Unhindered by a voice from behind her back, or the peal of Edith’s little bell, Catherine passed through the garden gate. She tried to walk casually, though an attempt to move soundlessly made her movements furtive. She experienced a deep discomfort at leaving the building without asking, but then was aghast at herself for assuming that she needed permission to leave to make a phone call.
After the screening of the film, Edith had been wheeled to her room to sleep before dinner, and Maude had retreated to her fiefdom on the ground floor to prepare the evening meal. Both rooms were situated at the rear of the property, and she realized this was her best chance to leave the building unobserved. Her request to begin work on the inventory had been treated to an embarrassing silence before Maude escorted her to her bedroom without a word. Was she then to wait there all afternoon until dinner?
She needed a phone signal and urgently wanted to share her experiences with Leonard, and get his advice on what to make of it all, and what to do. But she now worried that as soon as she got behind the wheel of her car, leaving the Red House even for half an hour would make a return to the building difficult. Unbearable would be an exaggeration, but not a great one.
As she walked away, she desperately tried not to look back at the house. If someone was watching from a window, her glance might be an admission of wrongdoing, of not keeping her hosts abreast of her movements.
The nape of her neck cooled as if a cloud had passed across the sun, or the shadow of the house had lengthened to keep pace with her scurrying down the lane. The house’s scrutiny began to feel like a tangible pressure, as if there was now a disapproving face at every window behind her. She was struck with an instinct to cringe, and could not prevent a surreptitious peek at the house just to make sure that no one was, in fact, observing her. But the peek became a double-take, in which she was forced to stop and face the building.
In a solitary glance, she had been shocked by a mistaken impression of a sudden change in the Red House’s character. For a moment, in her moving vision, the overgrown garden had climbed even higher up the dark walls of the house’s front. The bricks of the building had appeared unkempt, blackened with age or even dereliction.
The illusion was caused by the way the nearby trees cast their shadows over the first storey, abetted by her sight briefly dimming under the canopy of a small fir tree crowding the garden wall. The house was now restored to its former hideous magnificence.
Catherine reached her car and got inside quickly. Turned the engine over and put the car into first gear. As she drove away as slowly and as stealthily as she could manage she hoped the occupants of the Red House wouldn’t hear the sound of the engine.
She slipped her car through the tunnel of hawthorn, but struggled to see the lane as shadows rolled over the bonnet and across the windscreen in a strobe effect. Emerging from the natural tunnel, strong sunlight blinded her and she was forced to brake. She fumbled with sunglasses and the sun visor.
In the rear-view mirror the black claws of the roof finials were skeletal against the sky.
Once she was moving again, the idea of escaping Edith’s unpredictable moods, at least for a while, allowed the tension of the day to seep from her shoulders and neck. There would be no friendship or even familiarity between them. Hoping for such was tiring and destined for repeat disappointments. Just an evening meal to get through and then she could sleep. If she could photograph every item for sale the following day, she wondered if she might even complete the valuation offsite, at home.
But finishing the valuation begged the question, what next? In the months ahead the catalogue would need approval, contracts would require signatures, and arrangements would have to be made for an auction. Her visits to the Red House would be endless, her exposure to this madness limitless.
She also suffered a persistent anxiety that Edith wouldn’t let her go. That her firm’s contract would be dependent on her staying at the Red House for weeks, even months. Her role had already fallen into being led to curious rooms, introduced to their interiors and inhabitants, before being whisked away. Boundaries upon her freedom to roam and work independently had been set in stone that morning. The idea of enduring even one more day of the obsessive supervision and tormenting felt like it would break what little spirit she’d summoned to get herself out here in the first place.
But the prospect of the Red House experience continuing was also unhealthily intriguing. She couldn’t fully suppress her fascination. Part of her was recklessly and guiltily eager to stretch and reach for the enigmatic here, for all that was undisclosed about this weird family. She wanted to throw open doors and see everything at once, while being desperate to flee every other minute of the day.
Catherine swapped her hands on the steering wheel and bit her nails until the fingertips on each hand were sore. Inside her mouth the chips of polish tasted like pear drops.
Two miles beyond Magbar Wood, her phone revealed two blue bars of a reception signal. There was nowhere to pull over on the narrow road, so she stopped the car in the middle of the lane to call Leonard. She tried his desk phone; she’d never known him leave the office before eight.
‘Hello, Leonard Osberne. Hello. Hello?’
Such was her relief to hear Leonard’s voice, she had to clear her throat of emotion before she could speak. ‘Leonard, it’s me.’
‘Kitten! How lovely to hear from you. Are you OK? How was your first day?’
‘Insane.’
‘How is the charming Edith?’
‘Well, like most sticklers for good manners, she’s as rude as they come. But it’s not just Edith, it’s . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘I just need a second pair of ears, Boss. Because . . . well, today has been . . . They’re crazy, Boss.’
‘Mad as snakes. We know that. It won’t make it any easier to start with, I understand. And you’ve gone out there after a truly ghastly experience. To be frank, I’m glad you called because I’ve been worried sick.’
‘I would have called earlier, but there’s no signal at the house.’
‘Well I’m all ears now, Kitten. So what’s on your mind? Or is it your heart?’
How could she even begin to explain her day? Or more precisely, how it made her feel? ‘I’m genuinely not sure about this, Leonard.’
‘Oh?’
‘Edith and Maude. I really do not know what to make of them. It’s like they’re only interested in trying to conjure all of this mystery and reverence around Mason.’
‘Has anything been said about the contract?’
‘Nothing. I’d say any mention has been deliberately avoided. I’ve escaped for a bit, but it’s only convinced me that other motives are at work out here, disingenuous motives. I think she might just be playing with us.’
‘Edith will dance about like a spider and keep changing her mind. I know that much. And sometimes we must suffer in our trade. But unless she’s thrown you out, she’ll come round eventually. I’m sure of it.’
‘Even if we get to that stage, it’s going to take a lot of stamina to endure her, Len. You really should come out. I could do with some backup.’
‘Of course. I plan to.’
‘Glad to hear it. There’s a stairlift here too, so you can get round easily.’
‘Tomorrow’s full. Maybe I’ll come the day after. But what has upset you? Can you be specific?’
‘Something . . . is just not right. Edith won’t get to the point at all about what’s available for auction. Which is why I’m just not convinced there’s ever going to be one. I haven’t even started the inventory. Haven’t seen a single bloody item. Instead, I’ve seen the most awful film and had this big history lesson about a puppet tradition that I’ve never even heard of. Henry Strader? Ring any bells? And Mason’s old puppets. She talks about them like they are children, you know, living. They sleep in a room next to her. She just seems intent on disturbing me. She’s such a bully. And this man, this Strader, who her uncle was obsessed with, they have this film of him being broken on the wheel. A cruelty play, that’s what she called it. Edith claims the play is hundreds of years old. It’s worse than a horror film. I’m supposed to be here for the tableau, the dolls. But it’s like they’re already out of the picture. Irrelevant. So I’m not even sure we’ll ever get to a contract, and if we do, it could be cancelled on a whim.
‘But where does she think it will all go, I mean is there a will? Any surviving family?’
Leonard was silent for a while, save for the little sucks on his pipe stem that she could hear through the phone. She could visualize his frown while he considered what she’d said. ‘Perhaps she can’t help herself. It’s in her nature, after so much time alone out there. Maybe she can’t resist you. Who can? And she’s making the most of you. Testing you with a load of nonsense. Though I have heard about Strader. He was supposed to have been executed for witchcraft, I think. Or maybe it was treason. Or both. He was put to death while touring London. But the authorities let a mob do the dirty work. His plays were supposedly highly seditious, and mystical. Apparently, a huge unwashed mob of peasants used to follow Strader around, if my memory serves. Orphans mainly, lepers, cripples. They thought he was a healer, a saint, the second coming or something, a saviour.’
‘That seemed to be the gist of it.’
‘And he was a local lad too, from out your way, so maybe that’s why it took Mason’s fancy once he’d killed everything on four legs and dressed it up. I’ll look Strader up for you but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Edith has also become attached to you, my dear. It’s why she wants to share all of this with you. She won’t show her hand, yet, but I am sure it will come. Dependency on new company is a hard thing to acknowledge when you’ve prided yourself on isolation. I mean, Kitten, you might just be the first guest they’ve had in that house in decades. You’re like the sole friend who came over for a sleepover and she wants to show you all of her toys. And she wants a passive audience too, for all of her jumbled-up stories. But she’ll keep the upper hand by playing hard. I’ve seen it all before, my dear. Maybe in not such a colourful way, but it goes with the territory.’
‘Maybe.’ She did feel as if she was an unwitting player in a performance, one born from decades of routine, tradition, and the stifling hierarchy of a servant and mistress, now gone from the world beyond Edith’s isolation within those red walls. But the more she considered the woman, now she was out of her grasp, the more the whole idea of Edith troubled her. ‘No woman still dresses like that, Leonard. The hair, the bleached face. It’s impossible. A costume? Is Edith playing a role? And Maude’s total silence, is that a performance too? She still hasn’t said a word, nothing. No explanation about the note. The two women function, but it’s like they’ve gone completely mad. It’s like some crazy prank.’
Her instincts suggested she was being prepared for a greater revelation. Now she was free of the building, the idea was hard to suppress. Or maybe, like Leonard claimed, they were merely apportioning out their helpless strangeness because they had nothing else to offer. She wanted to believe that.
‘In these situations, Kitten, I always extend my imagination into their perspective. Use your imagination and it’ll take the sting out of Edith’s bite. Edith is very old, lonely, surrounded by relics of a world and of people she loved who are long gone. She’s clearly always revered what her uncle left behind. It’s what she’s protected and curated, on his bizarre instructions, I might add. That is clear from what you have told me. And we can safely assume that old Mason was pretty disturbed by the time he took his own life. She would have been in that house during the great patriarch’s end. God knows what kind of shock and trauma his suicide inflicted upon her. But she stuck it out. No wonder she’s half crazed. Maybe even frozen in time, from that period.’
‘Then she needs a doctor, help. A social worker. Not a valuer.’
‘We both know none of those types would even make it through the gate.’
‘Then me being here feels wrong.’
‘Then look at it another way. From what you have told me, she’s also endured a long imprisonment. Mason pretty much confined his niece to that house. And still does, even though he’s dead. Imagine what Mason’s treasures have deprived Edith of. The freedoms, liberties, opportunities we’ve taken for granted, as our right. Edith won’t have known any of it. But you can bet she’s spent most of her life thinking about the wider world, resenting it while desiring it. And it would be reasonable for Edith to now despise her uncle’s work, even while she covets it. She’s broke and needs to sell it all. So what has her life been for? I’ve seen this happen, Kitten. At their end, some people experience a terrible revelation. But we must hold her hand while she goes through this. I think that is what she is asking you for. She wants to share all of this with you before she says goodbye to it, for ever.’
Catherine was no analyst, though she’d known a few, but now Leonard put it like this, she wondered if the Red House was smouldering with a resentment that had become something much worse. Futility was a powerful force, as well she knew.
‘Maybe. This helps, Boss. Thanks. But I still have to go back and sleep over. It’s like willingly going to bed to have an awful nightmare.’
‘If it’s too much, just say the word and pull out. I won’t think any less of you. We can try and persuade her to let me in, even if she has her heart set on you. Your well-being must come first. I’m a businessman, but I fear you might not be ready for this job. And I feel wretched for talking you into it. I got carried away when you told me about the Mason pieces. It would be a glorious end to my career. I’ve been selfish.’
‘Don’t feel bad. I can’t . . . The last thing I want is for my dysfunctional private life to interfere with my work. You know that, Boss.’
‘Yes, but we all have our limits.’
‘I’m not there yet. I had a wobble last week. A big one. But I also know this is too good to let go of. Let me try another day. See if I can at least photograph everything and then I’ll pull out. Maybe tomorrow night.’
‘You sure?’
‘I think so, Boss.’
‘But the next time we go together.’
‘OK. I better get back. There’ll be hell to pay if I’m late for dinner.’