned, shocked. ‘What about?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ Lyn stood looking down at her. ‘He thinks David fancies you.’

Joss opened her mouth to protest. Then she shut it again. ‘That’s silly.’

‘Is it?’

‘You know it is. David and I were colleagues. Yes, he’s fond of me and I of him, but that’s all it is. Luke can’t think anything else. It’s crazy. Damn it all, I’m pregnant!’

‘He thinks David has been giving you flowers.’

‘Flowers!’ Joss was astonished. ‘Of course he hasn’t given me flowers. And even if he did, what’s wrong with that? Guests often bring their hostesses flowers.’

Lyn shrugged. ‘Ask Luke.’

Joss lay back on the pillows with a deep sigh. ‘Lyn.’ She ran her fingers gently over the bed cover. ‘What kind of flowers does he think David gave me?’

Lyn gave a small laugh. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes, I think it does.’

‘Well, you’ll have to ask Luke. I don’t know.’

‘I will. He can’t order our friends out like that!’

‘I don’t think he ordered him out. He just went. It’s a shame. I like David. We need visitors here to cheer us up.’

Her voice was light, casual, but Joss frowned distracted for a moment from her own worries. ‘Is it too lonely for you, Lyn? Are you missing London?’

‘No.’ Course not. I’ve told you before.’ Lyn picked up the tray.

‘I feel so guilty that you’ve got to do so much while I’m stuck here in bed.’ Joss reached out and put her hand on Lyn’s arm. ‘We’d be lost without you, you know.’

‘I know.’ Lyn softened the abruptness of her answer with a grin. ‘Don’t worry. I’m tough. Looking after this house is a doddle and you know how much I love Tom.’ She paused. ‘Dad just rang, Joss. The last set of results were good.’

‘Thank God!’ Joss smiled. ‘You must go up and see her again, Lyn. Whenever.’

‘I shall.’

‘I would go if I could, you know that.’

Lyn gave a tight smile. ‘Of course you would,’ she said. She hitched the door open with her elbow, the heavy tray balanced in her hands. ‘Simon is coming later. He said not to tell you or you’ll get your blood pressure up!’ She grinned again. ‘Yoga breathing and meditation for you, madam, and then if you are sufficiently calm and laid back, maybe he’ll let you come downstairs.’

He did in the end. Gentle walking. No housework, and don’t try to carry Tom. Those were the instructions.

The first moment she had on her own in the study she picked up the phone and rang David. ‘Why did you go like that – not even saying good-bye?’ Luke had driven over to Cambridge for the rest of the day in pursuit of spares. She couldn’t ask him.

She heard the hesitation in his voice. ‘Joss, I think maybe I had come down once too often to see you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Joss frowned. ‘Lyn thinks you had a row with Luke. You can’t have. No one rows with Luke.’

‘No?’ He paused. ‘Let’s just say that Luke and I had a small disagreement over something. Nothing serious. I just thought maybe it was time to come home and do some preparation for the new term. No sweat.’

‘What did you have words about?’ She glanced at the door. The house was silent. Lyn and Tom had gone for a walk.

‘He feels maybe I am encouraging you too much in your obsession with the house.’ He did not mention Luke’s sudden strange hostility. The accusation, sudden and frenzied, about the rose.

Joss was silent.

‘Joss, are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. I didn’t think he minded.’

‘He doesn’t mind your interest. He’s interested himself. He just doesn’t want you to get things out of proportion.’

When Luke got back she pounced on him. ‘What on earth do you mean, quarrelling with David and sending him away like that? If you have a problem with him doing research on the house tell me, not him. I asked him to do it!’

‘Joss, you’re becoming obsessed – ’

‘If I am, it has nothing to do with David!’

‘I think it has.’ Luke tightened his lips.

‘No. Besides, it’s more than that, isn’t it. You’ve got some crazy idea that he’s in love with me.’

‘I don’t think that’s crazy, Joss. It’s obvious to everyone, including you.’ He sounded very bleak. ‘You can’t deny it.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘He’s fond of me, I know. And I of him.’ She met Luke’s eye defiantly. ‘That doesn’t mean we’re planning a raging affair, Luke. You’re the man I love. You’re the man I married, the father of my children.’ She rested her hand on her stomach for a moment. ‘Luke.’ She hesitated. ‘Did this start off as a row over some flowers?’

Luke shrugged. ‘A rose is usually a love token, I believe.’

‘A rose.’ She went cold all over.

‘He left a rose on your pillow.’ Luke’s face was set with anger. ‘Come on, Joss, even you can see the significance of that.’

She swallowed. The rose, when she had found it on her bedside table had been cold and dead. She knew it had not come from David.

For a long time she said nothing else about the house or the family, reading her mother’s diaries in private and, between stints of writing, climbing to the attics only when Luke was out or safely ensconced beneath the car. David did not come again that term, nor did he send her any more cuttings or notes gleaned from his research.

Taking advantage of Lyn’s baby sitting and making visits to Mothercare and research for the book her excuse, Joss made one or two trips to Ipswich and Colchester. She went to libraries, looking at books on local history, borrowing tomes on medieval costume and food and fifteenth-century politics. Given the all clear by Simon, on the condition she rested whenever she felt tired she drove around the countryside, astonished to find that,
away from the house and the strained atmosphere with Lyn, she felt happier and more positive than she had for months.

Coming home exhilarated and inspired she wrote and wrote, hearing the story inside her head almost as if it were being dictated to her by Richard himself. She began to think that the story was like a charm. As long as she thought about it and stopped thinking about the family into which she had been born, the house remained gentle and benign, content to sleep with its memories, content perhaps, she sometimes wondered, that she was weaving its story into her novel and exorcising its legends by putting so much of it down on paper.

Sometimes, when it was her turn to do the lighter chores she was still allowed she would straighten up from sorting clothes or dusting or washing up and listen intently, but the voices in her head were only those of her own imagination. Perhaps the ghosts had gone. Perhaps, they had never been there at all.

A few weeks later Gerald Andrews came. On the back seat of his car was a pile of books. ‘I thought I would leave them for you. Just for when you have time. No rush to give them back.’ He shrugged. ‘I am hoping to go into hospital next month. When that’s all over may I come again and bring my friends? I so want to be there when they see the vaulting.’ He smiled conspiratorially and she said she would look forward to seeing him. She put the books in the study, in a pile behind the chair. Luke would never notice a few more amongst so many.

For several days she ignored them, then she realised they could be fruitful sources for her novel. One by one she brought them out when she wasn’t writing and scoured the pages for information.

It was all there – especially in the Victorian guide books to East Anglia. The legends, the rumours, the ghost stories. Belheddon Hall had had a reputation as long as it had stood.

Outside, a short grey February leached into March. Her stomach had at last rounded a little as though acknowledging that spring was on the way. There were golden whips on the willow trees, hazel catkins in the hedge. Snowdrops and primroses gave way to daffodils. Hidden under her steadily growing manuscript was her family tree. She had filled in details covering more than a hundred years now – births, marriages and deaths. So many deaths. It was compulsive. She pushed the pile of paper aside and read about the house again. Her excursions became fewer, and as
she moved around the house with dustpan and brush or piles of clean clothes and towels for the various cupboards and drawers or took her turn – less often because she hated cooking as much as Lyn loved it – at the hot stove in the kitchen, she found she was again listening for voices.

Climbing to the attics, almost against her will, when Lyn or Luke and Tom were all out in the stableyard she moved slowly through the empty rooms, listening intently. But all she could hear was the wind, soughing gently in the gables and she would go back down to the bedroom or to the study with a sigh.

She was mad, she knew that. To want to hear the voices again was idiotic. But they were the voices of her little brothers; her only contact with a family that had gone forever. She began to ignore her writing, deliberately challenging her theory that the intensity of her concentration on the book had driven Georgie and Sammy away, but without her writing there was an empty space inside her – that thought made her smile wryly as she patted her steadily swelling stomach – an empty space which left her feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

Luke noticed her restlessness and tried to help. ‘Lyn wondered if it would be fun to take Tom to the zoo. He’s had so few excursions since we moved here. Shall we make a day trip of it? All of us go? It’ll get you out of the house.’ He had noticed that her own private excursions had stopped.

She felt her spirits rise. ‘I’d like that. It would be fun. Tom will love it!’

They settled on the following Wednesday and Joss began to look forward to the trip. Her aimless visits to the attic stopped and she helped Lyn prepare Tom for the animals, looking at pictures of elephants and lions and tigers and telling him stories about the other animals they thought they would see there.

On Tuesday night Tom was sleepless with excitement. ‘It’s our own fault.’ Wearily Joss stood up. They were sitting at the kitchen table finishing supper when the baby alarm had crackled into life for the second time that evening. ‘It’s my turn. I’ll go and see to him.’

She let herself into the great hall, hearing Tom’s cries for real now, not through the plastic alarm on the kitchen dresser. Hurrying to the foot of the stairs she peered up into the dark and reached for the light switch.

The shadow on the wall at the angle of the stairs was clearly that of a man. Hunched towards her menacingly it hovered above her as she clutched at the banister. Paralysed with fear she stood for a moment staring up towards it, Tom’s screams echoing in her ears.

‘Tom!’ Her whisper was anguished as she put her foot on the bottom step, forcing herself to move towards it. ‘Tom!’

One of its arms was moving slightly, beckoning her onwards. She froze, willing herself upwards, craning her neck towards the landing. Luke’s waterproof jacket was hanging jauntily from the carved acorn knob at the top of the stairs. What she had seen was its shadow.

That night she had a nightmare which woke her shivering and sweating. In her dream a huge metal drum on legs had walked slowly towards her across the room. On top of it a jaunty tricorn hat belied the evil expression in its two press-stud eyes. Its arms like giant linked paper clips were stretched out towards her, its method of propulsion hidden by the gleaming aluminium of its body. She awoke with a start and lay there, too afraid to move, her heart thundering in her chest. Beside her Luke stirred and groaned. She listened intently. Beyond his gentle snores there was silence. No sounds from Tom. No sounds from the house. There did not seem to be a breath of wind outside in the garden.

When she awoke at last it was with a splitting headache. She sat up and groped for the alarm clock and then fell back on the pillow with a groan. She could hear Lyn talking cheerfully to Tom as she got him up. The little boy was giggling happily. Of Luke there was no sign.

By the time the others had had breakfast she knew she couldn’t go with them to the zoo. Her head was spinning and she was so tired she could barely move.

‘We’ll put it off; go another day.’ Luke bent over her, concerned.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, you can’t disappoint Tom. You go. I’ll go back to bed and sleep the rest of the morning. Then I’ll do some work on the book. Honestly. I’ll be fine.’

She waved them off, torn by Tom’s tears when he found his mummy wasn’t coming too, and then, her head throbbing she turned back towards the house.

It was after two when she awoke. The morning sun had gone
and the sky was overcast and sullen. As she made her way downstairs she could hear the wind in the huge chimney.

Making herself a cup of tea and a Marmite sandwich she sat for a long time at the kitchen table before at last reaching for her jacket.

At the edge of the lake she stopped, her hands in her pockets, watching the gusty wind blow sheets of black ripples across the water. Staring down into its depths she hunched her shoulders against the cold, deliberately fending off the thought of a little boy with his jam jar of tadpoles bending towards the water on the slippery bank.

She tensed at a sound behind her. Turning she surveyed the lawn. There was no one there. She listened, straining her ears to separate sounds from the roar of the wind in her ears, but there was nothing.

Turning she began to walk slowly back towards the house. Another cup of tea and she would go back to the book. She had wasted too much time day dreaming; she had a novel to write.

Sammy!

One hand on the mouse the other on the keyboard she looked up, listening. Someone was running down the stairs.

Sammy! Play with me!

Holding her breath she stood up slowly and tiptoed towards the door.

‘Hello? Who’s there?’ Reaching out to the doorknob she turned it slowly. ‘Hello?’ Peering out into the hall she squinted up the staircase into the shadows. ‘Is there someone there? Sammy? Georgie?’