Barbara Erskine - House of Echoes

There was no reply.

She stepped onto a faded Persian rug and glanced quickly into the doorway on her right. It led into a large bedroom which looked out across the back garden and beyond it, over the hedge towards a huge stubble field and then the estuary. The room was sparsely furnished. A bed, covered by a dust sheet, a Victorian chest of drawers, a mahogany cupboard. There was no sign of Luke. The doorway half way down the landing led into a large, beautiful bedroom dominated by an ornate four-poster bed. Joss gasped. In spite of the dust sheets which covered the furniture she could see how exquisite it all was. Stepping forward she pulled at the sheet which lay over the bed to reveal an embroidered bedcover, matching the hangings and tester.

‘So, Mrs Grant. What do you think of your bedroom, eh?’ Luke appeared behind her so suddenly she let out a little cry of fright. He put his arms around her. ‘This is the kind of style to which you would like to be accustomed to live, I suspect?’ He was laughing.

Her fear forgotten, Joss smiled. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s like Sleeping Beauty’s palace.’

‘And Sleeping Beauty needs a kiss from a prince to wake her up and show her she’s not dreaming!’

‘Luke –’ Her squeal of protest as he pulled her onto the high bed and began to kiss her was muffled as he climbed up beside her. ‘I think we need to stake our claim on this bed, don’t you, Mrs Grant?’ He was fumbling for the buttons on her jersey under her jacket.

‘Luke, we can’t –’

‘Why not? It’s your house, your bed!’

She gasped as his hands, ice cold from the chill in the house, met the warm flesh of her breasts and pulled away her bra. Her excitement was rising to match his. ‘Luke –’

‘Shut up.’ He dropped his mouth teasing her with his tongue, his hands busy with her skirt and tights. ‘Concentrate on your husband, my love,’ he smiled down at her.

‘I am.’ She reached up pulling away his sweater and shirt and pushing them back so that she could kiss his chest, his shoulders, pulling him down towards her, oblivious to everything now but the urgency which was building between them.

In the corner of the room a shadowy figure stood motionless, watching them.

‘Yes!’ Luke’s cry of triumph was muffled by the hangings of the bed. In the ceiling beams the stray sunlight from the garden wavered and died as dark clouds raced in from the east.

Clinging to Luke, Joss opened her eyes, staring up at the embroidered tester above her head. A rosette of pale cream silk, threadbare, cobwebbed, nestled in the centre of the fabric. Stretching, contented as a cat, Joss gazed round, not wanting to move, enjoying Luke’s weight, his warmth, his closeness. It was a moment before her eyes registered something in the corner, another fraction of a second before her brain reacted. She blinked, suddenly frightened, but there was nothing there. Just a trick of the light.

Luke raised his head at last and looked down. Joss was crying.

‘Sweetheart, what is it?’ Contrite he wiped the tears with a gentle hand. ‘Did I hurt you?’

She shook her head. ‘Take no notice. I’m all right. I don’t know why I’m crying.’ Sniffing she wriggled away from him and slid off the bed.

Pulling down her skirt she went to retrieve her tights from the dusty boards. It was as she was putting them on that the sound of a bell pealed through the house.

Luke stood up. Pulling his sweater on over his head he padded across to the front window and looked out. ‘There’s someone at the front door!’ He smothered a laugh. ‘How embarrassing! Our first visitor and we’re caught in delicto!’

‘Not caught!’ She pushed her feet into her shoes and smoothed her hair. ‘Go on, then. Let them in.’

They couldn’t. Of the front door key there was no sign. By dint of shouting through the two-inch keyhole, Luke directed their visitor to the back door and it was in the shadowy kitchen that they received their first guest, a tall distinguished-looking woman, dressed in a heavy woollen coat, swathed in a tartan scarf.

‘Janet Goodyear. Next-door neighbour.’ She extended a hand to them both in turn. ‘Sally Fairchild told me you were here. My dears, I can’t tell you how excited the village will be when they hear you’ve arrived. Are you seriously going to live here? It’s such a God-forsaken pile.’ Pulling off her gloves and throwing them on the table she walked over to the range and pulled open the door of one of the ovens. She wrinkled her nose cheerfully. ‘This kitchen is going to need at least twenty thou spent on it! I know a brilliant designer if you need one. He would make a really good job of all this.’

Luke and Joss exchanged glances. ‘Actually, I want to leave the kitchen as it is,’ Joss said. Luke frowned. Her voice was ominously quiet. ‘The range will refurbish beautifully.’

Their visitor looked surprised. ‘I suppose so. But you’d do much better, you know, to swop it for a decent Aga. And God help you when it comes to the roof. Laura and Philip were always having trouble with the roof.’ She turned back from her poking around, her smile all warmth. ‘Oh, my dears, I can’t tell you how lovely it will be to have neighbours here. I can’t wait for you to move in. Now, what I’ve actually come for is to ask if you’d like to pop over for lunch. We live just across the garden there; in the farmhouse.’ She waved a vaguely expansive hand. ‘My husband owns most of the land round here.’

Joss opened her mouth to reply, but Luke was ahead of her. ‘It’s kind of you, Mrs Goodyear, but we’ve brought our own food. I think on this occasion we’ll take a rain check, if you don’t mind. We’ve got a lot of measurements and notes to take while we’re here.’

‘Twenty thou!’ He exploded with laughter when at last they had managed to get rid of her. ‘If she knew that we are going to move in here without a penny to our name she would probably have us struck off her Christmas card list before we were ever on it!’

‘I don’t think she meant to sound so frightening. I quite liked her.’ Joss had pulled open one of the tall cupboards. ‘She’s right in one way, though, Luke. There is a lot to do. The roof – presumably – water, electricity; we don’t know if it all works. And the stove. I suppose we could get it going –’ she stared at it doubtfully ‘– but it is going to gobble fuel.’

‘We’ll cope.’ He put his arms round her again and gave her a hug. He was, she noticed, looking happy for the first time since he had found out about Barry’s treachery. Really happy. ‘For a start there was a massive amount of coal in one of the sheds in the courtyard, did you notice?’ he said. ‘And there will be logs. We’ll manage, Joss. Somehow. You’ll see.’

An empty beer glass had left a wet ring on the pub table which Joss was busy transforming into a figure of eight with variations when David Tregarron fought his way back towards her from the bar carrying two spritzers and a bag of nuts.

The head of the History Department at Dame Felicia’s School in Kensington, David was thirty-eight years old, two years divorced and, as house master and second head lived above the job, over four dormitories of unruly little boys, in a Victorian flat with minimal mod cons. His divorce had been an unpleasant messy business, and Joss had been one of his anchor points at the time. She and he might not agree over teaching methods but her loyalty to him as his marriage had unravelled had been unswerving. She had comforted him as his wife took off into the sunset with her new man, propped him up in the staff room with coffee and Alka Seltzer and cheerfully agreed with all his maudlin lamentations over a woman she had never actually met.