Heartstones (13 page)

Honey giggled, ‘I bet she didn’t like all the cobwebs and the leaky roof and broken windows.’

Theo smiled down at his daughter. ‘It wasn’t quite so run down in those days.’

‘As children Nola and I longed to see inside,’ said Phoebe.

‘You can see it now!’ cried Honey. She turned to her father. ‘Shall I show Phoebe round the house?’

Theo looked uncertain. ‘I expect Phoebe has things to do.’

‘Please.’ Honey’s large blue eyes looked imploringly up at Phoebe. ‘Come and see the Castle.’

Phoebe hesitated. It was just too tempting; something to tell Nola if she’d ever talk to her again. ‘Oh OK, just a quick look round.’

Theo stood up. ‘You’ll have to take us as you find us; I haven’t had a chance to tidy up today.’

Chapter Twelve

They took a short cut along a narrow path, climbing steeply through the trees. Honey chattered non-stop; pointing out the first celandines and the holes where foxes lived and the place where she was sure she’d found a dragon’s footprint. Theo’s black dog panted beside them as they walked. Every now and then the dog ran on ahead and Theo would call
Poncho
and the dog would return obediently to his master’s side.

The clouds had cleared to reveal a high, blue sky; all around them fat buds and uncoiled ferns hinted at the coming spring. Phoebe took a deep breath and savoured the smell of damp soil mixed with the sea air; the sun felt warm on her cheeks and her duffle coat a little hot.

Suddenly they emerged from the woods and were standing in front of the grey façade of the house. It rose majestically in front of Phoebe and seemed so much bigger than it looked from the beach. Phoebe gazed upwards. Two round towers flanked the central building and gothic arches outlined windows that seemed so randomly arranged that it was hard to tell how many floors there were. Mottled yellow lichen created patterns on the stonework, and ivy and Virginia creeper suckers wove their way around the carvings that adorned the front. Centuries of Atlantic weather had worn the carvings but it was still possible to make out the remnants of a row of gargoyles and the vestige of a coat of arms. Beneath a turreted portico, stone steps led up to an arched doorway with a heavy double oak door.

Honey pirouetted in front of them on the weed-strewn gravel. She stopped abruptly and looked at Phoebe. ‘We only live in a bit of it; we can’t afford to live in the rest because we’re poor.’ She started to spin again.

Theo looked up at his home. ‘We tend to live in the kitchen and a few rooms above it but we’ve made it through two winters and I think we’re getting used to the cold now, aren’t we, Honey?’

Honey stopped spinning and ran up the steps, ignoring the question. ‘This is the door we don’t use,’ she said and danced down the steps. ‘But this is the one we do.’ She disappeared around the corner. Phoebe and Theo followed her. At a half-glazed door Theo gestured to Poncho to wait and ushered Phoebe inside.

Phoebe stopped and stared around the cold and cavernous room. Centuries of use had left layers of kitchen history that would have been treasure-trove to the social historian had it not been for the mess.

Every surface was covered in clutter; half-unpacked supermarket bags spilled out across the filthy work surfaces – jostling for space with dirty crockery, over-flowing ash trays, piles of newspapers, letters, and Honey’s school books. Jumpers and coats lay in jumbled mounds with muddy dog blankets. Discarded Wellington boots and shoes were heaped up at the door beside an overflowing box of empty bottles.

Phoebe took a few steps into the room; the floor felt both sticky and gritty. Looking down she saw worn slate flagstones covered with a layer of mud and sand and goodness knows what else. In the middle of the room Honey was desperately trying to tidy up a large pine table; so many bottles, cartons, mugs, and dirty plates were strewn across it that she was making little impression.

Theo pushed past Phoebe to swiftly remove several empty glasses; he put them in a Belfast sink piled high with pots and pans.

‘I’m afraid it’s all a bit of a mess.’ He didn’t look at Phoebe but walked over to a fireplace to throw a piece of driftwood onto the dimly glowing ashes; he threw another into the fire-box of an ancient Aga. ‘Tea or coffee?’ Something about the stiffness in his stance made Phoebe wonder if he regretted asking her back to the house.

‘Tea please.’ Phoebe took another gritty step across the floor.

‘I’ll get out the milk.’ Honey opened the door of a large, double-fronted fridge that hummed in one corner, a period piece in its own right, 1970s maybe? Phoebe decided it had probably been installed by Theo’s American mother along with the central heating. Apart from the fridge little attempt had been made to bring the kitchen into the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Looking up she saw a row of huge black hooks set into a wooden beam; this was where the meat would have hung in her grandmother’s day.

Theo set a kettle on the Aga; water splashed onto the hotplate with a hiss and a cloud of steam.

‘Come and see the rest of the house,’ said Honey, pulling at Phoebe’s hand as though to distract her from looking around the chaotic room. ‘The kettle always takes ages to boil.’

‘Do you mind if I look round, Theo?’ asked Phoebe.

‘Do whatever you like.’ Theo looked over his shoulder at her; she thought she saw a flash of defiance in his eyes, challenging her to criticise his home, then he turned away again and began to stoke the fire.

‘This way.’ Honey was already dragging Phoebe through a wooden door that opened on to a steep spiral staircase. ‘This is the way the servants brought the food upstairs in the old-fashioned days.’ Her voice echoed around the circular walls.

The stairs abruptly ended at another wooden door and a thick carpet muffled Phoebe’s steps as she stepped into a very different room. Phoebe gazed around. It was beautiful and, unlike the kitchen, devoid of any clutter – in fact devoid of anything but a long dark mahogany dining table that looked as if it could easily have seated twenty people. The pale pink walls were a patchwork of darker pink squares and rectangles where paintings must once have hung. Sunlight poured through long un-curtained windows which looked on to the garden at the back of the house, Phoebe stared outside; a long-disused fountain rose up from a pond now full of thick green sludge instead of water, while flowerbeds which probably had once been full of roses were now a tangle of brambles and weeds. Despite the sunlight Phoebe shivered.

‘We don’t use this room,’ said Honey. ‘We use the room next door because there’s a fireplace that doesn’t blow back all the smoke.’

‘What about the central heating?’ asked Phoebe.

‘Too expensive,’ said Honey, beckoning to Phoebe as she opened a door.

The adjoining room was smaller and warmer, but just as beautiful. Pale yellow walls were edged in elaborate plasterwork and a glass chandelier was suspended from an intricate ceiling rose of acanthus leaves and lilies. The wall in front of her was semi-circular and must have been built into one of the towers; three long windows were set into the curve and looked out over the sea towards the mountains of the opposite peninsula. Heavy velvet drapes fell down to the floor on either side of the windows, and oriental rugs lay across a worn cream carpet. At one end of the room an assortment of sagging sofas and armchairs were gathered around a marble fireplace. The fireplace was heavily carved with what looked like little figures. As Phoebe approached it she saw that they weren’t human figures but monkeys, clad in sailors’ costumes; they scrambled up each side and along the front where a group of four were busy playing billiards.

‘I like these monkeys,’ Honey stroked the smooth little white head of one of the billiard players. Phoebe felt compelled to touch one too and was surprised by the warmth of the marble beneath her fingertips.

Theo and Honey’s use of the room was evident: a dusty television set sat on a low table, stacks of books were piled along one wall and clothes, dirty crockery, and newspapers were scattered around the floor along with broken toys and remnants of biscuits and apple cores; it seemed almost as chaotic as the kitchen downstairs.

‘We sleep in rooms off there.’ With a wave of her hand Honey indicated two narrow doors side by side, but she led Phoebe to the other side of the room and through another door. It led into a vast entrance hall. Phoebe stood on the black-and-white marble tiles and stared up the sweeping stone staircase. Light flooded in from a glass dome set into the ceiling high above them. She had a sudden image of her grandmother, running down the stairs, maybe to greet her father, maybe to be reprimanded by her mother for her haste or lack of decorum.

‘Watch this!’ Honey’s voice echoed around the hallway as she began a display of hopscotch on the floor tiles. When she had propelled herself to the other side of the hall she opened another door and beckoned Phoebe to follow.

This room was grander than the previous ones; the plasterwork on the ceilings was even more elaborate, numerous windows looked out at the view both front and back and a huge fireplace incorporated a coat of arms into its carved decoration. Phoebe stood and stared at it; a fierce-eyed crow stood proprietarily on top of a crest and a greyhound lay elegantly along the bottom. Phoebe realised that this must be her grandmother’s family crest; it seemed bizarre to have one’s own coat-of-arms and she smiled at the thought of getting it made into a T-shirt for Nola’s birthday present.

The room was completely empty apart from a grand piano in one corner.

‘That’s Uncle Oliver’s,’ said Honey with a wave of the hand. She didn’t give Phoebe a chance to ask any questions as she took her hand and pulled her through yet another door.

Now they stood in a completely circular room. It was lined with long, glass cupboards, each one fitting perfectly into the curve of the walls.

‘This is the library,’ whispered Honey with a giggle. ‘Look at all these books –who’d ever want to read them?’

Phoebe opened one of the cupboard doors and read the titles on the cracked leather spines. A complete set of Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Greek philosophers; she wondered if the books had been there in her grandmother’s day or if they had belonged to Theo’s father.

A series of smaller rooms led them back into the hallway and Honey skipped up the staircase with untiring energy. Phoebe followed and found herself being led through a warren of corridors that incorporated countless sets of small uneven steps; the middle floor seemed to be on so many different levels that it explained the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of the windows seen from the outside.

Numerous empty rooms led off the corridors. Phoebe counted at least eight bedrooms and three bathrooms of varying periods. Faded wallpaper peeled away from the cold, damp walls and Phoebe noticed cracks across the windowpanes and mould mottling the ceilings. An assortment of buckets and plastic bowls were set out in almost every room, Phoebe assumed the water they contained was rain. Honey dipped her finger into one and flicked water drops across the floor.

‘They all need emptying after last night.’

Phoebe tried to imagine which had been her grandmother’s bedroom. She decided that the largest, lightest room might have been a nursery where her grandmother and her brothers would no doubt have been brought up by a nanny, before being sent away to school.

Honey took her up another flight of stairs to the attic floor. Small rooms that had once been the servants’ quarters were piled with boxes, furniture, and paintings.

‘These are all Uncle Oliver’s things. Daddy inherited the house and Uncle Oliver inherited the things inside it, but he never stays anywhere long enough to need them.’

‘What does he do?’ asked Phoebe.

‘Oh, he goes all over the world giving piano concerts. He’s famous.’

Oliver Casson – the name sounded vaguely familiar to Phoebe, she thought she’d heard him mentioned on a radio programme. ‘He used to live in New York with his wife Gloria,’ Honey continued, ‘she looked like Barbie, but Uncle Oliver liked another lady so he married her and went to live in Hong Kong, but now he’s on his own and mostly he just lives in hotels and has girlfriends.’ She shook her head as if bewildered by the complications of the adult world.

A cardboard box at Phoebe’s feet overflowed with black and white photographs, their sides curling in the damp. Phoebe squatted down and began sifting through the pictures; she recognised Theo’s father’s long jowly face and she also recognised many of the other people who appeared in the photographs with him; film stars, actors, politicians and musicians.

‘What a wonderful record of your grandfather’s career.’

Honey looked indifferent. ‘I didn’t like my grandpa much, he was always grumpy and he thought my mum was “just a pretty little floozy from the local pub, fine for kissing after a village disco but my dad should have married someone from a better family.”’ She said the last part of the sentence with a parrot-like intonation and a broad West-of-Ireland accent.

Phoebe looked up in surprise. ‘Did your father tell you that?’

‘No, I heard Uncle Fibber saying it to Katrina when they thought I wasn’t there. But my grandpa was wrong. My dad shouldn’t have married anyone else and I don’t care what that ugly old man said anyway.’

‘He thought enough of your parents to leave them this beautiful house?’

‘He only left it to them because “he thought they would never be able to run it on the money Daddy made from pottery and he wanted to see it destroy them.”’ Again Phoebe heard the parrot-like expression in the child’s voice.

‘Did you hear your Uncle Fibber saying that?’

‘No. I heard my mum say it to Grandma when we first came to live here. My mum said she was going to show the old goat’s ghost that they were going to make a successful business out of the Castle and prove him wrong.’

‘Goodness, you overhear a lot of things Honey, don’t you?’

Honey pursed her lips and Phoebe thought she caught the glimmer of tears in the corner of her eyes. ‘Mummy was going to make the Castle all lovely but now she’s dead and the Castle is cold and dirty and Daddy says we’ll have to sell it.’ Honey wiped her eyes on the woollen sleeves of her jumper. Phoebe longed to wrap her arms around the tiny body and tell her that everything would be all right but she wasn’t sure it would.

Phoebe stood up. ‘Well, is this the end of the tour?’

Honey smiled and her face lit up. ‘No! I haven’t shown you the best bit yet. You have to see outside.’

Phoebe headed for the stairs, prepared for a trip around the gardens.

‘Not that way,’ called Honey, disappearing in the other direction, ‘outside is over here.’ Phoebe followed her and suddenly they were outside, standing on a lead gully that ran along the bottom of the slated roof. Crenulated battlements surrounded them and crows watched with interest from rows of tall brick chimneys. When Phoebe looked down she could see the beach, and the sea and in the distance the opposite peninsula and then the Atlantic. It all swept spectacularly in front of them as though they were flying.