The Women of Heachley Hall Page 9

  He shook his head. ‘No. Ghosts, the fire, she showed no interest in discussing them. Considered it all a storm in a teacup. To be frank, she didn’t say much to anyone. In recent years, before her accident, she rarely visited the village and relied on Maggie. Although—’ he tugged on his beard, ‘ – she did say Maggie should know better than to speak about things she didn’t understand. Yes, that was what she said, now that I think about it.’

  I stared at the bank of cupboards. ‘Charles might know about the fire. He and Felicity had a friendly relationship, perhaps she told him about it.’

  ‘Charles?’ Bert straightened up.

  ‘Her handyman. He’s back and is fixing the cupboard doors for me.’ I pointed at units and the two with the missing doors. ‘He’s in the shed right now. Let’s go ask him.’

  It was my turn to lead and Bert followed me outside across the rain sodden yard and into the shed.

  It was deserted. No sign of Charles. The doors lay on the bench, sanded and smooth and next to them, his tools neatly arranged. I picked up the discarded mug; the coffee dregs had thickened into a black gloop at the bottom.

  ‘Oh,’ I shrugged, apologetically. ‘He’s gone.’ I checked my watch. It was past four o’clock and the dim room, like the other outbuildings, didn’t have electricity. ‘Probably went home. It’s too dark to work in here.’

  Bert picked up the sanding block. ‘He didn’t come to say goodbye?’

  ‘We were in the cellar. He must have thought we’d vanished into thin air.’ I laughed at the irony. Shy Charles was content to come and go as he pleased.

  Bert nodded. ‘I best get off, too. Glenda will be kicking up a fuss.’

  I showed Bert out, thanking him once again for delivering the stepladder.

  ‘Come to the pub this evening for a meal. On the house.’

  ‘Bert, I couldn’t. You’ve been so generous with—’

  He wagged his finger at me. ‘I insist. I dragged you into the cellar—’

  ‘No, you didn’t, I was happy to go down there.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have considered it if I hadn’t mentioned the fire.’

  An awkward pause descended, because he was right. The fire intrigued me not the cellar. He’d graciously offered me recompense, I should accept. ‘I’d love to come to the pub.’

  ‘Jolly good.’ He fished his car keys out of his jacket pocket and I let him out the front door. I waved goodbye as he drove away, but I didn’t think he saw me standing in the porch.

  Alone again, I eyed the doorbell and its dangling wire. I couldn’t be bothered to fix it. Those restless guinea pigs needed longer whiskers.

  ELEVEN

  I wolfed down my food reminiscent of Oliver Twist – shovelling forkfuls into my mouth in rapid succession. I fought the temptation to creep over to the bar and ask for seconds. Ensconced in a cold house, I burnt calories, which in turn created a bottomless appetite. There was no danger of gaining weight while I lived at Heachley Hall.

  As I stabbed at the last morsels of flaked fish and chips, Glenda joined me, wiping her fingers on her apron as she wriggled into a seat.

  ‘Thank you.’ I dabbed the napkin around my chin. ‘It’s very kind of you to feed me.’

  ‘You look starved. You’ll turn into a waif.’ She rested her hands on her rotund belly and chortled.

  ‘Not likely.’ I twirled a loose strand of my hair, catching my fingers on the knotted ends. Upstairs was a lovely bathroom with a shower and tub. I craved for a hot bath above anything, even food. ‘I don’t suppose you could do me another favour? Would you feel put upon if I asked if I could have a bath or a shower? I didn’t anticipate how much I’d miss hot water.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You don’t have hot water?’ she shrieked. ‘How can you live like that?’ She scraped back her chair. ‘I’ll get you some towels. Take as long as you like. Good grief. I shall be having words with Kevin. How could he leave you with no hot water.’

  I rushed to follow her back to the bar. ‘It’s not his fault. I only asked him to fix the cold water supply.’

  ‘Now listen here, dearie.’ She leant across the bar and ground her thumb into the wood, twisting it back and forth. ‘Don’t let these men walk all over you. I’ll give him a ring and insist he sorts this out.’

  ‘Glenda,’ I called after as she disappeared into a back room. ‘Drat,’ I muttered to the swinging door.

  Lying among the fragrant bubbles I nearly nodded off. The bath water lapped over my body, warming my bones and redeeming my frozen core. I took my time to dry, redressed and return to the bustling bar downstairs. My damp hair hung around my face and I relished its smooth feel.

  Glenda was busy serving customers and I hung back, waiting for the opportune moment to say thank you for her hospitality.

  She spotted me and waved me over. ‘I’ve spoken to Kevin. The earliest he can come out is Friday. Let’s see what he can sort out for you.’

  Friday was the day after tomorrow, I hadn’t expected anyone that quickly. ‘I’m really grateful—’

  ‘Say no more. Us girls must stick together.’ She gave me a swift wink and returned to serving the next customer.

  The short drive up the lane took no more than five minutes and throughout the journey I yawned. By the time I’d located the porch light switch and illuminated the keyhole with sufficient light, I’d made up my mind to go straight to bed. Turning on the heater, I peeled off my clothes for a second time that evening, put on my thermal pyjamas and burrowed under the damp duvet. The promise of hot water gave me something positive to focus on, otherwise, I struggled to find anything encouraging about my circumstances.

  In the morning, I slipped on my slippers and heavy dressing gown, and scurried downstairs in search of an essential cup of coffee.

  Sunshine blazed through the frosted glass of the front door, dancing across the tiles of the hall, and the brightness cheered me up.

  Entering the kitchen, I let out a shriek and jumped back a step. ‘Charles! How did you get in?’

  The dazzling light reflected off the screwdriver in his hand. He lowered his arm to his side unperturbed by my outburst and he greeted me with a surprisingly sincere smile. ‘Good morning, Miriam.’

  ‘The door,’ I jabbed a finger towards the back of the house. ‘It was locked. I locked it.’

  ‘Ah, I found the key. Felicity used to leave a key under a stone by the back door. I found it.’ He seemed pleased with himself and his pale eyes sparkled for a second. Usually they possessed an empty dullness to them.

  ‘Oh,’ I walked past him to switch on the urn.

  ‘You don’t mind? I didn’t mean to scare you. I like early mornings.’

  ‘It’s fine, but I’d rather you didn’t just walk into the house without me knowing. At least call out or something, so I know you’re here.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I took advantage of the key. I forgot that was Felicity’s arrangement, not yours.’

  ‘I don’t mind the key.’ My swift declaration came without much thought. I’d just granted him permission to come and go as he pleased. The freedom I’d gifted him should unnerve me, but it didn’t. Given my isolation, having somebody was a comforting afterthought. ‘I came to see you yesterday but you’d gone already.’

  ‘I had?’ He furrowed his eyebrows, then gave an indeterminate shrug. ‘I had something urgent to deal with. I apologise.’

  ‘Please, don’t. You must have others.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Clients. People you help out?’

  He smiled, as if amused by my question. ‘Probably, but at the moment, you have my time. I’m sure when needs must, I shall be busy elsewhere.’

  His response contained the usual vagaries, a recognisable feature of Charles’s style of communication. I’d dealt with monosyllabic men before, something of a speciality of mine, but at least he didn’t grunt and ask for another bottle of beer, which was Ruth’s sad experience. The urn started to hiss and I spooned out the cof
fee granules into a mug. ‘Fancy one?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  I hovered waiting for the urn to reach temperature and wondered how to interrogate him without appearing inquisitorial or unpleasant. ‘It was a pity you’d gone. Bert was here and I wanted to introduce you to him.’

  Charles hesitated, clearing his throat before speaking; another peculiar, and somewhat endearing mannerism of his. He refused to make eye contact with me. ‘It is of no importance. I’m not a man for idle chit-chat.’ He turned away and fiddled with one of the doors.

  ‘Not idle. He and I had visited the cellar.’

  Charles’s hand froze, poised halfway between hinges. ‘Why? I mean, it’s just a cellar.’ He reclaimed use of his arm and jabbed the screwdriver at the lower hinge.

  ‘To see the original foundations. He says part of the house burnt down years ago.’

  ‘It did,’ Charles said softly. His shoulders had gone rigid and the grip on the screwdriver tighter.

  I shrank back a little. Had I angered him? ‘Do you know much about it? Did Felicity tell you anything?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’ He rotated his wrist, attempting to release the screw holding the hinge in place.

  I persisted. ‘You talked about this place. You know it so well.’ I pulled on the urn’s tap and a gush of steaming water landed in my mug, splattering liquid over the rim.

  ‘Perhaps not as well as you might think.’

  He’d lied, I felt sure of it. He kept his back towards me, but the tension in his body remained. There was no point pushing him; we were barely friends and I couldn’t afford to alienate my rather useful handyman, not while I had a monopoly on his time.

  I hunted around for a slice of bread to toast. As well as soup, I would be living on a diet of jam and toast for the foreseeable future. ‘Okay, my mistake. I guess Felicity really didn’t speak much about this place.’ I’d intended to sound dismissive, but it came across as grumpy and frustrated.

  Charles released a harsh expiration of defeat. He turned and directed his gaze straight into mine with an unswerving focus. It startled me how his eyes lacked vibrancy, because the rest of his body reflected confidence, a fluidity of movement rather similar to an athlete and a superlative comfort of being in his own skin, except the pallor on his face remained pasty and untainted by an expected flush of annoyance at my sulky remark.

  ‘She was very fond of this house, more so than many would know. A lonely woman on her own, pining for another time, she’d come to rely on Heachley as a sanctuary. We understood each other well enough. If there are stories to tell, then they remain with her, not me.’

  At last, something of an explanation. He’d maintained a distance with Felicity, just as he seemed determined to do with me. ‘I understand. I’ll leave you to it.’ I nodded towards the upper hinge.

  ‘Thank you.’

  I slotted the bread into the toaster and waited, praying a fuse didn’t blow. He reached up for the upper hinge, stretching his tall frame higher until he stood on tiptoes. As he did, the sleeves of his jumper slipped down to his elbows. I suppressed a cry. From his elbows to wrists, his skin had puckered into blotchy red scars – an intermittent patchwork of discolouration.

  The toast shot up and I released my paused exclamation, using the toaster to mask my reaction to seeing his arms. He lowered the door and the sleeves dropped back down, covering up the red blotches. He seemed unperturbed by the exposure.

  ‘I’ll take this to the shed.’ He left me to scrape rock hard butter over my toast in a haphazard fashion. Felicity’s life held my curiosity, but Charles’s should be none of my business.

  TWELVE

  Before I started work I fixed the doorbell, ensuring the wire was secured and unlikely to loosen. Pleased with my efforts, I retreated to my den in the attic. On a blank piece of paper I sketched a farmer. Needing inspiration, I stole Tony and next to his bandy legs, I drew the naughty billy goat with giant horns about to launch his attack on the unsuspecting guinea pig. It was a bad habit – stealing real-life people for my illustrations.

  I heard a distant metallic clunk and paused, cocking my head to listen. There it was again – a dull chink – the doorbell. By the time I’d raced downstairs, I expected my visitor to have given up and left. However, the woman outside had patiently waited and when I opened the door, she smiled in greeting.

  She was neither young nor old, and she’d bundled her chestnut dyed hair into a neat bun. A pair of letterbox shaped spectacles were perched on her long nose, and the lenses enlarged her eyes into dark moons. Bright red lipstick smothered her plump lips and her cheeks were as rosy as her mouth. Behind her, parked up next to my Fiesta, a black Toyota Rav-4 and a thick coating of dried mud encrusted the bonnet and wheels, forming splatter marks that Jackson Pollock might have admired.

  ‘Miriam, isn’t it?’ she asked, her voice deep and husky and quite at odds with her feminine appearance. ‘Sorry to disturb, but my husband said yew were after some information, and I thought rather than drop a note or ring, I’d pop by and say hello.’ She spoke with a thick dialect: a slow drawl of vowels, stretched and songlike.

  I couldn’t place her. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Liz. Liz Pyke.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, I’ve been lost in work and… Do come in.’ I waved her into house and led her into the only room downstairs with a sense of normality – the kitchen. I switched on the small fan heater and offered her a drink, which she declined. She stared at the disassembled kitchen units and I explained about the absence of some of the doors.

  ‘Felicity would have appreciated your efforts to sort this place out,’ Liz said sweetly. Too saccharine; it reached my ears as patronising.

  I salvaged a faint smile. ‘Did Felicity talk about her family? I know so little about her.’ I leant against the worktop and tried to appear nonchalant as if there was nothing exciting to know.

  Liz tucked a loose strand of hair into her bun. Unhurried in her action, she tested my patience. ‘It’s been a few years and she was a reclusive woman. I tried to encourage her to attend church or join the Women’s Institute, but she declined, politely of course. She liked to bake and she donated the odd cakes for stalls, if I asked. I usually stuck a note through the door and Maggie would turn up at our house with a fresh cake.’

  ‘Maggie seemed to be more than her cleaner. Why didn’t she have a full-time carer?’ Where had Maggie gone? The questions stacked up in my head.

  ‘She treated Maggie like a gopher. Bert and Glenda, too.’ Liz hesitated, as if to suddenly recall who I was to Felicity. The moment of embarrassment was fleeting. ‘Sorry, that’s sounds cruel. Let’s just say she knew how to get the most out of people. She’d sit in her library, blanket on her lap and book in her hand with the house gradually falling apart around her. She seemed content as long as somebody was there to run her errands. Never one for the village, if she went anywhere it would be Old Hunstanton and the seaside. She’d take a taxi. When she put her mind to it, she was reasonably capable of looking after herself. Until she fell.’ Liz placed her handbag on the worktop and rummaged inside it. ‘Here this is what I came to give you.’ Liz handed me a piece of paper: Beechwood Care Home. 01603900201. ‘The nursing home where she ended up.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I tucked the note into the back pocket of my jeans. ‘There’s a small chance they still have some of her things.’

  ‘Possibly. When she left here she asked me to collect a silly box from her bedroom to bring to the hospital. She said it contained photographs and letters, and other things. I guess, even though she was optimistic about her return, she removed them as a precaution. As I said, she kept things to herself. Something she’d been used to doing.’ Liz shrugged and her glasses slipped down her nose a fraction.

  I wished I could remember what Felicity looked like, how she behaved in the company of my parents. I thought hard and pictured a woman with bronze skin, wrinkled and weather worn. It reminded me she hadn’t gained that swarthy app
earance living in Norfolk.

  ‘Because she was different?’ I suggested

  ‘Different?’ Liz pulled a face.

  ‘Mixed raced.’

  Liz lowered her voice. ‘It didn’t bother me nor Tony. I expect she’d got the odd look with her dark skin and pale eyes. Some of the locals didn’t think it appropriate for her to live in this house.’ Liz’s cheeks blushed as bright as her lips. ‘Not many, just a few,’ she swiftly added.

  I frowned, disheartened by the notion I might be living amongst the narrow-minded. ‘I’d thought such things didn’t matter so much these days.’

  ‘Oh, maybe not now, but back in the sixties and seventies people were a little more prejudiced.’

  ‘Because her mother was Indian? I know she was born in India.’

  She puckered her plump lips, creating a ring of wrinkles about her mouth. ‘To be honest, I don’t think it was her colour. She wasn’t that dark, not like some. No, it was because her mother and father never married, even after his first wife died.’ The pause tested my patience. I urged her on with nod. ‘She was the outcome of an adulterous affair. Her brother, John, had refused to speak to her or her mother. According to Felicity, after their father died, John returned to England leaving her behind and washed his hands of them. It was only when both her mother and brother passed away that she left India.’

  Her brother – my grandfather – a man who’d died long before I’d been born, when my mother had been a small child. ‘So he lived in the house up until then?’

  ‘What? Oh no. Hated the place, I gather. His father had rented it out during his time in India and John carried on the duty of landlord. Several families lived in this house for three or more decades. My late father remembered John visiting occasionally; he’d stay in the pub. Dad knew quite a bit about our neighbours – the tenants; he liked to call by and chat.’

  ‘My grandfather made an impression, if your father remembered him.’