Shining On (9 page)

There's a good-looking lanky guy with dark hair who peers round at me curiously. He's wearing a shirt the exact royal purple of my jacket. He grins, acknowledging this. I grin back foolishly. And then the organ music starts up and Becky and my uncle come walking down the aisle.

The guy keeps looking at me during the ceremony and the reception. (I'm allowed my very first glass of cham-pagne.)

He doesn't come and talk until the disco starts. He stands behind my chair, fingering the jacket I've slung over the back.

“Snap,” he says.

“Snap,” I reply, casually.

“Would you like to dance?”

Would
I! Though the glass of champagne and my new high heels make me walk very warily onto the dance floor. He is really gorgeous and he's asked
me
to dance. He's quite a bit older than me too, probably nineteen or twenty. A student. Smiling at me. I hope he doesn't know I'm only fourteen. I don't think he's family.

“What's your name?” I mumble shyly.

“James. And you're Angela.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I live next door to Becky. I knew your sister.”

My heart misses a beat.

“You're not a bit like her,” he says.

I knew it.

“Not that I can remember her all that well. I was only a little kid when she … But I remember that last summer be-cause she came to stay with Becky. She had all this pretty blond hair and big blue eyes, yes?”

“Like a little angel,” I say. I've stopped dancing.

“Mmm,” says James. He pauses. “Well. Not exactly
angelic.
I was terrified of her, actually.”

“You were … what?”

“I was this pathetic little wimp, scared stiff of the big girls. They teased me and I blubbed and that only made them worse.”

“My sister, Angela?”

“Becky wasn't too bad, but Angela gave the most terrible Chinese burns. And she had this way of pulling my ears, really twisting them. You're not into ear-twisting, are you?”

I shake my head, still too surprised to joke.

“So Angela really gave you a hard time? I just can't imagine her doing stuff like that.”

“No one else could either. Whenever I told on her she batted those blue eyes and looked so sweet and innocent that no one believed me. I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't talk about her like that.”

“No, no—tell me more,” I say, picking up the beat and dancing again.

Up above, sparkling in the strobe lighting, Angela is taking off her halo, folding her feathery wings, little horns sprouting through her blond curls. She's waving her new forked tail at me. My bad sister.

I
n August, the great house had looked benign and beautiful; the honey-colored stone glowing in the sunlight, the banks of leaded windows shiny and square, open to the air. Now the stone was mottled and dull. The casements were fastened tight and all the little panes looked blank and black, as if the house was filled with darkness. The gates were now closed with a computer-printed notice cased in plastic and taped to the bars:
Open again April 5th.
The house had only been shut for a month or so, but moss had begun to coat the carefully raked gravel like velvet. The neat flowerbeds looked ragged, and leaves drifted in heaps across the lawns; the grass was patched with tattered black ink caps and rings of slimy little toadstools.

It hadn't taken long for the house to take on a deserted,
even neglected, air. Jules was cold already; the prospect of living here made her shiver more.

“We're not going to live in
there,”
her mum said, peering through the bars with her. “We've got a flat over the stables. All mod cons. Central heating. Furniture from IKEA. You don't even have to go into the old part, if you don't want to.”

“But
you
do.”

Her mother laughed. “I don't spook as easily as you.”

“Yoo-hoo!” They both turned to see a short blond woman, gesticulating at them. “You can't get through that way! Over here!”

They followed her round to the stable yard.

“This
is where you'll be living.” The blonde peered at them. “Didn't they explain?”

“I know,” Jules's mother said. “We were just having a look, that's all.”

“It's Zadie, isn't it?”

“Sadie,” Jules's mother corrected.

“Of course!”

“Nice to meet you again, Monica.”

“And this is?” Monica squinted harder, as if screwing up her eyes would help her remember.

“Jules.”

“Julie! I remember! You were at school with my Katie!”

“A while ago.” Jules scuffed at the yellow gravel. “Yeah.”

“Now, Zadie—”

“Sadie.”

“Yes.” She teetered back on heels a little too high for her rounded frame. “Sorry.” Her big red-lipstick smile did not rise to her pale blue eyes. “Is that the time?” She looked over at the church tower. “Here are the keys.” She handed Sadie a big bunch. “I'm sure you've been over everything with Derek. Here's my card if you encounter any problems. Must run.” She was already stepping backwards towards her car. “I've got a meeting in Cheltenham.”

She let out a cry and nearly toppled over as fur brushed the backs of her legs. Jules had to stifle giggles. The cat must have been under her car, but he'd appeared as if from nowhere to rub himself against Monica's substantial calves. He was big, sinuous and long—obviously a tom—with un-usual markings: his deep, amber fur thickly barred with black. There was definitely a touch of the Siamese about his narrow face and tilted green eyes.

“That reminds me. You're expected to feed the moggies. I don't know which one this one is….”

“The cat's name is Aloysius,” Jules said.

“How do you know that?” Monica asked, astonished.

“When we were here in the summer, one of the guides told me.”

“Oh, right.”

Monica reached down to stroke him. The cat's ears flicked back, lying flat against his sleek head. He opened his mouth to show long, pointed teeth and let out a sound
somewhere between a growl and a hiss. Curved claws, sharp and black, lashed out. Monica snatched her hand away. Blood beaded on her palm, as red as her nail polish.

“Vicious little brute! They're quite wild, as you can see.”

“You should get to know his name,” Sadie said under her breath. “Maybe he's touchy about it.”

“Say what?” Monica looked at her.

Jules felt the giggles breaking like bubbles in her nose, making her eyes sting.

“I just asked if you were all right.” Sadie smiled sweetly. “Do you need a Band-Aid? I've got a hankie….”

“No, thank you. A tissue will do.” Monica fished one out of her bag to staunch the blood and gave a shaky laugh. “We ought to put a notice up.
Beware of the Cat!”

Jules used the cover of Monica's feeble joke to let out her smothered laughter. Her mirth died quickly as she thought she caught a movement in one of the upper sto-ries, like someone reaching to open a window. She blinked and … there was no one there. Jules smiled as she followed her mother to the stable block.
Definitely
too much imagination.

“Oh, it really is too much!” Lavinia stamped her foot, although the tiny buttoned boot made no sound as it hit the ground. “We should be down there! It's such a bore to be stuck in the house while Aloysius has all the fun.” She
beckoned the others over, to share the scene below her, and then had to admonish Jessica for getting too close to the window. She was reaching up to open it!

“Don't!” she scolded. “Keep away from the window.”

“Why?” Jessica scowled and her rosebud mouth pursed to a sulk. Lavinia was far too bossy. “They can't see us.”

“Some
can,” Lavinia replied.

Jessica skipped away to play with the others. “All the more fun!”

Sadie threw the card onto the kitchen counter. “I can't be-lieve she couldn't get our names right. I've known her for years!”

“Is she the one who interviewed you?”

“No, that was Derek. Didn't even know she was working for the National Trust. Last thing I knew, she was volunteering at the local museum. You do think you'll like it here?” she added, changing the subject. “It's just that it's perfect for me to finish the book, and with our house not ready …”

After her marriage broke up, Sadie had wanted a complete break. She had accepted a job at Michigan State University, teaching creative writing. Jules had elected to go to America with her. They'd spent a year there and come back in July. Sadie had found a house, but it needed work. They wouldn't be able to move in for months and months.

“We could always go back to Granny's.”

“Not another day! Staying with my mother is
not
an
option. She treats me as though I'm still your age.” Sadie sighed. “I'll take that as ‘I don't like it,’ shall I?”

Jules went over and gave her a hug. “No, don't do that. I'm fine with it. It's just a tiny bit creepy.” Jules felt an un-easiness she could not define. “The house …”

“Is not creepy!” Sadie hugged her daughter back. “Just different with nobody in it. I'll prove it. Come with me.”

The wood of the door was weathered silver and opened onto the porch. The Trust had tried to keep a flavor of how the house used to be. It had been owned by an eccentric old lady who had run her own tours: sixpence for children, one shilling for adults.

“Totally batty, by all accounts,” Jules's mother commented. “Place was inches thick with dust, and totally infested with cats.”

“What happened to her?”

“She got too old to manage the place. Gave it to the Trust. Lives in a nursing home in Cheltenham now. Not far from your old junior school.”

They had lived in Cheltenham before the year in America and, although the house was only about twenty miles away from where they used to live, Jules had never visited it before the summer.

“It was shut up for a long while after the old lady moved out; then the Trust were doing it up. Must say, they've done a good job.” Sadie sniffed, her nose wrinkling. “Pity they couldn't have done something about the cats.”

“Perhaps they come with the house.”

They both laughed, although Jules's words were truer than she knew.

It was like the old lady had just stepped out. The hand-painted signs were still there. An old raincoat hung in petrified folds; umbrellas, their cloth tattered like crows' feathers, rusted in a worm-eaten stand; a pair of perished wellington boots lay keeled over in the corner, as if they had tired of waiting for an owner who had walked out years ago and never come back. Pots of geraniums and pelargonium were ranged along the windowsill: a jungle of writhing stems and straggly blooms raining the last of their red petals like showers of blood. They filled the stuffy space with their peppery, lemony scent, and behind that was a strong smell of cats.

“You don't have to come round with me.” Sadie sensed her daughter's reluctance as she opened the front door.

“What's that?” A last shaft of sunlight, striking low through the porch windows, showed a circle divided by more circles to make a looping petal pattern scratched into a wooden panel. Jules put out a finger to trace it. “It looks like the hex symbols that we saw in America.”

“A witches' sign? Put at the threshold to guard the house?” Sadie bent forward to take a closer look. “Could be. Why does this house need protecting?”

Jules shivered. Sometimes the signs were not to keep something out, but to keep something in.

They continued down the passage into the Great Hall.
It was late in the afternoon and high windows made it as gloomy as a cave in here. The chill room smelled of freshly applied beeswax polish, but underneath that was a distinct, dusty tang of ancient coal fires. The white dust sheets, shrouding the furniture, glimmered in the half-light. Above their heads, the threadbare colors of some long-forgotten regiment stirred and fluttered. The banners were cobweb thin and probably disturbed by their coming in, although the draft of air seemed to come from above, as if the house, or something in it, was stirring, waking to their presence.

Mother and daughter drew closer together.

“I don't think we have to explore any more, do you?” Sadie said. Jules shook her head. “Let's go back to the flat and put the kettle on, shall we?”

Jules settled in reasonably well. The flat was comfortable, the fully modernized conversion tastefully done. She liked her new school and made friends quickly. She would have been quite happy with her new life if it hadn't been for the house. And the cats. She didn't mind cats in general; in fact she quite liked them, or had done until now. She was in charge of feeding them: Aloysius, the big amber tom; a gray female; a white and ginger; a tortoiseshell; and two black ones, the smaller one almost a kitten. They were a vicious crew, milling round, spitting and snarling, tails whipping, ready to start on her when they had finished the
Whiskas. Jules just emptied the cans and ran. They were not allowed in the house, although that prohibition didn't seem to stop them. They had the run of the place.

There had always been cats, Susan, one of the girls on the school bus, said. They went with the house. They'd be-longed to the old lady. “They've tried all sorts,” she said. “They just come back. She was a bit of an old witch, by all accounts. Maybe she put a spell on them.”