Kingsholt (2 page)

He circled round and came out on the road again, taking the longer route home. It led him past Mum’s church and the little garden she looked after. He went through the gate and up the path that led to the porch. To his surprise, the oak door to the church was half open. Someone must be about. He hadn’t sung in the choir since he was ten and he’d given up church when he got into the football team. But he always felt at home in this red brick, Victorian building. He walked up the side aisle, to where
the white candles were burning and put a10p piece in the little wooden chest. He carefully lit a candle from another and pressed it down over one of the iron spikes. He hadn’t done this for months, not since he came to the conclusion that a candle would never show Dad the way home. He couldn’t explain why he was moved to do it now. There was no knowing. Or maybe it was because, at that moment, there didn’t seem to be anyone else around who would light one for Chloe.

He’s right, thought Chloe. Aidan’s right! There’s a darkness in this valley. It’s bad enough at school with all the bullying but here —

She leaned against the gate at the top of the long, winding drive and stared down at Kingsholt. She could hardly believe it was hers, or to be more accurate, theirs, – though Mum and Dad were so often away, it seemed as if the big old house only belonged to her.

What has happened, she wondered, for everything to have grown so lonely and neglected, deprived of its old happiness? Even from this distance, she could see how dilapidated the building had become. Tiles were slipping off the roof and one tall chimney sloped dangerously as if it had been pushed over by a gust of wind. The stone lintels were covered in creeping ivy; the windows were grey and dusty, so you couldn’t see through them. The pillars under the front porch leaned outwards, as if they were about to collapse, and on one side of the drive a stone saluki dog leaned forward, one leg bent, his feathery tail held high. Chloe imagined there was a taut, strained look to his head, as if he was listening, despite his broken ear, to all the dark rumours that she herself had half-heard.

Everything’s gone wrong, she thought, ever since Uncle George was found dead. For once her father had been around to discuss it.

‘My brother wasn’t old or ill,’ he had said, with an unusually bleak gaze. ‘Everyone respected him for all his ‘rescue’ work. We even call him, St George, don’t we? Or did.’

Chloe had known Dad was speaking in a chopped up way so he wouldn’t show his feelings too much. His blue eyes had looked pale and watery.

‘He was good to everyone,’ he went on. ‘Aidan says as much
and if anyone’s reliable he is.’ He spoke more sharply. ‘Aidan has his own thoughts about our brother’s death and so have I.’

From that moment rumours grew like creeping ivy.

Chloe stared for a long time at the big house in the valley. Aidan told her there had once been a monastery here and a stone mine that went right back to the Romans. Somewhere, he said, there were underground passages, but no one knew where.

She imagined the valley had not changed very much since old times; the fields and trees and the little stream that ran by the house were full of echoes of the past.

She looked round. The wood where Aidan had found Uncle George was on her left, across a field where a few sheep were grazing. She had avoided going there before but now she somehow wanted to find the place where his body had been found. She stepped off the gate and went through a trail of sunshine and grass, to the edge of the tall pines. As she went deeper into the wood, the trees closed in on her and the air grew thicker and hotter. She could smell something rotten and stopped where the path was blocked by a branch.

Just in front of her was a tree that had been struck by lightning. A few dead leaves clung to its twisted branches, like shrivelled creatures that could not let go. A short inscription was incised in the stripped trunk, so low down it was half hidden by undergrowth. She pushed the brambles aside and stared at the letters:

She remembered what Aidan had once told her when she came with Mum and Dad to look over Kingsholt.

‘It’s my belief this area is under a curse. It must be or George would never have been killed.’

Maybe Rosie was killed as well.

A deep voice echoed her thoughts. ‘Summat dreadful
happened here!’

Chloe jumped and turned round. A little way off in the undergrowth a man stood, watching her. He was tall, with black hair tied in a rough ponytail and dark eyes that softened as he examined Chloe. ‘Twelve, is it?’

‘How do you know?’ Chloe bit her lip. Why on earth did she allow herself to reply to a stranger?

‘Our Rosie was twelve when George Penfold killed her.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ she asked, torn between outrage and curiosity and a desire to run away.

‘I won’t harm you,’ he said softly, answering her thoughts.

Chloe walked quickly down the path.

‘Nimbus,’ he shouted after her, ‘that’s who I am.’

But Chloe was thinking of her cousin Sam. She felt guilty because she hadn’t written to him for months and now suddenly she longed for him to be with her. Not that Nimbus had done anything wrong. It was just his intense look that frightened her and the way he stared at the bony branches of the tree, as if they pointed to a truth no one else could understand.

She broke into a run. The same thought kept going through her head: if Uncle George
really
killed Rosie, how could she believe
anything
again? He had been her kindly uncle, bringing her pocket money or sweets. ‘The daughter I never had,’ he had once said.

Later that evening, when they were eating in the kitchen, Chloe told her mother how she had met Nimbus and what he had said. Mum dismissed the accusation with a laugh. ‘Of course Uncle George didn’t kill Rosie. It was an accident. She ran out when he was felling the tree. It’s grief speaking, my dear. No parent can get over the death of a child.’

Aidan leaned towards Chloe. ‘Keep away from Nimbus,’ he said in his deep, even voice. ‘He’s a bitter man, especially these days. He has a new partner but it hasn’t worked out. As you’re beginning to understand, there’s more to Kingsholt than meets
the eye. Terrible things once happened in this valley and history always has its echoes. It’s those echoes we must fight if we are ever going to bring peace to this place again. Mind you, there are good corners. The little cottage where Leela and Tyler live has always been untouched by any darkness and let’s pray Leela will keep it that way.’

Chloe left her omelette piled on one side of her dish. She slipped through the kitchen door and ran up two floors to her room. Lying on the bed, she looked up at the torn wall paper. Small bits flapped from the ceiling like brown moths. Sunlight smeared the dusty window that overlooked the valley and hills at the front of the house. If she did up her bedroom she would feel better. Or would she? Perhaps she should write to Sam again, at least he lived in a normal world. She looked round for a biro and scraps of paper and scrawled hurriedly. But she hadn’t written to him for ages and it wasn’t good enough so she screwed up the letter and threw it on the floor. She would try again later.

Still feeling unsettled, she ran downstairs, found some stale bread in the kitchen and went up to the hospital cage where Aidan looked after the wounded animals and birds.

‘At least everyone can see what’s the matter with you,’ she told them, stuffing the bread through the wire. A rook hopped over to grab the largest crust and she was so absorbed watching the scared smaller birds peck and run, that she was unaware of anyone approaching.

‘There’s many a bird with a broken wing,’ said a voice behind her. Chloe jumped and wheeled round to face Nimbus.

‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘Walking. I often walk in the evening.’

‘I haven’t seen you round here before,’ she said.

Nimbus nodded. ‘I’ve kept myself to myself but from now on things are going to be different.’

He stared at the cage. ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘My Rosie liked animals like you. She had a barrel laid on its side
where she kept ferrets. She watched them for hours in their run.’

He was holding a child’s plastic bucket full of worms and he threw them through the cage bars. The birds vied with each other to peck at them.

‘Survival of the fittest,’ he said, nodding at a blackbird with a trailing wing. ‘
He
won’t make it, not for long.’

After that Chloe often met Nimbus wandering about the valley. He would show her the wild flowers, the birds, the badger holes and the secret tracks where the foxes walked. And yet there was no subject that did not lead him back to Rosie. Perhaps it was because of her own unsettled feelings that she found herself becoming more trusting.

She was off her guard when he first offered her the pills. It was the day when the bully at school had shown up her accent by mimicking her and making the others laugh.

‘This’ll help,’ he said when she told him – and it was true.

That afternoon her spirits lifted, she felt as if even school would never get her down again. From then on, whenever she was depressed, she took what he offered and liked the way he included her, as if he was her ally against her new school and this great ruin of a house and all the grandiose plans. Yet she didn’t altogether trust him. As the days passed, she realized there was something strange and bitter about the way he talked to her, almost as if – dare she think it – as if it was all her fault that Rosie had died. But then his voice would turn soft and lingering, so she couldn’t resist it. He had a deep, commanding voice, not like Dad, who often sounded breathless and exhausted, or Mum, who was always sighing. Chloe found herself telling him about her old house and the friends she really missed. But she never mentioned Sam. There was no need, she thought.

One day Nimbus said to Chloe, ‘Come up to my place. You can meet Gina and the baby, and maybe you can help Tammy. She can’t read any more than I can.’

Chloe toyed with the idea for a long time, peeping from her bedroom window at the stone cottage on the slope above the wood. Then, one Saturday, when no one else was about, she found herself walking towards it, holding a book for Tammy, as if someone else had decided for her. She had refused to accompany Mum and Dad to the market, watching them sweep up the drive in the Range Rover, stopping while Mum opened the gate. Her mother had turned and waved, and for a moment, Chloe wished she had gone with them. Then the car disappeared round the corner and she caught sight of the smoke rising from Nimbus’s cottage like a signal.

She went quickly through the dark wood, past the dead tree – the Nimbus Tree – and out onto the sloping field where the stone building stood. It was dilapidated, with a lopsided front door and a garden overgrown with thistles. Rusty toys lay about in the grass and Nimbus was holding an axe in both hands, swinging the blade down onto a large log.

‘Mind the thistles,’ he said but it was too late. Chloe tripped over a stone and put out her hand to keep her balance. A small prick of blood rose on her forefinger, a tiny, bright red sphere.

Wiping it away, she looked up. A little way off, a girl – surely it was Tammy – was sitting on the grass, painting her toe nails bright red.

‘I’ve brought you a book,’ said Chloe, ‘We could read it together.’

‘No point.’ Tammy, barely looking up, ‘I’ve finished school.’

‘How old are you then?’

‘Sixteen, aren’t I?’

She was slight boned with a mass of auburn hair round her pale face and blank eyes, one hazel, one green. She’s more like twelve, thought Chloe, and it’s not just her looks. It’s the way she’s painting her toenails, hunched up, intense, private, like a twelve year old acting big. She doesn’t like me, she thought.

‘Your dad wants you to learn to read,’ she said, ‘and I’ve especially chosen this book. It’s about a girl who hears voices. Well, it’s about St. Joan —’

Tammy laughed. ‘Hears voices? I do that all right, don’t I Dad?’

Nimbus put down his axe and looked up. His brown arms glistened with sweat. His jeans were torn at the knee and his old vest was full of holes.

Tammy screwed the lid onto the bottle of nail varnish, took the book from Chloe and hurled it at the house. ‘That’s what I think of that.’

‘It’s not mine,’ said Chloe angrily. ‘It’s from Kingsholt. And if you feel like that I won’t bother again.’ She ran to pick it up. To her surprise Nimbus threw back his brown head and laughed.

‘She’s like me, eh? No truck with reading or writing. Give it a miss today, Chloe. Who knows, Tammy might end up carrying everything up here, see?’ He tapped his head. ‘Can you read my mind, Tammy?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Tammy, shooting him a conspiratorial look.

She went indoors while Nimbus picked up his axe again and felt its edge. His arm swung back and down and the log sprang apart. He spoke softly as if he knew what Chloe was feeling. ‘There’ll be other days. She’ll get by, people like us always do. Come on in and eat with us, Chloe. We got baked taters today. She’s good at baked taters is our Tammy.’

Dark and dusty, thought Chloe as she stepped inside the cottage. An old-fashioned iron stove stood inside the wide chimney place. It had two doors side by side, one for the oven, the other for the fire. Wood ash filtered down onto the stone floor
and over the rag rug that spread, discoloured and dull, before the hearth. Tammy knelt down, opened the door of the oven and poked at the jacket potatoes with a sharp knife.

She’ll never be my friend, thought Chloe.

Nimbus took off his boots and stretched out on a ragged couch that was covered with a dirty tartan rug. ‘Got some for
her
then?’

‘Plenty of jackets,’ said Tammy. ‘They’re good and ready.’ She grinned and waved the knife at Chloe. ‘We don’t use these things, see? We use these.’ She held up her small red-nailed hands.

‘Fingers and newspaper,’ said Nimbus. ‘That’s when you really taste the food. Like taters?’

Chloe nodded.