The Chandelier Ballroom (31 page)

The first had held a mass of gardening tools, plant pots, seed boxes, also several ladders, some old benches, an old oil-driven lawnmower and some drums of unknown chemicals, no doubt to do with soil cultivation. The two large greenhouses that lay a short distance away had seen better days, but once she and David settled in they’d probably restore them and employ a gardener to return the grounds to their former glory.

The other outhouse was less cluttered, mainly various pieces of furniture that had been stored away for years, most of them damp and mouldering. There was even a grand piano, or what was left after woodworm had been at it no doubt, a sin to see such a thing in that state.

It was then she discovered, lying under a moss-covered tarpaulin, the object that was still playing on her mind as she now led David towards it. She’d recognised it instantly for what it was, recalling Jennifer Wainwright’s story of a magnificent chandelier that used to hang in the big house in what had at that time been grandly christened the chandelier ballroom.

‘Have you got your cigarette lighter on you?’ she asked urgently.

‘Why?’ he asked, the question faintly terse and irritable.

‘To see by,’ she said in a tone just as terse. When she had been here this afternoon, the sunset had offered some light, but it was now dark, a full moon only just risen, not yet bright.

‘Hurry, it’s freezing out here!’ she urged. ‘Use your lighter!’

Without another word he did as he was asked, the small flame affording just enough light as she lifted one edge of the tarpaulin to reveal what she’d brought him here to see.

‘It’s that chandelier Jennifer Wainwright told me about,’ she cried, her excitement now steadily mounting. ‘It’s still here. It’s been here all this time. Don’t you think it’s absolutely beautiful?’

In this fitful light of the small flickering flame, even after all this time lying here neglected, the object of her attention threw back such a brilliant sparkle that David gave a gasp of surprise. His earlier look of exasperation had been slowly changing to one of faint amusement and she could understand why. It wasn’t usually in her nature to air her feelings with such exuberance, but in this instance she couldn’t help herself.

From the moment she’d come upon this exquisite piece of illumination, with its two tiers of gleaming gilt arms and its swathes of twinkling crystal, even in what light there had been, a feeling of wellbeing seemed to have bubbled up from the very depths of her body, leaving her in a fervour of excitement ever since.

‘Well, what do you say?’ she prompted as he continued to gaze at it. But before he could say anything, the flame heating the cigarette lighter case suddenly burned his fingers, making him drop it.

‘Damn!’ Fumbling in the dark, he found it but didn’t relight it. ‘It’s cold out here,’ he said, his unemotional tone suddenly irritating her, all her excitement doused. ‘I need to get back in the warmth.’

‘Is that all you can say?’ she burst out, but she was cold too, freezing. It was hard to keep any limb still.

‘We’ll discuss all this indoors,’ he said in his sensible tone. ‘You’ll catch your death out here if you’re not careful.’

With that he stood up, leaving her with no option but to let the edge of the tarpaulin drop back into place and follow him out, back to the house.

Once indoors he slowly took off his hat and coat, carefully hung both up on the hall stand and went past her into the sitting room, going to the drinks cabinet to pour a small whisky for himself, taking it to his armchair to begin sipping at it, maybe a little too quickly, all without saying a word to her.

Normally he would have kissed her on the cheek before taking off his hat and coat, and asked how her day had gone. It was only as she followed him into the sitting room that she realised that something must have upset him, maybe something at work. She should have given him time to get indoors, get warm and tell her all about it before dragging him back outside. Perhaps that was it.

All in all he was the most even-tempered of men, and in all the time she had known him she had never seen him annoyed. So it took her a while to realise that it was she who must have upset him. Yet she still couldn’t be sure. All she could do was ask, ‘Is something the matter, dear?’ as she sat down in the armchair opposite to sip her own sherry before going off to dish up dinner.

‘Is it something at work?’ she queried when he didn’t reply.

‘No, everything’s fine at work,’ he said without looking at her, his gaze on the low burning fire in the grate in the already warm room.

She thought awhile, her mind turning to the way she had pounced on him, dragging him out into the cold night hardly had he arrived home. But surely that shouldn’t have upset him all this much.

‘Then what is it, love? I’m sorry if I stopped you going indoors. I didn’t mean to …’

‘It wasn’t that.’

Now she knew it was she who was guilty. ‘Then what?’ she burst out.

‘It was that thing you showed me,’ he said slowly.

‘Do you mean that chandelier?’

‘Why did you think it so important to show it to me?’

‘I know. I should have waited until tomorrow. I didn’t think.’

‘That has nothing to do with it. It’s
why
you should have found it so very important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.’

‘It was just that …’ she hesitated then went on, her speech growing rapid. ‘Something Jennifer Wainwright, the post mistress, told me. I’ve had lunch with her a couple of times in the local tea shop. She said that it was something she was told a long time ago by a young couple who’d once had this house and who learned all about it … the chandelier, I mean,’ she hurried on as David shook his head, having lost the thread of her story.

‘At the time they made enquiries about it and the wife who’d become friends with Jennifer Wainwright told her all she’d learned. Apparently it all started in London …’

She became aware that he was growing impatient, no doubt wanting dinner. But she didn’t want to break off now. Quickly she went over the story attached to the beautiful object as related to her by Jennifer Wainwright, an apparent suicide attempt that went wrong, the poor woman killed by the very thing she’d tried to hang herself from, falling on her instead, thus ending her life.

‘That was all years ago, back in the twenties, so Jennifer said. But you know how stories can grow and get magnified out of all proportion.’

‘Yes, I do know,’ he said, having previously not said a word. He sounded sceptical, almost sarcastic, which wasn’t like him.

Eileen gave a little laugh. ‘Heaven knows, I don’t suppose any of it is true, and anyway, like you, I don’t believe in such things.’

‘What things?’

Was he deliberately trying to be difficult? She held herself together. ‘You know, ghosts and spooks and haunted houses and such like.’ She paused then said, ‘Nor do I attach anything sinister to what I’ve just shown you. I merely think it a beautiful object, that’s all. That’s why I’d like to see it back in the big room where it used to hang. It must have looked quite something all those years ago. I can see it now, all those people Jennifer said who once attended the parties there – men in tails and bow ties, women in long slinky evening dresses and the crystals on that chandelier sparkling off the diamonds they wore.’

She paused, realising that she was rattling on. She smiled at him. ‘Well, never mind dear, you go into the dining room. I’ll bring in our dinner.

‘I think your Jennifer Wainwright is right,’ he said as he went. ‘You
should
have someone here to do the cooking. This house is far too big for one person to manage everything. I might look into it in time for Christmas.’

Annoyance flooded over her. He’d not been listening to a word she’d said, or if he had, had chosen to ignore it. Well, whatever he thought, and whether he liked it or not, she was going to arrange for that lovely thing to be reinstalled in the big room to be admired by those she intended to invite just prior to Christmas: her old teaching colleagues, David’s colleagues too, of course. And Miss Reade, still headmistress at the school. She would certainly admire the thing. She had good taste.

It was a lovely party, apparently the first that had been held since those who had bought the chandelier in the first place had left. Eileen had also asked a few in the village whom she’d made friends with – Jennifer, of course, and some of those with whom she’d become acquainted from the village’s parent/teachers circle which she had joined a couple of weeks previously, with her experience of being a teacher. It had even been mentioned that maybe she might consider stepping in on the odd occasion as a sort of supply teacher. She had said gravely that she would give the matter serious thought even as she hid the excitement the flattering offer brought to her.

All those who’d readily accepted the invitation to her pre-Christmas gathering, more out of curiosity than anything she guessed, were clustered in the big room – she refused to call it the chandelier ballroom, judging the title as utterly silly, even though the chandelier was now reinstated in its old position.

David hadn’t been too enthusiastic about that, but she had been so used to having her own way, making her own decisions for so long as an unmarried woman, and he not naturally an argumentative sort of person, and he had to admit it did look splendid now, though it was far more enormous than they had imagined as it hung there gracing the room.

It was a source of pride, though she did notice quite a few from the village giving it more than one cautionary look, trying to avoid lingering under it, a now well-entrenched superstition hard to shift.

Even so, before the evening was out, with everyone standing about nibbling chicken and ham sandwiches, Christmas cake and mince pies, sipping wine or soft drinks as they talked and talked, they were all behaving as if the chandelier wasn’t even there. At least the less superstitious had admired it on entering, which was what she had been aiming for.

All in all, her first social evening was proving a great success, she already considering holding something similar when Easter arrived. Mingling, it was enjoyable to recognise those faces she’d known so well when she’d been teaching and had almost forgotten in her happiness of being married; now they sprang back into mind as if she had never left. It was lovely to renew acquaintances, just like old times when they would all gather in the common-room for their own small pre-Christmas get-together once the pupils had gone for the holiday.

Yet one face she couldn’t place. She was a woman maybe in her early thirties, quite small and trim, very pretty with short fair hair and wearing a very odd dress; rather shapeless it looked from where she stood, with the waistline far too low as if made for a much taller person. She was standing by the French windows looking rather lost, while everyone else around her stood in groups. Maybe a new teacher at the old school, not yet settled in? But she wouldn’t have issued an invitation to someone she didn’t know – unless someone had brought her along rather than see her left out. That was probably the answer. But she looked so alone and Eileen’s first thought was to go over and talk to her, make her feel more at home perhaps.

As she began to make her way towards her, she was stopped by Mr Tom Eldred, the maths teacher, wanting to introduce his wife.

‘I should have done so long before now,’ he rumbled in his deep voice. ‘But you seemed to have been so occupied by everyone.’

Eileen smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said graciously. ‘There are some here I still haven’t had a
chance
to talk to yet. As a matter of fact I was about to have a word with that young lady over there by the French windows. She seems to be all on her own. I can’t place her. She’s not local. Perhaps she’s a new teacher at the school?’

He glanced to where she’d indicated. ‘Young woman?’ he queried. ‘There is only Mr and Mrs Chandler over there with some other people, probably local.’

She let her gaze turn to where she’d been pointing. There was now no sign of the woman. ‘Oh!’ she said, then laughed. ‘Well, whoever she was she’s not there now.’

They laughed with her at her little jest and she excused herself to continue on towards the French windows. There she asked the English teacher Alfred Chandler and his wife and the two they were with whether they knew which way the woman who’d been standing near them a moment ago might have gone. All four looked mystified.

‘Sorry, my dear,’ said the rather elderly Mrs Duncan, a long-standing member of the parent/teacher group, while her even older husband stood looking a little blank. ‘I’ve not seen anyone on their own and we’ve been here some time, haven’t we, Kenneth?’

To which the man gave an emphatic nod then an equally emphatic shake of the head, obviously unsure whether she meant standing here or seeing the woman.

Eileen gave up, moving away after voicing the hope that they were all enjoying themselves and to help themselves to more food and drink whenever they fancied.

But it was a mystery as to who the woman was whom she had seen. A gate-crasher perhaps? She hardly thought so. But where could she have gone in the little time it had taken to speak to the Eldreds?

Throughout the rest of the evening Eileen kept looking around for the person she had seen, but there was now no sign. Had the young woman – she had looked young, though there had been signs of maturity there – been so lost all on her own that she’d decided to leave? But how far had she to go to get home?

Eileen racked her brains to think of anyone new in Wadely, but there hadn’t been anyone new since she and David had come to live here as far as she knew.

The whole business began to nag at her so that rather than enjoying the rest of her evening, she grew more and more eager to see the departure of their guests, even her old colleagues whom she had yearned to meet again.

Saying goodbye and thanking everyone for coming, promising those she’d known best from the school to keep in touch, she noted that the fair-haired woman wasn’t among them – definitely a gate-crasher then. It happened sometimes, cheeky devils looking for a free evening’s eating and drinking, sneaking away well before everyone else left. And who would notice their going or even think to question it? Nor would anyone query who the stranger was, many of them not knowing half the people present anyway. So easy!