The Empty Frame (9 page)

After an undisturbed night's sleep, Magnus woke very early. When he opened his eyes the clock by his bed said it was only five-twenty. The others were still fast asleep, tucked up under their duvets. During the night the temperature had dropped sharply and delicious cool air was coming in through the open windows. Outside the birds were starting to tune up. The TV weatherman had said that today was going to be “another scorcher”. Magnus got up at once, trying not to make any noise. This might be the best part of the day and he was going to make the most of it.

Silently, he wriggled into his new swimming trunks – bright red with thin jazzy blue lines. He liked them a lot, the children's mother had bought them for him when she bought the dressing gown. She always picked things he liked; she was a brilliant person.

He rolled up a towel, tucking his shorts inside it, pulled on a T-shirt and sandals and crept towards the door. Then he remembered his tell-tale piece of sticking plaster, went back to the fireplace and inspected it. In the dim early light, he couldn't really be sure, but it did
seem to him to have become very slightly stretched, if only by a couple of millimetres. He must note this down, in the exercise book.

Unknown to the others he'd already written an account of the three apparitions he'd seen: the empty frame, the woman with no feet, and the shimmering white shape that had floated across the swimming pool. To the list he'd added the wreckage in the fireplace and the scattered white petals. They must surely be to do with her too. Miss Adeline's brother had been killed in the month of July, and on the night of his death she had heard Lady Alice's voice. The rare, old-fashioned flowers, which resembled the modern peony, she obviously associated with her son, and the flowers bloomed in July. And the three of them, three modern children, one of whom had suffered like William Neale, were now in this house, in July. Magnus believed it was their presence which had made her active again and more especially,
his
presence.

Would she be in the swimming pool building again? That was surely too much to hope. But the more he thought about it the more convinced he was that she was trying to communicate with him, that she'd been seeking his help.

Running down the turret spiral staircase, he walked out into the early summer sunshine, across the dewy grass and along the gravelled drive. Then, very
cautiously, he approached the swimming pool building where all seemed deserted, except that somebody had come and propped the outer door open, presumably to freshen the air. The dried-up potted plants inside made the muggy atmosphere feel stale and there was a faint smell of putrefaction overlaid with the smell of chlorine.

Through the glass of the inner door he saw someone walking towards the deep end. Magnus would have liked to be able to dive in, but he'd only recently learned to swim, and he lacked confidence. This man was obviously planning to take a dive though. He couldn't see his face yet but the lean skinny body was definitely that of Colonel Stickley. His pronounced limp was unmistakeable. At the end of the pool the old man bent down and began to unwind a broad flesh-coloured bandage that had been wrapped round his right leg, just above the knee. Carefully he folded up the bandage and put it on a bench then, holding on to a metal railing, he removed the lower part of his leg and propped it against the wall. Then he dived into the pool with a great splash and began to swim awkwardly, with a lot of rolling from side to side, but quite fast.

“That's brilliant,” Magnus said, and he must have spoken it out loud, because behind him Wilf said, “Not bad, is it? He can swim a lot faster than me. He lost the leg in forty-three. Couldn't swim before then, fear of water, that kind of thing. Just shows, doesn't it?”

“Yes it does,” muttered Magnus, watching Colonel Stickley do a neat turn and set off again down the pool. Something was making him want to cry, the plastic leg propped carefully against the wall, that brave, ungainly dive.

Wilf said, “Listen, go and have a swim yourself. Just keep over to the other side, there's plenty of room, he won't even notice. Anyway, there'll be others here soon. This is the day your cousin Maude offered it to the village folk. One or two usually show up.”

“Are you sure?” Magnus said, rather doubtfully. He didn't want Colonel Stickley to shout at him, but the water did look very inviting.

“Yes. It'll be OK. And if he blows his top I'll deal with him. But he'll be out in a few minutes. He never notices anything when he's swimming, anyhow. He has to concentrate.”

Magnus waited until the Colonel had done another two lengths, had made his turn and had his back to him. Then he slipped into the water at the shallow end and set off cautiously. He'd only once managed a whole length, and he was still very nervous. He kept putting one foot on the bottom, for reassurance, and when he was halfway down, and the floor disappeared, he held on to the curved tiles that jutted out just above the water. This way, first hopping and then clinging, he made his way to the deep end. Then, equally cautious,
he turned and began to go back. It was not exactly swimming, but he felt it was giving him confidence. He loved the feel of the water on his body and the fact that he virtually had the pool to himself.

But soon it began to fill up. He saw the Colonel get out, bandage his false leg in position and limp away towards the changing rooms. But the old man was replaced by others, equally old, even ancient, some of them. And they all seemed to be women.

Magnus stuck to his lane by the wall and watched them going sedately up and down. Two, who swam together, had carefully piled-up grey hair and they progressed very slowly, with fixed, flat smiles, as if the main business of their lives was to avoid getting their perfect hair wet. Another was small and stringy with a great hooked nose. She wore a most elaborate bathing cap, purple with a swag of yellow swathed round it, rising to a point, a hat that might have been worn at the court of some Eastern potentate, and she swam up and down grim-faced, counting her strokes aloud. Once, somebody swimming very slowly got in her way and she barked, “Stick to your own lane,
please
!” She was terrifying. And she got even madder when the two ladies with hair-dos stopped to gossip in the shallow end, leaning lazily back and letting their substantial legs float out in front of them, inevitably blocking her progress. They looked so relaxed as they chatted away that
Magnus half expected them to produce flasks of coffee, or to light cigarettes.

When he got out of the pool, they waved to him and one shouted, “Nice to have some young round here, for a change. What's your name, darling?” but Magnus, suddenly shy, scuttled off to get changed.

As he rubbed himself dry he found that it was hard, now, to believe in his first visit to this pool when, across the shimmering water, he had perceived the shape of the Lady Alice Neale, and heard her voice. It felt already as if it belonged to another time, almost as if it had never happened. Perhaps it had not. Feeling unpleasantly damp, he walked back slowly to the tower, fighting with an inexplicable feeling of loss, and of disappointment.

Floss and Sam were awake now and rather irritable. The builders had obviously come back and the noise of them unloading more equipment at the foot of the turret, had broken into their sleep. As Magnus entered the room, there was a great thumping sound from down below and it seemed as if the whole building shook.

“I think they'll
have
to move us out, if it's going to be like that all the time,” Sam said. “Thought this was a restoration. They seem to be hell-bent on knocking it all down, to me.”

“I've told you,” Magnus reminded him. “They fill holes up with concrete so they have to make the holes first.”

“In other words, it gets worse before it gets better?”

“Something like that.”

“Great.”

Sam was grumpy not only because the builders had woken him up but also because Magnus had beaten him to the swimming pool. Not that it sounded a very attractive proposition, swimming up and down with a lot of old-age pensioners trying not to get their hair wet.

“The Colonel's got an artificial leg,” Magnus was telling Floss. “He sort of, unwrapped it, before he dived in.”

“Ugh!”

But Magnus said loyally, “I think it's rather brave of him. I mean, nobody can help having a look at a thing like that. It must be awful for him.”

At breakfast, Colonel Stickley made no reference to seeing Magnus in the pool, just as he'd never referred to their meeting in the night, in the Great Hall, under the empty frame, nor was there any reference to the arrival of the builders. He seemed particularly bad-tempered, snapping at Maude for leaving a spoon stuck in the marmalade jar, and sweeping Arthur off the table, knocking him away sharply with the back of his hand, just as he'd managed to reach the butter dish.

“I'm sorry, dears,” Maude said in embarrassment, as the lean, upright figure stomped off, muttering bad-temperedly
under his breath. “He's terribly upset. He received a letter in yesterday's post about his son. Well,
not
about his son, that's the point. He'd been waiting for news. There've been government representations in London and he'd worked so hard to get them to do something, and now – nothing. He's going up to London this morning, to talk to somebody in one of the foreign embassies.”

“Miss Adeline said she thought his son must be dead,” Floss told her. “What do you think, Maude?”

“I really don't know, dear. It does seem very unlikely that he would be alive after all this time. But we have to go on hoping. After all, no actual death has been reported and no body has been found. Until it is, then there's still hope, I think.”

Magnus suddenly thought about the son of Lady Alice Neale. “Cousin Maude,” he said, “did they ever find the body of that boy who died here, the one Miss Adeline told us about?”

She shrugged. “Not that I know of. There's nothing about him in the parish records, or in the family memorial. But of course we don't actually know that he ever existed. It's just rumour – well, tradition's a better word.”

“But if he
did
exist and was killed, or died accidentally, they'd have had to bury him somewhere, wouldn't they?”

“Well, yes, except that if he'd died in some scandalous way I suppose they'd have disposed of his body pretty quickly. They'd have surely wanted to hush it up. They were very famous people in their day.”

“And that's why the mother weeps,” Magnus said to himself. One thing at least had just slotted neatly into place. He'd talked a lot to Father Godless about ghosts, because of the troubles the old priest had had at his church. There were “unquiet” ghosts, who walked the earth unhappily because nobody had ever laid them to rest, or because someone they loved had not been laid to rest. He saw it clearly now. The Lady Neale felt guilty about her son's death, and so she wept. But she also mourned because she had never said a proper goodbye to him. Perhaps terrified servants, finding him dead, had disposed of his body, then made up some story about how he had inexplicably disappeared. You
would
try and make up some kind of story, faced with a formidable woman like Lady Alice Neale.

“I thought that this afternoon we might take a boat along the river and have a picnic,” Cousin Maude said. “There's a dinghy here and Wilf keeps it in good order. He could come with us, while the Colonel's in London. There's a swimming place too, and it's a bit more fun than the pool. Do you fancy that at all?”

“Great!” said Sam and Floss together.

“Yes. Thank you,” Magnus said, but more slowly. It was the tunnel under the river that really interested him, not taking a boat out. Still, it was just possible that she might have some information about the tunnel herself – or Wilf might.

After breakfast and the ritual washing of hands (which oddly, they all dutifully performed, even in Colonel Stickley's absence) they set off to see Miss Adeline. This time her front door was propped open by a cast-iron figure of Mr Punch, painted bright fairground colours.

“We still ought to knock,” Floss said. “It's rude, just barging in.” So they let the polished brass knocker rise and fall three times. As before, there was silence, but finally they heard her voice. “Is that the children? Is it Magnus and Florence, and is Samuel with you today?”

“Yes, I'm here,” said Sam, feeling a bit as though he was reporting for duty. But the old woman's voice sounded so firm and youthful that he was a bit ashamed that he'd not come last time.

“Well, come and join me in the drawing room. There are cold drinks. It's too hot for coffee.”

As they walked down the tiled passageway, Arthur, who had followed them from the Abbey, suddenly bounded ahead, looking like a tiny fox, with the fat bush of his tail beating the air impatiently as he sought out Miss Adeline. When they reached the drawing
room he was already settled in her lap and purring loudly.

“Maude tells me that this is a beautiful cat,” the old lady said, pulling gently at his ears, “but my goodness, he's got a round little tummy.”

“He's a big eater,” Floss explained. “He's always ravenous.”

“My eyes are pretty useless these days, but I can see that he's a very special colour. There are so many varieties of orange cat, aren't there – and they're always male by the way – as many varieties of colour as there are kinds of marmalade. Do you like marmalade, Samuel?” she said. “I'm sorry you missed tea yesterday. Magnus also missed tea, as it happens, but he was unwell, so it was hardly his fault.”

Samuel, like Magnus the day before, wondered whether the old lady was playing some kind of game with him. He said, “I don't like marmalade very much, it's too sour. I prefer peanut butter.”

This reply seemed quite satisfactory. “Have a cold drink, all of you,” she said. “I believe it's all set out in my kitchen. Maude came by with some things. She's so good. And there are biscuits. I would like one, if I may. I have a sweet tooth. No lemonade, though, it's a little too sour for me.” And she looked sideways at Sam, with a sly little smile, as if to say “Your move.”