Barbara Erskine - House of Echoes

Putting the kettle onto the stove Joss went to the back door and pulled it open. The morning blackness was totally silent. No bird song. No traffic murmur in the distance as there would have been in London; no cheerful clank of milk bottles. Pulling on her heavy coat she stepped out into the courtyard. The bulk of the old Bentley had been pulled into the coach house and the doors closed. There was nothing here now, but their own Citroën, covered in a thick white frost. The gate out into the garden was painfully cold even beneath her gloved hands as she pushed it back and let herself out onto the matted lawn. Above her head the stars were still blazing as though it were full night. Glancing up she could see a faint light shining from behind the curtains in Lyn’s room. Was she too unable to sleep in a strange bed?

The grass was spiky, brittle beneath her boots. Almost she could hear the tinkle of broken glass as she walked across it, skirting the skeletal branches of a blackly silhouetted tree, down towards the gleam of water. In the east now, she realised, the stars were dimming. Soon it would begin to grow light.

She stood for several moments, gloved hands in pockets, staring down at the ice as around her the garden began imperceptibly to brighten. She was numb with cold, but through the chill she could feel something else. Apprehension – fear even – for what they had done. They had had no real choice. Even if Luke had found a job working for someone else she doubted if they could have afforded the rent on a flat of a decent size and certainly they couldn’t have bought somewhere of their own. They could no longer live in London. But this, this was so different. Another world from the one they had planned together when they had first got married. She frowned, stamping her feet, reluctant as yet to go back inside. A new world, new people, new memories – no, memories wasn’t the right word. A history to be learned and assimilated and in some way lived.

Sammy!

The voice, a boy’s voice, called suddenly out of the darkness behind her. Joss spun round.

Sammy!

It came again, more distant now.

Across the lawn, in the house, a light had appeared in her and Luke’s bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite closed and a broad vee of light flooded out across the frosted grass.

‘Hello?’ Joss’s voice was a husky intrusion into the intense silence. ‘Who’s there?’ She glanced round. The stars were disappearing fast now. A dull greyness was drifting in amongst the bushes in the shrubbery near her. She frowned. ‘Is there someone there?’ She called again, more loudly this time, her voice seeming to echo across the water. In the distance a bird called loudly. Then the silence returned.

Turning sharply back to the house she found she was shivering violently as she hurried back in the direction of the kitchen. Pulling off her boots and gloves she ran inside, blowing on her fingers, to find the kettle cheerfully filling the room with steam. When Luke appeared, some ten minutes later, she was sitting at the table, still in her heavy coat, her hands cupped around a mug of tea.

‘So, Joss, how is it?’ He smiled at her as he found himself a mug on the draining board.

She reached up to kiss him on the mouth. ‘Wonderful, strange. Terrifying.’

He laughed, briefly resting his hand over hers. ‘We’ll cope. Joss.’ His face became serious for a moment. ‘Are you happy about Alice and Joe staying? You don’t want to establish your own territory a bit before they muscle in?’ He searched her face seriously. ‘I know how much this house means to you, love. I do understand how you must feel about it all. If there is any conflict –’

‘There isn’t.’ She shook her head adamantly. ‘I need them here, Luke. I can’t explain it, but I need them. It’s as though they represent something solid, something to hang on to – a life belt – from my old life. Besides, I love them. They are my parents. Whatever, whoever Laura was, I never knew her.’ Pushing back the chair she stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t want her taking over my life. I don’t want her to think she can buy my affection – my love – with all this.’ She gestured at the kitchen around them.

‘I don’t think that’s what she intended, Joss.’ Luke was watching her, puzzled. Her dark hair had fallen in a curtain across her eyes and she hadn’t tossed it back, a habitual gesture of hers which he loved. Instead it hung there, hiding her face, concealing her expression.

‘Luke.’ She still hadn’t looked at him. ‘I walked down to the lake while it was still dark. There was someone out there.’

‘Out in the garden?’ He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her. ‘Who?’

‘They were calling. For someone called Sammy.’

He laughed. ‘Probably a cat. You know how sound travels. On a cold, still night, and near water. It was probably someone in the village.’

At last she had pushed back her hair. She gave him a small lop-sided grin, blowing on her tea. ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that.’

‘Because you are an idiot and I love you.’ He smiled, still watching her face. She was white with exhaustion. The stress of the last two months had told heavily on her. Preoccupied with the business he had had to leave the organisation of the sale of the house, the packing and the move to her as well as the frequent trips to East Anglia to supervise the opening up of the house and the checks to the plumbing and electricity and although Lyn had from time to time taken Tom off her hands for a few hours to help her, he knew the strain had been enormous. She had lost about a stone and the dark rings under her eyes were gaunt reminders of night after night tossing sleepless beside him as they lay staring up at the ceiling locked in silent thought in the dark before the move.

‘First day of the rest of our lives, Joss.’ He raised his mug to clink against hers. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ She smiled.

Alice and Joe appeared some half hour later as Joss was strapping Tom into his high chair. ‘Good morning, sweetheart.’ Alice stopped and kissed the little boy on the head. ‘Joss, my love, your father and I have been talking and we’ve decided to go back to town today.’

‘But Mum –’ Joss stared at her aghast. ‘Why? I thought you liked it here –’

‘We do, Jossie.’ Joe sat down and pulled the teapot towards him. ‘And we’ll be back. We’ve things to do at home, and shopping.’ He wiggled his eyebrows at Tom, who giggled and banged his spoon on the table in front of him. ‘Shopping to do with Father Christmas. We’ll be back, love, before you know it. Your mum needs to rest a bit, Joss. She’s not really up to doing much at the moment.’ He shook his head. ‘And I know her. She won’t be able to sit still as long as she knows there’s work to be done and besides, I think, and your mother agrees with me, that you and Luke need a few days to settle in on your own.’

‘But we don’t. We’ve already discussed this, and I want you here.’ She knew she sounded like a spoiled child. With a miserable sniff Joss turned towards the stove and reached for the kettle. ‘You can’t go. Mum needn’t do anything heavy. She can rest here –’

‘I think maybe they’re right, Joss,’ Luke said quietly. He glanced over her head at his father-in-law.

‘Well, at least Lyn can stay.’ Joss took a deep breath. Picking up a jug of milk she reached for Tom’s beaker.

‘No, love. Lyn is coming with us.’ Joe hooked the toast rack towards him. Selecting a piece he buttered it and cut it into strips, putting them down in front of his grandson. ‘We’ve talked it over with her too. She can come back next week if you want her, if she hasn’t got another temporary job by then.’ He sighed. Uninterested in anything academic Lyn had left school at sixteen and drifted from one unsatisfactory temporary job to another. While Joss had stayed on to do her A levels and followed that with a brilliant career at Bristol University and then a teaching post, Lyn, at the age of twenty-eight, with two failed relationships and an aborted attempt at running her own catering business behind her, had moved back in with her parents and resumed her half-hearted trawl through the agencies. Joe shook his head. ‘Then your mum and I will return on the Wednesday after that in plenty of time for Christmas. And we’ll all stay as long as you like to help you get straight.’