The Women of Heachley Hall Read online

I gave the door a tiny shove, and it drifted, almost loathed to respond to my gentle encouragement. Now that it was open, it was keen to stay that way. I started to lean my shoulder against it and with a few centimetres to go, it slammed shut. I knew that sound. I’d heard it before.

  I laughed, a nervous titter of bemusement. There had to be an explanation, there generally was for most things, but I’d no time to investigate. The house would have to wait a little longer before I took up residence.

  Giving up the fruitless search, I trotted downstairs, the echoes of my heels clattering in time to my heartbeats. I’d seek a signal in the village where I had left my car in the Rose and Crown car park. I locked the front door and dropped the house keys into my handbag. Soon it would be too dark to see the driveway. There were no outside lights, only the luminous presence of the awakening moonlight that chased the silvery cobwebs across the long grass. I hurried down the path, keen to immerse myself in the warmth of the pub.

  TWO

  The Rose and Crown gloriously epitomised the quaint countrified public house with blackened timber beams, an oak panelled bar, the fiery glow of a wood burner and tarnished brass horseshoes hooked on nails hammered into the wall. Alongside those rural enrichments was a flat screen TV; something for everyone, I supposed. However, the place was deserted and the absence of staff even at this early hour required me to ring the bicycle bell screwed to the bar.

  A woman bustled out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her stained apron, the smell of seared meat and caramelised onions trundled after her adding to the aroma of hops. A disgruntled expression – I’d probably interrupted her in the middle of an important task – occupied her mottled face. She raised her eyebrows: bushy little things perched above her thickly lined eyes. ‘Yes?’

  I tried not to yawn or squeak; my dry mouth needed replenishment. ‘Miriam Chambers. I booked a room for the night.’

  A smile shot across her face and her chubby cheeks flushed pink, clashing with her shockingly red hair and her orange t-shirt. Nothing about her appearance seemed co-ordinated as if the notion of presentation had any place in a public establishment. My colour sensitive brain struggled to deal with her intriguing concept of harmonisation.

  The cheerful demeanour froze mid-development, never truly blossoming into delight, but her displeasure at my arrival had been swept away. ‘Oh, right you are.’ She reached under the bar and retrieved a small ledger. ‘Fill in your details here. Just the one night isn’t it?’

  ‘One. I couldn’t face driving back south tonight.’ I scrawled my name across the page.

  ‘London, is it?’ She’d watched me write Chelmsford before commenting.

  I grinned. ‘Close enough.’ London seemed a long way from anywhere, never mind Chelmsford.

  The upstairs guest room was tucked away at the back of the inn and its décor was awash with floral motifs – the bed cover and wallpaper didn’t match, one depicted red roses, the other pink carnations. I squeezed my eyes tight in the hope the garish colours might lose their potency. The addition of potpourri in the form of orange peel and juniper had failed; onions followed us everywhere.

  ‘Bathroom down the hall. You’re the only guest, so don’t worry about sharing.’ She handed me two keys – the bedroom and the back door. ‘If you do pop out, let us know. Don’t want to be worrying about you. Dinner any time after six.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Best get down there.’ She dashed out the door.

  I flopped onto the iron framed bed and dangled my feet over the sides. Tempting as it was to simply doze off – I’d been up since dawn – I had to contact the solicitor.

  Graeme Porter of Porter and Flint gasped when I told him.

  ‘You do understand that you only inherit the house after living there for a year?’ he asked; the refined voice of Middle England took on a fatherly tone. ‘And that at any time you leave the house for more than two weeks, barring medical problems, you forfeit the right to inherit it.’

  I stared at the crack in the low ceiling, then across at the botched attempt to hide the mould above the crooked window. Earlier, I’d not noticed the flaws, now they seemed reassuring in their unimportance.

  ‘Yes. I know it seems…preposterous.’

  ‘Quite,’ he enunciated. ‘I’ve seen some strange things in my time as an executor, but truly, these clauses in the will are peculiar. She was most particular.’

  ‘And she drew it up when exactly?’

  There was a pause before he answered. ‘Eight years ago.’

  When I was nineteen and not long after Dad had died. What kind of life had Felicity envisaged for me? One of solitude, like herself, or marriage, which she’d shunned? I’d fulfilled some of her requirements, but only by my lack of success in finding a life partner and a career that didn’t require me to be somewhere specific all the time. There again, taking a career break at twenty-seven years wasn’t frowned upon these days, married or not. Her remarkable, and insightful view, of my unknown future made me wish I’d known her better.

  Snow white hair. Braided, perhaps? Chocolate eyes. Or maybe they’d been hazel. How had I managed to forget a member of my family with little regret? The thought didn’t sit comfortably with me. I soothed myself with the knowledge that loosing contact with distant aunts and cousins was a common enough family trait. Sometimes, even siblings cut blood ties. I had no siblings.

  Mr Porter asked again if I was sure. Answering him gave rise to the familiar bedlam of emotions: fear, excitement, exhaustion and determination.

  ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’ I ended the call abruptly, terribly confused by the jumble of thoughts colliding behind my sleepy eyes.

  I sat up on the bed, dived into my handbag and extracted a notepad and pencil. Making myself comfortable, I sought out my salvation: a list. When faced with a demanding project, I craved the organisation of a list, just seeing it would stave off the impending panic. Once it was down on paper, I could eat, then sleep.

  The list swiftly occupied two sides of paper. It had started rather simply before rambling on and on without any prioritising or timescales. When it got to financial issues, the tension in my temples sent shooting pains down my neck.

  My mortgage payments would have to continue, but what about the bills?

  I slumped backwards onto the lumpy pillow. The council tax on the hall would put serious pressure on my income even with guaranteed work for the year. Looking at the scrawling nightmare of needs, I would have to delve into my savings. I couldn’t believe there was no cash left in Felicity’s estate and I simply couldn’t afford additional payments on top of my existing bills.

  I dragged myself downstairs. An hour earlier the place had been deserted, now it bustled with people. The village possessed a few dozen houses, a postbox and a bus stop, yet the pub attracted patrons: regulars, given how they greeted the red-haired landlady by name.

  ‘Glenda, pasty and chips, please,’ shouted a young man with tattoos down one arm.

  ‘Right you are, Jack,’ she yelled back.

  I stared at the blackboard and the smudged chalked menu. My stomach rumbled for food but the dishes didn’t appeal, my appetite crushed by nervous energy. I needed something to eat, though. ‘Steak and ale pie, please.’

  ‘Mash or chips?’ asked Glenda.

  ‘Mash, please.’

  The food, when it arrived, tasted good. The kind of wholesome home cooking my mother might have given me, if I could remember. Mum had passed away from breast cancer when I was ten. Raised by a heartbroken father, I’d learnt to be independent at an early age: laundry, sewing the name labels on my school uniform and so on. My father’s response to losing Mum had been long hours sequestered at his office or distant travel. My life had revolved around a fragile self-sufficiency and the occasional overnight stay with a child minder. Dad had been a microwave aficionado. He spent ages in the supermarket aisles, debating out loud whether to have Italian or Indian, peering at the cardboard covers. Politely declining his chosen package, I grabbed
my fresh vegetables and fashioned a recipe off the top of my head.

  Dad had never attempted to cook from scratch and if he had seen me beavering over the hob, he’d reminisced about Mum’s cooking. However, I couldn’t tempt him into trying my efforts, as if his taste buds needed no reminders of Mum – she’d gone and taken her culinary delights with her. Dad and I ate at different times with me at the dining table with a book and Dad in front of the television with a lap tray. Mum’s food sloped off into the past, along with her stylish dresses, frizzed hairstyle and the soft edge of her soothing voice when she’d sung me to sleep.

  He’d met another woman, somebody abroad, and by the time I’d left school he’d moved out there to be with her. A woman I never met. They both died in a boating accident off the shores of a Greek island. I mourned him every day, my part-time father, with his soft smile, dry wit and firm knees, which I’d sat upon many at time as a child while he’d recounted his travels: exaggerated fun tales. I believed those embroidered fantasies gave rise to my passion for the creative arts and many a picture I’d painted or drawn had been based on his florid imagery. With Dad’s sudden departure, I had no link to Mum, nor perhaps the ability to dredge up the memories I’d banished.

  Abandoned in the earliest stages of adulthood and battling the constancy of grief, his sudden exit also had left me financially deprived with only a mediocre savings account to fall back on when work dried up.

  I washed down my meat pie with a gin and tonic.

  Glenda came over to my table. ‘Pud, luv?’

  I sighed, returning my thoughts to the future, and slid the plate across into her awaiting hands with their bright red fingernails. ‘No, thanks. What I need is an electrician.’

  ‘Electrician?’ She hovered, unfazed by my wish to talk.

  ‘I’m moving into the area and the house desperately needs electrical repairs, amongst other things, like plumbing.’ I swilled the dregs around the bottom of my glass.

  ‘Which house, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  Did I mind the locals knowing I was less than mile down the road? Would they cast a sympathetic eye over my circumstances? It depended on what I told them.

  ‘Heachley Hall,’ I said softly.

  ‘Well, I never,’ she declared. ‘That place. Felicity finally sold it.’

  I entered the world of small village gossip with a heavy sense of foreboding. ‘No, not sold. I’m her great-niece. I’ve inherited it, sort of—’

  ‘She died?’ Glenda slipped her broad bottom onto a nearby chair. ‘I’d no idea. I knew she emptied the place. I remember the day the clearance men came. Broke her hip, you see, fell down stairs. Never really recovered mobility to live on her own in such a big house.’

  ‘How long ago did she move out?’ I leaned forward.

  Glenda fiddled with her fingers, counting back, mouthing the years. ‘Five years or so. Bert, my husband, he had more to do with the house. He delivered the groceries. They never liked to drive up that road, them lazy gits, so he’d drive up and drop off the bread and milk, and the like.’

  ‘Five years,’ I repeated, aghast. It explained the forlorn interior. ‘She really lived there alone?’

  ‘Maggie, her cleaner, she used to go up there every day and help her out. It was only towards the end Felicity struggled. Very independent woman, Felicity Marsters. Stubborn, too. You’re her family, then?’

  I traced my family tree using the wood grain, skipping over my parent’s generation. ‘Felicity had an older brother who died in the 1960s, my grandfather, John. She had no children. I’m her sole beneficiary.’

  ‘So you need an electrician. Well, Jack over there, stuffing his face with pasty, his dad is an electrician. Plumber, now Bert usually does our leaks.’

  ‘I need a new toilet and kitchen sink.’

  ‘Bert will know somebody. Bert!’ She screeched in an indiscriminate direction.

  A small bearded man appeared from behind the bar. He rocked on his feet as he walked over. Perhaps, given his age, which I suspected was close to sixty, he was marred by rheumatism.

  ‘Yes, my darling.’ He tugged on his wispy beard and blinked at Glenda in an ingratiating fashion. I reckoned behind close doors they bickered away without fear of onlookers.

  ‘This young lady is Felicity’s niece.’

  ‘Great-niece,’ I corrected.

  ‘She’s moving into the house. Needs a plumber.’

  Bert’s eyes widened. ‘Heachley Hall? Well, I never. It needs more than a lick of paint.’

  ‘I know,’ I rolled my tired eyes up to the ceiling. Perhaps it had been a mistake to raise my issues so publicly.

  ‘An exorcism, too.’ He smirked and Glenda thumped his arm.

  ‘Pay no heed to him.’ She laughed, rather too obviously.

  ‘Exorcism?’ I watched as Glenda’s smile turned to a scowl as her husband continued to chuckle; a low rumble that bubbled up from his beer belly.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense. All squit,’ she said. ‘It’s Maggie’s fault. She put about the idea the place is haunted. Felicity never said a word about it. All on her own every night, quite happy, no screaming for help or look of fear about her. Nonsense and rumours.’

  ‘So why did Maggie talk of ghosts?’ I remembered the closet and the slamming doors, wondering if the weird flow of air through the house was responsible for conjuring up apparitions, too.

  ‘Ghosts? She never mentioned ghosts. Just strange happenings. It’s an old house, so it creaks and groans. This pub is four hundred years old and built without foundations. It makes a racket sometimes.’ Glenda halted, clucking her tongue. ‘Don’t fret. You’ll sleep fine, everyone does here.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said slowly, not keen on the idea of dwelling on improbable supernatural happenings and accompanying village gossip. My immediate problems were based on a pressing matter – making the hall habitable for me, a living person. ‘Plumber and electrician are all I need.’

  ‘I’ll get you their numbers,’ Bert said and hastily retreated.

  ‘Sorry, dearie,’ said Glenda, ‘he’s always after a bit of excitement. We’ve lived here for twenty years, things rarely get exciting.’

  ‘Sounds nice,’ I said, shaking out my napkin. ‘Quiet.’

  ‘If that suits you.’ She stood.

  ‘I’m not sure what suits me. This is an experiment, a yearlong experiment. It could all go horribly wrong.’

  THREE

  A line of blood red ink outlined the sketch of a little girl in her pyjamas waiting for her fairy godmother. My abandoned illustration – Milly’s Marvellous Godmother – was parked on the easel; I’d failed to settle back into the routine of work since returning from Norfolk.

  Rolling across the floor on the casters of the stool, I perched on it and surveyed my little world.

  I’d transformed part of my bijou apartment into an atelier: an artist’s desk under the illumination of natural light – one small window – and, over the period years, I’d nourished the space with useful clutter. The bulky computer, which converted my scanned drawings into digital images, was ostracised on another table; I preferred the fluidity of a pen nib over paper or the delicate caress of a brush stroke.

  My finished artworks – all collaborations with authors, specifically children’s books – either decorated the walls in frames or were carefully mounted in albums. I earned a reasonable income from my hard work. Dad would have been proud.

  One irksome question kept bouncing back and forth: why the palaver of living at Heachley for a whole year? Why bait me with enigmatic legal devices in order to fish me out of my sea of comfortable living? Each time doubt nipped, I pictured a vast studio with skylights and heaps of space.

  In lieu of parental guidance, I needed to talk to somebody sensible. The cry for help was made by text. I invited myself to Southend-on-Sea that evening. With a steady hand, I focused on finishing my illustration. Each skate of the brush on paper recaptured my undulating attention, creating a placating distance
between Felicity’s house and myself.

  ·•●•·

  Ruth lived in a small village to the north of the town and she greeted me on her front doorstep with a brief hug, then hurried to put on the kettle.

  ‘Tell me,’ she yelled from the kitchen, while I kicked off my shoes. ‘You’ve kept me in suspense for two days.’ Prior to my visit, I’d told Ruth I’d been bequeathed a property but detoured around the exact details of the will.

  Whilst she busied herself with a teapot and mugs, I regaled her with the basics of my dilemma, the strange conversation with Great-aunt Felicity’s solicitor and my impromptu visit to Norfolk. I shied away from describing the memories I’d triggered.

  Ruth wore her ten years of extra age well. I’d repeatedly repressed the notion she was my secretly adopted sister or surrogate mother. Since our first encounter, I’d admired her sensible wisdom and her kindly approach to handling any problems I occasionally deposited in her genial kitchen. Our friendship stemmed from a chance encounter at a book fair where I’d dashed around the stalls, handing out newly printed business cards to publishers and agents, imploring them to look at my portfolio. I’d been fresh out of college and armed with a diploma in graphic design, however regrettably, whenever they asked about my existing published illustrations my smiley face expression had lost its impact.

  Ruth – a determined and boundlessly creative teacher with a plan to write a children’s book – found me hunched over a tepid coffee, mourning my failure and with space tight in the little coffee area, she joined me. Jaded by years of classroom teaching she’d written her book, the kind that appealed to young kids: rhyming couplets, a fantasyland and a faintly moralistic tale. As it happened she needed an illustrator. The outcome of our meeting had a dramatic effect on my fortunes.

  The book was a commercial bestseller, lauded by reviewers and awarded prizes. My successful working relationship with Ruth had provided the kick-start I needed in the form of well-received artwork. She’d found me Guy, my agent, and instigated the illustration contract that had kept me busy ever since.