Chapter 4
The rain has cleared away, and the day has brightened, with small bits of blue showing through the overcast sky. Ollie leaves his car in Stanton Bay and follows a bridle path up onto the nearby headland, the highest point in the area. He removes his ear buds when he reaches the top to listen to the wind, and takes in the panoramic view from Corfe Castle round to St Alban’s Head and the open English Channel. Grey and choppy, he can’t see any boats, just a few sea birds. The Manor is just below him, further down the hill, but he turns his back on it and heads on to the next village, where he stops for a late lunch at the pub. It is quiet, with a couple of dog walkers at the bar and a few groups having lunch.
He returns by a different route, through a sheltered valley, following a path suggested by an app on his phone, and he comes back into Stanton Bay through the churchyard. The church is small and old, and surrounded by a scattering of gravestones. Ollie wanders slowly round, looking at the engravings on the stones, worn and faded by the years. He tries to read the names and piece together some of the family stories. There is a smart memorial to soldiers from the village who died in the two world wars, a short list with names and ranks, his great-great grandfather among them. In a prominent position on one side are three matching gravestones in a row, although one is much older than the others. Someone is clearly looking after them, the grass around has been trimmed and an old china jar has some flowers that are only a few days old. The gravestone in the middle, leaning slightly and clearly the oldest, remembers Sir Christopher Harding, 1870 to 1915. Next to it is the grave of William John Harding, who lived from 1910 to 1958, and lettering clearly added later includes his wife Victoria Alison Harding, 1905 to 1970. On the other side a smaller gravestone but matching the others is for Bobby Harding, 1936 to 1937 “Too short a time in this world, resting now with God”. This is where the flowers have been left.
Ollie sits on a bench near the graves and eats the piece of cake that Cathy wrapped for him. The cake is dry, crumbly and uninteresting, and he gives most of it to a scavenging seagull. So there was a brother. Older than Alice and Cathy, who died in infancy. He guesses that it was not unusual at that time for children to die very young; but how tragic for the young couple he saw so happy in the photograph, living in the big house. Cathy would never have known him, but she still puts flowers on his grave 80 years on. But no flowers on her parents’ grave. And why no mention of Sir Christopher’s wife? Cathy had called her Mary and he doesn’t know much about her, but he knows that she lived on in the house for years, at least until the marriage of his grandparents. Where was she buried?
Ollie walks slowly back to the car, and rings his mother while he is walking. The line is poor, and he struggles to hear her clearly. “I spent the morning with Granny, but she was distracted and didn’t really tell me anything.
“Did she say why she had asked you down?”
“No, something about the Manor I think. She says it is something that she couldn’t talk to Daddy about.”
“I remember them arguing about the house once, she sounded angry. I wonder whether that was it. But he never said what it was about. Perhaps there is an inheritance for you.”
“So I am going back tomorrow for lunch. She clearly isn’t in a rush to tell me whatever it is, and she has to go to the bank for something first. I have just been walking on the hills. I found the war memorial in the churchyard, it mentions Sir Christopher, and the family graves – or at least four of them. There is one for a boy called Bobby, who I guess might have been Granny’s brother, but he died as a baby. Did Daddy ever talk about him?”
“No; I know that there was an older sister, Alice, but she also died before Daddy was born. There were hints of some sort of scandal, but if he knew about it he never told me. Ask your grandmother, if anyone knows it will be her. Is she OK?”
“Yes, she seems fine. She just didn’t say very much this morning. Someone rang. I don’t know. So I may be here for a couple of days. It’s OK, the hotel is nice, but dull. The wifi is rubbish, and the phone signal not much better.”
“I remember the house well. Your father brought me down, although not very often. The walks are amazing. You should go over to Lulworth Cove – it is a long walk but worth it on a good day. So you don’t know when you will be home?”
“No. I might go to Bristol on the way back, a couple of people from school are still at uni there. I’ll be back by the weekend, I am working at the pub.”
“That’s fine, just let me know.”
“OK, bye.”
Back at the hotel he heads for the bar, hoping for a pint of lager and a sandwich in front of the football. He looks at the room, wondering how this must have been as a family home. He remembers Michael, Cathy’s husband, his grandfather, a tall man, full of games and joy and with time to spare and more for his grandson. In Ollie’s mind the house was a wonder, full of passages and staircases, a cellar, an attic. It would have been the perfect place for parties. But it must have been so different when Cathy was a girl. The house seems much too big, too grand for a young couple. Was Victoria’s mother still here then? How strange for her, with a husband recovering from the war and two small girls to bring up in this cold and isolated spot. The decor now looks old fashioned, suitable for an older couple living out their last years, or a hotel. But there must have been a nursery for the girls, and he imagines a friendly nanny in a light room, perhaps with flowers on the wallpaper in bright colours and rugs on the floor.
Back in his room he looks again at the picture on the wall. The light catches it, and it looks different. His eye is again drawn to Alice, in the way that your fingernail finds an insect bite. She is sitting to one side but somehow the whole picture is focussed around her. She is not smiling at all now, her face is strained, her eyes look sad. On her upper arm, just below the sleeve, is a faint bruise that he didn’t notice before. A small brown mark, perhaps the size of a thumbprint, as if someone has pinched her hard. He gets out his phone to check the photograph that he took of the painting this morning, but annoyingly it has gone from his phone. Cathy must have deleted it when she nearly dropped the phone. He looks back at the portrait. He can feel a family in turmoil. Other than Cathy, innocent in the front, separate from the troubles behind her, all the characters are holding back malice, misery, mistrust. It should have been a happy moment, to celebrate an engagement, but the more he looks the more sadness he feels coming out of the canvas.
He sleeps poorly, with disturbed dreams of graveyards and hillsides, and struggles to get comfortable in the unfamiliar bed. Some time in the small of the night he hears a crash in the next room, loud and harsh, and is suddenly awake, listening, straining to hear. There is no more noise, and he lies in bed listening. And then gradually he hears sobbing, quiet, insistent, a child sobbing. After a few minutes it gets louder and then fades and he struggles to hear it. But it goes on, nagging at the edge of his hearing, and he gets up and tries to work out where it is coming from. Not from the walls either side where there are adjacent rooms, but from near the door. There is some light coming from under the door, that dim light you get in hotels where a light has been left on in the hallway, and he picks his way across the room towards the door. The noise has gone, but in his mind he can still hear a child crying. He looks out onto the landing, but there is no one there. Just the staircase and the hall, carpet quiet, lit with a gloomy light. He stops and listens, there is nothing.
He returns to his room shutting the door behind him. His night vision has gone, and his room seems very dark when he reenters. He reaches for the light switch, but the lights are not working. He flicks the switches on and off a couple of times in frustration, and then gropes his way along a chest by the wall, his fingers looking for his phone. Finding it he turns on the torch, and holding up the light he turns round. He is standing right in front of the picture. He gasps, and grips the phone. Alice is staring straight out at him, her face looking young, a child’s face, eyes red with crying, wide with fright. Fixed to the spot he can only look at her. Her hand that was resting on the arm of the chair is clenched into a small fist, the knuckles bloodless. Her hair that was tied back has fallen forward, framing her shocking gaze. There are red blotches on her white cheeks, accentuated by the primitive style of the painting. Something terrible has happened, she is scared and in pain.
Ollie backs away from the wall, and falls into the sofa; his breath is rasping, his heart racing. He puts down the phone and looks up as with a flicker the lights come back on, suddenly too bright, and he looks back at the picture as his vision adjusts. It is back to its earlier form, Alice looking away over his shoulder, her hand resting peacefully on the chair, her hair tied back with a ribbon. But his sense of panic stays with him, and he shuts his eyes and counts his breaths in and out to slow them.
Who is this girl? Why is she haunting him? Did he imagine the image he saw in the light of his phone? It felt real. He is wide awake, and there is no question of going back to sleep. He finds a beer in the fridge and puts on the TV. He turns off the spotlight above the picture, throwing it into shadow, and flicks through the channels until he finds a movie he has seen before. He tries not to look at it, but every few minutes his eyes find the picture. Out of the shadow he can feel that she is watching him, although her eyes look away. He keeps glancing up, thinking he might catch her looking at him as if in a strange game of grandmother’s footsteps. But it is just a picture on the wall, it looks calm, he starts to wonder what he was so worked up about. Was it just the hangover of a dream?