The Empty Frame (3 page)

Magnus suspected that a fireman's lift, one of the few terms with which he was not familiar, involved being carried back to his room over the old man's shoulder. “I'm all right,” he said firmly. “I'd just like to go back to bed. Sorry if I frightened you.”

The Colonel gave a dry laugh. “You didn't frighten me, young man, I often sit up late. Can't sleep y'know, it's my age. All right then, follow me, and mind where you put your feet, the lighting's not good along these corridors.”

But as they left the hall something made Magnus look back. He said, “You've left one of the lights on.”

Colonel Stickley turned round. “So I have, and the Lady Alice won't like
that.
Beautiful young woman but she had quite a temper, they say, quite an old paddy.”
He clicked a switch and Magnus saw the tall woman in white and black with the thin little dog at her feet fade into the darkness.

As they went along the corridors towards the turret stairs, he saw two tapestries hanging on a wall, lit by a solitary lamp. One portrayed Pontius Pilate washing his hands in a bowl of water. A soldier stood by with a scarlet towel and Jesus, in a corner and already wearing his crown of thorns, was looking on, sadly. The other showed a scene from the Old Testament. Father Robert had told him the story, about Balaam's donkey who was beaten because he disobeyed his master. Knowing that he was in the presence of an angel of God, the poor beast had lain down in the road and would not budge. Here, in ragged, faded threads, was that donkey, flattened, with its ears sticking out at right angles, as if something had run over it, and a great ball of shimmering light that was the angel. It was only a glimpse as the Colonel, puffing slightly, started to mount the spiral stairs, but it made Magnus think of Arthur, the little cat. Animals were sometimes more sensitive to the big, deep things than human beings were, and Arthur had been plainly terrified when the crying began. Like Balaam's ass, the cat must have suddenly picked up a very strong presence, and he had fled from it. It was definitely not good, like the angel, but perhaps it was not totally bad either. All Magnus knew
for certain was that it was very troubled. Its grief was great and it had wept human tears.

But how could it have anything to do with that hard-faced woman in the gold frame, the woman who had, he was sure, been
out
of it when he'd first come into the Great Hall and found the Colonel playing chess? And had Colonel Stickley known that the woman had gone from the frame and was that gruff, calm treatment of Magnus all a sham?

As the Colonel said goodnight to him and he snuggled down into his bed again, he once more felt afraid. He wanted some arms round him. Why hadn't he gone to Majorca with Auntie Win and Uncle Donald? He felt round in the bed. Perhaps Arthur had crept back and was waiting for him, a warm purry presence, but the cat was not there. So he turned on his side, burrowing down as Colonel Stickley limped down the stairs, still muttering to himself. “Flowers in the fireplace,” Magnus heard. “Whatever next… for three children. Is this the Hilton Hotel? Humph, I'm not clearing the mess up. It'll be that damned cat.”

But a cat as small as Arthur could not have achieved the complete wreckage that now lay in the grate, a wreckage Magnus had not seen as he'd climbed thankfully and hurriedly into his bed. Cousin M's beautiful arrangement of wild peonies, set in the fireplace in their honour, lay in ruins. The simple green
vase that had held them was smashed and it looked as if some of the smaller pieces of glass had been ground into powder. The flowers themselves had been torn from their stalks and dismembered, petal by petal, and they lay upon the dark polished floor of the tower room like big flakes of snow.

Cousin M, coming into the turret room next morning, saw the flowers scattered in the grate, knelt down and, without comment, began to pick them up.

“It wasn't me, I didn't knock them over,” Magnus said defensively, sitting up in bed. He'd become very used to people telling him off for things he hadn't done.

Cousin M showed no reaction. “It's all right dear. It's a shame about the vase though, it was a pretty one. Perhaps the children's mother could get me another. It came from the old glass factory near my flat in Majorca.”

Sam and Floss had woken up too. Through the barred window they could see a square of cloudless blue sky, sun shining on a sheet of water. The day suddenly felt good.

“Don't know if you're interested, but there's breakfast down below,” Cousin M said casually, tidying the bits of glass into a heap. “Mind you don't cut yourselves on this. I'll bring a dustpan.”

“Did Arthur knock the flowers over?” asked Floss.

“Probably. He doesn't know his own strength, that
animal.” But Magnus, who was observing her very carefully, didn't believe a word of it. It was quite obvious to him that this kind of thing must have happened before and she'd got used to it. Her studied matter-of-factness did not fool him at all.

“I'm
very
interested in breakfast,” announced Sam, suddenly smelling a faint bacon smell which he decided must be coming up the chimney flue. The sandwiches and buns of the night before now seemed a very long time ago.

“Well, get ready and come down. We'll be in the hall. When there are just the two of us we usually eat in the kitchen but you're a good excuse to do things properly. I'm afraid the Colonel doesn't like the way I slob around in my gardening things.”

While they were cleaning their teeth, Floss said to Sam, “Do you think Mags is all right?”

“Seems to be. Why?”

“I'm sure he was crying again, in the night. It woke me up.”

Sam shrugged, then made a great business of rinsing and spitting. He half-believed that a noise had woken him too, the voice of someone in distress. It hadn't sounded at all like Magnus, it had sounded too adult. But he was a very sound sleeper and he had finally concluded that he was almost certainly dreaming. He'd snuggled down in the bed until he'd fallen asleep again.

Floss had lain awake for some time too, but the sound she'd thought was Magnus had faded away in the end. The other thing she remembered was feeling very cold. “Do you think Cousin M has got any hot water bottles?” she said, as they climbed back up to Dove, to collect Magnus for breakfast. “My feet were like ice, last night.”

“You could ask her,” said Sam. Then he added, “My feet were cold too. I put some socks on. It's funny, how it suddenly went very cold. It was cold down in the Great Hall as well. And yet our dormitory's a warm little room compared with the others, according to Cousin M. That's why she's put us up there. She said that Colonel Stickley was cross about it, apparently. He told her off. He said we should have been in one of the portakabins.”

The long oak table by the fireplace was set for breakfast with a checked cloth and neatly folded napkins. As Cousin M seated them all Colonel Stickley came in with a loaded tray. He presented an interesting contrast with Cousin M who was wearing her grubby gardening clothes of the night before. He looked very formal and very smart in a tweed suit with a waistcoat and a watch chain across it, a silk handkerchief tucked into the top pocket and brown brogue shoes polished to a mirror gloss. “He's a bit of a smoothie, isn't he?” Sam whispered to Floss, as they sat down. “What is he doing frying breakfast for us lot? Don't they have servants in a place like this? Where's the cook?”

Cousin M said, sticking spoons into pots of honey and marmalade and manhandling a very large teapot, “Let's have a few introductions. Cecil, this is Sam, Floss and Magnus. This is Colonel Stickley, children.”

Embarrassed, and unused to formal introductions, the three of them made vague mumbling noises and took refuge in their bowls of cornflakes. “Stick insect,” thought Sam, watching the colonel's long legs arrange themselves neatly under the table. The old man did not smile, nor did he look in their direction. The business of the moment was breakfast and he was concentrating on that.

Magnus, who was sitting with his back to the fireplace, thought he knew why Colonel Stickley was ignoring them all. It was because of the episode the night before. He'd been quite friendly in the end, in a stiff, grandfatherly way, helping him up to bed, but he was very different this morning. Magnus was determined to talk to him in private but he would have to find the right moment.

He chewed his cornflakes and ran his eyes along the rows of portraits. The Lady Alice Neale, in her black dress, was back in her frame. There were the thin, unkind lips and the cruel hands, there was the little dog. He did not dare look from the portrait to Colonel Stickley. It was obviously better for now to go along with the pretence that the two of them had never met before.

Instead he said, “Who is the big fat man?”

Colonel Stickley glanced along the rows of painted faces and removed a sliver of food from between his teeth. “His nickname is Burst Belly,” he said. “He was a monk, head of this place, once. He was in charge of the Black Canons. Henry the Eighth got rid of them and he didn't much like it. So he put a curse on the Abbey, or so people say.”

Floss and Sam looked up at Burst Belly too. He was a huge and ugly man wearing the black and white robes of a priest. The white part of the costume was lacy and frilled like a Victorian night gown, incongruous under the flat silver cross which hung round his neck.

“Good name for him, wasn't it, Burst Belly,” Cousin M remarked, buttering her toast thickly and heaping on the marmalade. “He obviously ate too much, like me. I do love food, don't you?”

Floss said, “I don't like his face. It doesn't look exactly… well,
holy
, to me. It's not the kind of expression you expect in a priest. Did he really curse the Abbey?”

“That's the story,” said Colonel Stickley. “But who knows? It's certainly had a sad history. If you look at all the families that have lived here, you'll see that nobody stayed around for very long. Things tended to happen to people.”

“What sorts of things?” demanded Magnus, and his voice was unnaturally high and shrill. It was the voice
he unconsciously seemed to develop when he was really concentrating on something. It irritated the other two.

“Shh, Mags,” said Floss, and pressed his foot under the table.

But Magnus seemed not to have heard. “That's what
you
told us,” he informed Cousin M.

Cousin M blinked at him. “Me, dear? What did I tell you? I'm afraid you'll have to remind me.”

“You said yesterday that Lady Alice did things she lived to regret; that's exactly what you said, those were your exact words.”

Floss was now pressing down on Magnus's feet just as hard as she could because she knew it was a dangerous moment. If they didn't somehow change course, he would start crying, possibly even screaming. It had happened just once or twice, and it was frightening. It seemed to be something to do with the stresses of the awful life he'd had, shut away in the unfamiliar house with his sick mother, wondering what had happened to his father.

But Colonel Stickley, not knowing what was going on under the table, actually helped matters by glaring at Cousin M, rolling up his napkin and standing up. “End of subject,” he announced crisply. “Now then, I have a very busy morning, but if you're prepared to come with me now I will show you a little of the Abbey, so you can get your bearings for the day.”

Cousin M said in a nervous voice, “Why don't you let them go round on their own, Cecil? You've so much else to do and I'm sure they'd be happier poking round independently.”

Sam said, “We'll be fine, sir, we won't touch anything.” He was dying to get away from Colonel Stickley.

“
I
shall take you round,” he said frostily. “‘Poking about', as you call it, is precisely what I do not wish to encourage,” and he produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. “The public still use this place from time to time, Maude, in spite of our present circumstances. There are all kinds of hazards in an old building like this. I'd like them to see exactly what's what.”

“Very well, Cecil,” Maude said meekly, then, to the children, “I'll be in my garden this morning, dears, if you want me. It's the walled garden, beyond the dovecote at the end of the Long Walk. Otherwise, see you at lunch.”

“At twelve-thirty,” said Colonel Stickley, “and it's… nine o'clock now.” He consulted a large gold pocket watch, tapped it and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. “I will meet you in the entrance hall in ten minutes, after you've rinsed off your breakfast crumbs. I shall go and do the same.”

Floss and Sam exchanged disappointed looks, shrugged silently at each other, then set off obligingly
for their turret room. But Magnus lingered. In between the pictures of Burst Belly and the Lady Alice Neale was a tiny portrait of a young boy. Magnus hadn't noticed it the night before but now sunshine was filtering through small leaded panes and a square of barred light was shining on it. He was almost certain that it was a boy, though the child was very prettily dressed in a lacy ruff and had longish golden curls. Between two fingers he held a white, many-petalled flower.

Magnus said, “Is that a peony?”

The Colonel glanced up at the little painting. “I wouldn't know. Flowers are Maude's department.
Why
?” he demanded quite sharply. “I must say you ask rather a lot of questions.”

Magnus was not put off. He was collecting information. “Well, she put some flowers like that in our room, and the cat knocked them over and broke the vase. Where is Arthur, by the way?”

“I'm sure I don't know. Cats aren't my department, young man. Asleep somewhere, I suppose, it's a nice life. I must get on, I've a great deal to do this morning. Rinsed your hands, have you?”

Ignoring this Magnus said, “Who is that boy in the painting?
Is
it a boy?”

“It is. And we don't know. He might have been a son of the Lady Alice. She was married twice and she had several children. If it is a son of hers, then he wasn't
born here. He's not in the parish records, and he's not included in the family memorial, down in the church. Seen the church, have you? Rinsed your hands?” he repeated.

“Just going to,” muttered Magnus, but he didn't. His hands were perfectly clean. Instead he went into the entrance hall and stood by the tapestries, Balaam's donkey and its meeting with the angel, Pontius Pilate washing away his guilt. That set him thinking about the woman in the night again, the woman who'd cried, and about the misty coldness, and how Arthur had fled in terror. Who
was
the pretty child with the flower between his fingers, and who had smashed Cousin M's vase of green glass and torn her peonies to pieces? He had come to a conclusion about Cousin Maude and Colonel Stickley. They were both pretending. Both of them knew that all was not well in the Abbey but neither of them was prepared to say anything. This thought rather excited Magnus, but it also made him afraid. He'd quite like to talk to Floss and Sam about it, but would they laugh at him? He suspected that the best person to talk to would be Colonel Stickley, if he could get him on his own, and in a good mood – if the old man ever had such things.

Colonel Stickley was obviously determined to show them as little as possible of “his” Abbey. He'd made it
clear at the beginning that he thought of it as his, even though Mum had told them that it was Cousin M's money which had saved it from being sold. It was obvious that they were not to see a lot of the rooms.

“What's in
there
?” they kept asking, as he hustled them past intriguing doors bristling with ancient nails and bolts, and very firmly shut. “Can we just have a peep?”

“Absolutely nothing of interest”, the Colonel would say or “just household rubbish”, or “the domestic offices”. And the faster he hurried them on the more they wanted to linger and to explore.

What they saw were the public or “show” rooms; those rooms which were on view to possible clients, for firms to use when they held conferences at the Abbey – a money-making scheme which, like the sports centre, had almost ground to a halt.

“Why don't people come any more?” asked Magnus.

Floss glared at him and Sam tried to get near enough to give him a kick. “Don't keep going on about it, Mags, it's tactless,” he whispered, holding him back as Colonel Stickley unlocked a door labelled “Council Chamber”.

But Colonel Stickley had heard. “Ask away,” he said. “We're in a recession, young man, everybody is tightening their belts. People don't have the money for luxuries any more. Our charges are high, naturally,
because we give a very high quality of service, but there isn't the money to pay for it. QED,” he added.

“‘As has been demonstrated',” said Magnus. “‘
Quod erat demonstrandum
'.”

“Stop showing off,” Floss hissed at him. “It's getting on my nerves.” In the atmosphere of the Abbey Magnus definitely seemed to be coming out of his shell and to be more confident. He was talking more and asking most of the questions. She supposed this was better than sitting in silence all the time but she was finding it irritating, particularly when he paraded his knowledge in front of Colonel Stickley.

But the old man didn't seem to have heard. “I don't mind the place being empty for a few months,” he said. “I quite like it to myself, actually. All those tennis-playing brats were beginning to get me down.”

“Thanks a lot,” mouthed Sam to Floss, as they stepped inside a large panelled room on one wall of which was a small bay window with a cushioned seat and a view of the river. There was another huge fireplace with a coat of arms above it.