Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

Maude watched the charade in silence beside the serving trolley. Once she was satisfied Catherine had finished eating she cleared the table. But not a word was exchanged. The permanent expression of suppressed rage on Maude’s crumpled face was sufficient indication that any private discussion about the note from Catherine’s first visit would be unwelcome.

Could Edith’s behaviour truly be an elaborate ploy for attention, as Leonard had suggested? Tonight the woman seemed barely able to tolerate her presence. Or perhaps the compulsion to be judgemental and controlling was a role the woman barely had the strength for at this hour.

Coming back had been a dreadful error. She should have kept on driving. She needed familiarity, warmth, support, and suffered a sudden fear that a last chance had been missed and now it would be too late to leave. She had to say something. Speaking might force a resolution she was desperate for, because tomorrow and the day after were at risk of being whittled away just like today.

‘Ms Mason?’

It took a few seconds for Edith to look up. ‘My uncle never tolerated chatter at the dinner table.’ She almost spat the word ‘chatter’ at Catherine and her dark gums and thin teeth were briefly exposed in a grimace.

‘Sorry.’

‘But as you have begun, you may finish. What is it?’

Catherine cleared her throat. ‘The dolls I viewed in Green Willow.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well… they… I don’t think I have seen a finer private collection. Ever.’

Some warmth returned to Edith’s little reddish eyes. ‘Thank you. They were gifts from my mother and uncle. They spoiled me.’

‘You were loved. Cherished. I can see that.’

‘The dolls were not for playing with.’ Edith added this refrain with such sadness that Catherine instantly forgave her for being unpleasant. In a heartbeat she saw how lonely and afraid Edith was. She had been left behind. And how could she estimate the damage inflicted upon Edith as a child, by a mad uncle and mother, as Leonard suspected? The force of her recrimination and shame for thinking badly of her host surprised her.

‘You have a kind heart, Miss Howard.’

‘Catherine, please.’

‘I will address you as I see fit. But you are quite right to assume that I wait here alone.’

‘I…’ Had she spoken out loud? Or had her expression communicated more than she would wish to a woman unaccustomed to conversation?

‘But not for much longer.’ Edith spoke to the table’s surface.

Catherine’s courage to continue the conversation deserted her.

‘You must make allowances for those who live so long. Whose role is unexceptional. My time is almost done. My use was what it was, I fear, and no more. So take them. It won’t matter much, I suspect, if I am no longer here for their safe keeping. They must now watch over other children as they sleep. Only innocence can give them life. Please make sure they are well looked after.’

Flushing with embarrassment before more evidence of the woman’s decline, Catherine decided she’d be better off if she just gave up trying to understand anything Edith said to her. It was hopeless. ‘The dolls. I think a private collector, or even a museum, would be—’

Edith waved her napkin with irritation. ‘I have no interest in these other places.’

‘But if I may begin the inventory with them. They are a speciality of mine.’

‘Because to you they also live. I knew it immediately. Your presence here is not ideal, but at least the vulgarity and coarseness we have encountered in others is mostly absent in you.’

She wanted to be flattered, but it was the ‘mostly’ that spoiled the moment.

‘So take it all. I don’t know why I cling. The house seems to wish it all comes to you.’

All. The word boomed inside her.

‘But before you begin, you must see where my uncle worked. I’ve decided to let you in there tomorrow.’ The smile disappeared from a face that looked dead in a moment of unwavering candlelight. ‘I know you wish it. I am too old, and have been here too long, for you to hide things from me.’

Catherine tried to change the subject. ‘If it is all right with you, ma’am, if you can tell me what it is you want included in the inventory, I’ll restrict my work to those areas of the house. I don’t want to trouble you any more than I have already.’

‘Don’t be impatient. Nothing infuriates me more than impetuousness. We won’t be rushed, Miss Howard. All that is here, all who are here, are part of the Red House. This is a curious house that has known many times and lives. But nothing of it is indivisible. All must be understood in its proper and rightful context, and to begin with, in the places my uncle worked and brought such strange life to this house. Nothing has value unless it is considered properly. By degrees. And in the correct sequence. Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes,’ Catherine said automatically, but had no idea what Edith had actually asked her. She glanced at Maude, but looked away just as quickly from the housekeeper’s face because it stared with a barely contained malice at Edith. Catherine suspected the couple had been chastened by something she was not privy to. There was no warmth between them. They were as indifferent to each other as strangers. What bound them together, and motivated Maude to continue with the fatiguing care required by an elderly invalid, was mystifying.

But if she was not permitted to begin the inventory the following morning, and was manoeuvred into another digression involving M. H. Mason’s grotesque hobbies, she would force the issue. She was prepared to leave empty-handed, save clutching a handful of stories no one would ever believe. And then Leonard could try his hand here. And she would prepare her excuses to avoid any more meals before tomorrow too. Regardless of Edith’s decline, she knew her own mental state made it unhealthy for her to remain in this environment.

‘You have time, dear. And there is much to understand.’ Edith’s voice had softened, was almost wheedling. She also grinned in what looked like triumph as if the woman had won some war of wills Catherine would only understand later. ‘Now you are with us, there is less to distract you from this exceptional opportunity. There is more for you right here, than you ever found out there. I sense you are a young woman accustomed to disappointment.’ Edith slowly moved her head in the direction of the window behind her chair. ‘Out there.’

Was Edith now, impossibly, referring to her break-up with Mike? Had Leonard said something to Edith before she arrived? No, he’d only written Edith one letter, and that was before she split with Mike. Besides Leonard, she’d only told her parents about the break-up. The news worried them, but also wearied them. Or was Edith even hinting something of her flight from London, the incident, maybe her childhood, everything. The idea stunned her, baffled her into silence.

No, she was being paranoid. Edith could not possibly know about Mike, or anything of her life out there. ‘Oh really. Why do you say that?’

‘We keep to ourselves, but we are not blind, dear. Your eyes are full of a broken heart.’

We? Leonard must have said—

‘I never went in for all that. My mother did once. Must have done, though she never discussed it with me. I never knew my father. But I had my uncle. He introduced me to other things. More rewarding pursuits.’ Edith grinned her yellow grin. ‘There are other things one can love. A different kind of love maybe, but love all the same. A more enduring love. One perhaps that is everlasting.’

‘Today,’ Catherine said to deflect Edith’s uncomfortable taunts, or her investigation, or whatever it was. ‘This afternoon…’