“I would hate to think that what happened then has made her ill all this time,” Dinny says quietly. He knows what happened. He knows.
“Oh?” I say. If only he would go on, say more. Tell me. But he doesn’t.
“It wasn’t… well. I’m sorry to hear that she’s not happy.”
“I thought coming back here would help, but… I’m worried it might be making her worse. You know, bringing it all back. It could go either way, I think. But it’s good that Eddie’s here. He takes her mind off things. Without him I think she’d even forget it was Christmas.”
“Do you think Beth will come to the party tonight?”
“Truthfully, no. I’ll ask her, if you like?” I say.
Dinny nods, his face falling. “Ask her. Bring Eddie too. He and Harry seem to be getting on well. He’s great with kids-they’re less complicated for him.”
“If you asked her, I’m sure she’d come. If you came up to the house, that is,” I venture. Dinny shoots me a brief, wry smile.
“Me and that house don’t really get along. You ask her, and perhaps I’ll see you both later.” I nod, bury my hands in the back pockets of my jeans.
“Are you coming, Ed? I’m going back to the house.” Eddie and Harry look up from their work. Two sets of clear blue eyes.
“Can’t I stay and finish this, Rick?” I glance at Dinny. He shrugs again, nods.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” he says.
We smuggled Dinny into the house once, when Meredith had gone into Devizes for a dental appointment. Henry was at the house of a boy in the village with whom he had taken up. A boy whose house had a proper swimming pool.
“Come on!” I hissed at Dinny. “Don’t be such a baby!” I was desperate to show him the big rooms, the huge stairs, the enormous cellars. Not to impress him, not to show off. Just to see his eyes widen. To be able to show him something for a change, to be the one in charge. Beth hunkered down at the back of the three of us, smiling tensely. There was nobody about except the housekeeper-who never paid us much attention-but still we crouched to scuttle in. Behind the last sheltering bush, I was close enough to feel Dinny’s knee pressing into my hip; smell the dry, woody smell of his skin.
Dinny was reluctant. He had been told enough times, heard enough stories from his grandpa, Flag, and his parents; had even had fleeting encounters with Meredith. He knew he wasn’t welcome there, and that he shouldn’t want to look. But he was curious, I could tell. As a child will be when a place is forbidden. I had never seen him that unsure; I’d never seen him hesitate, and then choose to carry on. We went from room to room, and I gave a running commentary: “This is the drawing room, only nobody ever does any drawing in it, not that I’ve seen. This is the way to the cellar. Come and see! It’s the size of another whole house! This is Beth’s room. She gets the bigger room because she’s older but from my room you can see right into the trees and I saw an owl, once.” On and on I went. The Labradors followed us, grinning and wagging excitedly.
But the more I went on, and the more we showed him, the more rooms we dragged him into, the quieter and quieter Dinny got. His words dried up, eyes that were wide fell flat again. Eventually even I noticed.
“Don’t you like it?”
A shrug, a tip of the eyebrows. And then the sound of the car on the driveway. Freezing, panicking, hearts lurching. Trying to hear: were they coming in the front, or the back? A calculated risk and I chose wrong. We ran out onto the terrace as they appeared at the side of the house. Meredith, my father, and worst of all Henry, back from his visit. He grinned. After a hung moment I grabbed Dinny’s arm, yanked it, and we tore across the lawn. The greatest act of insurrection I think I ever performed and it was to save Dinny. To save him from hearing what Meredith would say to him. She was shocked into silence, just for a second. Standing tall and thin in a crisp linen suit, duck-egg blue; hair set, immaculate. Her mouth was a hard red line of pigment, and then we were away and it cracked open.
“Erica Calcott, you come back here this instant! How dare you bring that filth into my house? How dare you! I insist that you come back here immediately! And you, you thieving gypsy! You’ll scuttle off like vermin, will you? Like the vermin that you are!” I like to think my father said something. I like to hope Dinny didn’t hear, but of course deep down I know that he did. Running away like a thief. Like a trespasser. I thought I was being brave, I thought I was being a hero for him. But he was angry with me for days. For making him go into the house, and then for making him run away.
I’m up in Meredith’s room. This is the biggest bedroom, of course, with an ugly four-poster bed, heavy with carvings. The base is high and the mattress deep. How will the next owners move this bed? It’s huge. Only by taking an axe to it, I think. To be replaced with something contemporary and probably beige. I fling myself across it, over the stiff brocaded bedspread, and count how long it takes me to stop bouncing. Who made this bed? The housekeeper, I suppose. The morning that Meredith collapsed on her way into the village. Gradually I become still and realize that I am bouncing on my dead grandmother’s bed. The very sheets she slept in the night before she died.
In here more than anywhere the ghostly remains of her seem to linger. As is only natural, I suppose. Part of me wishes that I’d come to see her as an adult. That I’d pinned her down, made her tell me where all that bad feeling came from. Far too late now. Her dressing table is a huge thing-deep, wide; several drawers in columns on either side, a wide drawer in the middle that opens into my lap; a triptych mirror set on a box of yet more drawers. The top is satin smooth, a patina wrought by centuries of soft female fingers. I think Mum should have jewelry as well as photos. Meredith made no bones about telling us she’d sold off her best pieces, like the best of the estate’s land, to pay for repairs to the roof. She told my parents this accusingly, as if they ought to have put their hands in their pockets, looked under the sofa cushions and produced thirty thousand pounds. But there has to be something left for my thieving hands to find.
Lipsticks and eyeshadows and blushers in the top right-hand drawer. Small dunes of loose make-up powder, shimmering underneath all the metal tubes and plastic compacts. Belts in the next, coiled like snakes. Handkerchiefs, hair clips, chiffon scarves. This drawer smells powerfully of Meredith, of her perfume, and the slightly doggy notes of the Labradors. In the bottom right drawer are boxes. I take them out, put them up where I can see them. Most are full of jewelry-dress pieces by the looks of it. One box, the biggest, shiny and dark, is full of papers and photographs.
With a prickle of excitement, I sift through the contents. Letters from Clifford and Mary; holiday postcards from my mum and dad; odd bank statements, secreted away into this secretive box for who knows what reason. I read odd snatches of each, feeling the illicit thrill of prying. Some photographs too, which I put to one side; and then I find the newspaper clippings. About Henry, of course. Local papers started the coverage. Lady Calcott’s Grandson Missing. Search for Local Boy Intensifies. Clothes found in Westridge woods did not belong to missing boy. Then the nationals joined in. Abduction fears, speculation, a mysterious hobo spotted walking the A361 with a bundle that could have been a child. Boy matching the description seen lying in a car in Devizes. Police very concerned. I can’t take my eyes from it. As if a hobo could have carried Henry any distance at all. Big-boned, solid Henry. We never saw any of this, Beth and I. Of course we didn’t. Nobody reads the paper when they’re eight years old, and we weren’t allowed to watch the news at the best of times.