‘I like old houses,’ Becky said.
‘Well, there are hundreds of them around here,’ I said. ‘This must have been quite a hoity-toity area at one time. Now, people like us live here.’
‘Who lives in that green place down the road?’ Simon asked. ‘Looks pretty run down. More students, by any chance?’
‘Don’t think anybody lives there,’ Tara told him. ‘Last we heard, it was going to be knocked down and they were going to build pretend houses there. You know, the ones that are all red brick and patio and last about twenty years before the cardboard goes soggy between the rooms. The ones that sell for risible amounts to young executives.’
‘What a waste! It’s enormous. And the silly bits on it – it looks like a Victorian wedding cake!’
Tara sighed. ‘Ah, that’s progress you see. Destroy the country’s heritage and smother it with disposable eyesores.’
‘Is it haunted, do you think?’ Al asked, rolling his eyes and making ghoulish faces.
Tara laughed. ‘Honey, any house that big and old is haunted! At least, I bet anyone going in there will be scared shitless whether it is or not. It must have seen so much, so many lives...’
I recognised the warning signals that Tara was about to become philosophical; a state of mind unsatisfied unless it provoked arguments. One glance at the nearly empty Jack Daniels bottle confirmed my fears.
‘Why don’t we go and see?’ I said, brightly. They all looked at me; sprawling around, stuffed, lazy and warm. Nobody wanted to move. It would be cold outside. ‘Oh, come on!’ I cajoled. ‘We could do with some exercise. I can hardly move.’
‘Neither can I, nor do I want to,’ Tara said.
Becky pressed closer to her beloved Al, pouting prettily for the benefit of the attendant males and mimicking the shivers.
‘I’d like to,’ Simon said.
At that point, I had to concede he was certainly the better looking of the two and I saw Tara and Becky stir themselves towards him like sun-glutted lizards. Suddenly house exploration seemed like a good idea.
It was cold outside and damp too; streets all wet and shining. Tara took hold of Simon’s arm, marching into the lead. Dominic and I looked at each other assessively for a moment before deciding we’d forego the bodily contact. He hunched into his leather jacket, I hunched into mine and we walked behind the others, some distance apart. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ he said. ‘It’s like something out of a cheapskate horror movie.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I replied, rather stiffly. ‘Everyone goes in that place, I’m sure. It’s fuck-city. Nobody has ever disappeared or even been scared in there, to my knowledge.’
‘Have you been there before, then?’ A double-edged question, I felt.
‘No.’ I fixed him with a gorgon stare. ‘Always meant to. I was curious but never got round to it.’
He stared back speculatively, wondering whether all that was a double entendre or not.
While this sparkling repartee was going on, we’d arrived in front of the empty house. Becky started going on about how she wished she was rich and could afford to buy such a place etc. The front gates, gowned in dead convolvulus and rust, were padlocked, so we all had to scramble over the wall. Tara and I went first and headed off up the drive. We knew what eruptions could be expected from Becky playing helpless female and didn’t have to say a word to each other about wanting to avoid it; we just vacated the area swiftly.
Lamp House, it was called. Lamp House. Why? It had a rakish look to it; knew it was past it, didn’t give a shit. This is me, it said, uncompromising. Half of the external woodwork had gone. It would have cost several fortunes to restore the place.
Simon and Dominic came scampering up behind us; further back Becky was complaining to Al about some ravagement to her tights.
‘We could be in the middle of nowhere,’ Simon said, clearly impressed.
A fat, waxing moon illuminated the scene but we had still been organised enough to bring torches. The grounds to Lamp House were flat and, if once lawns and borders and all that business, now only weak scrub. Trees formed a thick border round the edge but grew nowhere else. Clearly, the garden had never been landscaped properly. Soon it would all be cheerful estate populated by middle executives and their cosmetic families. I experienced a deep, resonating pang of sad frustration, sharing Becky’s desire to be rich, to be the saviour of this grand old folly. Behind us, I could still hear her going on about what she’d do with it, if she had the money.
The blistered front door was impenetrable and the lower windows all boarded up against the soulless attentions of the local youth. Naturally, such obstacles had been overcome some time ago by determined explorers and we found a back door that was open a few inches. It was a gap just wide enough to squeeze through; the door wouldn’t move a fraction either way. Simon went in first and switched on his torch, the rest of us piling in behind rather tentatively.
It had crossed my mind that Lamp House might be regularly occupied at night by characters I wouldn’t want to stumble over, and I don’t mean supernatural ones. We were in the first of a series of rooms that had probably been domestic-staff territory in Lamp House’s days of glory. The presence of illicit occupants, either present or past, was evidenced by the fact that all the woodwork had been ripped away, even the floorboards here and there. We guessed it had all been used as fuel by tramps, junkies, or lovers seeking warmth.
In single file, we ventured further into the house. Wounds upon the passage walls, revealing gouged plaster, showed where the panelling had been torn away. We had to be careful where we walked because of the vandalised floors. It made me think about how it wouldn’t be easy to make a fast getaway from Lamp House. I wasn’t scared though; it was all rather depressing. I’m sure no ghosts could have stomached such a raped and ransacked environment. The place was dead.
We gathered in the front hall and shone our torches around. Cleaner patches on the yellow walls showed where furniture and paintings had once lived. The tiled floor was mostly intact, surprisingly, but the banisters had gone, the stairs leading up into a predictable, sepulchral gloom.
Tara came and took hold of my arm. ‘God, it makes me want to cry,’ she said. ‘Just imagine if the guy who’d built this place could see it now!’
‘Bloody kids and vagrants!’ Becky exclaimed.
‘No, antique dealers, dear,’ Tara said dryly, and went to stand at the foot of the stairs, looking up. ‘The panelling and banisters alone must have been worth a bit.’
We took a look around the ground floor rooms. It wasn’t mentioned aloud, but no one felt like going upstairs. What had promised to be an adventure back at the flat now felt as if we were examining a vandalised family mausoleum. All that was missing were the blackened bones kicked carelessly around the floor so that whoever had come for profit could get at the mahogany coffins. I wanted to go home. This wasn’t fun at all. We were a sensitive lot; we all cared about poor old Lamp House.
‘Now I wonder why no one took this,’ Simon said. We were in a room at the front of the house with French windows at the far end. There was a huge, black, empty hole in the wall where a posh fireplace had once stood. It must have been beautiful at one time, perhaps a dining room, for there was a fairly large table standing in the middle of it on what remained of a carpet. Even to me, and I know nothing about furniture, it seemed an interesting piece; carved legs, sturdily built. Hopelessly mauled, of course, and covered with the detritus of previous visitors; yellowed newspapers, remains of crisp packets and beer cans, various lumps of unrecognisable material and an undeniable dried dollop of faeces that looked uncomfortably human. Al wandered over to take a look, shining his torch up and down the room, while Tara, Dominic and I hovered near the doorway. Becky was still poking about in the hall.
‘Think this is worth something?’ Simon asked Al.
‘How should I know?’ Al replied touchily.
I thought, ‘Ah, he’s not that impressed with boy wonder e
ither,’ and immediately felt justified about my slight antipathy towards Simon.
‘Doesn’t everyone recognise something worthwhile when they see it?’ Simon continued, undaunted.
At that point, Becky came noisily through the door. When she saw the table, she gave a twitter of delight and danced over to it, like some disarmingly gauche heroine out of an American teenage movie. ‘Al, look!’ she squealed. ‘It’s divine. It’s unique!’
‘It’s still here,’ Tara said to me, and her look was more cynical than usual in the light of the torches.
Al, brightening up with his usual goofy, self-effacing humour (the life-saving trait which Tara and I were sure was responsible for him being able to put up with Becky), started cracking jokes about how it was a crap table. Ha, ha. From Becky’s enthusiastic noises, it seemed logical to conclude the dizzy bitch wanted to take it home with her somehow. Simon, Dominic, Tara and I had unconsciously started to back towards the door.
‘It’s just what I want,’ Becky said, ‘and we can’t afford to buy one. Those second-hand stores are such rip-offs! We could put it under the window, you know. Al. Al!’
‘Beck, it’s filthy!’ Al pointed out to her. ‘And how could we get it out of here anyway? The only open door’s stuck and everywhere else is boarded up.’
‘Don’t be such a wimp!’ Becky replied and shouted over to us, ‘Come on, you lot, give me a hand.’ Nobody moved.
‘Al’s right, Becky,’ Tara said. ‘And not only do we have a door problem, but the gate is padlocked too, remember? I don’t fancy hauling this thing over the wall. Anyway, people would see us and I suppose it’s a kind of stealing, isn’t it?’
‘From who?’
‘Property developers?’
‘It’s been left here,’ Becky insisted. ‘Probably isn’t worth much to a dealer or anyone, but it’s just fine for me. Oh, come on, help me, please?’ She can be charming when she wants to be. Sighing, Dominic and Simon went over, rubbing their hands. Tara and I went into the hall.
‘She’s mad,’ I observed. We could already hear her calling out instructions and the rattle, rustle and crash of garbage sliding to the floor.
‘They won’t get it out of here,’ Tara said. ‘Come on. Let’s leave them to it. Let’s go home.’
We went back and put the coffeepot on. Tara lay down on the best sofa and described what she’d like to do with Simon if given the opportunity. I cleared the plates from the room and put milk into mugs, deliberately refraining from comment on that score. ‘I wonder where they are? It’s nearly half past one.’
‘Probably trying to explain to a policeman why they’re nicking firewood,’ Tara replied. ‘If they got that table over the wall at all, I doubt it’s still in one piece. Must have weighed a ton. Christ, they could be at the hospital for all we know!’
‘That girl is an asshole.’
Tara sat up, grinning. ‘Don’t be stupid. Nice young ladies like that don’t have assholes.’
‘Unless you count Al.’
‘True, but he’s more of a masochist with a self-image problem than an asshole!’
With such banter, we started to drink the coffee, adopting one of our favourite late night topics; what Al saw in Becky and why.
At two o’clock, Becky swept triumphantly into our front room and announced, ‘Well, we got it.’
They certainly had.
It had taken the men an hour to haul the damn thing out of the house, force the back door open wide, stagger down the drive and drag the table over the wall. Luckily, it was not as heavy as it looked and in the unflattering light of our downstairs hall, did not appear to be very much of an antique at all, but a recent copy of something older. The surface was stained and scratched, all the polish gone, bits of the carving were missing and it didn’t smell too sweet either. Becky seemed oblivious to its shortcomings. In the morning, she planned to have another day off from her job and start work on restoring it. After examining her haul, the rest of us retired back upstairs for a quick coffee before bed. Much to Tara’s displeasure, Simon and Dominic didn’t stay for long and Simon made no intimation at all about wanting to get to know Tara better. The evening ended on rather a sour note.
The next morning our landlady, Mrs. Cryer, turned up. She’s a decent sort; rich, old, a bit scatty, but generous. She has agents to handle the property and rent collection but likes to drop in from time to time to see how the old place is getting on and to have a chat. We gathered her family used to live here. I was in the front room, working on a new design with the door open, because Tara had just popped out for some supplies, when I heard Mrs. Cryer’s unmistakeable fluty voice come wavering up the stairs. ‘Tara, Jo!’ She always shouts out to us when she arrives. Tara says it’s a trait left over from when her people used to have servants or something.
I called out a hello, but her voice came back more urgently, ‘Tara! Jo! Please!’
I thought she’d hurt herself and came hurtling out of the flat still clutching pencil and rubber. I leaned over the banister. ‘You alright, Mrs. C?’ I could see her wrinkly, powdered face looking up at me all confused.
‘Jo, hello darling! There’s something horrid down here in the hall!’
‘Something horrid? Hold on a min, Mrs. C. I’ll be right down.’
The horrid something turned out to be Becky’s table. I did a quick explaining job. ‘She’s going to clean it up today, don’t worry. I’ll get them to move it upstairs.’
‘But what does she want it for and where did she get it?’ Mrs. Cryer was still puzzled.
‘She thinks it’s unusual. It came from Lamp House, the old green place down the road.’
Mrs. Cryer made a strange dismissive, half-disgusted, half-disinterested noise. ‘I’ve better tables than this in my attic,’ she said scornfully. ‘Rebecca could have had one of those if she’d asked.’
‘I don’t think she knew she wanted one until she saw it,’ I said. ‘But if you’ve got any spare, we could do with another table.’
‘Of course, dear. I’ve a lovely old piece with little lion feet. A bit marked, but you could put a runner on it.’
Feeling pleased with myself, and not a little smug, I invited Mrs. Cryer up for a coffee. She sat down vaguely on the rickety sofa, so I had to move her, wondering whether I ought to enquire whether her attic stock ran to sofas as well as tables.
It didn’t look right, Mrs. Cryer sitting there, gripping a big, thick mug in her dainty, papery hand, but we haven’t any fancier crockery. She didn’t appear to notice though, still holding out her little finger and asking, with a roguish, naughty-girl glint in her eye, if I’d mind if she smoked. Shaking my head and even accepting one of her black, Russian, horribly vile but posy, cigarettes, I asked her about Lamp House.
‘Family went under,’ she said in a condescending tone, nodding and winking. ‘They were never people to know, the Ruttickers. When I was a girl, the daughter, what was her name… oh, Celia, was always trying to get in, but we’d have none of it, of course.’
‘Why was that, Mrs. C.?’ I hoped that wasn’t an indelicate question.
‘Suspect background,’ she answered darkly.
Tara came in then. There was a flutter of greetings, more table talk, and Mrs. Cryer said, ‘I’m not sure if I approve of Rutticker furniture in my property,’ but from the way she said it, we knew it was a bit of a joke.
‘Tell us about the scandals, then,’ Tara said.
‘Scandals, dear?’
‘Well, there must be some.’
‘We never talk about that family,’ Mrs. Cryer said firmly. ‘The last Rutticker left Lamp House about forty years ago.’
‘It’s been left to decay since then?’
‘I think it was rented out for a while. It’s been empty for a long time, though.’
We couldn’t get much more out of her than that. She wanted to tell us about the latest antics of her neighbours, an ongoing soap opera. We felt we knew them as well as she did, although we’d never met
the people. Before she left, she made us promise to get Becky to move the table from the hall as soon as possible.
Tara went straight over and knocked on Becky’s door. Somehow, she was roped into helping clean the relic up and I spent the rest of the day in glorious peace, lost in the euphoria of a creative surge.
Two weeks later, Becky and Al invited the rest of us in for a meal, to be eaten off the Rutticker table and to celebrate Becky’s success in restoring it. When we arrived, we found it had been pulled into the middle of the room, where it gleamed seductively beneath the light of a dozen candles. ‘Wow!’ I said, genuinely impressed. ‘You’ve done a great job on it, Beck!’
‘All thanks to my help,’ Tara added, breezily, and swept into the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.
‘She didn’t do that much!’ Becky said sharply, and with a touch of venom that was most unlike her. I wondered if she and Tara had quarrelled. It happened occasionally, mainly because Tara took a sadistic pleasure in flirting with Al, knowing how it wound Becky up into a frenzied ball. Becky was an irritant and, I thought, rather stupid, but she wasn’t spiteful at all. Tonight, she wore a definitely mean look. Perhaps not Tara, then. Perhaps Al had done something we’d all be praying for – been unfaithful or answered her back. Miracles might happen.
So: Simon and Dom arriving and then down to the meal. Bare arms in the candlelight and soft, witty conversation drifting across the glossy surface? Hardly. For a start, Becky whinged and bickered at Al all evening and hardly spoke to Dominic and Simon, so the atmosphere wasn’t exactly congenial, until everyone had drunk enough to ignore her. The meal wasn’t that great either. Perhaps eaten off knees in front of Al and Beck’s TV as per our usual habits, it wouldn’t have tasted so boring. Perhaps we should only have eaten venison and consommé off Becky’s elegant restored furniture; I don’t know. Anyway, Tara, never one to mince words, pushed back her plate half-finished and said, ‘Not up to the usual standard, chef.’
Normally, Becky would come back with the nearest she could manage to a smart remark. This time, she merely glowered at her plate. Her face went bright red, but she said nothing. Tara didn’t notice. She was up to her usual trick of trying to allure Simon.