Kathleen McGurl - The Emerald Comb

You might want, having read this far, to throw this manuscript down in disgust, and hear no more of your father’s indiscretions. But, my dear son, bear with me please, for you must know the truth. Steel yourself, Barty, for there is worse, far worse, to come. And some of it, I must write as though Agnes herself is telling the story. She was loyal to me, in those days, and told me everything, or at least, almost everything, that passed in private between her and Georgia.

Chapter Six: Hampshire, April 2013

The day we moved into Kingsley House was one of those bright blue April days, when the air is rich with birdsong, the sun shines with golden promise, and the hedgerows explode with blossom. The newly-unfurled leaves on the huge beech tree were an electric lime green, and the grass, in its first growth since the winter, rivalled them in intensity of colour. It almost made your eyes hurt to look out at the day.

The removal men whistled as they carried our furniture and cartons into the house. Lewis and Lauren were taking huge delight directing them – ‘Lounge!’ ‘My bedroom at the top!’ ‘Kitchen!’ – according to what was scrawled on the boxes in marker pen.

‘Can you put my curtains up, Mum?’ Lauren called down the stairs.

‘Dad, when are you going to plug in the telly? Deadly Sixty ’s on, and I don’t want to miss it. They’re doing tarantulas this week.’ Lewis was apparently bored of directing removal men.

‘Katie, any sign of the box with the kettle in? I could so do with a cuppa,’ Simon said, as he staggered past me carrying two boxes at once.

‘Mind your back! Why are you shifting boxes anyway, aren’t we paying blokes to carry them in?’ I said.

‘These got put in the living room but they’re books, should be in the study,’ he said. ‘They’ll go on those big built-in shelves in there. Fabulous piece of carpentry, that. Wonder how old it is?’

I smiled. It was one of my favourite features in the house too. And if Simon was wondering about the age of it, it’d surely only be a matter of time before he started wondering about the people who used to live here…and then I’d be able to spend many happy hours filling him in. I still hadn’t mentioned the fact my ancestors had lived here.

‘I reckon it’s mid-Victorian, possibly even earlier,’ I said. ‘I’ve found the kettle but we’ve no milk or tea bags. Don’t suppose you’ve come across my laptop and genealogy research notes?’

‘Look in the fridge,’ he grunted, as he passed me again with another box marked BOOKS. They were mostly mine.

‘What?’ I went out to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Bless the Delameres, they’d left us a pint of milk, a plastic bag with a dozen teabags in, a bottle of orange squash and a packet of chocolate digestives. I pulled the kettle out of a box and turned on the kitchen tap to fill it. The water ran brown.

‘Hmph. Looks like we’ve inherited rusty iron piping,’ said Simon, looking over my shoulder.

I guessed the house would need new plumbing, then. I shrugged. It’s what you have to expect when buying an old house. I ran the tap for a minute until it cleared, filled the kettle, then searched for somewhere to plug it in. There was a single socket at worktop height, and a double beneath the table. When we refitted the kitchen we’d have to rewire and add plenty more sockets.

It wasn’t long before the van was unloaded, the removal men tipped and gone, and we were left amid a sea of cardboard boxes. Thank goodness this was such a large house: there was still space to move around the boxes and shift furniture. We made the kids’ rooms habitable then headed into the village centre for an evening meal at the local pub, the White Hart. It was just a five-minute walk up the lane. The pavement was narrow and I was thankful Thomas no longer needed to sit in a pushchair.

‘Great idea, this,’ said Simon, as he sat down with his pint. ‘I’d thought we’d get a takeaway but it’s so nice to escape the chaos for a couple of hours.’

‘Agreed. Well, here’s to our new life in North Kingsley!’ I raised my glass of Pinot Grigio and clinked it against his Guinness. Lauren and Lewis picked up their glasses of Coke and clinked too, while Thomas put his thumb in his mouth and cuddled up beside me. Although he was four, he was still very much our baby and tended to act it, especially when he was tired.

I gave him a hug. ‘Aw, as soon as we’ve had dinner we’ll go home and I’ll read you a story and put you to bed, sweetie.’

‘Our proper home?’ He gazed up at me with wide, worried eyes.

‘Our new home. You’ve got your own lovely bedroom now. No more sharing with Lewis.’

Wrong thing to say. He still looked worried and his lower lip began to tremble. ‘I don’t want to sleep on my own. That house is scary. There might be ghosts.’

‘You can sleep in my room tonight,’ said Lewis. ‘Can’t he, Mum? Just till we get used to the new house.’

I smiled at my lovely thoughtful eleven-year-old. ‘Yes, of course he can. It’ll be strange for all of us tonight. But we’ll feel better in the morning when we’re not so tired.’

We’d sold our Southampton house to a buy-to-let investor, who’d made us an offer during the twins’ birthday party back in February; we’d negotiated the sale price while a horde of pre-teens ran riot having a balloon fight around us. There was no chain, so we’d been able to move on a day which suited us. The survey on Kingsley House had been worrying at first glance, but all it said when you boiled it down was that the house was old, and had the kind of problems you’d associate with old houses. Simon dismissed it as a waste of money, declaring he could have written it himself without ever having seen the house. Our removal company had packed for us earlier in the week, and had turned up at eight am to load up the van. It had been a very long day. No wonder poor Thomas was so tired and tearful.

The food arrived, and we all tucked in to battered cod and chips, burgers for the kids, followed by steaming treacle pudding and custard. Perfect comfort food, and it hit the spot quickly. Soon the children were laughing together; Lauren was telling whispered stories about the grizzled old men who were sitting on bar stools clutching pints of real ale, making Thomas giggle uncontrollably. It was good to hear.

‘Looks like a pretty old pub, this one,’ said Simon, gazing around at the low beamed ceiling, dark wood panelling and stone window seats.

‘I like it, it’s got character.’ I wondered whether Bartholomew or his father William had ever sat in this pub. Probably not, they’d been too high up the social scale to drink in the local hostelry. But Barty, at least in his later years, had certainly frequented this place. Vera Delamere had told me as much, recalling the village gossip about him.

Across the room, screwed to a wall beside the bar, was an old map. I got up to go and inspect it. It showed the village as it was in 1852. It was much smaller then: the railway had only just reached North Kingsley and none of the housing estates had been built. I picked out the High Street, with the White Hart pub clearly marked. Following the road out of the village centre I found our house, surrounded then by outbuildings and stables, with far more land than I’d imagined.

‘Come and look at this,’ I called to Simon.

He came over, with the remains of his pint, and peered at the map. ‘Wow, is that our house? Look at all the land it had then. Shame it’s all been sold off. I wouldn’t have minded a huge garden. Could have bought a ride-on mower.’ He put on a wistful expression. ‘Always wanted a ride-on mower, you know. Ah well, next house…’

I gave him a gentle thump on the arm. ‘I’m not moving again, Simon. Well, not until it’s time to downsize, like the Delameres. This is our forever home, as the estate agents put it.’