Rose Cottage (6 page)

The key. I peered into the vases on the sideboard. The first one appeared to hold nothing but two hairpins, a halfpenny, and a dead moth. The other was a quarter full of papers, and the assorted small rubbish of years. Well, later would have to do. No point in starting to worry tonight. I hung the text back in its place, and – the first really important action of every homecoming – went and put the kettle on.

I finished my tea, put away the iron ration of food that I had brought to last me till morning, then, spreading a sheet of newspaper on the table, I tipped out the contents of the second vase.

A clutter of papers, a couple of clothes pegs, a toffee rather past its best, three safety pins and a thimble, and that was all. No key.

The sideboard drawers next, with the same result. No key.

I looked around me. The table drawer. The big cupboard in the alcove to the right of the fireplace. Two more vases on the mantelpiece, and a hundred other places where a tiny key might lie hidden. And then there were the back premises and the bedrooms.

It would have to wait. I had, in any case, a strong suspicion that Gran had taken the key with her to Strathbeg, and forgotten all about it. It was just the sort of thing she would have tucked away in some pocket of the enormous holdall she called her handbag, that held
everything from her purse and essential papers like ration book and identity card, along with her pills and her spectacles and her knitting and her prayer book, and other necessities of her life.

I picked up my own holdall and opened the door in the wall opposite the fireplace, which gave on the steep, enclosed staircase. My steps rapped, echoing, on bare boards. At the top was a small landing where Gran’s beloved clock stood; a miniature long-case, the kind they called a grandmother clock. I remembered its gentle chime punctuating the long days of childhood. I would set it going, I thought, before I went to bed.

My room had certainly shrunk. Two steps from the door to the foot of the iron bedstead that stood against one wall. Three from the bedside to the window sunk in the alcove under the slope of the ceiling. It was hard to believe that I had shared it with my mother. It had been her room until Aunt Betsy came to stay, after which I had moved in with her, while Gran, giving Aunt Betsy the larger of the two front rooms, had taken over my little room at the back.

I dumped the bag and went to the window. I had to stoop to see out. There was a stool in the alcove, and I knelt on that and pushed the window open to look out.

Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. The beck, wide here and quiet, slid past below the bridge. Willows and wild roses, cuckoo pint and king cups, and a wood pigeon crooning in the elms.

And someone crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate.

It was someone I knew well, my godmother Mrs Pascoe, who had been my mother’s friend and had ‘helped out’ at the Hall when there were guests to stay. She was a little older than Lilias would have been, somewhere nearing her fifties, I guessed; a capable, comfortable woman who never seemed to be either fussed or short tempered – a valuable quality in the sometimes stressful world of a crowded kitchen.

I went downstairs and opened the door to her.

‘Aunty Annie! How lovely to see you!’ We embraced warmly. ‘Do come in! And thank you for the welcome home. I had tea straight away, thanks to you, but the kettle won’t take long to boil up again if you’d like a cup—’

‘No, dearie, no. I’ll be going home soon. I just came over to see if you’d got here. I thought you might be on that train. Well’ – following me into the kitchen – ‘let’s have a look at you. You look well, Kathy. You’ve changed a bit, but then how many years is it? Six? Seven?’

‘Nearly seven, I’m afraid, but you haven’t changed at all! Not a day older! How’s Uncle Jim? And Davey?’ Davey was their son, who worked alongside his father. He was about my age, and had been in my class at the village school, and later at the Sec.

‘Oh, they’re all right. Nothing ever ails them. But what about your Gran? She didn’t sound so clever when she phoned me.’

‘I’m afraid she’s had a bad time, flu and then some gastric trouble. They took her into hospital for treatment and tests, but we hadn’t heard the result when I
came south. Did she phone you from the hospital? Well, she’s home now, but she’s keeping her bed for a bit. Look, won’t you sit down?’

‘Well, thanks, but just for a minute. I only came along to see if you had all you need.’

‘I’m fine, thanks. I brought enough for tonight, and I’ll go up to the village tomorrow. Thank you for the milk and the tea – Gran did tell me that you were coming in to fix the place up, but it was just wonderful to get here and find everything so lovely. You wouldn’t know we’d ever been away! I hope it wasn’t too dirty.’

‘It wasn’t so bad. I’ve been coming down about once a month to open up and stop the place getting damp, so there wasn’t all that to do, bar a few spiders to chase out, and a fall of plaster over by the fireplace there. But nothing to worry about, and you can see there’s no damage to the ceiling.’

I looked where she pointed, but it wasn’t the ceiling I was thinking about. I was remembering the plasterless state of the square of wall behind the Unseen Guest. Presumably she hadn’t lifted the picture down to see that. And possibly – a less comfortable thought – the plaster had been chipped away during the last three or four weeks, since she had last been in to air the cottage …

‘How long d’you reckon you’ll want to stay?’ she was asking.

‘What? Sorry. Oh, not long, just enough to get Gran’s things sorted and the ones she wants packed up. I suppose you knew that she’d decided to stay up at Strathbeg? I doubt if she’ll ever come back here.’

‘She didn’t say much, but I thought that would be how it was. I suppose she feels at home there. Oh, well. Look, dearie, can I change my mind? I’ll take a cup, if you’ll have another with me yourself?’

Over the fresh brew of tea I told her about Gran’s new house in Strathbeg, and the furniture that was to be sent north. She already knew something about it from Gran herself, and had talked it over with her husband. Mr Pascoe knew a good firm of carriers in Sunderland who would do the moving, she said, and she and Davey, when he could, would help me with the packing.

‘They’re working at the Hall now, aren’t they? Lady Brandon told me the family were keeping some rooms for themselves.’

‘That’s so. It’ll be a nice place for them when it’s done, and it’ll be good to see them back here again. Todhall isn’t the same without the family. The word goes that Sir James isn’t likely to come back much, but my lady always loved this place, and I dare say Miss Margery’ll be here with the children.’

‘Have you heard anything about the plans for Rose Cottage?’

But she had not. A firm of contractors from Darlington were being called in to do the main work of the hotel conversion, but the Brandons had made it a condition that local tradesmen should be employed there, too, whenever possible.

‘Stands to reason,’ said Mrs Pascoe, ‘that there’s nobody knows more about that old house and its fixings than my Jim, and when it comes to the plumbing
you can’t get better than Peter Brigstock.’ She set down her cup. ‘Now, how about you? I should have said sooner, I was sorry about your trouble, we all were. An airman, wasn’t he, your husband?’

‘Yes. Bombers. He’d nearly finished his tour, only another four missions to go. Ah, well, that’s the way it went. It seems a long time ago now. We didn’t have very long, but we were happy while it lasted.’

‘It was a terrible thing. We were that sorry when we heard. But your Gran said he left you all right – comfortable, I mean? Well, that’s a bit to the good. And you’re living in London now, with a good job?’

‘Well, it’s a job. A friend offered it to me, and it’s pleasant work, in a big plant nursery. Not very well paid, but I enjoy it, and luckily that’s all that matters.’

‘You didn’t go back to teaching, then?’

‘No. I didn’t want to, but I had to do something.’ I didn’t elaborate. I had never wanted to admit, even to myself, what a vacuum Jon’s death had left in my life. With marriage had come a feeling of belonging, plans for the future, a sense of identity, of being. The satisfying, perhaps, of something primitive in every woman; the need for a warm cave-place of her own, and the family round the fire. Quite apart from the grief of it, his death had pushed me, so to speak, back on the world again, with my own solitary way to make, and not much idea of which way to go.

I put the thought aside, and asked about the people in Todhall that I remembered.

‘Will I find the place much changed?’

‘Not really. The village was lucky in the war. Your Gran would tell you about it, I don’t doubt.’

‘She told me Arthur Barton lost an arm, and about Sid Telfer being killed. How’s Airs Telfer making out? There were three children, weren’t there?’

‘There were. And there are five now, so the less said about her the better.’ She must have remembered then that she was talking to another child of shame, because she pushed the empty cup back rather hastily and got to her feet.

‘I’d best be getting along. I had a word with Ted Blaney yesterday – you remember the Blaneys at Swords Farm? – and he’ll stop by with milk tomorrow. If you have a word with him he’ll bring what you need from the village.’

‘Or give me a lift in? He always used to.’

‘I dare say he might still,’ she said, and suddenly smiled. ‘If you change to something a bit less London. His cart’s usually half full of straw, or even a hen or two in a crate. Not but what you look very nice, at that. So, I’ll be getting back to the Hall. I go up there most days while the men’s working. It’s just Jim and Davey there now, and you’d be welcome if you want to come by and see what’s going on.’

‘I’d like to, very much. Thank you.’

I went to the front gate with her, and stood while she made her way back across the bridge. There was a sort of secondary driveway there, which led up through the woods that edged the park and then past the walled garden and into the back quarters of the Hall. It was the way my grandfather had walked daily to his work, and
where I, as a small child, had so many times gone with him.

I turned back into the cottage, hesitated for a moment by the hidden safe, then, shrugging, left it for tomorrow, and went up to my bedroom to unpack.

Try as I would, I could not set aside my curiosity about Gran’s safe. As soon as I had unpacked my few things, and refilled the hot water bottle in the freshly made-up bed, I went out to the toolshed which stood under the lilac tree behind the cottage.

The toolshed had always been my grandfather’s special place. It was small, a wooden hut with a window in one side, under which stood a sturdy bench, and on the other wall a row of six-inch nails from which hung his garden tools. If he had needed any special implement, he borrowed it from the big collection up at the Hall; here he kept only the basics, spade, fork, hoe, rake, shears, and, in a wall-rack beside the window, the hand-tools such as trowels and secateurs. A metal toolbox under the bench held chisels and screwdrivers and boxes of nails and so forth. The barrow was kept outside under a lean-to. There was no lawn mower; we had no lawn.

The shed had always been kept tidy, but when I saw
it that day it was tidy indeed. It was empty. All the tools had gone, including the tool box. I checked the door, which had been locked, and which I had opened with the key that hung in the back kitchen. No sign there of tampering or damage. I looked outside; the barrow was there. But all that could be carried away had gone.

It was possible, of course, that Gran had got rid of the things, sold them or given them away when she went north. It didn’t concern me much, except that I would need something rather stronger than a kitchen knife to tackle the door of her safe. Feeling suddenly impatient, I glanced at my watch. Half past five. I would walk up to the Hall and borrow the tools I needed. If there were still gardeners employed there, they would have gone off at five, and the gate into the walled garden would probably be locked, but I knew where the key was kept. I got my jacket from the cottage, and set out for the Hall.