The Haunt (3 page)

The girl’s appearance was unprepossessing, not to say slovenly. It implied, Mildred thought, sovereign disregard of anyone else’s opinion, but of course nowadays it was a cult with young people to make the worst of themselves.

The girl spoke without preamble. ‘Who was that I just saw in a wheelchair?’

‘There is a disabled gentleman staying here,’ Mildred said guardedly.

‘Name of Piper?’

‘Indeed no!’ When Mildred had asked, in the nicest possible way, who her fellow guests were, and seen his signature in the hotel register – ‘Maurice Piper’ – that fine calligraphic script, she had experienced a shock of pure joy. She said, ‘Do you know him?’

The girl shook her head. ‘But he’s here? Piper, I mean?’

‘You must ask Mrs Clapham. She is the proprietress.’

‘Who are those two wheeling the old boy?’

Mildred said sharply, ‘I understand Mr Eashing is an antiquarian. Two of the guests have volunteered to take him for a walk.’

‘Are there any rooms vacant?’

‘I’m not privy to the functioning of the hotel.’ Mildred turned away. ‘Enquire at reception.’

*

She put on her floral silk to go down to dinner. It was suitable for a minor social occasion, and the pre-prandial display here was not exactly dazzling. This was no five-star hotel. The brochure described it as ‘for connoisseurs of peace and plenty, set in secluded grounds with private foreshore, in the reaches of the River Fal, overlooking the beauty of the creeks. A warm welcome and the finest home cooking is assured you at the Bellechasse.’

The welcome on Mildred’s arrival had been disrupted by an argument as to which room she had been allocated. Mrs Clapham had stalked off in a rage, leaving her husband to carry Mildred’s luggage and conduct her to her room. There seemed to be no porter.

The room, when they came to it, was clean and homely.

You couldn’t say fairer than that, thought Mildred. It looked out on a sombre assembly of rhododendron bushes. Mildred supposed it was too early in the season for them to be in flower.

Clapham had thrown open the window with a flourish. ‘You can see the Sillies on a clear day,’ Mildred understood him to say.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The Scilly Isles.’

‘The bathroom is not
en
suite
?’

‘It’s right across the landing, you’ll be sharing with Mister Piper from up in the tower.’

Mildred felt herself flushing scarlet. Clapham grinned. ‘He’s not here just now, he was called back to London a couple of days after he booked in.’

‘I would much prefer—’

‘So you’ve got it all to yourself. I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

‘—a south-facing room—’

‘All bedrooms face east,’ Clapham said cheerfully. ‘There’s a sun lounge and a log fire in the TV room after 6 p.m. You’ll be nice and cosy. Let us know if there’s anything else you want.’ His tone had left Mildred with the impression that it would be unreasonable to want anything else.

As she went into the dining room the young Wallingtons, husband and wife, saluted her. A middle-aged couple looked up from their soup and nodded. Mr Eashing, the antiquarian, was intent on steering his wheelchair between the tables.

Mildred was not altogether pleasantly surprised when the girl she had met on the terrace came into the dining room
and stood looking round. Seeing Mildred, she came to her table. ‘May I sit with you?’

‘I believe the tables are numbered according to one’s room.’

‘Are you waiting for someone?’

When Mildred shook her head the girl pulled out a chair. She hadn’t bothered to change; she wore a T-shirt and what Mildred believed were called the Bermuda shorts she had arrived in. Mildred said, ‘If you sit here it will confuse the waitress.’

‘Which of these people is Piper?’

Mildred experienced a sharp intestinal fuss. ‘I believe he has gone to London.’

‘Is he coming back?’

‘He hasn’t vacated his room.’

‘You checked?’

Mildred said stiffly, ‘I happened to hear Mrs Clapham remark on the muddle it was in.’ She thought it her turn to ask a question. ‘Are you staying here?’

‘I’ve taken a room, you’ll see me around.’ She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Senga. Agnes backwards.’

‘How original.’ Mildred didn’t feel she could say how pretty because it wasn’t. ‘My parents called me Mildred after a great-aunt. They hoped she’d leave me her money.’

‘Did she?’

‘No. She took it with her. She lived to be a hundred and the money went to keep her in a nursing home.’ Mildred had found the wry little jest useful for breaking the ice.

The waitress came with soup. She set it before Mildred and stared in alarm at Senga. ‘Nobody said anything about her.’

‘It’s quite all right, Bettony, this young lady is staying here. You can bring her soup to my table.’

‘There’s only one left, and that’s Number Nineteen’s.’

‘I’m Number Nineteen.’ Senga peered at Mildred’s plate. ‘I don’t think I want any of that.’

Bettony cried, ‘It’s poured already! She won’t have it left!’

Mildred said, ‘Just tell Mrs Clapham the lady in Nineteen doesn’t wish to take the first course.’

Bettony glared and trundled away, preceded by her bosom which was large and uncontrolled.

‘She should wear a horse-collar,’ said Senga.

Mildred sighed. ‘Poor child.’

Senga leaned across the table, knocking Mildred’s bread roll to the floor.

‘When will Piper be back?’

Mildred felt the questions should add up to something. She said, ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m a journalist, interested in people. They’re my bread and butter.’

Mildred worried about the roll. It would be unhygienic to pick it up and replace it on the table.

Bettony returned with a plate of soup. ‘Here’s yours,’ she said to Senga.

‘I don’t want it, I told you.’

‘She’ll charge you for it.’

‘It doesn’t matter, please take it away.’

Soup was spilled on the cloth. ‘Look what you made me do!’ wailed Bettony.

Mildred mopped up the soup and sprinkled salt on the
cloth. ‘Salt stops discolouration. Don’t worry, Bettony, we’ll tell Mrs Clapham we did it.’

Bettony trod on the roll which disintegrated under her.

The next course was served in one of Mrs Clapham’s scenic permutations: a quarter chicken supreme among green beans, Duchesse potatoes and florets of purple-sprouting broccoli irrigated with gravy. Mildred said, ‘I always think dessert is the nicest part of a meal. Mrs Clapham makes excellent puddings, she has a light touch with pastry.’ Senga, chewing a head of broccoli, seemed to be concentrating on something other than food. ‘Do you like cooking?’

‘I never cook.’

The first to finish her meal, she left her knife and fork askew on her plate and sat looking round the room. ‘Who are those two by the window?’

‘I believe they are Americans.’ Mildred met her gaze. ‘Which newspaper do you work for?’

‘I’m a freelance.’

Mildred had visions of pennants carried into battle. ‘I take the
Telegraph.
I can’t always complete the crossword, but I enjoy the challenge.’

‘You’re not married.’

It was a statement, a conclusion reached, the knack – indispensable in her profession – of winkling out the heart of the matter: any matter.

Mildred said, ‘I have chosen not to be.’ One might choose without being offered a choice. ‘I am singular by nature.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Senga reached into the air and a cigarette materialised between her fingers.

‘The dining room is a no-smoking area,’ warned Mildred. ‘Mr Eashing takes his pipe into the garden.’

‘Where does Piper take his?’

It was provocatively spoken, but Mildred felt it was intended to provoke a viable answer. ‘I have always believed him a non-smoker.’

‘Always
?
How long have you known him?’

‘Just a manner of speaking,’ Mildred said, flushing.

*

It rained steadily after the Griersons moved in. Owen put up shelves, mended a fuse, swept out the garage, wrote letters, tried to do the
Times
crossword. Raindrops, leisurely as glycerine, slipped down the grass stalks. On the third day the clouds parted, the sun came out and the garden steamed.

All their married life they had lived in flats, conversions – and for a brief traumatic period – high-rise. Owen’s close encounters with gardens derived from visits to National Trust properties, and the back yard of his childhood home. He found the superabundance of Nature hard to take.

He did the shears in the garage and went exploring. At the end of the garden a paddock fence gave on to the lane. It led through mud into a fir plantation.

Under the trees was a gamey smell which pierced his sinuses. He couldn’t identify it. At the side of the path he glimpsed what he took to be flowers, white roses, and thought, That’s nice. But when he drew level the flowers were the feathers torn from the half-eaten corpse of a bird.

It was stock-still under these trees. Although a wind drove the clouds overhead, here below the dry twigs did not stir. But
he saw something out of the corner of his eye, an extraneous flutter which ceased when he looked over his shoulder: it could have been a flash of light in his own eyeball.

The trees thinned, gave on to a field planted with low-growing green, a crop of some sort. Circling it, Owen was pleasantly surprised to come to a pool fringed with yellow irises and being musically replenished by the fall from a swift-running culvert.

He went to the brink, disturbing waterfowl which scrambled up the bank with fussy cries. Muddied, the water flowed into a still centre peppered with gnats.

In relaxed mood, Owen tossed twigs into the gnats. Some twigs fell short, interrupting the music of the little waterfall. He took a stick and worked to clear them, dislodging a big stone. The fall fell stronger. When he lifted his stick from the depths it was draped with a shawl of brilliant green weed. The voice of the fall changed to a deeper, sweeter note; suddenly the water was shooting up the sun. Splinters of light fell round him, the trees roared in the wind.

Like an ovation. Why not? Suddenly he felt wholly glad that they had come here to live. It had been a gamble, but so was everything nowadays and at their time of life they stood a greater chance of losing. He looked about to identify the factor which had resolved his doubts. There was nothing he could pass on to Elissa, he couldn’t say what makes it all worth while is a waterhole with wildlife. As he turned to go he lifted his hand in salute, acknowledging benefit received.

On the way back he sighted someone under the trees, someone small, in a bright blue jump suit, running away.

‘Little beggar must have been following me,’ he told Elissa.

‘Why would he do that?’

Owen shrugged. ‘Kids!’

‘Mrs Latimer says he’s a handful.’

‘If he does it again I shall speak to his parents.’

‘His mother’s a widow.’

It was the first he heard of her, that she was a widow, alone but for her child. He had a thumbnail view of a forlorn woman in widow’s weeds and thought no more about her until he saw her hanging out washing on a boisterous September day. She was having to cling on to the clothes line to hold down sheets which were breaking out like sails. As often as she reached up to put on a peg she was engulfed, overpowered. She lost her temper, fought the wet linen, laying into it as if it was a punch ball.

Owen leaned on the fence to watch. It was as good as a variety turn, he told Elissa. He was remembering how she looked, a young woman with red hair a shade darker than poppies, putting strands of it back from her cheek.

He said, ‘We should make ourselves known.’

‘She should welcome
us
.’

‘She probably feels a bit diffident.’

Elissa smiled. ‘Redheads aren’t known for their diffidence.’

It was the child who brought them together. He had found – Owen rather thought he had made – a gap in the fence and crept through whenever Owen was in the garden. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, speak. In reply to Owen’s questions he hooted, without mockery or intent to offend. He was able to put a degree of response into each hoot – acquiescence or denial politely conveyed. Owen couldn’t be annoyed, but he did wonder.

‘He must be about six years old: he should have learned to talk by now.’

‘Mrs Latimer says he’s a dummy.’

‘I don’t think that’s true. It’s as if he’s ruled out the need of words.’

‘He’ll be in trouble if he has.’

As he worked, chopping off the heads of weeds, Owen tended to muse aloud, a sort of grumblelogue. He noticed the boy drawing near to listen. Translating my whingeing into hoots, Owen thought. I’ll try him with something happy.

‘Did you know there’s a pool with a little waterfall and a posse of black ducks on the other side of the wood?’

‘Moorhens,’ said the boy.

‘You surprise me – I thought you’d done away with words!’

He came and put his hand in Owen’s. ‘My name’s James. Will you come with me?’

‘What?’

‘I’m not allowed to go there alone.’

‘We’d have to ask your mother.’

Owen didn’t particularly want to talk to her. She was young, and young women embarrassed him, on their account as much as his. Because he was old and big and a man, they weren’t sure how to treat him. They either turned skittish and teased, tried mock flirtations, took the mickey, were insolent or – which he preferred – openly dismissive.

The colour of this young woman’s hair was the sign of a temper quick to reach flashpoint – she would suspect him of indecent designs were he to suggest taking the boy into the wood.

James tugged at his hand. ‘Come and ask.’

‘Not now.’ Owen prised his fingers free. ‘I have work to do.’

Next day he drove Elissa into town. They had lunch and took in a film. When they returned home it was dark.

‘By the way,’ Elissa said as they turned into their drive, ‘I met your boy’s mother picking blackberries in the lane.’

‘He’s not
my
boy.’

‘She says he’d like you to take him for a walk and if that’s what you’d like, it would be nice.’