Chapter 23

Saturday, 30th October

Mark opens the front door as the twins and I reach the end of the drive.

‘A visitor’s waiting for you in the morning room,’ he says, turning back into the house.

‘Who?’ I ask, running up the steps.

Mark strides across the hall and jogs up the stairs.

‘I need to get on, see if Mother’ll make tea,’ he says as he vanishes along the landing.

The Southampton-case prep. Papers swamp our bedroom, with both the office and spare room out of bounds. Yet he’s managed to spend almost two hours this morning looking over the Armstrong Siddeley with the mechanic. I unzip the neck of my windcheater and shoo the children down the front steps.

‘Take Riley the back way. Don’t let him off the lead till you’ve got the mud off his paws.’

The twins race off around the side of the house, Riley yip yipping at their heels. I win the battle to close the front door and head across the hall, drop my keys, gloves and scarf on the table. The morning-room door is wide open: two brown leather chesterfields, coffee table, the bookcase Mark and I moved in there this morning, the record player and a stack of paperbacks waiting to be sorted onto shelves. The room looks like our space now.

I walk in. She’s standing in front of Mum’s sofa, immaculate in a navy coat, shoes and wide-brimmed hat, clutching a pair of cream gloves and her stick in one hand, my sketch pad in the other.

‘Mrs Havers!’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Keeling.’

She lowers the sketch pad and smiles at me. ‘I do apologise for the intrusion. One would usually make arrangements, but the matter is quite pressing.’

We stare at one another, my brain scrambling for something to say. I suspect I look like a rabbit in headlights. After our last meeting I never expected to see her again. She raises the sketch pad.

‘You draw very well.’

The half-sketch of the children stares up at us.

‘Thank you, though that one didn’t come off for some reason.’

She studies the drawing for several seconds, the pad trembling as she continues to regard what is only a very rough thing.

‘The boy is very good . . .’

‘Our daughter, Sophie, is the easier of the two to capture usually. Tom looks much younger there.’

I can’t make out her expression, her brow crinkles into a frown and the paper shakes. I think she might say something, instead she turns abruptly and drops the pad onto the sofa.

‘I hear you have been unwell. Are you quite recovered?’

Jennifer’s shoes, clickety-clack, across the hall.

‘I’m much better, thank you. I had an accident, in the bedroom above here. I can’t quite explain how it happened.’ I watch for a reaction from our visitor, but there’s nothing. The hall is suddenly silent. I step towards the door and stare into my mother-in-law’s face. She covers her surprise with a swift smile and comes into the room to stand beside me. Her make up looks fresh, a whiff of sandalwood.

‘We were so concerned,’ she says to Mrs Havers. ‘My son had to go out into the lane to call the doctor. I really don’t know how you manage without any sort of telephone.’ She smiles at me, looks at Mrs Havers. ‘Shall I make tea? Only breakfast blend, I’m afraid, Lady Havers.’

Mrs Havers smiles. I raise my eyebrows, turn away as laughter bubbles up.

‘I’m sure that will be delightful, thank you so much.’

Jennifer hurries back across the hall. I suspect tea won’t be long arriving, my mother-in-law won’t want to miss her share of the conversation. We listen to the clickety-clack of her heels receding across the hall. Mrs Havers’ smile is entirely mischievous.

‘How long are you going to let that go on?’ I say.

‘I rather think it suits me, don’t you?’

She taps her stick on the armrest of Mum’s sofa.

‘They don’t make them like this any longer: good, solid framework and wonderfully turned legs. Will you have it reupholstered?’

‘Possibly. My mother bought it years ago from a flea-market in London near where we lived.’

Mrs Havers studies my face. I smile. What does she think of the new family at Haverscroft?

‘Would you like to sit down? I can bring a chair in from the kitchen if you’d prefer?’

I glance past her, look at Mum’s sofa. How hadn’t I noticed it before, surely it wasn’t just sitting there? My breath is a stone in my throat. Where has it come from, this horrible thing?

‘Mrs Keeling?’

The indentation in the sofa where the twins and I sat earlier is still there, it’s so ancient, the stuffing so compressed, there’s no spring in the saggy old seat. Its balding, curly head tilts slightly to one side, one black button eye stares at Mrs Havers’ back. Sitting bolt upright in the indentation, the throw on its lap, is the golly.

Mrs Havers follows my stare. I can’t see her face, only her hat. She hooks the throw on the end of her stick and flips the fabric aside. I take a step backwards, a shiver runs through me.

‘Where did he come from?’ she says. I shake my head, there’s a quaver in her voice.

‘I found him in the attic, on one of the children’s beds.’

Mrs Havers’ stare is fixed on the ragged old toy. ‘I’ve not seen him in more than sixty years.’ Her voice is a whisper.

‘Your children’s?’ I ask.

‘My sister, Helena, gave him to me one birthday. I was terribly keen on him for years. You know how children become attached to such things.’ She pulls her eyes away from the golly and stares at me.

‘I thought we’d thrown him out with all the other things from the attic. I expect one of my twins rescued him.’ I doubt the twins would have done any such thing, but I can’t immediately think of another explanation.

‘When the chimney came down, we were clearing up and found the key to the metal box in the golly’s pocket.’

Mrs Havers stares at me, her eyes hold mine. I’m reminded of the woman in the mirror, that empty, blank stare. It’s impossible to guess what’s in her head. She turns away from me and walks towards the French windows.

‘I suggest you dispose of it.’ Her tone is clipped and sharp. ‘I’ve been admiring your room,’ she continues. ‘It’s beautifully decorated. I thoroughly approve of the decor, it’s so much fresher and brighter than before. I’m glad to see you light a fire.’

The grate is full of yesterday’s ash waiting to be cleared and relayed. I glance back at the sofa, half expect the golly to be gone, but he’s still there.

‘Would you like to walk around the garden?’ I ask, keen to escape the golly’s fixed stare and Jennifer’s inquisitive ears.

‘I thought you would never ask,’ she says, tapping her stick against the windows.

 

Pockets of frost linger on the terrace, the sun low and yellow. She walks slowly, each step carefully taken, all the time pointing out this plant and that. I can’t get the thing with the golly out of my head.

‘My sister put in that climber, only a bare root at the time, no more than a foot tall. It smothers the wall in June with deep red blooms and has such a lovely heavy scent. It was her favourite rose. You won’t have seen it yet?’

Mrs Havers watches me, expects a response. I shake my head. ‘We first looked around at the end of May, just as the wisteria was going over at the front of the house.’

‘Yes, yes. Now I remember.’

She heads for the terrace steps, puts her elbow out for me to take her arm as we descend to the path. We make our way along the gravel to the long border.

‘You need a map,’ she says, pointing her stick at the turned black soil. ‘A plan of what’s here. Richard will be unlikely to tell you. I’ll put something together, if it will help?’

She’s friendly again and, I suspect, making an effort to be so.

‘Yes, certainly, thank you.’

‘You don’t want to dig up something precious!’

What does she think of plastic, white goal posts, a football caught in a shrub at the front of the border? Here and there the lawn is scuffed from skidding, kicking feet, Riley’s scrabbling paws.

‘Richard told me that he’d put the posts in.’

‘I thought it might keep the children away from the pond.’

‘He said as much. He’s been giddy recently, a bit of tummy upset. It troubles him greatly to think that if he’d finished the job sooner your boy may not have taken a tumble.’

‘I’m sure it made no difference. If they’d been determined to go near the pond they only needed to duck beneath the rope. I can’t understand though why they would. I’d been so clear, perhaps too clear, about not to play near the water.’

We reach the end of the border, I put out my hand and catch a strand of willow. I’ve no wish to go any further and realise Mrs Havers also hangs back.

‘There’s a little metal seat,’ she jabs her stick towards the willow. ‘Helena’s favourite spot, we often sat there together. Like you, she was a talented artist. I keep a number of her sketches still. There are many of the pond, with the church tower rising in the distance. You’re like her in many ways.’

She’s silent, her eyes unfocused on the swaying willow branches.

‘I came here today to discuss a private matter with you. It requires a little explanation, if you can bear with me?’

‘Of course.’ I wait for her to continue, wondering what could be so urgent.

‘Some think it odd Richard and I are such firm friends. It is, of course, absolutely none of their business.’

She purses her lips into a coral-pink line.

‘We both felt Helena’s loss keenly; a shared grief is a little easier to bear. Richard says he feels her here still, particularly on a warm summer’s evening, in the scent of the roses.’

She looks me full in the face for an instant before turning towards the house.

‘Richard is a dear man and would never have harmed Helena in any way. Gossip in the village says it was my husband.’ She glances at me as I catch up. ‘I’m sure you’ll have done your research or Shirley will have told you.’ She stabs her stick into the grass with each alternate step and puts her elbow out again, I take her arm, the grass uneven, she leans against me, then the stick.

‘I do not make excuses for Edward, I merely seek to explain. He was convinced Helena was unfaithful although I have her word she was not.’

We reach the gravel path, she points her stick back the way we have come. ‘Just after the start of the new year, you will see a great swath of snowdrops all across here. Quite stunning on a sunny winter’s morning. It would be better to keep the children off the grass then, if you can.’

She stops at the bottom of the steps that lead to the terrace, turns to face me and lowers her voice so I barely catch her words.

‘I have only ever spoken to Richard about the matter I now refer to. You know me a little, you know I value my privacy. I must have your discretion: not a word must pass to anyone.’

I’m astonished. ‘Of course.’

‘I only tell you at Richard’s insistence. He is quite right – you need to know. The inquest found that my boys died by misadventure caused by my husband Edward driving in the loke here.’

I recall the news reports of the inquest, its outcome and fail to imagine how this woman must have felt.

‘Some weeks later Edward claimed that it was no accident. Like my sister before, he accused me of being unfaithful and said that the boys weren’t his. Absurd, but once a thought fixed in his head, there was no shifting it. Logic and reason played no part. Fear was his friend, he used it to control both his wives.’

She stares at the end of her stick, silence pulling out. I wait as she gathers her thoughts.

‘I tried to put it all out of my mind. I did not wish to believe Edward, who would do such a thing? But his paranoia was such . . .’ She breaks off, her thoughts left unfinished. She presses her lips together. ‘As a mother, you might try to imagine how impossible it was to erase that accusation from my memory. Should I have done more to protect my children? Andrew was just nine and Micheal only seven years old when they died.’

She looks up at the terrace steps, but makes no move.

‘Before I mustered the courage to challenge him he suffered a fatal heart attack.’ She points her stick back towards the willow. ‘I found him there, quite dead, floating in the pond. He died before he had time to drown.’

‘I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you coped being here alone.’

‘Richard is a dear friend, a great comfort, and I had my garden.’

‘What happened to your nephew, Freddie, Helena’s son?’

Her dark eyes look at me. I’m pushing too hard, too fast, but I need to know.

‘Edward moved to London after my sister died.’ It’s impossible to gauge her, what she’s thinking. I tilt my head to one side, make it clear what she’s said isn’t enough. ‘He continued to maintain the boy wasn’t his, then the child died within a few months of his mother. Scarlet fever – it was quite common back then.’

She looks away, out across the garden. Does Mark know about all this? How far has his research into Haverscroft and the family gone? Another thing to put me off moving here.

‘I’m so sorry.’ It sounds so trite, inadequate but words fail me. ‘And here, what is at the house?’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Keeling?’ She takes a step towards the terrace.

‘You know what I mean.’

She lowers her head, her hat shields her face.

‘What does one know, exactly?’ She rakes the gravel with her stick, short, deep strokes scarring the path, a line of dark earth. ‘There was nothing which concerned me before my husband passed away. Since then . . .’ She looks at me. ‘You have experienced the room above here.’ She nods towards the spare room. ‘It was my sister’s room when she was married. They argued there, I heard them myself. And she claimed Edward locked her and her son in there. Her journal, I assume, referred to some of this?’

I nod, recalling entry upon troubling entry.

Mrs Havers shakes her head. ‘Get Wynn, the new man, in. Reverend Haddingley did something for me, quietened it all down for some time, but of course by then only I was here and kept myself to the ground floor rooms.’

‘Why didn’t you warn me? I thought I was imagining things!’

‘I wrote to you, I warned your husband before you bought the house. He chose not to listen. Most do, Mrs Keeling, most do.’

‘Mark came to see you? When?’

For an instant, she looks at me, then taps her stick again into the gravel.

‘I don’t recall exactly. I can be forgiven the occasional lapse of memory at my age.’

She twists the ring on her finger, glances up at the terrace and takes a step forwards.

‘You might at least try,’ I say, my voice terse.

‘It was shortly after I first wrote to you, I’d say. The roses were in full bloom.’

Tom, Sophie, then Riley hurtle around the corner of the house and race across the lawn. Tom picks up the football and flings it across the grass sending Riley sprinting after it. The children’s laughter, the dog’s excited yap, yap yapping ring through the cold air.

‘He’s like his father, although very fair, of course.’ She watches the children chasing after each other and the ball. Riley scampers up to Mrs Havers, tail wagging nineteen to the dozen, then turns, sprints back to the twins. ‘He’s a friendly little fellow.’

Jennifer comes onto the terrace and stops at the top of the steps, her jacket pulled tight across her chest. She smiles down at us. ‘Tea’s getting cold.’

Mrs Havers waves her stick. ‘We’re on our way!’

She puts her elbow out, I take it, hold her back for a moment. She looks up into my face.

‘Are my children safe here, Mrs Havers? At least tell me that.’