The House of Doctor Dee

I did not want to hear any more about his concealed life, and I tried to divert him. 'Is it true what you said about the radicals?'

He turned round and faced me. 'Oh yes. London breeds strange habits. In the eighteenth century a group of Marjories, as they called themselves, started fires at Tyburn and burned down the gallows. That's why the executions were switched to Newgate.' He smiled now, and went back to his chair. 'I'm afraid I'm much more docile.'

I sensed that he was still holding something back but, as I said, I did not want to get too close to the source of his obsession; it would have been too painful, too extreme. He sensed my nervousness, and waved his hand in the air as if he were dismissing the subject. 'Now,' he said, 'in real ghost stories they always explore the attic of the old house.'

'But there is no attic.'

'Oh. What about the basement?'

'We've done the basement already.'

'That's true. A room under the stairs?'

'Non-existent.'

'I think you will find at least a cupboard.'

We went into the hallway and there, as he predicted, was some hollow panelling just beneath the staircase; I had not noticed a small catch on the side, but Daniel knelt down and unfastened it at once. It was almost as if he had not needed to look for it. 'How did you know it was there?' I asked him.

'There is always a cupboard under the stairs. Haven't you read Lady Cynthia Asquith?' But at that moment I realized he knew this house very well. 'Ah,' he said, more quickly now. 'Pipes. I wonder if you get your water from the old Fleet River. That would account for your behaviour.'

'What behaviour?'

'Hello, what's this?' He pulled out, with some difficulty, a wooden box with a black cloth laid across it. I turned away as he uncovered it. 'Toys,' he said. 'A child's toys.' I closed my eyes for a moment. When I turned round again, he was taking out a small cardboard fish with a tin hook attached to it; there was a glove puppet beside it, and a spinning-top. I picked up a small book, the pages of which were made from some kind of shiny cloth. 'I remember this,' I said, looking at the letter 'D' which had a child climbing upon it.

'What?'

'I do remember something about my childhood now. These are my toys. But what are they doing in this house?'

At that moment there was a loud knock upon the front door, and both of us were so startled that for an instant we clutched each other. 'Matthew! Matthew Palmer! Where's my little sprout?' It was my mother, calling through the letterbox, and in my dismay I quickly brushed the toys back into the cupboard and closed it: I did not want her to see them in my hands. Daniel stood up, and seemed unaccountably nervous as I went over to the door; my mother offered me her cheek to kiss, and I could smell the Chanel upon her skin. It was the same perfume she had used when I was a child. 'The lover is parking,' she said. 'He'll probably never get here.' I introduced her to Daniel, and she looked at him with the strangest mixture of curiosity and distaste. 'Haven't I seen you before?' she asked him.

'Not as far as I know.'

'But there's something familiar about you.' She seemed puzzled. 'It will come to me in a minute.'

Geoffrey suddenly arrived in the hallway, and Daniel took advantage of the temporary confusion to leave. Once again he seemed embarrassed, and my mother watched him go with a somewhat grim expression. I noticed then how old she had become; she had lost weight, and her right hand shook slightly. 'Now,' she said. 'Do show me and the lover around.'

I went to the door and watched Daniel as he opened the gate and, without looking back, hurried down Cloak Lane. It suddenly occurred to me to walk around the side of the house: I looked up and there, on the top storey, was a window sealed with brick. He had known about it, just as he had known about the cupboard under the stairs. It was clear to me now that he was acquainted with this house, and might even have been deliberately leading me towards my old toys. But how was such a thing possible? How could he have known?

'Your father was such a dark horse,' my mother said as I came back into the hall. 'Fancy keeping this to himself.' She walked into the ground-floor room as nonchalantly as if she owned the place herself. 'I suppose he used it for a bit on the side.'

'I don't think, mother, it's that sort of house.'

'How would you know?' At moments like this I recognized the depth of her animosity towards my father and even myself; it was as if we had been involved in some act of vengeance or violence against her. 'Well, never mind. Where's the lover gone?' I turned round, but Geoffrey had disappeared. Nothing in this house seemed to stay in the same place.

'Just poking around,' he said. He had gone up the stairs without us, and I resented his familiarity in my father's house. 'You'll probably get a good price for it.'

'I'm not putting it on the market. I'm going to live here.'

I enjoyed announcing my intention so flatly, and I was delighted to see the expression of fear upon my mother's face. 'But you're not going to sell up in Ealing?' she asked me very quickly.

I hesitated for a few seconds, unwilling to reassure her. 'Of course not. It's yours.'

'That's a good boy.' She seemed to breathe more easily, and took a pocket mirror out of her handbag; she peered into it, and brushed some powder from her face. I saw it falling on to the old stone floor. 'Well, my darling, you're a better man than your father. I'll give you that.' I wanted to ask her about the toys I had just found, but I could not bear to mention my childhood to her. 'Now will you show me the house, please?'

The trouble did not begin until we reached the top floor. 'There's a lot of dust up here,' she said. 'Typical of your father.' She waved a hand in front of her, as if she were scaring away a fly or wasp; but I could see nothing. We went downstairs to the next floor and, to my surprise, I realized that there was no dust at all in my own bedroom; it looked as if it had been swept clean in preparation for my arrival. Geoffrey had adopted his professional role as a surveyor, for want of anything better to do, and was busily tapping the walls and scrutinizing the ceiling. My mother seemed to enjoy the process: it was as if the house, and therefore my father, was being subjected to some long-overdue judgement.

'What was that?' she said.

'What?'

'I thought I saw something over there.' She pointed, strangely enough, towards the wall beneath my window.

'It must have been a fly,' I said. 'A summer fly.'

But then, when we descended the stairs to the ground floor, she started back again in horror. 'Something just moved again.' She was looking at that part of the hallway in front of the basement door. 'Did you see it? It was like some creature. Some little thing.'

Geoffrey was laughing at her. 'It's the old girl's eyes. All sorts of bits and pieces floating in them at her age.'

She was looking at me accusingly, as if I were responsible for these distortions in her vision. 'Come on,' she said. 'Let's finish the grand tour.'