The Unquiet House (25 page)

Then she heard her brother’s voice, calling their names, and Eddie hailed him. ‘You’re to come inside,’ he said. ‘Mum wants Aggie indoors. She’s brewing up. Dad’s gone off to your house, Eddie; he wants to use your telephone.’

*

They sat at the table sipping cups of tea and no one looked at each other. Aggie’s mum and Will had gone out to meet her father, leaving her alone with Eddie once more. She set down the cup and it rattled against the saucer.

‘It’ll be all right, Aggie,’ he said. ‘You did just the right thing. Your dad will see everything’s done as best they can. I wish – I mean, you shouldn’t have had to see—’

She looked up at him. He was leaving in the morning and for a time she hadn’t even known it; he had told her brother first. No one had thought to tell her. He was going to be with all the rest of them, the boys with the faraway look in their eyes, but for now he was here and he was just Eddie again, the boy she’d known all her life.

He started to say something else but it turned into a tentative smile, and then he looked down at the table as if he could read something in its scars.

‘What is it, Eddie?’

He half-smiled. ‘I suppose it’s just that sometimes you don’t really
see
things,’ he said, ‘and then it’s too late.’

She swallowed. That dry feeling was back in her throat. ‘It’s never—’

The door opened and she turned to see her brother standing there, his shoulders heaving as he drew in rapid breaths. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘she’s dead.’

Aggie looked away. Nobody said anything. After a while Will poured himself a cup of tea and pulled out a chair. She couldn’t seem to settle her thoughts. She knew she had been about to answer Eddie, but she had no idea what she would have said. Why did Will have to come back just then?

Then her brother spoke, and when he did she saw again that he looked older, not the playful, teasing, irritating boy she had always known. ‘I may as well tell you I’ve enlisted, Aggie.’

She whirled in her seat. ‘You’ve done
what
?’

‘I had to do
something
. I can’t simply stay here, safe from everything. Someone has to stand, Aggie. Eddie’s going, and I’m going too.’

‘But you can’t! It’s impossible – Dad’s going to
kill
you.’

For a while he didn’t say anything at all, he just kept staring into his cup, and then he let out a hollow laugh. It wasn’t really funny, but it wasn’t mocking either. She thought he’d say something else, but nothing came. And then she remembered the little bags her mother had been stitching –
They can write their
names on t’ front, see?
– and she started again, ‘Really, you can’t. We need you here, Dad said so. And it’s – I mean – anything could happen.’ She didn’t look at Eddie though she could feel his gaze; she felt as if he had touched her cheek, ever so lightly.

Will looked up at her and smiled. He gestured towards the door, the outside, the body she’d discovered in the graveyard. ‘There’s death everywhere, Aggie,’ he said. ‘It’s no use waiting till it comes to find you.’

Then her mother bustled in, all questions, and what her brother had told her was pushed aside.

When Aggie went downstairs the next morning she could see that her mother knew what Will had done. It was there in her tight lips and her pale skin. She barely looked at Aggie. She had let her sleep late and now she saw it wasn’t out of consideration so much as having her thoughts occupied with more important things. Aggie went to the stove. A cold egg lay half-congealed in a pan and she scooped it onto a plate. She sat down at the table and stared at it.

‘Doctor called by, afore,’ her mother said. Her voice sounded tired. Older.

Aggie scooped cold egg white into her mouth and forced herself to swallow. She didn’t want to think about last night, about what had become of the woman. She didn’t want to think of her as
Mrs Hollingworth
, as if the figure on the bench had been someone she
knew
. And she didn’t, not really. She only knew her married name, not her own, not even her first name; she didn’t have any real connection with her at all. She wished now that the woman was a long way away, that she’d never even come here, never thought of building the house.

Then she remembered the way Eddie had sat here at this very table, the way he’d looked at her and spoken to her, how he’d wrapped his coat around her, and her cheeks reddened.

‘He said she likely ’ad yew poisoning.’

Aggie put down her knife and fork, her thoughts banished. ‘Do you mean it’s true, what they said – about her sitting under the yew? That it made her ill?’ But what she was thinking of was not the yew but the bench beneath it, the letters that had been carved there.
Perhaps it was those words that poisoned her; maybe it was some kind of punishment
.

Her mother shook her head. ‘No, that’s rubbish – just another story about them trees, that’s all. There’s all sorts o’ tales. But she din’t take sick from sitting there. She’d etten it.’

‘Etten it?’

‘Aye, leaves and berries and seeds an’ all, by the looks o’ things. Awful business. The doctor said it would ’ave finished ’er off in no time: it made her lips turn blue and her eyes go wide-open an’ her ’eart give out.’

Her eyes go wide-open
. Yes, it had. Aggie shuddered at the memory. When she looked up again, her mother was staring down at the floor as if she were seeing some memory of her own; and she remembered something she’d said. As if reading her mind, her mother let out a spurt of a laugh. ‘You know, those old stories,’ she said, ‘about the trees – some say they spread their roots ’round the graveyard to stop them who’s buried there from coming back to the world. Others say that putting yew on a grave ’elps a soul find the other side. Some—’ She paused, and then went on, ‘Some tell as ’ow it makes gateways. There’s one about ’ow people eatin’
yew – they get to see the other place. The
after
place. An’ then they come back.’

She turned to her sewing basket and took out some pieces of fabric, spreading them in front of her. ‘So that showed them, I ’spose,’ she said. ‘’Appen she did see the afterlife all right. But there in’t no way she’s coming back again.’

Aggie walked slowly across the field, enjoying the sensation of the breeze in her face. She turned and Jack the dog gave a little jump; he looked as if he was grinning. She smiled at him. Her limbs ached and her hands were sore, but it didn’t matter. She was almost at the boundary of the farm now. She wondered how Eddie’s family were coping on the next one. Another of his brothers had gone for the Air Force and she’d heard his dad had taken on Land Girls to help. She frowned. If she’d joined the Women’s Land Army she’d have had fresh new breeches and a little felt hat with a fancy badge on it, and when she went into the village she’d have looked as if she was really doing something for the war. But it didn’t matter. She had been doing things she never thought she’d be doing, driving the cart, managing deliveries, topping beets, cutting logs for burning. It was something different from dusting, and her father kept saying as how she’d done a ‘grand job’, although there was a sad look in his eyes when he said it. Still, the work was making her stronger. She even felt like she stood a little taller. Much of her spare time went on helping her mother knit blankets or sew more of those little bags, but just now she had a little reprieve, some rare time to herself, and it was nice to be up here, away from everything. She
looked right across the tops of the rolling hills, dotted with trees that were losing their foliage. It seemed so short a time since the end of summer and yet so long ago, and now autumn too was beginning to fade. So much was changing and yet she was still here. It wasn’t what she’d imagined. She’d thought one day she’d go far away, see whatever there was to see, leaving her brother to take over the farm. Now he was the one far away, seeing –
what?
Things, she supposed, that she never wanted to look upon.

She stood there a little longer. The lone cry of a curlew pierced the air. She half-closed her eyes. Her mother had told her once it was a bad omen, the curlew’s call: sailor folk said its wailing was a warning from a drowned friend. She felt a passing relief that it wasn’t the Navy Eddie had joined and then she shook the thought away –
thank goodness for Will too
– but, really, it hadn’t been her brother’s face she had been thinking of. She touched her cheek, remembering the way that Eddie had looked at her. What might he have said to her if Will had not come in? But it was too late to dwell on it now.

She looked down into the valley and realised she could see the chimneys of the big house from where she stood. She walked a little further so that she could see into the driveway: a car was parked on it, close by the porch. As she watched, someone stepped out. It was a man in a trilby; she couldn’t see his face. She thought she could hear the metallic sound as he shut the door behind him. He tilted back his head and stared up at the windows. Even without seeing his face, she felt certain it was no one she knew. Her heart began to beat a little more quickly. She supposed she should be glad, but instead she didn’t really know what she felt. She remembered her girlish excitement at the thought of being a maid in such a fine house, of working for
someone, of being all grown up. It felt so distant now, as if those feelings had belonged to someone else. Now her hands were rough and she had calluses on her palms and she didn’t care. It occurred to her that if she’d gone for a maid she would have been black-leading the grates and emptying the commodes and scrubbing the steps and her hands would have been ruined anyway. Now she didn’t have to slave away in service; she had work, but it was all right. And at least the farm was
theirs
.

She looked back to see the man walking around the car and putting out a hand to assist someone from the passenger side. It was a tall, straight woman, her hair swept back neatly under her hat, and Aggie thought she was wearing a fox-fur stole. She let out her breath. A part of her had been expecting to see
her
, back the way she was at the beginning, big with child and full of hope; and then the two of them walked towards the house and vanished inside. They appeared to be alone. There were no children.

Nothing else happened and she looked instead towards the church. She could see the upper reaches of the graveyard and it looked quiet and empty, a place where nothing ever happened. The yew stood proud, its branches a thick crown. She narrowed her eyes. In the shadows beneath it the old twisted tree limbs were confusing to the eye; for a moment it had almost looked as if someone was sitting there, quite motionless, so that they blended with the shape of the tree.

*

‘Bold as brass she was,’ her mother said, bashing down her pastry with her rolling pin, sending flour flying from the pine table. ‘Already! I know folk are quick to wed in wartime, but you’d think he’d ’ave waited a
little
longer.’

She glanced at Aggie. ‘Wanted to know if we’d ’eard of any good servants. I ask you! Anyone’d think they didn’t know there’s a war on.’

She didn’t seem to see the contradiction in what she’d said, but Aggie wasn’t about to point it out. She couldn’t help be curious about the newcomer. Had she really stolen Mr Hollingworth’s affections before his first wife died? Thinking of the previous wife’s coldness, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy.

‘She was asking about eggs. I told ’er they’d need their coupons. I can’t just go sneaking things on the hush-hush, not wi’ them bein’ new, an’ all.’

Her father grunted. ‘’S prob’ly the on’y reason she called. They sound like snooties to me.’

‘Well, snooties or not, at least she was being neighbourly.’ Now her father had joined in, it was as if she wanted a reason to argue. ‘An’ it’ll make a change to have that place full.’

‘Not that full.’

‘No, well, I dare say they’ll rattle about in it. It’s still a wicked waste o’ rooms.’

‘No children?’ Aggie hadn’t thought to say the words out loud, but now they hung in the air.

‘Of course, no children.’ Her mother turned on her. ‘What did you think? ’E’s been quick but ’e in’t that quick, at least I jolly well ’ope not.’ She turned the pastry and bashed it again. ‘An it dun’t sound like ’e’s stoppin’ round ’ere, anyways. Runs a fact’ry in London, so I dare say ’e won’t be about much.’

Aggie thought of the new wife, alone in the big house, and shuddered.

‘That woman named the place too, apparently, before she went.’

Aggie started: it was as if her mother had been thinking the same thing.

‘Not a nice name, either: Mire House it is now. I dare say ’e won’t change it neither, it bein’ ’er last wish an’ all.’

‘Bad ground, that,’ her dad remarked.

Aggie frowned. Had that really been the woman’s last wish? She thought of the things she’d said to her:
No laughter, no light, no life in that house … And no children, not ever
. Somehow, she thought that naming the house had been the least of it.

‘She said she’d be ’aving a soirée before long.’ Her mother’s nose wrinkled over the word. ‘A
soirée
. Fancy that. Can you imagine?’

Aggie straightened. She opened her mouth to protest, to remind her mother that they all needed a diversion, a reason to forget about the war and the work and their worries and simply laugh, perhaps even dance, just for a while; and then she saw her expression and she closed it again.

Soirée
, she thought, replaying the sound of the word as her mother talked, trying to smother the smile that was threatening to break out on her face.

Aggie no longer liked to walk past the graveyard alone. No matter how she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the lane she couldn’t help but look up through the gravestones towards the yew tree. A little part of her remained convinced that the first Mrs Hollingworth would still be sitting there, staring out at nothing, but of course she was never there. The seat was empty. She had never seen anyone sitting in that particular spot and she supposed now that it was abandoned. There was no one to look upon the words that had been written there, and she was glad of it.