Jan Siegel - The Dragon-Charmer

‘Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It’s like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again – you put on yourself – and then you know who you are.’

Gaynor appeared unconvinced, but an approaching road junction caused a diversion. Fern had forgotten the way, and they stopped to consult a map. ‘Who’ll be there?’ Gaynor enquired when they resumed their route. ‘When we arrive, I mean.’

‘Only my brother. I asked Abby to keep Dad in London until the day before the wedding. He’d only worry about details and get fussed, and I don’t think I could take it. I can deal with any last minute hitches. Will never fusses.’

‘What’s he doing now? I haven’t seen him for years.’

‘Post-grad at York. Some aspect of art history. He spends a lot of time at the house, painting weird surreal pictures and collecting even weirder friends. He loves it there. He grows marijuana in the garden and litters the place with beer cans and plays pop music full blast; our dour Yorkshire housekeeper pretends to disapprove but actually she dotes on him and cossets him to death. We still call her Mrs Wicklow although her Christian name is Dorothy. She’s really too old to housekeep but she refuses to retire so we pay a succession of helpers for her to find fault with.’

‘The old family retainer,’ suggested Gaynor.

‘Well … in a way.’

‘What’s the house like?’

‘Sort of grey and off-putting. Victorian architecture at its most unattractively solid. We’ve added a few mod cons but there’s only one bathroom and no central heating. We’ve always meant to sell it but somehow we never got around to it. It’s not at all comfortable.’

‘Is it haunted?’

There was an appreciable pause before Fern answered.

‘Not exactly,’ she said.

They had been friends since their days at college, but Gaynor sometimes felt that for all their closeness she knew little of her companion. Outwardly, Fern Capel was smart, successful, self-assured, with a poise that more than compensated for her lack of inches, a sort of compact neatness which implied I am the right height; it is everyone else who is too tall . She had style without flamboyance, generosity without extravagance, an undramatic beauty, a demure sense of humour. A colleague had once said she ‘excelled at moderation’; yet Gaynor had witnessed her, on rare occasions, behaving in a way that was immoderate, even rash, her slight piquancy of feature sharpened into a disturbing wildness, an alien glitter in her eyes. At twenty-eight, she had already risen close to the top in the PR consultancy where she worked. Her fiancé, Marcus Greig, was a well-known figure of academe who had published several books and regularly aired both his knowledge and his wit in the newspapers and on television. ‘I plan my life,’ she had told her friend, and to date everything seemed to be proceeding accordingly, smooth-running and efficient as a computer programme. Or had it been ‘I planned my life’? Gaynor wondered, chilling at the thought, as if, in a moment of unimaginable panic and rejection, Fern had turned her back on natural disorder, on haphazard emotions, stray adventure, and had dispassionately laid down the terms for her future. Gaynor’s very soul shrank from such an idea. But on the road to Yorkshire, with the top of the car down, the citified sophisticate had blown away, leaving a girl who looked younger than her years and potentially vulnerable, and whose mood was almost fey. ‘She doesn’t want to marry him,’ Gaynor concluded, seeking a simple explanation for a complex problem, ‘but she hasn’t the courage to back out.’ Yet Fern had never lacked courage.

The house was a disappointment: solidly, stolidly Victorian, watching them from shadowed windows and under frowning lintels, its stoic façade apparently braced to withstand both storm and siege. ‘This is a house that thinks it’s a castle,’ Fern said. ‘One of these days, I’ll have to change its mind.’

Gaynor, who assumed she was referring to some kind of designer face-lift, tried to visualise hessian curtains and terracotta urns, and failed.

Inside, there were notes of untidiness, a through-draught from too many open windows, the incongruous blare of a radio, the clatter of approaching feet. She was introduced to Mrs Wicklow, who appeared as grim as the house she kept, and her latest assistant, Trisha, a dumpy teenager in magenta leggings wielding a dismembered portion of hoover. Will appeared last, lounging out of the drawing room which he had converted into a studio. The radio had evidently been turned down in his wake and the closing door suppressed its beat to a rumour. Gaynor had remembered him tall and whiplash-thin but she decided his shoulders had squared, his face matured. Once, he had resembled an angel with the spirit of an urchin; now, she saw choirboy innocence and carnal knowledge, an imp of charm, the morality of a thief. There was a smudge of paint on his cheek which she almost fancied might have been deliberate, the conscious stigma of an artist. His summer tan turned grey eyes to blue; there were sun-streaks in his hair. He greeted her as if they knew each other much better than was in fact the case, gave his sister an idle peck, and offered to help with the luggage.

‘We’ve put you on the top floor,’ he told Gaynor. ‘I hope you won’t mind. The first floor’s rather full up. If you’re lonely I’ll come and keep you company.’

‘Not Alison’s room?’ Fern’s voice was unexpectedly sharp.

‘Of course not.’

‘Who’s Alison?’ Gaynor asked, but in the confusion of arrival no one found time to answer.

Her bedroom bore the unmistakable stamp of a room that had not been used in a couple of generations. It was shabbily carpeted, ruthlessly aired, the bed-linen crackling with cleanliness, the ancient brocades of curtain and upholstery worn to the consistency of lichen. There was a basin and ewer on the dresser and an ugly slipware vase containing a hand-picked bunch of flowers both garden and wild. A huge mirror, bleared with recent scouring, reflected her face among the spots, and on a low table beside the bed was a large and gleaming television set. Fern surveyed it as if it were a monstrosity. ‘For God’s sake remove that thing,’ she said to her brother. ‘You know it’s broken.’

‘Got it fixed.’ Will flashed Gaynor a grin. ‘This is five-star accommodation. Every modern convenience.’

‘I can see that.’

But Fern still seemed inexplicably dissatisfied. As they left her to unpack, Gaynor heard her say: ‘You’ve put Alison’s mirror in there.’

‘It’s not Alison’s mirror : it’s ours. It was just in her room.’

‘She tampered with it…’

Gaynor left her bags on the bed and went to examine it more closely. It was the kind of mirror that makes everything look slightly grey. In it, her skin lost its colour, her brown eyes were dulled, the long dark hair which was her principal glory was drained of sheen and splendour. And behind her in the depths of the glass the room appeared dim and remote, almost as if she were looking back into the past, a past beyond warmth and daylight, dingy as an unopened attic. Turning away, her attention was drawn to a charcoal sketch hanging on the wall: a woman with an Edwardian hairstyle, gazing soulfully at the flower she held in her hand. On an impulse she unhooked it, peering at the scrawl of writing across the bottom of the picture. There was an illegible signature and a name of which all she could decipher was the initial E. Not Alison, then. She put the picture back in its place and resumed her unpacking. In a miniature cabinet at her bedside she came across a pair of handkerchiefs, also embroidered with that tantalising E. ‘Who was E?’ she asked at dinner later on.