Sarah Rayne - House of the Lost

If he came home to find the house in this silent, frightened state it meant the cold-eyed men were there. Matthew did not know what went on between the men and his father, but after their visits Father often shut himself in his study for days and Wilma had to carry his meals in on trays, puffing a bit as she came up from the scullery because she was quite stout. Once when the men were there, Matthew listened outside the study door, his heart hammering with panic in case he was caught, but he did not hear anything because this was an old house with thick doors.

‘Better not to hear anything at all,’ Wilma always said about the men. ‘Better to stay out of their way.’

For most of the time Matthew did so. Once he was in his bedroom at the top of the house with the door closed, he felt safer. He loved this room, because it was the place where he could escape into his own world. He had several of these worlds. Father once said it was the best thing ever to escape into worlds you made for yourself, but he meant the worlds he wrote about in his books. Matthew knew Father would like him to write books one day – stories anyway – but he did not think he would. In any case, his father often seemed to find writing books quite hard. He wandered round the house with his hair in an untidy tumble because he could not be bothered to brush it, and swore at pieces of paper or angrily crumpled them into balls and threw them across the room.

Instead of writing stories Matthew would rather have the private worlds he drew in the sketchbooks he was given for Christmas and birthdays. Father explained that they did not have much money for presents, but Matthew thought drawing paper, coloured pencils and crayons were the best presents. For his ninth birthday he had a whole paintbox which was the loveliest thing he had ever been given in his whole life.

It would be wonderful if the pretend worlds could be real, so that if the cold-eyed men ever came into his bedroom they would not find him because he would have walked into one of the painted pictures like Alice vanishing into the looking-glass world. Father had read that story to him last year, saying it was not actually a fairytale but something called an allegory, in fact a number of allegories. That was interesting, wasn’t it? Matthew had not known what an allegory was, but his father always expected him to understand lots of words and he had not wanted to disappoint him, so he had said politely it was very interesting indeed, then went away to make drawings of the playing cards who had chased Alice. When he said his prayers each night (his teachers said everyone should do this), he always added a prayer that one morning he would wake up to find one of his worlds really did exist and he was living in it.

The inside of Fenn House was as dingy as the outside.

The curious image that had printed itself on Theo’s vision like a dark sunburst when he entered the house was no longer so vivid, but it had not entirely left him. He supposed it had been a result of eye strain due to the long drive, probably with a degree of emotion generated by returning to this house.

The musty desolation of the house was rather daunting, but the electricity was connected which was one mercy. Although, when Theo switched on the lights, he thought he would almost have preferred oil lamps and candles which might have softened the ominous look of the peeling wallpaper and damp patches under some of the windows.

He unloaded the boxes of provisions he had bought in Norwich and carried them through to the kitchen, distributing them in the larder and fridge. After this he took his suitcases upstairs, pausing outside the bedroom Charmery always had when they were children, sometimes sharing it with their younger cousin, Lesley, who loved coming to Fenn because of being with these two nearly grown-up cousins.

Dust lay thickly in Charmery’s room and there were several faded oblongs on the walls where pictures had hung and been removed. But the old grandfather clock was still in its corner. It had originally been in the big, low-ceilinged sitting room, but as a child Charmery had fallen in love with the clock and persuaded her parents to carry it up to her bedroom. She liked to fall asleep listening to it, she said; it was like listening to Fenn’s heart beating. The clock had to be wound every seven days or it stopped, and Charmery had always made a little ceremony of the winding. Every time she came to Fenn House she would race up the stairs to start it: she always insisted the holiday could not begin properly until the clock was ticking.

No one had wound the clock recently, though. The elaborate brass hands stood at some long-ago three o’clock, and there was dust across the face and the carved door. Theo found himself wondering if three o’clock was the hour Charmery had died.

He closed the door and went along to the bedroom he had always used. There was a view towards the river from this side of the house, and in the gathering dusk he could just make out the outline of St Luke’s Convent. The convent’s land did not exactly join up with Fenn House, but parts marched alongside here and there. On a quiet day – and most days in Melbray were quiet – you could hear the chapel bell. Nancy Kendal said it was intrusive, but Theo had always rather liked hearing the soft chimes. He stared at the crouching bulk of the convent for a moment, then closed the curtains and went back downstairs.

After several unsuccessful attempts he managed to fire up the central-heating system. It clanked protestingly and the pipes juddered alarmingly, but eventually it sent out a reasonable warmth and Theo began to feel more in touch with normality. He went into the dining room which he had not looked at yet, but in which he intended to work.

It was annoying to find, when he switched on the light, that the bulb had blown. Theo swore, but although the room was dim, the curtains framing the old-fashioned French windows were open and there was enough light for him to make a cautious way to a table lamp. He was halfway along the wall, skirting the shadowy shapes of furniture, when a face, the eyes looking straight into his, suddenly swam out of the shadows. Charmery.

Theo’s heart gave a great leap and he felt as if he had been plunged into a vat of ice. For several seconds he could not move and could scarcely breathe for the sudden constriction round his chest. Charmery could not be here, she simply could not , not unless he was really going to accept Guff’s premise of ghosts. He forced himself to reach for the lamp’s switch and reassuring light sprang up.

It was not Charmery herself, of course, nor was it a ghost. It was a framed sketch of her, head and shoulders, almost life-size, done in a smudgy charcoal. In the uncertain light it had been disconcertingly lifelike. Theo had never seen it before and it must be fairly recent, because it was not the Charmery he had known: this was the teenage cousin finally grown-up. The tumble of copper-coloured hair did not show up in charcoal, of course, but the long narrow eyes with the thick dark lashes were there. The artist had given an impression of a low-cut gown of some kind so that the shoulders were bare and she was wearing what looked like a rather elaborate Victorian pendant, which Theo did not recognize.

The sketch did not seem to be signed, but Theo reached up to unhook it. Cobwebs floated down, ghost-strands from the past. He turned the picture over, to see if there was any signature or date on the back, but there was only a layer of dusty backing paper. Theo turned it round and studied it closely, noting the differences again. Hair and clothes were all unfamiliar, and the expression… The expression was the most unfamiliar thing of all. Whoever had drawn this had caught a side of Charmery Theo had never seen. A softer side. Had something happened to her in those years he had not shared? Someone who had come into her life after he left it? There had been a series of lovers – the family had reported that with gleeful disapproval, of course – but towards the end had there been someone who had wrought this extraordinary change? Or had it been someone who had been going to give her the things Theo could not? Marriage, a child… An old pain stirred – a pain that after ten years ought to have been safely buried under thick layers of scar tissue but which still had the power to claw painfully into his mind.