House of Echoes (6 page)

Moving her head slightly to left or right Joss could see the squares of starlight which showed the two windows on opposite sides of the room. Divided by stone mullions in the old plaster one looked over the front of the house and down the drive towards the village, the other across the back garden and down towards the lake and beyond it, over the hedge to the river estuary and beyond it the distant North Sea. Initially Luke had closed the curtains when he came upstairs. They were heavy with woollen embroidery, double lined against the cold, luxurious. Looking at them Joss was grateful for their weight against the draughts, but even so, she pulled them open before she climbed into the high bed. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ she explained to Luke as he lay back beside her. His only answer, minutes later, was a gentle snore. Outside the moon shone onto a garden as bright as day as the frosty sparkle hardened into a skim of ice. Shivering, Joss huddled down under the duvet – a modern concession, the embroidered bed cover carefully folded away for safety – glad of the solid warmth
of her sleeping husband. Surreptitiously her hand strayed to his shoulder. As she snuggled up against him in the darkness she did not see the slight movement in the corner of the room.

I
t was still dark when Joss slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the icy floor in bare feet. Behind her Luke gave a quiet murmur and, punching the pillow turned over and went back to sleep. Switching on the light in the bathroom Joss reached for her clothes, left piled on the chair. Thick trousers, shirt, two sweaters, heavy thermal socks. In the ice cold room her breath came in small clouds. On the window pane, as she held back the curtain and peered out into the darkness she was enchanted and horrified to find the beautiful, lacy designs of Jack Frost on the inside of the glass. With a rueful smile she padded across the floor and glanced through Tom’s door. Worn out by the excitement of the day before he was sleeping flat on his back, his arms above his head on the pillow, his cheeks pink with sleep. Tiptoeing to the chest where his night light burned she glanced at the thermometer which Alice had suggested they keep in the room. The temperature was steady. With a fond smile, she tiptoed out of the room and left the door slightly ajar. If he woke, Luke would hear him.

Putting the kettle onto the stove Joss went to the back door and pulled it open. The morning blackness was totally silent. No bird song. No traffic murmur in the distance as there would have been in London; no cheerful clank of milk bottles. Pulling on her heavy coat she stepped out into the courtyard. The bulk of the old Bentley had been pulled into the coach house and the doors closed. There was nothing here now, but their own Citroën, covered in a thick white frost. The gate out into the garden was painfully cold even beneath her gloved hands as she pushed it back and let herself out onto the matted lawn. Above her head the stars were still blazing as though it were full night. Glancing up she could see a faint light shining from behind the curtains in Lyn’s room. Was she too unable to sleep in a strange bed?

The grass was spiky, brittle beneath her boots. Almost she could hear the tinkle of broken glass as she walked across it, skirting the skeletal branches of a blackly silhouetted tree, down towards the gleam of water. In the east now, she realised, the stars were dimming. Soon it would begin to grow light.

She stood for several moments, gloved hands in pockets, staring down at the ice as around her the garden began imperceptibly to brighten. She was numb with cold, but through the chill she could feel something else. Apprehension – fear even – for what they had done. They had had no real choice. Even if Luke had found a job working for someone else she doubted if they could have afforded the rent on a flat of a decent size and certainly they couldn’t have bought somewhere of their own. They could no longer live in London. But this, this was so different. Another world from the one they had planned together when they had first got married. She frowned, stamping her feet, reluctant as yet to go back inside. A new world, new people, new memories – no, memories wasn’t the right word. A history to be learned and assimilated and in some way lived.

Sammy!

The voice, a boy’s voice, called suddenly out of the darkness behind her. Joss spun round.

Sammy!

It came again, more distant now.

Across the lawn, in the house, a light had appeared in her and Luke’s bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite closed and a broad vee of light flooded out across the frosted grass.

‘Hello?’ Joss’s voice was a husky intrusion into the intense silence. ‘Who’s there?’ She glanced round. The stars were disappearing fast now. A dull greyness was drifting in amongst the bushes in the shrubbery near her. She frowned. ‘Is there someone there?’ She called again, more loudly this time, her voice seeming to echo across the water. In the distance a bird called loudly. Then the silence returned.

Turning sharply back to the house she found she was shivering violently as she hurried back in the direction of the kitchen. Pulling off her boots and gloves she ran inside, blowing on her fingers, to find the kettle cheerfully filling the room with steam. When Luke appeared, some ten minutes later, she was sitting at the table, still in her heavy coat, her hands cupped around a mug of tea.

‘So, Joss, how is it?’ He smiled at her as he found himself a mug on the draining board.

She reached up to kiss him on the mouth. ‘Wonderful, strange. Terrifying.’

He laughed, briefly resting his hand over hers. ‘We’ll cope. Joss.’ His face became serious for a moment. ‘Are you happy about Alice and Joe staying? You don’t want to establish your own territory a bit before they muscle in?’ He searched her face seriously. ‘I know how much this house means to you, love. I do understand how you must feel about it all. If there is any conflict – ’

‘There isn’t.’ She shook her head adamantly. ‘I need them here, Luke. I can’t explain it, but I need them. It’s as though they represent something solid, something to hang on to – a life belt – from my old life. Besides, I love them. They are my parents. Whatever, whoever Laura was, I never knew her.’ Pushing back the chair she stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t want her taking over my life. I don’t want her to think she can buy my affection – my love – with all this.’ She gestured at the kitchen around them.

‘I don’t think that’s what she intended, Joss.’ Luke was watching her, puzzled. Her dark hair had fallen in a curtain across her eyes and she hadn’t tossed it back, a habitual gesture of hers which he loved. Instead it hung there, hiding her face, concealing her expression.

‘Luke.’ She still hadn’t looked at him. ‘I walked down to the lake while it was still dark. There was someone out there.’

‘Out in the garden?’ He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her. ‘Who?’

‘They were calling. For someone called Sammy.’

He laughed. ‘Probably a cat. You know how sound travels. On a cold, still night, and near water. It was probably someone in the village.’

At last she had pushed back her hair. She gave him a small lop-sided grin, blowing on her tea. ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that.’

‘Because you are an idiot and I love you.’ He smiled, still watching her face. She was white with exhaustion. The stress of the last two months had told heavily on her. Preoccupied with the business he had had to leave the organisation of the sale of
the house, the packing and the move to her as well as the frequent trips to East Anglia to supervise the opening up of the house and the checks to the plumbing and electricity and although Lyn had from time to time taken Tom off her hands for a few hours to help her, he knew the strain had been enormous. She had lost about a stone and the dark rings under her eyes were gaunt reminders of night after night tossing sleepless beside him as they lay staring up at the ceiling locked in silent thought in the dark before the move.

‘First day of the rest of our lives, Joss.’ He raised his mug to clink against hers. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ She smiled.

Alice and Joe appeared some half hour later as Joss was strapping Tom into his high chair. ‘Good morning, sweetheart.’ Alice stopped and kissed the little boy on the head. ‘Joss, my love, your father and I have been talking and we’ve decided to go back to town today.’

‘But Mum –’ Joss stared at her aghast. ‘Why? I thought you liked it here – ’

‘We do, Jossie.’ Joe sat down and pulled the teapot towards him. ‘And we’ll be back. We’ve things to do at home, and shopping.’ He wiggled his eyebrows at Tom, who giggled and banged his spoon on the table in front of him. ‘Shopping to do with Father Christmas. We’ll be back, love, before you know it. Your mum needs to rest a bit, Joss. She’s not really up to doing much at the moment.’ He shook his head. ‘And I know her. She won’t be able to sit still as long as she knows there’s work to be done and besides, I think, and your mother agrees with me, that you and Luke need a few days to settle in on your own.’

‘But we don’t. We’ve already discussed this, and I want you here.’ She knew she sounded like a spoiled child. With a miserable sniff Joss turned towards the stove and reached for the kettle. ‘You can’t go. Mum needn’t do anything heavy. She can rest here – ’

‘I think maybe they’re right, Joss,’ Luke said quietly. He glanced over her head at his father-in-law.

‘Well, at least Lyn can stay.’ Joss took a deep breath. Picking up a jug of milk she reached for Tom’s beaker.

‘No, love. Lyn is coming with us.’ Joe hooked the toast rack towards him. Selecting a piece he buttered it and cut it into strips,
putting them down in front of his grandson. ‘We’ve talked it over with her too. She can come back next week if you want her, if she hasn’t got another temporary job by then.’ He sighed. Uninterested in anything academic Lyn had left school at sixteen and drifted from one unsatisfactory temporary job to another. While Joss had stayed on to do her A levels and followed that with a brilliant career at Bristol University and then a teaching post, Lyn, at the age of twenty-eight, with two failed relationships and an aborted attempt at running her own catering business behind her, had moved back in with her parents and resumed her half-hearted trawl through the agencies. Joe shook his head. ‘Then your mum and I will return on the Wednesday after that in plenty of time for Christmas. And we’ll all stay as long as you like to help you get straight.’

‘They had it all planned!’ Standing in the coach house later, with Tom’s gloved hand clutched in her own Joss stared at her husband’s back as he leaned over the huge rusting engine of the Bentley. ‘Why? Was it your idea?’

Luke straightened. ‘No, it wasn’t. But I had the same feeling they did. You need to be here on your own, Joss. It’s important. You need to explore. To get the feel of the place. They know you as well as I do – better, for God’s sake. We all know how special places are to you.’ He walked over to the bench by the wall where already he had laid out a selection of his tools.

She shook her head. ‘Am I so predictable? You can all tell how I feel before I feel it?’

‘Fraid so!’ He chuckled.

‘And what about you? What are you going to feel about this place?’

‘Cold mostly.’ And uneasy, he was going to say, though he wasn’t quite sure why. The same way Joe and Alice had felt. They hadn’t said anything, but he could see it in their eyes. No wonder they had wanted to get away. ‘So, if you could arrange to have the kettle on in say half an hour, I can come in and thaw out. I want to keep to my plan if I can. Work on the old bus for George Maxim in the mornings, and on the house and garden in the afternoon. That way I can divide my time. Joss –’ He looked suddenly concerned. ‘We weren’t all ganging up on you, love. I promise. Listen, if you think you are going to feel a bit lonely, why don’t you ask that Goodyear woman and her husband over
for a meal. They are obviously dying to find out about us and we can do some reciprocal pumping about the house.’

‘Right, Tom Tom, let’s start at the top today for a change.’ Two days of unrelenting unpacking and sorting and cleaning later, her phone call made, and her invitation for supper at the end of the week ecstatically accepted by the Goodyears and the Fairchilds at the post office, Joss picked up a duster and broom and made for the stairs, the little boy running purposefully behind her.

In the attics a series of small rooms led out of one another, all empty, all wallpapered in small faded flowers and leaves, all with sloping ceilings and dark, dusty beams. Those facing south were full of bright winter sunshine warm behind the glass of the windows; those which looked out over the front of the house were cold and shadowed. Joss glanced at the little boy. He was staying very close to her, his thumb firmly held in his mouth. ‘Nice house, Tom?’ She smiled at him encouragingly. They were looking at a pile of old books.

‘Tom go down.’ He reached out for her long sweater and wound his fingers into it.

‘We’ll go down in a minute, to make Daddy some coffee –’ She broke off. Somewhere nearby she heard a child’s laugh. There was a scuffle of feet running, then silence.

‘Boy.’ Tom informed her hopefully. He peered round her shyly.

Joss swallowed. ‘There aren’t any boys here, Tom Tom.’ But of course, there must be. Boys from the village. The house had been empty so long it would have been very strange if no one had found their way in to explore the old place.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Who’s there?’

There was silence.

‘Sammy?’ She remembered the name out of nowhere; out of the dark. ‘Sammy, are you there?’ The silence was intense. It no longer seemed to be the silence of emptiness; it was a listening, enquiring silence.

‘Mummy, look.’ Tom tugged at her sweater. ‘Flutterby!’ A ragged peacock butterfly, woken by the heat of the sun on the glass was fluttering feebly against the window, its wings shushing faintly, shedding red-blue dust.

‘Poor thing, it’s trapped.’ Joss looked at it sadly. To let it go out into the cold would mean certain death.

The laughter came from the other end of the attic this time; pealing, joyous, followed again by the sound of feet. Tom laughed. ‘See boys,’ he cried. ‘Me wants to see boys.’

‘Mummy wants to see boys too,’ Joss agreed. She stooped and picked him up, abandoning the butterfly as she pulled open the door which separated this room from the next. ‘They shouldn’t be here. We’re going to have to tell them to go home for their lunch –’ She broke off. The next room, larger than the rest, was the last. Beyond it, out of the high windows she could look down on the stableyard, seeing the doors pulled wide where Luke was standing in the coach house entrance talking to a strange man. Joss swung round. ‘Where have those naughty boys gone?’

‘Naughty boys gone.’ Tom echoed sadly. He too was staring round, tears welling in his eyes. This was where the sound of the children had come from without a doubt, but the room was empty even of the clutter which had stood in some of the others. The boards, sloping with age, were dusty. They showed no foot marks.

‘Tom, I think we’ll go downstairs.’ She was uneasy. ‘Let’s go and make Daddy his coffee, then you can go and call him for me.’ She backed towards the door. Suddenly she didn’t want to meet these hidden children after all.