Barbara Erskine - The Ghost Tree

At dinner that night, with Tom amongst the invited guests and, for once without Jamie, who was rapidly becoming his faithful sidekick, Sir John encouraged the boy to listen and to talk with his two distinguished guests. He was impressed that Tom appeared to know so much about the movement of the stars and had so swiftly grasped the basics of navigation. He did not know that the slowly growing pile of letters addressed to Lord Cardross in the bottom of Tom’s sea chest were the way Tom was assuaging his homesickness and at the same time proving to his eldest brother, secure in his academic haven in Scotland, that life at sea was something to be envied.

Cross though I was with my parents and my brothers, blaming them for my being press-ganged, as I considered it, into the navy, I wrote to them all. To my father I sent a short, polite note, informing him that I was still alive and moderately well. To my mother I wrote in warmer terms, withholding any news which I believed would be upsetting, though my mother was to my mind far better able to bear bad news than Papa. To David I was formal; I would never let him think I had been upset by my sudden relocation into the middle of the ocean. Only to Harry did I unburden myself at length, describing the worst parts of the experience, maybe, in spite of myself, allowing hints of my fear and homesickness, a sorrow compounded by the fact that I no longer knew where my home was. Certainly not Bath. I had been there but a few months. The house of my parents in Walcot was, I suppose, the nearest thing to home that I had known, but in my own mind I considered that they had cast me out. My brothers still lived and studied in Scotland, and Scotland was the land of my birth. It was there that I had grown up; it was there that I had explored a world of confusing contrasts. I was of noble birth, but poor. I was loved, at least by Mama, but I was also their youngest and least important child. I was in my heart a country boy but lived in a city. I had been privy to the conversations of the greatest minds of the enlightened age, encouraged to listen and watch and study, to express, albeit only occasionally, my own small opinions as I grew. I was allowed to make books my friends and to write and have dreams of academe, then told that all of my expectations and certainties were no more than that: dreams.

The place I now found myself was, I supposed, at present my home, the only certainty I knew upon the great wastes of the sea, and I put that at the head of my letters as my current address: HMS Tartar .

I sealed my letters and stowed them away at the bottom of my sea chest. I did not know if they would ever reach their destination. Perhaps it would be better if they did not.

April looked at her watch. There was no sign of Timothy and it had long ago grown dark. Presumably he had followed the Daimler for miles, then in his usual clueless way he had got himself lost. She felt a disproportionate wave of hatred for Finlay sweep over her. Everything about him, his complacency, his posh car, his celebrity status – which obviously brought money as well as fame – added to her fury at his decision to get involved and try to thwart her plans.

Sitters they had called themselves. The name had pleased them hugely. Squat. Infiltrate. Take. Hence the acronym. They would look for an empty house to use as a base – surprisingly easy even in this day and age. Then they’d move in, their story of distant relatives ready should anyone ask who they were, and begin to leaflet the area. They offered cleaning services, odd jobs, help with shopping, ‘no job too small’ and targeted elderly people who seemed to be living on their own. They then befriended them. Hence the sitting; not babysitting, but sitting with the elderly. Timothy at least had convinced himself they were doing the old folk a favour. They were lonely, abandoned by the world. It pleased them to have a friend. They entrusted their money, their credit cards, their PIN numbers, in order to get the shopping done, and she and Timothy had done that shopping, keeping meticulous records in case anyone ever asked. Until the money ran out. Which it inevitably did. That was the point. Sometimes they found the pension was enough to make it worthwhile sticking around, but not usually. Someone might notice. Time to move on. This was business. Their last target had been in Leeds. Before that in Birmingham.

The squats had varied. Some were in empty houses and they had made do with basic second-hand tat to furnish them. Some were already furnished, as this one had been. They knew who had lived here from sorting through the post that still cascaded through the door. Where the old woman had gone they did not know, but she had had good taste. April liked this house. She would be sad when it was time to go. Edinburgh had been trickier than anywhere else had been so far. She had found it harder to make contacts, to know where to go. But this new enterprise was the best so far; a potential gold mine.

They had tried the inheritance scam once before, in Exeter; it had worked like a dream. No one had questioned them, no one had cared. Her only sorrow had been that they hadn’t chosen a more ambitious target. ‘Start small,’ Timothy had said, and she had listened. But now at last they were about to hit the big time. She had looked up the house prices around Number 26 and they were astronomic. Once they had pocketed the deeds to that place and sold it on, she had calculated they wouldn’t have to work again. And now it was all being threatened by this bloody greedy daughter who had never cared for the old boy anyway and by Finlay Macdermott, of all people. She could hardly contain her rage.

With a sigh she turned out the lights in the kitchen and stamped up the stairs to the small back bedroom. Drawing the curtains before reaching for the light switch, she hauled a heavy suitcase out from under the bed.

Opening the lid of the case she looked down at the newspaper-wrapped contents. There were candlesticks, spoons and forks, small dishes. She pulled out a large square parcel and unwrapped it. She knew what this was. She had seen it on an antiques programme on the telly. A standish. A sort of pen and ink holder. The glass bottles for the ink had hall-marked silver lids. There weren’t any pens with it any more. She ran her finger over the intricate designs carved onto it. Victorian, she supposed. It was sad that it would have to be melted down; the swirls and curls on the silver appealed to her. The other stuff was more austere. Georgian probably. She had made good use of her study of daytime TV. The value of silver had dropped, but it was still all worth a lot of money by their standards.

She couldn’t see how Tim’s claim to that old boy’s inheritance could fail. She had thought of everything, even the DNA. It had been a shock when they discovered he had a daughter, but that almost certainly didn’t matter. Donald Dunbar hadn’t mentioned her to Timothy in all those months; it would be clear to the solicitor that he had intended to disinherit her. She shivered. It had only been chance that Timothy had spotted the letter on the mat from the solicitors to Ruth that day; otherwise they wouldn’t have known what was going on.

She replaced the standish in the suitcase and shoved the case back under the bed. Standing up, she turned away and caught sight of the pictures with their gilded frames stacked behind the door. She wasn’t sure he should have bothered to remove them; they would have come anyway with the whole inheritance. But if anyone asked, he could always say it was to keep them safe in case the house was burgled. She gave a wintry smile. Shuddering, she studied the picture facing her. Ghastly woman in a lace-trimmed bonnet. Hideous face! But an oil painting nevertheless and who knows, it might be by someone famous. Or of someone famous. The jewellery she had locked in a drawer, all except the small bag of rings that Timothy had pocketed and she had demanded back as soon as they got home. There was other stuff too, which Timothy had removed little by little over the last few months. He was fairly certain he had taken everything of value. Poor old Donald had been oblivious, pathetically grateful for the attention that had been given him, clinging to her hand when she had gone to visit. She did not allow herself to remember the time when, with tears in his eyes, he had called her Ruth.