‘I’ll think about it. But I did sleep pretty well, thank you.’
‘That’s all right, then. I just thought you looked a bit peaky. You don’t mind me asking?’
‘Of course not.’ The questions, surely too many for casual interest, made me decide to probe a little on my own account. ‘As a matter of fact, I did have a bad dream.’
‘That’s nasty, when you’re alone in the house. What was it about, then?’
Certainly not casual. ‘I’ve forgotten,’ I said indifferently. ‘No – there was something in it about music. But you know how it is with dreams. They seem terribly vivid, but as soon as you wake up, they’ve gone.’
‘I thought maybe it was about me, seeing as it was a bad dream.’ She laughed merrily, looking at me sideways.
‘Do you know,’ I said slowly, ‘I think you did come into it somewhere … But that sounds rude, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. There’s a dog barking at night – it seems quite near. Do you know whose it is, and where? It sounds – well, I wondered if it was all right.’
‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure. You get used to the noise after a bit, in the country. I’ve never noticed.’
‘Well, never mind. I must get back now. Oh, Mrs Trapp—’
‘Agnes. Do call me Agnes.’
‘Agnes, then. When will the brambles be ripe enough for jam?’
‘If this sun goes on, another week and you might find plenty. They grow down this way, along the road you came.’
‘I know, I saw them.’
‘You make your own, then?’
‘Oh, yes. That is, if I can find the recipe. Miss Saxon seems to have left quite a stock of sugar. I’d rather make jelly than jam with the brambles, but I never can remember quantities, and my own books haven’t come yet. Have you got a good one?’
‘I have, but you use Miss Saxon’s. She has lots of books, you’ll find a recipe somewhere. She was always trying things, and if they came out well, she’d write them down herself. Her jams and such were real lovely, better than anyone else’s.’
‘Oh? I will, then, if I can find it. Didn’t she give it to you?’
‘She never gave her recipes to no one. But if you do find her book, and you don’t mind, I’d be right pleased to see it. I did look in the kitchen when I had the books down to clean, but it wasn’t there. I reckon it would be in the still-room, along with the concoctions she made up there. Wine and such she would make, cordials she called them, and very good they were. But the last year or so she didn’t bother so much. You ever made wines yourself?’
‘No, but I’d like to learn. I’ll look out for the recipes, and we might have a go.’
‘I’d take that kindly. You do your own baking as well?’ Eyeing the bread flour in my basket. ‘You got your rations all right, then? And that’s a nice chicken, Bolter’s, was it? You’ve been lucky there, and I see he let you have two eggs. Like gold they are these days, so watch those tins don’t break them. I can let you have a box for them if you like.’
‘Thanks, but it’s not worth it. I’m nearly home, and I’m being careful. I’ll only get one a week after this; I had two weeks’ rations to pick up today.’
‘Well,’ said Agnes, ‘when you get to know folks better …’ She let it hang, then added, meaningly: ‘I never knew your aunty go short.’
‘It looks like it. Her store cupboard’s a sight for sore eyes. Well, goodbye, Agnes. It’s a lovely drying day, isn’t it? I’ve got some washing out, and it’ll be ready for ironing by now, I expect.’
When I got home I wheeled the cycle straight round to the shed, and was startled to see that the back door stood open. William appeared on the step.
‘William! How did you get in?’
He ignored the question. He was bright with excitement. ‘Oh, Miss Geillis! Did you know Hodge was back?’
‘Yes. He came back last night. But William, how did you get into the house? It’s all right, I don’t mind, seeing it’s you, but I was so sure I’d locked the doors, and I know the back door was bolted. I went out by the front.’
‘Oh, there’s a broken sneck on the back kitchen window. It’s been bust for ages, but Miss Geillis never bothered. When I got here Hodge was sitting on the sill, and I thought he’d just come home and was hungry, so I climbed in and got him some milk. You really don’t mind?’
‘No.’
‘You said he would come back! How did you find him? Where was he?’
‘He came back himself, late last night. He was dreadfully hungry, and he looked as if he’d had a bad fright. William, did you know Miss Geillis kept pigeons?’
‘Yes, of course. In the attic. All the birds used to come in. I used to help her feed them. But just before she went to hospital someone came with a big basket and took them away. Let me carry yours for you. Gosh, it’s heavy. Oh, you got two tins of cat food, and doesn’t the fish smell! I needn’t have asked if you knew Hodge was back! It looks as if he’s the only one going to eat.’
I laughed as I followed him into the house. ‘I got a chicken, and two whole eggs, so I won’t starve yet awhile unless Hodge helps me with that, too.’
‘He probably will. But I brought you some eggs. My dad sent them. That’s why I came over. There’s a dozen, all brown ones. I put them on the kitchen table.’
‘Why, how lovely! Thank you very much. Please thank your father for me. Where do you live, William?’
‘Over towards Tidworth. It’s called Boscobel. At least, it used to be called Taggs Farm, but Dad changed the name.’
‘Boscobel’s nicer than Taggs Farm. Is your father a farmer, then?’
‘No. It’s not a farm now, it’s just a house. Dad writes.’
‘Writes what?’
‘Books. I’ve never read one, not right through, that is. I tried once, but it was a bit dry. He’s pretty famous, I think, but it’s not his real name.’
‘What is it?’
‘Peter Vaughan. Have you read them?’
‘I’m afraid not. But I do know the name. I’ll have to look for his books, now that I’ve met you. Is he writing just now?’
‘Yes, and it puts him in an awful temper most of the time. So I come out,’ said William, simply. ‘He can’t do with me around the house at such times.’
It sounded like an echo of something often said. I smiled. ‘And your mother? Does she hide away from him, too?’
‘She does better than that. She left us.’ His tone was quite indifferent. ‘Has Hodge had his dinner?’
‘Yes. He had it before I went out. But you can give him some of the fish, if you like, while I get my things off.’
When I came back into the kitchen Hodge was under the table with his chin in a saucer, with William kneeling beside him. The boy’s face was rapt, loving. I thought of my own childhood, so rich in practical care, so starved of the real needs of the lonely and imaginative child. I had wondered why a lively boy seemed happy to spend so much time, first with my cousin, who was old enough to be his grandmother, and now apparently with me. Much was now explained, the self-absorbed father, the absent mother, the long days of the school holiday. There was no need to feel pangs of conscience about letting him stay and help; presumably his father knew where he was; but one day soon I would have to find my way to Boscobel and make myself known there, and find out if the child was needed at his own home or not.
William looked up. ‘What are you thinking about? You look kind of sad.’
‘Not sad,’ I said, ‘and nothing much.’
The first was true, the second a lie. I was thinking three things. The first was that Agnes Trapp had examined the contents of my basket, and had not seen fit to remark on the couple of tins of cat food, and the damp, smelly parcel of fish scraps that cushioned the eggs from them. She who remarked on everything.
Hence, she knew that Hodge was home.
She had also asked, with some interest, how I had slept last night.
And thirdly, th
ere had been a way into the house last night, for someone who knew the sneck on the back window was broken. If William could climb in and unfasten the door, so could Jessamy.
It was crazy, it was in itself a nightmare, but was it possible that Agnes and her son Jessamy had really been in my bedroom last night, and that they had carried in the grass and the dead leaf? That in the moment between, sleeping and waking they had been in very fact bending over my bed, and had seen Hodge then – even a glimpse of him as, presumably, he had jumped off my pillow and fled into hiding?
But why? William had told me that Agnes had had the place upside down ‘looking for something,’ and I had certainly arrived too soon for her. I had declined her help in my cleaning, and since then had kept the doors locked. But it really was absurd. If she had wanted to search the house she would do far better to wait till I was out, like today, than break in at night, with the risk of waking me … Unless, of course, she could have drugged my sleep. More and more absurd. And how and when? While I was upstairs in the bathroom? The sound I had heard? Easier still, the pie she had given me for supper? Some drug dropped in it to make me sleep heavily, which had induced that incredible nightmare of flight and fantasy? Forget it, Gilly, and don’t pretend the woman is anything but perfectly friendly and helpful, or that there’s anything weird about this place or anything to do with it, because Thornyhold is heaven and you love it.
‘William,’ I said suddenly, ‘what time did you come along here – to the house, I mean?’
‘About two o’clock. You can’t have been gone long, because Mrs Trapp came up just after, and said she’d seen you go out the main gate.’
‘She was here?’
Something in my tone caught at him. He eyed me. ‘Yes.’
‘Why did she come?’
‘She didn’t say. She just said how funny that you’d washed the sheets again when they were just fresh on, and were the eggs for you and she would put them in the pantry and take the sheets in because they were dry. So I said she couldn’t because the doors were locked and you’d taken the back door key and I was going to do some gardening and wait for you myself.’
I was silent.
‘I’d locked the door again, you see. When I’d given Hodge his milk I came out again to get the eggs – I couldn’t carry them when I climbed in – and then I saw her coming through the wood and so I just shut the door and put the key in my pocket.’
I took a breath. ‘She’ll think I don’t trust her,’ I said uncertainly.
‘Miss Geillis didn’t. She told me so.’
‘Oh?’ Some relic of my Victorian upbringing made me feel how unsuitable it was to let a child talk so, but William was more sensible than a lot of adults I had known. Besides, I needed to know. ‘Did you tell her Hodge was back? Or did she see him?’
‘No. He went upstairs after he’d had the milk. I didn’t tell her because she hates Hodge, and he hates her. That’s why he went. After Miss Geillis died, Mrs Trapp was going to drown him.’
‘William!’
‘It’s true. I heard her say so.’
‘Who to?’
‘Jessamy. He’s all right, actually, but he’s a bit simple, and he is scared of her, and does what she tells him.’
‘I see.’ A lot was beginning to explain itself. I decided to treat his fears as rational. ‘So that’s why you were so worried about Hodge’s disappearance?’ He nodded. ‘And about the saucers that weren’t touched?’
‘Yes. I didn’t tell you for fear of upsetting you, too.’
‘You know, the saucers were probably quite all right. You didn’t find the place strewn with dead birds and voles, did you?’
‘No.’ He smiled then, relieved, I thought, at not being laughed at.
I was, indeed, far from laughing. I said slowly, after a pause: ‘Well, look, William, this may all be true, but one needs to be on good terms with one’s neighbours, so just go easy with Mrs Trapp, will you, even if you don’t like her? Or even if, much more important, Hodge doesn’t like her? So far she’s been very good to me, and I want it to stay that way. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said William the sensible. ‘She was good to Dad and me, too. Made cakes and things for us, and she’s a smashing cook. But she used to stay around and talk, and Dad couldn’t take it. I told you, I get chased out myself when he’s busy. I don’t mind her really. It’s only because of Hodge.’
‘She was probably joking about Hodge. It can’t be easy to drown a full-grown cat, even if he would have let her catch him. Anyway, he’s all right now.’
‘We all are,’ said William, half to himself, half to Hodge, who was sitting back from the saucer and starting to wash his face. ‘I’ll go on with some weeding now, if you like?’ He paused in the doorway. ‘By the way, did you notice that your bicycle pump had come back? It’s on the shelf in the shed. Flew, I expect.’
14
The year drew on into a lovely autumn. The days went by, bright and still, or with a breeze that lifted a few leaves from the trees. The horse chestnuts turned first, a rich golden yellow, then the cherries, to scarlet and saffron and jade. No frosts as yet. In the garden asters and chrysanthemums smelled rich and sweet. I found autumn crocus one morning just beside the front door, and on the Garrya against the north wall the grape-bloomed catkins were beginning to lengthen for winter.
I had never worked so hard, physically, in my life, and had certainly never been so happy. My luggage came, and with it the furniture and household effects that I had kept from the vicarage, so, before these could be arranged, I started on the promised turnout of the house. Drawing-room, den, dining-room, hallway – I swept, scrubbed, polished. One day Jessamy Trapp came up with his mother, and offered to climb up and clear the roof gutters. Agnes came two or three times, with renewed offers, insistent ones, of help, so that I began to wonder if she needed the money, and in the end set her to scrub out the old kitchen and back premises, and then, I am afraid with intent, to do the same for the pigeon-loft. To do her justice, she did the jobs well, but it seemed that the pigeon-loft was enough, for, after I had thanked her and paid her, she did not come back, and I was left in peace.
At length the house, scoured, polished and smelling of autumn flowers, was as clean as it would ever be. I spent two or three satisfying days rearranging the rooms to accommodate my own things, leaving the picture-hanging – always a slow job – till last. I had rehung most of the pictures from the hall and drawing-room after cleaning them, but had kept one or two aside to make way for my own – flower studies I had done some time ago, which my father had thought good enough to frame. These, I thought, might go well enough with Cousin Geillis’s pictures, which were all water colours, pretty things, the sort you can live with. Her taste had been conventional and gentle: all her spirit and energy, it seemed, had gone into her care for garden and still-room.
One of her pictures intrigued me. It was a tinted drawing, very much faded, of Thornyhold seen from the belvedere, its south front, bare of creepers and climbing plants, looking vaguely unfamiliar. The garden, too, was different, with paths cutting curved lines through close-mown grass, and flower beds crowding between. The enclosing hedges were barely breast high.
There was nothing surprising about finding a ‘view’ of the house done many years ago, but what aroused my curiosity was the signature, a monogram of a G and an S entwined. Geillis Saxon? She had surely never seen Thornyhold when it looked like that? She could not even have been alive at the time. Then who? Not another Geillis, that was too fanciful … But the very fancy stirred something in me that had been forgotten for too long. Studying the ordered lawns and shrubberies of the old Thornyhold, I felt myself seized, for the first time since my schooldays, by the old longing to paint. Not ‘to be an artist’, no ambitions after London exhibitions, or dreams of vast canvases hung on gallery walls, but a desire to record some of the beauty around me, to put Thornyhold, quite literally, back in the picture. I would start this very week, and soon, when my hand was in agai
n, I would tackle this same view of the house as I had seen it – recognised it – with so much love on that first day. And with the work, somehow, stake my own claim to Thornyhold.
Meantime the garden, like the house, must be brought to order.
William had come from time to time, as he had promised, to help me with the garden. Between us we got the front strip weeded and tidied for the winter, and made a start on the kitchen garden and herb beds. Most of Cousin Geillis’s harvest would be wasted, because I knew very little as yet about the picking and drying of her plants, but I could deal with the potherbs, and brought in rosemary and sage and thyme and sprigs of sweet bay, and hunted out the jars for my bramble jelly. There was no orchard fruit to gather (if the Trapps had taken it during the interregnum, that was fair enough) but there would be wild blackberries in plenty. If I could lay hands on Cousin Geillis’s famous recipe book I might find new ways of using what was left of the garden produce.
But search as I might, I found nothing except an ancient volume of country recipes collected years ago by the local Women’s Institute. Whatever was special about my cousin’s preserves would just have to be missed; the jams and jellies in the WI book made luscious enough reading, and for the present would have to serve.
So one beautiful day I gave myself a holiday, and went blackberrying.
William had given me rough directions. Through the wicket at the side of the house, along the woodland path, then up a lane, which was rutted but passable, and led eventually, he told me, to an ancient quarry set in pasture land. This, long since disused, was overgrown with blackberry bushes, and, since it caught all the sun, ripened them beautifully.
I tied a basket to my bicycle, and set off. It was a roughish ride, and it took me some three or four miles, but by road it would have been fully six or more. The afternoon sun shone down with real heat on the quarry, and the wind could find no way there. Rabbits fled at my approach, scuttling up the steep byways of the rock face, to vanish among the stones. There was water at the quarry’s base, a pool surrounded by fine, sheep-nibbled turf. The sheep, indeed, were still there, but moved off at my approach. Their dismal bleating echoed from the quarry cliff, and was answered loudly and sweetly by a robin’s song. There were no other sounds. The wild thyme was still in flower, and here and there harebells hung motionless in the windless air.