I hope Clifford is sending enough men. The linen press is enormous. It looms against the far wall of the nursery: acres of French mahogany with minarets and cornicing, a scaled-down temple to starch and mothballs. A set of wooden steps live behind it, and they creak and wobble beneath me. I pull stiff, solid piles of linens from the shelves and drop them to the floor. They are flat, weighty; their landings make the pictures shake. Dust flies and my nose prickles, and Beth appears in the doorway, rushing to discover what havoc I am wreaking. There is so much of it. Generations of bed sheets, worn enough to have been replaced, not worn enough to have been thrown out. It could be decades since some of these piles have been disturbed. I remember Meredith’s housekeeper puffing up the stairs with laden arms; her cracked red cheeks and her broad ugly hands.
Once I’ve emptied the press I am not sure what to do with all the piles of linen. It could go to charity, I suppose. But I’m not up to the task of black-bagging it all, heaving it down to the car, taking it in batches into Devizes. I pile it back up against the wall, and as I do my eyes catch on one pattern, one splash of weak color in all the white. Yellow flowers. Three pillowcases with yellow flowers, green stems, embroidered into each corner in silk thread that still catches the light. I run my thumb over the neat stitching, feel how years of use have made the fabric watery soft. There is something in the back of my mind, something I know I recognize but can’t remember. Have I seen them before? The flowers are ragged looking, wild. I can’t put a name to them. And there are only three. Four pillowcases with every other set but this one. I drop them back onto a pile, drop more linen on top. I find I am frowning and consciously unknit my brow.
Clifford and Mary are Henry’s parents. Were Henry’s parents. They were in Saint Tropez when he disappeared, which the press unfairly made a great deal out of. As if they had left him with strangers, as if they had left him home alone. Our parents did it too. We often came here for the whole of the school holidays, and for two weeks or even three, most years, Mum and Dad would go away without us. To Italy, for long walks; to the Caribbean to sail. I liked and feared having them gone. Liked it because Meredith never checked up on us much, never came outside in search of us when we’d been gone for hours. We felt liberated, we tore about like yahoos. But feared it because, inside the house, Meredith had sole charge of us. We had to be with her. Eat our dinner with her, answer her questions, think up lies. It never occurred to me that I didn’t like her, or that she was unpleasant. I was too young to think that way. But when Mum got back I flew to her, gathered clammy handfuls of her skirts.
Beth kept me extra close when our parents were away. If she walked ahead, it was with one hand held slightly behind her, long fingers spread, always waiting for me to take hold of them. And if I didn’t she would pause, glance over her shoulder, make sure that I was following. One year, Dinny built her a tree house in a tall beech on the far side of the wood. We’d hardly seen him for days and he’d forbidden us to spy on him. The weather had been fitful, wind dimpling the surface of the dew pond, too fresh to swim. We’d played dressing up in a spare bedroom; built castles of empty flowerpots in the orangery; made a den in the secret hollow center of the yew topiary globe on the top lawn. Then the sun came out again and we saw Dinny wave from the corner of the garden, and Beth smiled at me, her eyes alight.
“It’s ready,” he said, when we reached him.
“What is it?” I demanded. “Go on-tell us!”
“A surprise,” was all he would say, smiling shyly at Beth. We followed him through the trees, and I was telling him about the den in the topiary when I saw it and was silenced. One of the biggest beech trees, with a silvery smooth trunk and bark that wrinkled where its branches forked, like the crook of your elbow or the back of your knee. I’d seen Dinny climb it before, with a few practiced swings, to sit amidst the pale green leaves far above me. Now, high up where the tree began to spread, Dinny had built a broad platform of sturdy planks. The walls were made from old fertilizer bags, bright blue, nailed to a wooden frame and belling in and out like boat sails. The route up to this fortress was marked by knotted rope loops and chunks of scrap wood, nailed to the tree to form an intermittent ladder. In the hung silence I heard the enticing rush of the breeze, the rustling snap of the tree house walls.
“What do you think?” Dinny asked, folding his arms and squinting at us.
“It’s brilliant! It’s the best tree house ever!” I exclaimed, bouncing urgently from foot to foot.
“It’s great-did you build it all by yourself?” Beth asked, still smiling up at the blue house. Dinny nodded.
“Come up and see-it’s even better inside,” he told her, moving to the foot of the tree, reaching up for the first handhold.
“Come on, Beth!” I admonished her, when she hesitated.
“OK!” she laughed. “You go first, Erica-I’ll give you a boost to the first branch.”
“We should give it a name. You should name it, Dinny!” I chattered, hoisting up my skirt, tucking it into my knickers.
“What about the watch tower? Or the crow’s nest?” he said. Beth and I agreed-The Crow’s Nest it would be. Beth hoisted me onto the first branch, my sandals scuffing welts into the powdery green algae, but I could not reach the next handhold. My fingertips crooked over the rung Dinny had nailed into the tree, so close, but too far for me to hang on safely. Dinny joined me on the first branch, let me step on his bent knee until I could reach, but from there my leg would not stretch to the next rung.
“Come down, Erica,” Beth called at length, when I was red and cross and feeling close to tears.
“No! I want to go up!” I protested, but she shook her head.
“You’re too little! Come down!” she insisted. Dinny withdrew his knee, jumped down from the tree, and I had no choice but to obey. I slithered back to the ground and stared in sullen silence at my stupid, too-short legs. I had grazed my knee, but was too disheartened to be excited about the sticky worm of blood oozing down my shin.
“Beth, then? Are you coming up?” Dinny asked, and I sank inside, to be left out, to miss out on the wonderful tree house. But Beth shook her head.
“Not if Erica can’t,” she said. I glanced up at Dinny but looked away again quickly, squirming away from the disappointment in his eyes, the way his smile had vanished. He leant against the tree, folded his arms defensively. Beth hesitated for a while, as if unable to choose her next words. Then her hand reached out for me again. “Come on, Rick. We need to go and wash your leg.”
Two days later Dinny fetched us back again, and this time the trunk of the beech tree was riddled with rungs and ropes. Beth smiled calmly at Dinny and I flew to the bottom of this ramshackle staircase, staring up at the floating house as I started to climb.
“Go carefully!” Beth gasped, sucking the fingertips of one hand as I missed my footing, wobbled. She followed me up, frowning in concentration, careful not to look down. A loose curtain of bags marked the doorway. Inside, Dinny had arranged plastic sacks stuffed with straw. There was a wooden crate table, a bunch of cow parsley in a milk bottle, a pack of cards, some comics. It was quite simply the best place I had ever seen. We painted a sign, to put at the foot of the ladder. The Crow’s Nest. Trespassers will be Persecuted. Mum laughed when she read it. We spent hours up there, adrift in whispering green clouds with patches of bright sky sparkling overhead, eating picnics, far away from Meredith and Henry. I worried that Henry would ruin it when he came to stay. I worried that he would crash through our magical place, mock it, make it seem less magnificent. But by happy, happy chance, it turned out that Henry was afraid of heights.