Rose Cottage Page 9

  Then I took a pull at myself. A grave? The disturbed patch of earth was roughly two feet square, no more. If something really was buried here, it could not be anything much bigger than a cat.

  Buried. This time the word held none of the chilling connotations of ‘digging’. The word that went with it was ‘treasure’. People buried treasure. And a treasure of a kind had been stolen. I could think of no reason at all why anyone should rob Gran’s safe and then bury the proceeds a few yards away in the garden, but I had to find out if that was what had happened.

  And of course I had no spade. Davey, as I was being reminded with tiresome frequency, had all the tools. But this time I was not prepared to wait till he came by, or to go up to the Hall for him. There ought to be a shovel in the coal-house. Awkward and heavy, but it would have to do.

  I went to get it, half expecting to find that it, too, had gone with the rest. But no, it was there, propped just inside the coal-house door. I hefted it to one shoulder and went back to the shed. As I poised the shovel for the first stroke I noticed two things; there was dried earth on it, mixed with the residue of coal dust, and now that I looked, there were traces of coal dust in the soil of the ‘grave’.

  So Miss Mildred’s intruder, whoever he was, had had to use the coal shovel, too. She had seen the light on Monday, and the tools had been taken the previous week. It fitted. She could be right. I dug.

  I dug for twenty back-breaking minutes. That wretched shovel got me down to nearly one and a half feet, and then I struck undisturbed clay. And nothing else. Nothing was buried there.

  So the hunt was still on for the missing treasures. I put the shovel away and went in to wash and make myself some lunch.

  At least there was no difficulty about finding the photograph album. There had never been many books at Rose Cottage; Gran read weekly magazines, which she called ‘books’, and very little else, except the Bible. This lived in the bottom drawer of the sideboard, and the album was there with it. It was more than an album, it was a sort of family record book; besides the photographs there was an envelope full of old, yellowed news clippings, mostly, as I saw at a quick glance, about prizes Granddad had taken at flower shows, or cuttings from the local paper about the doings of the family at the Hall. About my mother’s flight from home, or about her death, there was nothing. Either she was not news enough even for the Echo, or my grandmother had not cared to keep the record. I found ballpoint and writing pad, and sat down to make the list of dates the vicar wanted.

  I doubt if it would be possible for anyone, who has not seen it for some years, to work quickly through an old family album. It took me well into the afternoon to find all the relevant dates, then, after a pause for a cup of tea, I turned to Gran’s list, and busied myself with looking out the small things she wanted, and ranging them, ready for packing, on the sideboard or the table in the back kitchen.

  The evening was shading to dusk, and I had finished my supper and got the dishes washed and put away, when there was a soft rapping at the door. Wondering who could have come here at this hour, I went to open it, to find Miss Linsey outside. The light from the window, outlining her against the growing dusk, made her look almost ghostly. She had on some kind of cloak, grey and shapeless, which she clutched to her, and above it her hair looked wilder, than ever.

  She spoke in a whisper, with a glance over her shoulder so nervously furtive that I found myself looking about to see if anyone else was lurking near. But garden and lane were empty.

  ‘It’s only me, Kathy. May I come in?’

  ‘Well, of course. How nice to see you again, Miss Linsey.’ I stood back, holding the door for her. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t lighted the fire, but please—’

  ‘No matter, no matter.’ She slid, rather than walked past me as she spoke.

  ‘Will you let me take your cloak, or would you rather keep it?’

  The polite commonplaces didn’t seem to have the desired effect, of taking out whatever drama she saw in the situation. She went into the kitchen in a kind of breathless rush, looking to see that I had shut the door safely behind her. Then, still clutching the cloak round her, she rotated slowly, as if to check that no one besides ourselves was there in the little room.

  ‘Your door wasn’t locked.’ The whisper was a little stronger, but it was still a whisper.

  ‘Well, no. We never used to lock it. Have things changed hereabouts?’ I smiled, trying to give the reassurance she seemed to need. It was difficult not to whisper back. ‘I did ask the vicar if the gipsies had been here again, but he says there’s been no sign of them. And even when they were here—’

  ‘That’s it. That’s just it. They have been back.’

  I was reaching up to the mantelpiece for a match to put to the fire. I stopped in mid-action and turned. She nodded, with a glance to left and right, and I thought her eyes looked not so much mad as distressed.

  ‘Just let me get the fire going,’ I said, ‘and sit here in the rocking chair. That’s it. It’ll soon be warm, and then we can talk.’

  The fire, which I had relaid after a fashion, caught, flickered, then burned up into a cheerful blaze. Miss Linsey subsided into Gran’s chair, let her cloak slip back, and spread her hands out to the warmth.

  ‘You’ll take a cup of tea.’ I didn’t wait for an answer, but went to fill the kettle. When I returned with the tray bearing the tea things I found that she had the album on her knee, and was slowly turning the pages.

  I set the tray down. ‘Milk and sugar?’

  ‘No sugar, thank you.’ Then as I put the cup on the oven top beside her she said, on a faint note like a sigh, ‘Ah. Yes. It was. I knew it.’

  I looked at the open page on her knee. It held four small photographs, in faded black and white. They had been taken, I knew, with the cheap little box Brownie camera that Granddad had treasured. The prints were not more than two-and-a-half by one-and-a-half inches, but the focus was sharp, and the detail pretty good. There was one of Gran sitting outside the cottage door, with her lace-pillow on her knee. I remembered how years ago she had made the delicate lace to sell. Another of her down near the gate, picking beans, and with her myself, a very small girl, barefooted, in a print dress with a cotton bonnet on my head, and a basket for the beans held in both hands. One of me on the step of the front porch with my arms round the neck of our old dog, Nip. The fourth was a delightful snap, taken in a lucky moment, of a slender, lovely girl, standing just inside the garden gate with an armful of flowers. She was laughing. In my memory, except when I had last seen her, she was always laughing. My mother, Lilias.

  ‘They’re good, aren’t they?’ I made my voice as prosaic as possible. ‘I was just checking some dates. The album’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? Let me.’

  I took it from her and put it back on the table, then sat down on the opposite side of the fire.

  Before I could speak again she leaned forward, the eyes fixed again, intense. ‘You would hardly remember her, I suppose. How old were you when she left? Five? Six? But I knew her well. And she wasn’t someone you could forget very easily, she was such a pretty creature. So very pretty. Poor girl. If only I had known in those days what I know now, I could have warned her … But then it would have been so different, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it would. But Miss Linsey, you were saying that the gipsies had been back. Did Miss Mildred tell you what she told me this afternoon?’

  ‘Not if it was anything important,’ she said, sounding all at once surprisingly normal. ‘She never does. I think Sister’ – the word came out in a fair imitation of Miss Mildred’s slightly tremulous falsetto – ‘warns her that I’m not reliable, because she can only see what’s there in front of her eyes, and Millie can’t even see that. She’s a dear creature, but very unworldly, of course.’ She sipped tea. ‘Do you know, I don’t think she even knows what the bees are doing to her precious flowers?’

  I laughed. ‘Henry?’

  ‘Yes. She spent half an hour this morning try
ing to persuade me to hatch that wretched egg, even when I told her that I’d had Henry here alone in my garden for three years. But she’s such a dear, and at least she doesn’t try to put one down the way Agatha does.’

  Remembering Miss Agatha, I knew what she meant. That efficient business lady would have no patience with what she had called (according to Gran) ‘airy-fairy goings-on, and why doesn’t she set up as a fortune teller and make a little money with a crystal ball or some such rubbish, instead of living on bread and greens and whatever my soft-hearted little sister gives her?’

  She put her cup aside, settling back comfortably into the folds of her wrap. The hunted look had gone, but she still looked troubled. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so late, Kathy, but I couldn’t really get away till now without Millie seeing me, and I thought she might try to stop me. You saw what happened this morning. I did try to tell you then, but there was all the fuss about Henry, and to be honest, I think dear Millie changed the subject deliberately.’

  ‘She may have done, but she had just told me something herself, and I think she may have been afraid of making me nervous. You said you’d had a dream about my mother, and about the gipsy she ran off with.’ I showed a hand. ‘It’s all right, it’s a long time ago, and everyone knows the story. It’s all over, and nothing to do with me now.’

  ‘But that’s just it. It’s not all over. It started with something I saw. It may have been a dream, I don’t know. I did see her, and the gipsy with her. They had a light, a lantern, and they were in the lonnen, where that old caravan is – you know the one I mean?’

  ‘Yes, but Miss Linsey – no, please listen! I know you have the Sight, and I do believe that you see things that other people can’t, and that you dream things and then they come true. I remember what Gran told me about it, and when I was little we all knew.’ I tried a smile. ‘We were a bit afraid of you. We thought you might be a witch. But this about seeing my mother – she’s dead, and Jamie – that was the gipsy’s name – is dead, too. And that old caravan, well, if it is still there, it’ll have dropped to pieces by this time. What would anyone go there for?’ I added, gently, ‘It must have been a dream, Miss Linsey.’

  ‘But there was a light. I saw a light.’

  ‘There was someone down here the other night with a light. That’s what Miss Mildred told me this afternoon. Monday night. She thought she saw someone out there by the toolshed, and when I got home I looked around, and it’s true that someone has been there, digging, but I can’t think why. There’s nothing there.’

  ‘That would be Davey Pascoe.’ She spoke impatiently. ‘He took the tools. That’s nothing to do with it. And it wasn’t Monday when I saw them, Lilias and her gipsy. I know it wasn’t Monday. And I didn’t say they were down here at the cottage.’

  She turned that light, bright gaze on me again, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not seeing me. ‘The caravan – perhaps you are right about that. That was a different time and yes, now that I remember it, the lantern shone through the trees, and the caravan wasn’t broken at all, and there was a horse grazing, and she came running up the lonnen with a bag in each hand—’

  ‘Miss Linsey—’ I spoke breathlessly, but she took no notice. She swept on, still looking past me as if the cottage walls had melted into the dusk.

  ‘And then they weren’t there. They weren’t there. That’s right. That was a dream. Mildred’s wrong. They were in the lonnen, not at the cottage.’

  I said nothing. A coal fell in the grate, and the little noise seemed to bring her back, and to rebuild the firelit room round us. She turned to me.

  ‘But the other time wasn’t the same. They were in the cemetery. And they didn’t have a lantern then. He had a torch, an ordinary electric torch. He was shining it down on the grave.’

  That frisson again at the word. I didn’t speak. Her eyes focused on me, disturbed and disturbing still, but not mad. Certainly not mad.

  She gave a nod. ‘You do understand. It isn’t always easy to keep the two kinds of reality apart. So please forgive me, and forget it if you can, the dream about the caravan. Even if it happened like that, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘I know.’

  She set her tea cup aside and leaned forward. She had abandoned her whispering, and the normal, everyday tones somehow helped to enforce belief, as if she really had come out of her dream-country to the reality of every day.

  ‘But this was real, Kathy, and it happened on Sunday. I do always go to the cemetery on a Sunday, after the evening service, to tend Albert’s grave – my brother, you never knew him – and Mrs Winton Smith had kept me talking, something about the Sunday School Treat, where I always help, so I was late, and when I got to the cemetery it was dark, but the light from the torch was reflected from a white headstone, that marble angel with the Bible, and I recognised her.’

  ‘But Miss Linsey, please! I’m not sure – are you really trying to tell me – what are you trying to tell me? That you think you saw—’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw. But in any case it’s nearly twenty years—’

  ‘I know.’ Still that practical, everyday tone of voice. ‘That’s why I said she was carrying her age well. Still so lovely, and in that light … I suppose my vision of her at the caravan – call it a dream if you find that a more comfortable word – my dream had reminded me of what she was like, but I was sure.’

  ‘I—’ I took a deep breath. I found my heart had quickened uncomfortably, and I had to make an effort to keep the disbelieving protest out of my voice. ‘Look, Miss Linsey, all right. But if you were so sure it was, yes, let’s put it into words – if you were so sure it was my mother, still alive and back here in Todhall, why didn’t you say something? Call out, or go closer and speak to her – at least ask her what had happened and what she was doing there?’

  ‘I tried to,’ she said simply. ‘I did say something, and I tried to hurry, but I tripped over a kerbstone and dropped my flowers, and when I got up they were gone.’

  ‘“They”? You said “they”. Who was with her?’

  ‘I couldn’t see him very well, and of course I never knew him, but he was tall and dark, like the gipsy, the one at the caravan.’

  ‘And when you tried to speak or approach them, they disappeared? Just vanished?’

  She nodded, but as if answering a question I had not asked. ‘Yes, I know, my dear. You’re kind, and you have good manners, and you listen, but you still don’t believe. Well, I don’t understand it any more than you do, and perhaps I was mistaken, but I had to tell you. I do believe that I saw them there, both together, on Sunday, by the grave.’

  ‘By your brother’s grave?’ I said, blankly.

  ‘Oh, no! What would they be doing there? It was your Aunt Betsy’s.’

  She went soon after that, refusing my offer to see her as far as the road. She had never been afraid of the dark, she told me, with something of a return to her earlier manner; night was more interesting than day. On this note she floated off, a shapeless ghost muffled in cloak and scarf, to vanish into the shadows of the lane.

  Interesting indeed. I retreated rather smartly into the comforting firelight of the cottage kitchen, trying to think sensibly and coolly about what she had told me. It could not be true. It obviously could not be true. But, perhaps illogically, the very fact that her vision of the young Lilias’s flight into the lonnen was apparently so accurate, bade one believe that her tale of the couple in the cemetery might be true, even if her interpretation of it was not.

  I added the album to the goods laid ready for packing, then rummaged in the drawer for an envelope, ready for the list of dates for the vicar that would go up with the milk in the morning. As I folded the notes and sealed the envelope my mind raced away again, putting together the odd things that had happened. The light in the cottage garden. The empty safe – robbed by someone who had a key. The digging by the toolshed. And now this weird and unlikely story of Lilias and her gipsy at Aunt Betsy’s gr
aveside …

  Comfortingly, none of it added up to anything believable. Lilias back from the dead, and not getting in touch with Gran or myself? Not going near anyone in the village? Coming back from a long silence of some sixteen years, during which time neither her mother nor her daughter had had a word from her? Coming back, apparently, simply to visit the grave of the woman she had, with reason, hated, and then vanishing like a ghost at Miss Linsey’s approach?

  I got briskly to my feet, propped the envelope behind the empty milk bottle in the porch, along with a biscuit for Rosy, then I raked out the remains of the fire, and locked both doors before going up to bed. I didn’t want any more of Miss Linsey’s interesting things to happen while I was alone at Rose Cottage.

  14

  I was wakened next morning by the sound of Rosy’s hoofs in the lane. I had not found it easy to get to sleep. The night had been quite silent and uneventful, but I kept thinking about Miss Linsey’s ghosts. If Miss Mildred’s story of the light at the cottage, and the digging, was true – as seemed to be proved by the disturbed patch near the toolshed and the state of the coal shovel – then it was possible, just possible, that Miss Linsey’s story of the couple with the light at the site of the old caravan might have some truth in it as well. As for her ‘seeing’ of the young Lilias running up the lonnen with a bag in either hand, that was a story known by this time to everyone in the village, and she had admitted it to be merely a dream, but I was well aware that she had not been called a witch for nothing. I could think of at least two occasions when her prophetic ‘dream’ of a disaster had been right, and on one of those occasions a life had been saved. So it might at least be worth looking into.

  But her story of the couple encountered in the cemetery was harder to explain. Her Sunday evening visit to her brother’s grave must have been real enough, but the encounter with the ghostly couple was surely a trick of the imagination, suggested, perhaps, by the other dream? For Miss Linsey to recognise Lilias, a Lilias last seen almost twenty years ago, and now glimpsed at some distance in the evening dusk, and then to have her and her gipsy companion vanish when approached – it had to be a dream, and dreams, as all Todhall knew, were Miss Linsey’s stock-in-trade.