The Haunting of Harriet (14 page)

That night they both slept well, which came as a welcome change for Liz. Since her illness her nights had been filled with a succession of vivid dreams, some of which woke her and repeated with a disturbing regularity. Lately she was experiencing a bout of quite raunchy, erotic dreams. Often she would wake Edward by talking to him in her sleep. He never told her that she was “talking dirty”, for he knew she would be embarrassed. Liz was no prude but she was no wanton hussy either. Some of the things she said would have mortified her. She claimed not to remember what she had been dreaming about when she awoke sweating and breathless in the middle of the night. But their sex life was definitely benefiting from whatever her nocturnal exploits were so he decided to keep quiet and enjoy the ride. Liz genuinely could not recall the substance of these dreams, but there was a great deal of uninhibited sex involved.

Then one morning after a night of particularly vivid and obviously illicit passion, Liz awoke obsessed with a strange compulsion. The boathouse had to be razed to the ground. There was no recognizable connection between this burning conviction and her illusive dream. She only knew that what remained of the boathouse must be destroyed before they could think about rebuilding it. Once she had acknowledged this, she felt a strange peace. She pulled on her jeans and the first sweater that came to hand, scooped up her bowl of cornflakes and set off to take a closer look at the doomed building.

Seated on the bench under the willow, she gazed across the water at the derelict shell. There was something very sad about it, something that was intrinsically linked with the old submerged dinghy. An involuntary shudder took her by surprise and for a split second she felt decidedly cold. Liz tried not to think about the boat. Somehow it was forbidden territory; some sort of taboo hung over it. She never went to look at it but often at night it rose up to feature in her dreams and always associated with the black figure. Sometimes it stood in the boat, at others it merely watched as the dinghy sailed by. The most fearful dreams were when they stood side by side and watched as the boat capsized. Then Liz would wake with a feeling of utter powerlessness. Even now the merest thought of it brought her out in goose pimples. Something linked the sunken boat to the fire; that much she knew. And something linked it all to her, although she still knew precisely nothing. How had it sunk? Was anyone drowned? How had the boathouse caught fire? Was it deliberately set alight? She had quizzed the neighbours, but even the oldest inhabitants of the village had not been around long enough to know, though this did not stop them offering theories. The stories ranged from murder to witchcraft, but it was mostly spiced-up speculation. Liz was convinced that some personal tragedy had happened here and it could not have been that long ago. The archives at the local library and the church records were the logical places to start, but her confidence in her skills as a researcher was woefully lacking and as often as she resolved to make it her next major project she never quite got round to it.

The ruined building was quite something. If only she could paint it as it was now: romantic, dilapidated, beautifully melancholic. It was a ridiculous idea, of course. How could anyone hope to capture the mystery of such a place? Liz had not painted since school, and then she had only shown mediocre talent. This was too ambitious for an amateur to attempt.
Why not try?
As the thought struck her it was accompanied by the weird sensation that she was not alone. She looked around. There was no one there, just the gentle sound of the water lapping against the bank. Something brushed her hand; when she looked down, The Pote was sitting by her side, looking up at her. She ruffled his ears and eased herself out of the chair, pausing long enough to take one last look at the boathouse before they wandered back to the house together.

Turning the griffin key in its lock Liz entered what was still referred to as the Fourth Room. No longer an unwelcoming room, it had nevertheless remained in a sort of limbo for five years. Liz had never quite decided what to do with it, so it had become the place where all those potentially useful things not yet allocated a permanent home languished: old cricket pads and odd golf clubs; an unused sewing-machine; a dressmaker’s dummy whose proportions fitted no one and never had; piles of those awful plastic storage boxes that, once filled and shut, were never opened again. Rummaging in one of the children’s boxes, Liz dug out an old paint-box. The palette required only a quick spit and a rub with her finger to restore its true colours. The brush was well past its sell-by date, but with a little TLC it would do. Adding to this a sketchpad, a pencil and a jam-jar, she set off back across the lawn. Using the bench as a table she laid out her trappings, then with her sketchpad propped on her knees finally settled down to work.

After an hour she had amassed a pile of litter, which lay scattered around her exactly where thrown down in disgust. On the brink of giving up, she made one last stab at it. Suddenly there it was. The boathouse was there on the page. Somehow she had drawn a pretty good likeness. Exchanging her pencil for a brush she sloshed it in the water and began to paint. At first everything came out too opaque. The transparency of the water and the magic of the light playing on its surface eluded her ability. How did painters like Turner capture such luminosity? Well, she conceded that involved sheer genius; but how did they keep the colours clean and clear?

Frustrated at her own incompetence, she threw her hands up in despair. This sudden serendipitous movement knocked over the jam-jar. The water spilled out, slowly covering the paper and forming an annoying puddle. Still she carried on, painting wet on wet. She loved it. Losing all sense of time, she played with her new toys, no longer afraid of the results, simply enjoying the process. Her inhibitions had flown. She was free to experiment and have fun. She was still engrossed in her work when the twins burst into the garden, making it time to return to being a mother. But before packing her stuff away she could not resist taking a photo of the boathouse, to serve as a memory of a perfect afternoon. She emptied the jam-jar into the lake, disturbing a nearby trout that had been watching her progress. Apologizing to the basking fish, she returned to the house, grinning from ear to ear and feeling restored to health.

Liz’s painting of the boathouse was hung in the hall at Beckmans. Framed and mounted, it did look extremely accomplished, not at all like a first effort; maybe not a work of genius but certainly that of a competent amateur. She had captured some of the ethereal quality of her subject: the way the light played through the broken timbers, sending shafts down into the dark reed-filled water. The process of painting had completely absorbed her. She had been suspended in time. Her hand moved unaided, mixing colours from unlikely combinations, finding greens and blues she never knew existed. There was sufficient detail to define, yet obscurity enough to allow for a romantic, almost spiritual vision of the beautiful old ruin. It was a remarkably good painting and, of course, Harriet had had a hand in it.

Harriet was delighted at her pupil’s progress. As a young woman she herself had been well taught and now could pass on everything she knew. She had never before felt such a sense of pride. Her patience had been well rewarded. But she knew there was a price to pay. Liz’s painting reopened the question of the boathouse, sparking off some alarmingly heated discussions about the future of the folly. Its survival hung in the balance. Harriet wished the whole thing would go away but, try as she did, she failed to convince Liz it was a doomed project.

Liz recognized she had a real battle on her hands to win Edward around. She attempted to explain to him how she felt about the old building, without sounding too dramatic. Edward had no wish to be enlightened to the more spiritual side of the argument. Frankly, he thought Liz was becoming obsessive. He guessed it was Mel’s psychic hand behind all this and was not too happy about that. All that ridiculous palaver at Christmas had played on Liz’s mind and definitely delayed her recovery from what should have been a simple virus.

It was Bob who brought common sense to bear. His matter-of-fact approach could not be argued with. “Let’s face it mate, the place is a death trap. You have no choice but to pull it down. What you do after that is up to you two to sort out. If you want to rebuild it, I’m your man. I could do a modern state-of-the-art job, I can even build a replica of the Taj Mahal; but I warn you, Indian palaces don’t come cheap. No, as I see it, it’s very simple. Just ask yourself: do I want a peaceful life? Then, what sort of bonus am I going to get this year?”

Edward’s bonus was of an obscenely generous nature. He had planned to take the family to Disney World but certain comments Jenny had dropped along the way made him realize he was not altogether in touch with the likes and dislikes of his children. He decided instead to offer them a
carte blanche
holiday cruise. Anywhere they liked as long as it did not include the Bombay slums, which seemed Jenny’s preference. She had abandoned all thoughts of becoming a vet and was now hell-bent on being the next Mother Teresa. Life was never simple with Jenny, who was an extremely determined young woman. James was the complete opposite. He knew exactly where he was going, but was always going to take the easy route. His father had been disappointed that he showed little interest or aptitude for sports, but it was some consolation that his enthusiasm for maths and his facility with figures implied he would follow in his father’s footsteps. He was a great kid, which was the main thing. Everybody loved James.

Bob’s entry into the discussion about the future of the boathouse was a clear indication to Liz that Edward had at last come round to her way of thinking; after a few minor discussions about the old versus the new they agreed that demolition work should begin that summer. Faced with a blank canvas, Liz began to get carried away. Greek temples, a ruined Gothic folly, even a Japanese pagoda flashed through her mind. Harriet was constantly on hand to keep this fertile young imagination in check. Eventually a decision was reached. It was to be rebuilt to look exactly as it must have done before the fire. Liz was ecstatic and Harriet was exhausted. She took herself off to what she still called the Tudor room to rest and recuperate.

Exhaustion took Harriet to that pleasant state halfway between consciousness and sleep. In her mind she could see the old boathouse when she still thought it beautiful, before the fire. She could not remember when it had burnt down or if she had ever painted it before the fire ravaged it. It hardly seemed to matter now which came as a complete surprise to her.

H
arriet’s love of painting had taken a long and at times difficult route. Sometime after that fateful Christmas Eve on the lake Harriet had woken up to find she was in hospital. Once she was no longer confined to bed but still receiving a considerable amount of medication, always under the watchful eye of the terrifying ward sister, she was sent to a unit where she was given treatment that they called occupational therapy. She knew it as painting and when first presented with paints, paper and brushes she withdrew further into herself, stubbornly refusing to co-operate. Then one day, as if a switch had been thrown, she began to emerge. At first she produced violent explosions of black and red, the paint applied in vicious stabbing gestures, ripping the paper, which substituted for her flesh and exorcised her pain as though some macabre blood-letting ritual were taking place. A destructive rage ate away at her, breaking out in sudden uncontrollable bursts of violence that left her exhausted, crippled with remorse and shame. Gradually, over the months, she developed more control until she discovered she could command her moods as well as her paint. The work that poured from her was still, however, profoundly disturbed and belied the fact that she was still a young child. But her love of painting had begun and was never to leave her.

During her entire stay in the hospital she received no visitors and although she wrote to her brother every day without fail, no post came back. Her memory of that day aboard the
Jolly Roger
had been almost wiped from her fragile mind, leaving her with scant knowledge of what had happened. Wild speculation and hideous imaginings crowded in on her until eventually she created a safe world of her own making where she could take control, secure in the knowledge that all would be restored to normal as soon as she got home to her father and brother.

After a long difficult six months she was deemed well enough to be discharged. The same large car that had taken David away came to collect her and it was only as it pulled out through the gateway that she knew exactly where she had been living. The words written above the gates read, “St Luke’s Asylum for the Insane and the Incurable”. Her eyes fixed on the huge metal letters until long after they had disappeared from sight. That heavy iron arch was to hang over her for much of her life, reminding her that she would never be whole or normal again. The car was expensive and black and smelt of leather. The driver did not speak to her, not even when she asked where they were going, so she kept quiet during the journey. After about an hour they drove in through another pair of similarly ominous iron gates. But above these were the wonderful words: “Bletchley Academy for Girls”. She was going to school.