33

 

 

THE BOTTLE, BOTH Colin and Martin had told her, was in the cellarway. Tonight, Gwynn decided she needed it. Wrapped in a blanket against the chill, the fire having long since gone out, she felt her way down the stairs, through the sitting room, and into the kitchen. The door was in the wall beyond the counter; she flicked on the overhead light and was momentarily blinded. The fluorescent ring buzzed. She opened the cellar door and could find no light switch there, so she turned back to the cupboard and grabbed the flashlight. The beam showed her the glitter of glass bottles of the shelf at the foot of the steps. A veritable arsenal of drink. Good on you, Gwynn.

She pulled the blanket tighter about her, navigating the stairs slowly, leaning into the rough stone wall for balance. She reached for the bottle of whisky—the only bottle not covered in a coat of dust—and with a sharp creak, the cellar door closed behind her. She swung around quickly.

An old house. A drafty house with a broken kitchen window. A house uneven on its foundations after all these years. Gwynn took a steadying breath, collected the whisky bottle, and carefully ascended the stairs.

The door wouldn’t open.

Gwynn lifted the latch and shook it. The door would not budge.

Not another one. The doors to the house, the garden, the dovecote conspired against her.

A gate that would not close. A door that would not open.

Gwynn leaned her forehead against the door, trying to think. The blanket slipped from her shoulders. There was no point in pounding, no point in pushing or pulling or shouting. Gull Cottage would not acquiesce. She knew this. Yet a part of her brain fought against it. She tried to picture the latch on the other side, tried to imagine how the door might close itself, latch itself shut. The latch wouldn’t open. It had to be stuck, that was all. She lifted the handle and shook it some more. She leaned her weight into the wood. Nothing. Despite knowing it would do no good, she set the bottle on the step beside her, then kicked at the base of the door. Still nothing. Of course.

That was that. Gwynn slumped. She was locked in the cellar. No one would hear her if she shouted, pounded. No one until Mary came at eight. Quickly she checked herself, making sure what tomorrow was: Monday. Thank God. Mary came on Monday mornings. At eight. What time was it now? In answer, the mantle clock, far away in the sitting room, rang once. One? Or twelve-thirty. Or one-thirty? She closed her eyes, gripping the flashlight in her sweaty palm. She wished she had thought to look at the travel alarm clock on the bedside table. She wished she had turned on a light, passing through the sitting room. She wished—damn it, Gwynn—that her great-aunt had updated her appliances to include a stove, a microwave, a coffee-maker with an LED clock. Anything.

The blanket had come to rest at the bottom of the stairs. Gwynn retrieved the whisky bottle, and trod back downstairs, again leaning into the white-washed stone wall, gray now with age and neglect. She wrapped the blanket around her once more and huddled on the second step, her feet firmly on the packed dirt floor. She would not panic. She would wait it out. Mary would come at eight and everything would be all right.

Gwynn set the flashlight on the step beside her, the beam shining straight up to the low ceiling, where spider webs glistened. She let out a half-laugh. Mary hadn’t cleaned down here in a while, that was certain. She opened the bottle of whisky and sniffed at it. She wouldn’t need it to sleep now. She didn’t really want to sleep, not down here. She sniffed it again. It smelled sharp and peaty, like she thought heather must smell. Slowly she tipped the bottle back and let a tiny bit onto her tongue, where it burned and spread and warmed.

 

GWYNN DOZED OFF and on with her head and shoulder against the wall. She jerked awake and nearly tumbled off the stairs in the darkness. She had a sudden attack of vertigo, but she fought it down. She couldn’t see; the blackness was a soft pillow that stuffed her eyes and ears and dulled her senses, but she still knew that her feet were firmly planted on the dirt floor of the cellar. If she fell from her seat on the second step, it would not be far.

How long had she been down here now? She listened hard for the sound of the mantle clock, but heard nothing. Long enough for the flashlight batteries, the new ones she’d bought at the shops, but who knew how long they’d been on Leah’s shelves?—to weaken and die. Some hours earlier, she had shaken the torch in a panic, and once that had worked; though the beam had been faint it had revived. Now it was dead. She didn’t even know where the flashlight had rolled to when she had accidentally knocked it from the stair beside her in the dark.

Mary was coming at eight, she repeated to herself. The mantra had kept her calm through the night. Eight would not—could not—be so far away now. As soon as she heard Mary’s footsteps in the kitchen overhead, she’d call out, crawl up the stairs and bang on the door. Mary would unlatch it. Mary would let her out. It would be all right.

The cellar stank of whisky, though. The open bottle, too, had been a casualty in the night, falling from her grip when the flashlight failed, rolling down the last of the stairs, contents splashing out everywhere. Gwynn’s mouth felt fuzzy, as though she’d drunk down the remains of the half-empty bottle, but then again, it never took much with her. She felt headachy, too, but that could be the day, the night, not just the whisky.

She dozed again and woke to the measured step she’d waited for all night. Dragging the blanket after her, she climbed the stairs by touch and kicked the door.

“Mary?” she shouted. “Mary?”

“What on earth—?”

There was a metallic scrape and the door opened. Mary peered around cautiously, then frowned. Gwynn, exhausted, tumbled out into the kitchen and was only kept from falling by Mary’s strong arms.

 

“WHAT ON EARTH were you doing down there?”

Mary had not even yet shed her heavy coat, though it was unbuttoned, she being interrupted in mid-doff. Now she flicked on the electric kettle on the way by as she ushered Gwynn into the sitting room and saw her onto the sofa.

The other woman sniffed. Made a face. “Went down for a wee one, did you?”

Gwynn glared. “I dropped the bottle. The whole damn cellar smells like a distillery now.”

“And not a very good one.” Mary took her coat through to the tree in the entryway, then returned. “How on earth did you manage to get yourself stuck like that?”

Gwynn yawned, stretched, put her pounding head in her hands. Her shoulders and hips ached as well. Sleeping on a staircase was not anything she wanted to do again in a hurry. “I don’t know. The door swung shut. The latch must have fallen.”

Mary frowned fiercely. “That’s never happened to me, not in all the years I’ve worked here.” The kettle clicked off, and she excused herself for a moment. Gwynn could hear her fixing the tea in the pot, and then she heard the sound of the cellar door. Open. She waited for the creak as it swung shut. There was none. Mary said something unintelligible, and then Gwynn heard her close and open the door again.

After a few moments, Mary reappeared, carrying the tea tray, still frowning. She set the tray on the low table and straightened.

“I can’t get it to shut by itself,” she said peevishly, as though blaming the door for its recalcitrance. “I don’t know how you managed it. And what happened to the back door?”

Leaving the blanket, Gwynn pushed past Mary on her way to the kitchen and the cellar. She pulled the door open and released it, it stayed put. Just as it had the previous night, she recalled. It did not swing. It did not close. She looked at Mary, puzzled.

“It shut on me,” she protested. “I was at the bottom of the stairs, fetching the bottle. It shut on me.”

“And locked,” Mary reminded her with a raised eyebrow. “It shut and locked. From this side. All by itself.”

They stared at each other.

“Never mind,” Gwynn said at last, giving up. “I’m going to take a bath. And then I’m going to bed. In a real bed. Because I don’t want to deal with this.”

“I’ll call Colin about the glass.”

Gwynn didn’t reply.