Rose Cottage (21 page)

No one came.

I went in and started work.

At half past four I stopped for tea, reasonably satisfied. The floors were clean, the fire relaid, the exposed walls and skirting swept clear of cobwebs, and the windows bright. I went up to my bedroom, brought the bedside rug downstairs, and laid it in front of the fireplace. It was too small, and the colours had faded and worn to various shades of grey, but it covered the frayed edge of the lino, and was a distinct improvement. Even so, the room looked deserted and pathetic, with its bare walls and empty mantelpiece. I supposed that pictures and ornaments, even things like the brass candlesticks and the china ducks, gave life and spirit to the place,
because they were someone’s choice, they were loved. The Unseen Guest, which was still there, did very little to help. Home is where the heart is, and the heart had gone out of Rose Cottage. Soon, now, it would be a shell of its old self, waiting for the builders to ‘improve’ it ready for its new tenants.

I still don’t know what made me, at that moment, do what I did. There on the table beside me lay my pen and the writing pad with the list for the removers. I tore the list off and threw it into the fireplace, then sat down and started to write a letter.

Not to my mother. To Lady Brandon. To ask if she would reconsider her plans for the cottage, and would either let it or sell it to me. I was still not too sure of my plans, I told her, but since coming back here I had realised that I would very much like to keep my old home. If she preferred to let it to me, I would do my best to put it in good order and keep it so, but I would really like to buy it. I would be very happy to let her see any plans I made for its improvement … and so on. I had not yet, I wrote, mentioned this to my grandmother, but I would be coming back to Strathbeg soon and would, if her ladyship would like me to, come and talk to her and Sir James about it. I did very much hope that they would see their way to letting me have the cottage. I was …

I hesitated. I would normally have been theirs sincerely, Kate Herrick, but somehow the words weren’t there. I finished the letter as I might have finished it ten years ago:
Yours faithfully, Kathy. (Mrs Herrick.)

The signature was in its way an omen. I was a cottager again.

I looked up from addressing the envelope, my heart jumping. The garden gate had creaked.

Someone was coming up the path.

Not Lilias. Just Mrs Pascoe, coming in a hurry, carrier bag in hand.

‘Oh, Kathy! You’ve never been and done it all yourself! I meant all along to come and help clear after they’d gone, but I didn’t think they’d be here so early. Ted Blaney said they nearly beat him to it.’

‘It’s sweet of you, but there wasn’t a lot to do. They were pretty good. There was only Aunt Betsy’s room to clear upstairs. I shut the door on the others.’ I was watching for an indication that Davey had changed his mind and told her about our findings, but she gave no sign of it. She dumped the carrier bag on the table and looked about her.

‘Looks funny without the sideboard, doesn’t it? She’ll be glad to have her things round her again, though. She was always fond of that sideboard. Did you pack her tea set, the one with the rosebuds?’

‘Yes. Everything I thought she’d like, whether it was on the list or not. Did you come over from the Hall?’

‘Yes. The men are real busy today. The plumbers have come – and not before time – and there’s a lot to get sorted. Jim had to come home to pick something up, so I got a lift back with the van. They won’t get home for their tea till late, so if there’s any more clearing up to be done, I’ll give you a hand. I brought my apron along.’

‘Thanks very much, but I’ve done all I mean to do, for the time being anyway. There’s only Aunt Betsy’s room to do upstairs, and I’ve shut the door on that, too. I was just knocking off for a cup of tea, if you’d like one?’

‘Never refuse a good offer,’ said Mrs Pascoe comfortably, ‘and here was I hoping you’d say just that. Here,’ fishing in the carrier bag, ‘I’ve been baking, and I brought you some gingerbread. I mind how you always liked my gingerbread. And after tea, if you like, I’ll turn your Aunt Betsy’s room out for you.’

‘Well, thanks, that’d be great. Pretty nearly everything’s gone from there.’

‘Your own room’s all right? Davey did say you’d got all you need, but you know you’re welcome to come up to us if it’s more comfortable for you.’

‘Yes, he did ask me, but thanks all the same, I’ll be fine here.’

‘You’re staying on for a bit, Ted Blaney says?’

Ted Blaney seemed to have said rather a lot. ‘Yes. One or two more days, perhaps. I’ve no definite plans yet.’ I poured tea. ‘The gingerbread looks gorgeous. Fancy you remembering that.’

‘There’s not much I could forget about you, nor
about your poor mother either.’ She looked round the bare little room, and to my discomfort I saw her eyes brim with tears. She sniffed, smiled, and batted the back of a hand against her eyes. ‘There I am for an old fool. It’s seeing the place like this, when it’s been a friend’s home for longer than I can remember.’ She drank tea, her eyes seeming to follow the flight of the shadowy ducks up the wall. ‘You’re young yet, but you’ll find it. You go through your life thinking things never will come to an end, but they do. It may be a comfort to those in pain, but it’s a sore thing to know that things you’ve loved will be gone before you are.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She set her cup down and turned to face me, dry-eyed now, but with some kind of strain showing in her normally cheerful, plump face.

‘Well, I dare say that’s why the good Lord gave us the gift of memory. But it comes hard. It was bad enough all those years ago when your mum left, poor lass, and she the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a real friend, but I never would have thought your Gran would go. I’ve been telling myself all this time that she’d be home, maybe, at the back-end, but dear knows there’s nothing for her to come back for.’ A pause, but before I could speak she said, so abruptly that it sounded like an accusation, ‘And now you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. Clearing the place out and then leaving.’

‘But I’m not leaving.’

‘Not for a day or two, you said. But that’s not what I was meaning.’

I smiled right into the troubled eyes, and pointed to the letter which lay on the table. ‘I’ve just written to Lady Brandon to ask if I may rent Rose Cottage, or better still, buy it. I hope she’ll agree.’

‘Well! Well I never! That’s good news, and I’m sure she’ll jump at it. I know she didn’t want your Gran to leave. You mean you’re going to live here again, and maybe persuade your Gran to come back?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just that I feel the way you do about the cottage. It’s my home, and I don’t want it to change or disappear. But there’s something else.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

I set my cup down. The little click it made in the saucer seemed to finalise a decision already half made while Mrs Pascoe had been talking. If, as I had surmised, Lilias and her husband were to come back to Todhall and go to see the Pascoes again, Mrs Pascoe ought to be prepared for it. Even if our guesses were to be proved wrong, it was a mistake for Davey and me to keep our discovery a secret.

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’ I spoke slowly, wondering quite how to put it. ‘It’s the reason why I’m staying on, at any rate for a time. Davey and I agreed not to tell anyone, but I think you and Uncle Jim should know. I’ll have to wait and see how to break it to Gran.’ I pushed my cup and saucer aside and turned to face her. ‘Something happened yesterday that’s changed everything.’

She had been waiting with what looked like eagerness. The sad look had gone, so that I wondered if, after all, Davey had let out some hint. Her face lit to a
delighted smile, and her cup went down into its saucer with a rap that could almost have cracked it.

‘Kathy, dearie! I’ve been hoping! If you knew how I’d hoped! And when you came back, and things happened the way they did, I was sure. It’s lovely news, lovely! But when did you – I mean, he’s said no word to me?’

‘We – well, we agreed not to.’ I hesitated, confused. ‘You were hoping? Do you mean you suspected something? But – for heaven’s sake, how on earth did you guess?’

‘Oh, I’ve known for long enough. He didn’t need to say ought, but I’m his mother, and I’ve known all these years, and never a look at anyone else, let alone walking out with them, and I’ll not soon forget what he was like when we heard you were married. He was on leave then, and that was the only time – it was Polly Walker from Fishburn, but it didn’t last even till the end of his leave, though he might have done worse, she’s a nice girl. Maybe I oughtn’t to have told you, but I know you’ll understand, and it’s just between ourselves.’

‘Of course, but look, you’ve—’

‘And then when we heard you were coming back here he – all of us – were afraid you’d have changed, and wanting different things and different ways—’

‘Aunty Annie, please, it isn’t—’

‘And when I laid eyes on you I thought, no, he can forget it, but then you were just the same, for all you’ve been away so long, and I’ve been hoping, aye, and praying, too. I’ve missed your mother something sore,
but now, maybe, with him and you settled here in Rose Cottage—’

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said desperately. ‘Listen, please! No, listen! It’s nothing to do with – with what you think. I’m sorry. It’s something quite different, not about me, or Davey, at all. It’s something we found when we were packing Gran’s things up yesterday. It’s about my mother.’

‘About Lilias?’ The colour had rushed up into her face as I spoke, but the last word brought her up sharply, her embarrassment forgotten.

‘Yes. Davey found some letters upstairs in Aunt Betsy’s room. They were hidden away. She may have meant to destroy them, but obviously she forgot, or didn’t have the chance. I understand she was taken bad very suddenly at the end.’

‘That’s so. But, letters? What letters?’

‘Letters my mother wrote, and Aunt Betsy intercepted. And’ – I swallowed – ‘this will be a shock, but not a bad one. I promise you, not a bad one. They were written, all of them,
after
the date when she was supposed to have died.’

A staring silence. A hand up to her mouth.

‘Supposed to?’

‘Yes.’ I reached a hand across the table to cover one of hers. ‘She’s still alive, Aunty Annie. We’re sure of it. And we think she and her husband have been here in Todhall recently, just this last week. I know’ – as she started to say something – ‘I’m sure they’d have come to you, but it was last weekend, when you were away somewhere at a wedding.’

‘Wedding?’ She was looking dazed. ‘Last weekend?’

‘Yes. It’s pretty certain that they came here, too; they would, of course, but they found the cottage empty, so they’ve gone, I’ve no idea where, but I think they’re bound to come back to find some trace of me, and you’d be the person they’d go to, I’m sure. So you see why I had to tell you, and why I have to stay here myself till she comes, or till we’re proved wrong?’

The flush had died from her face and she was very pale. She shook her head, not looking at me. ‘I can’t get it. I can’t see … Why? What happened? You say you’re sure, but now you say you might be wrong? Kathy, love, you wouldn’t say all this without you were certain, would you?’

‘No. It’s quite certain that she didn’t die in that accident, and that’s the main thing. The rest is a guess, but it honestly looks like a good guess. She’s been here, and if that’s so, she’ll be back.’ I got to my feet. ‘Look, just sit quiet for a minute while I make a fresh pot of tea, and then I’ll tell you the whole thing.’

The story was told, the questions, speculations, and exclamations over. We lapsed at length into an emotionally exhausted silence while the sun, wheeling lower, sent the shadows of the big trees stealing across the edge of the cottage garden, and my grandmother’s ‘evening thrush’ began his song from the top of the nearest elm.

Mrs Pascoe got to her feet. I must have looked as she did, tired but lightened, and moving as one does in a dream.

‘I’ve got to go. They’ll be finishing soon. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Whatever happens.’

‘Yes. Will you take this letter for me, please, and put it in the post? Here, you’ve forgotten your carrier.’

‘I reckon I’m not thinking straight yet.’ She sounded spent, her voice as flat as if she was talking about the week’s groceries. ‘And I never did get to help you with the cleaning. There’s that wicked old woman’s room still to do. It can wait. I couldn’t bring myself to lay duster to it after this.’

‘Forget it. I told you I shut the door on it. If I do buy the cottage I’ll have to get the vicar to do a spot of exorcism. I wonder if he knows how?’

It was a feeble attempt to break the emotional tension, but it did the trick. We laughed, and then hugged one another – something we had seldom done – and she went to the door, pausing on the threshold to say, hesitantly, ‘I don’t somehow like to leave you alone.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘I ought to be at home anyway, in case’ – that flash of joy again, this time for Lilias – ‘well, in case. But are you sure? Maybe I could ask Davey to come down – oh, no, maybe not.’ A pause, and then she went back to the question that still lay silently between us. ‘I got it wrong, didn’t I? You and Davey don’t have an understanding at all?’