The Emerald Comb (12 page)

‘Once you’re asleep you won’t hear it. Come on, into these jim-jams, then let’s go and scrub your teeth.’

‘How do you know if the woo-woo is ghosts or the wind? If they’re both made of air like Lewis said?’ He held onto my shoulders while I tugged his pyjama trousers up.

‘It’s always the wind. There are no ghosts.’

‘Lewis said there was. He said there’s always ghosts in old houses. I don’t want to live in an old house with ghosts and chimleys. We didn’t have ghosts and chimleys in the other house.’

‘No, and you didn’t have your own room there either. And you like having your own room, don’t you?’ I led him by the hand into the bathroom.

‘Not when there’s ghosts in the chimley. Can I sleep in your bed tonight?’

‘We’ll see. Start off in your own bed. I’ll come and check on you when I come up to bed. So will Daddy, when he gets home.’ Whenever that might be. ‘OK? Now, here’s your toothbrush.’ I handed him the brush with a dot of paste on the bristles and watched as he carefully scrubbed his teeth. He kept his serious little eyes fixed on mine. I smiled at him, in what I hoped was a reassuring way. Outside the wind was picking up, and rain lashed against the bathroom window. Simon had better get home soon. It was not a night to be out in.

I read three story books to Thomas, hoping to push ghosts out of his mind with tales of baby bears going to the moon in a cardboard box and mother elephants trying to find five minutes’ peace from their lively families. At last he looked sleepy, and I kissed the top of his head and tucked his duvet around him.

‘I’ll come in and see you again after Lewis and Lauren have gone to bed. And I’ll leave your door open, OK?’

He nodded, and snuggled down beneath his duvet. For the time of year it was surprisingly cold.

I gave the older children their deadline to be ready for bed, and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. On the kitchen table was a letter for Simon which had come in the morning post. I picked it up. I’d been curious about it all day. The address was hand-written, in a writing I didn’t recognise, on a plain white envelope. The postmark was London. It had been sent to our old house, and forwarded by the post office.

I replaced the letter and moved Simon’s dinner, all plated up, into the microwave ready to reheat when he finally came home. I glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty. Presumably he was on the train by now. I picked up my phone and called him, but the phone went straight to voicemail. Where was he? Should I confront him or what? I didn’t want to think about it. Instead I went back to the study and continued with my research. I’d received in the post a CD of details from a local family history group. It was a transcription of church records from several churches north of Winchester, including our local one, St Michael’s. I was hoping to find where Bartholomew and Georgia were buried.

I stuck the CD in and keyed ‘St Clair’ into the search box. Minutes later, I’d found that both Bartholomew and Georgia were buried in St Michael’s graveyard. I’d guessed they would be, but it was great to be sure. Not only that, the CD included a plan of the graveyard with each block labelled. My ancestors were apparently at the top end furthest from the church. On my next free day, I’d go and look for the grave. They’d been buried in the same plot, even though they’d died a year or so apart, in the 1870s.

A blast of cold air raced through the house, and the front door banged. ‘Blimming heck, it’s blowy out there! Brrr!’

Simon was back. I took a deep breath and went to meet him in the hallway.

‘Hi, Katie. Had a good day?’ He gave me a peck on the cheek, dumped his briefcase just inside the study and went through to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. That was something else I’d noticed. He was drinking much more than usual, and was opening wine almost every night when he got home.

‘Usual kind of day. Went for a walk. Cleaned the house. Sorted some paperwork. You?’

He sighed. ‘Tiring. Long.
Very
long. Kids still awake?’

‘They’re ready for bed but still playing. I said they could stay up till nine.’

He looked at his watch. ‘It’s five to. I’ll say hello then I’ll chase them into bed.’ He took a large gulp of his wine then put the glass down on the kitchen table.

I poured myself a glass of wine and regarded him. He didn’t look like a man cheating on his wife. He looked like a man who’d had a tough day at the office and was simply glad to get home at last. I decided to keep quiet and say nothing. For now, at any rate.

‘I’ll reheat your dinner. There’s a letter on the table for you. Oh, and can you reassure Thomas there’s no such thing as ghosts – Lewis has been winding him up.’

‘Thanks, love. Let me hang up my coat first, I’m dripping wet. This is a proper summer storm. Hope our chimneys will stand up to it!’

Great. Now I’d spend a sleepless night worrying about the chimneys, as well as Thomas. ‘They’ll be all right, won’t they?’

‘Course they will. They’ve all got iron bars tying them to the roof, in any case. Don’t worry. Where’s this letter?’

I handed it to him, and watched his face closely as he glanced at the writing, frowned slightly, then tossed it back on the kitchen table. ‘It can wait. Now then, the kids.’

While he was upstairs I heated up his dinner. The letter lay on the table, glaring at me. I knew where Thomas got his overactive imagination from, at least.

Later that evening we curled up on the sofa in the sitting room with a glass of wine each, and listened to the rain lashing against the windows and the wind howling in the chimney. It did sound spooky – I could understand why Thomas had been frightened. He was sleeping soundly enough tonight. I’d been upstairs twice already to check on him. Lewis was the only one lying awake, complaining the noise was keeping him awake.

‘Quite a storm, this one,’ said Simon. ‘I bet we’ll lose some roof slates. I’ll have to check in the morning.’

‘My poor broad beans,’ I said, thinking of the little plants I’d tied onto canes only a few days before. They stood no chance.

I wondered again about the letter. Simon had opened it as he ate his dinner, read it quickly and tucked it into his pocket without a word.

‘Simon,’ I said quietly, ‘who was that letter from?’

‘What letter? Oh, um, just an old friend.’

‘Who?’

‘No one you know.’

Hmm. I knew, or thought I knew, all his old friends. At least all the ones he’d kept in touch with.

‘Ah ha,’ I said, poking him gently in the ribs. ‘It’s from an ex-girlfriend, isn’t it? That’s why you’re being cagey! Which one – that Sarah you went out with in college? Or the girl from your school days, what was she called, the one you said had the teeth of a racehorse and the eyes of a frog?’

He laughed. ‘No, I described Jenny as having the
legs
of a racehorse and the eyes of a
deer
– wide, brown and beautiful.’ He looked at me. ‘Katie, you’re jealous!’

‘No I’m not!’ I protested. ‘I’m just curious as to who sent that letter. No one sends personal letters these days. It’s all email.’

‘Well, it’s as I said, from an old friend. Kind of. Yes, a woman, if you must know. Hey, a new detective series is starting tonight. Shall we?’

He picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. Clearly he wasn’t going to tell me anything more about the letter, at least not now.
Who Do You Think You Are?
was on as well, so I set that to record. I’d watch it on my own some other time. Simon, of course, had no interest in that programme.

The storm didn’t let up all evening. We went to bed around eleven, with the wind still moaning in the chimneys and the rain pounding at the windows. I think it was around one am when we heard the enormous crash. The house shook, as though a ten-ton truck had smashed into it. I sat bolt upright, while Simon rolled instinctively out of bed and was on his feet before he was even awake. A small chunk of ceiling plaster fell down, scattering dust and debris over our duvet.

‘What the…’

‘What was that?’

‘Something hit the house!’

‘An explosion?’

‘The kids!’

We both ran from the room – me to Thomas’s room and Simon up to Lauren’s, while he shouted for Lewis. We’d agreed years ago who would go to which child in the event of an emergency: the thought of leaving one child to burn in a house fire while we both rushed to save another is unthinkable, so our ‘training’ kicked in without either of us speaking.

Amazingly Thomas was still sleeping, his duvet askew, and White Ted half under his head. I grabbed him anyway, folded him over my shoulder still sleeping, and ran downstairs with him. Simon was just behind, with a terrified Lauren in his arms, Lewis holding onto his pyjama trousers saying, ‘What’s going on, Dad? I heard a bang…’

We were all in the hallway before we stopped to take stock. We were all safe. There was no sign of fire – no smoke detector had gone off, no smell of burning. Simon checked the living room – safe in there, so I lay Thomas on the sofa. Lauren snuggled down next to him, pulling a throw over them both. Lewis sat on the floor, leaning against the sofa.

‘Stay there, kids, unless we shout for you to get out. Katie, stay in the hallway while I check the house.’

He checked the study, all clear, then went through to the kitchen. I heard him gasp, ‘Shit!’ then he came back to me. ‘You’d better come and look at this, love.’

I followed him through. The kitchen window was broken, shards of glass covered the floor and the wind was inside, bouncing off the walls like a caged banshee. Simon threw me a pair of gardening shoes which were lying on the kitchen doormat, and I slipped them on, and flicked on the light switch.

A huge branch from the beech tree had come through the window, and was resting now on the remains of the casement, its leaves dipped in the sink, its twigs entwined with a shattered vase of flowers that had been on the windowsill.

‘Oh my God!’ I said. ‘What a mess!’

‘The whole tree is down,’ Simon said, peering past the branch through the remains of the window. ‘I’d better go and check.’ He pulled a mac off its peg by the back door.

‘No, leave it till the morning,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing you can do now. Especially not while the storm’s still raging.’

‘I guess not,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll get the sleeping bags and some blankets. Let’s all sleep downstairs in the lounge for the rest of the night. Good thing it’s Saturday tomorrow.’

I went back to the kids to tell them what had happened. Thomas and Lauren were asleep, but Lewis listened wide-eyed while I whispered the news in his ear.

‘Can we plant it again?’ he asked. ‘Cos I like to climb it.’

I smiled, shook my head and ruffled his hair. ‘We’ll have to plant a new tree, and watch it grow. You can help with that. When we’ve cleared away the beech.’

He nodded seriously, then snuggled into the sleeping bag Simon had brought and settled down to sleep on the hearth rug. I did the same, and eventually drifted off to sleep reflecting on the loss of the tree. It must have been only a sapling when my ancestors lived here. Perhaps one of them had even planted it?

Chapter Nine: Hampshire, November 1876

Where were we, Barty my son, in this sorry narrative? I have not been well. I put it to one side for a week or so, while I lay abed and coughed and vomited as though my body was trying to rid itself of demons inside. There
are
demons inside me – as you are beginning to realise. Demons which made me take another woman to bed on the day I proposed to my wife, and take her again on the day I married. Demons driving me to drink too much brandy and whiskey, until I, although aware of what I was doing, no longer cared, and no longer thought of the effects of my actions on others.

Poor sweet Georgia. She was not much more than a child when I married her. Frightened and inexperienced. Did anyone even tell her what to expect on her wedding night? Quite possibly not. She deserved better than me; brute that I was.

We did, of course, eventually consummate our marriage. It was about a month later. We had by that time moved out of Charles Holland’s house, into a small but adequate apartment in Sussex Square. It faced sideways into the square, so there was not the benefit of a direct sea view, but Georgia pronounced it charming, and the rent was reasonable. I wasted no time furnishing it with taste, using Georgia’s inheritance, or what was left of it after I had paid off my creditors. Agnes, of course, moved with us, and took a rear-facing room on the top floor, one which was not overlooked at all. I was a frequent visitor to that room in the first month of my marriage, until Georgia finally overcame her scruples and allowed me into her bed.

And so it was that by the summer of 1838, Georgia was with child, and I confess I was excited at the prospect of producing an heir. Let us pick up the narrative again at this point, from Agnes’s point of view. She told me much of what happened between herself and Georgia, either at the time or later. The rest, the parts she kept secret, I confess I have guessed at. Pour yourself a whiskey, dear Barty, and read on.

Brighton, July 1838

Agnes rubbed Georgia’s back as she vomited for the third time that morning into a basin. Georgia was sitting on a chair in the corner of her bedchamber, while Agnes hovered around, trying to comfort her mistress.

‘Let it come up, ma’am,’ she said. ‘You will feel better once it’s out of you.’

Georgia groaned. ‘I had no idea being with child could make you sick.’ She retched again, and Agnes took a damp cloth and mopped her brow.

‘I remember my ma had terrible sickness with all of hers. She were sick for months each time. But the babies were all born bonny and healthy. She said the sicker the mother, the bigger the baby.’

Georgia moaned again. ‘I’m not sure I want too big a baby. How on earth do you get it out? Oh, there’s more…’ She vomited again.

Agnes stroked the younger woman’s hair. ‘There, there, miss. I’ll make you a potion for your sickness, if you would like it. Something with ginger in, to take in the morning afore you get out of bed.’