Property of a Lady(17)

But most nights Ellie wakes in a sobbing panic, apparently frantic with anxiety for ‘Elvira’. From which you’ll see we haven’t been able to get rid of Elvira yet. Two nights ago Ellie told Liz someone was trying to find Elvira, and when Liz asked to know a bit more – sort of going along with the fantasy in case she could find a way to dispel it – Ellie said it was the man with holes where his eyes should be. I don’t know about you, but that was enough to give me the creeps, never mind a seven-year-old.

Let me know about Charect. Liz sends love.

Jack

Michael did not really want to leave Oxford, which at that time of the year was rain-scented and chrysanthemum-tinted, but he could probably steal twenty-four hours.

Before he left, he sent Ellie a new episode of Wilberforce’s tribulations, in which the mice put on a display of street-dance, wearing baseball caps back to front, and thwarting Wilberforce’s attempts to disrupt the performance by tying him up with the strings from the cello and upending the tuba horn on his head.

Then he sent a second email to Jack, saying he would drive to Marston Lacy on Friday. He might as well stay overnight again.

Michael reached Marston Lacy shortly before eleven on Friday morning, checked in at the Black Boar, and asked about the availability of rooms for Jack and Liz’s Christmas sojourn. It appeared there would be no problem; the Black Boar prided itself on providing a really good family Christmas, said the manager. A proper turkey dinner at two o’clock, and a festive supper in the evening with mulled wine and carol singing. A lot of local people came in for the evening – they made quite an event of it. This Dickensian prospect might not entirely live up to its promise, but Michael knew it would delight Liz, so he booked a double room there and then, with a small adjoining one for Ellie. On impulse, he booked a third room for himself. Jack had been fairly insistent about joining forces for Christmas, and Michael remembered that his rooms at Oriel were due to be repainted during the holidays.

Blackberry Lane, when he reached it, was drenched in gentle autumn rain and still felt as if it was caught in its own tiny shard of the past. But there were a number of large tyre tracks, which had not been there on his first visit and which presumably belonged to builders’ lorries. Michael wondered if the lane was to be resurfaced or even widened. It would be a pity to lose the feeling of having stepped backwards – of having wandered by chance into an England where there were quiet lanes with dappled sunlight, and where the cuckoo called in spring and blackberries were picked by children in autumn. (And where three-quarters of the population had no inside lavatory or piped water, and at least half of the people earned wages so low they could scarcely feed their families, and children were sent into the mines and up chimneys, said his mind.) On the other hand, it would make life easier to be able to drive to the house without getting stuck in a ditch halfway.

At first sight, the only thing different about Charect House was the large skip, which appeared to be filled with a embarrassment of riches in the form of yards of lead piping, sections of uprooted bathroom fittings, and an assortment of rotting window frames. Two lorries were parked alongside the house, and a man wearing several sweaters and a hat with ear flaps was crawling, spider-like, across the roof, doing something with a large hammer to the tiles.

Michael called out a good morning and received a wave and an invitation to go into the house, on account of it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out here, pardon the French.

As he stepped through the half-open door, there was a moment when the hammering from the roof fell into the rhythm he had heard on his first visit: that grim tattoo somewhere within the house, that let-me-out tapping. He frowned and pushed the memory away. If Charect House had ever contained ghosts or even down-to-earth intruders, they would all certainly have fled in exasperation days ago to escape the hammering and drilling, and the thudding music coming from the small stereo in the hall.

Michael negotiated the builders’ debris with care and, encountering a rotund gentleman who appeared to be in some sort of overall authority, introduced himself and explained about being a friend of the owners.

‘They asked me if I could look in to see how things were going.’ He did not say he had made a two-hour drive from Oxford for this looking-in, in case the builder thought he was being spied on.

But the builder apparently saw nothing wrong and accompanied Michael on a tour of the house, explaining, in largely incomprehensible terms, what was being done, cheerfully pointing out such mysteries as RSJs in the drawing room, new lath and plaster ceilings in the bedrooms, and insulated bonding for the electrical circuit, which, he said, you had to have in a place like this, because you were so far from your substation.

‘Ah,’ said Michael, blankly.

‘I reckon your friends have taken on quite a task with this place,’ said the builder.

Michael reckoned so as well. ‘I think they inherited it out of the blue,’ he said. ‘They had no idea it was even in their family.’

‘So I hear. It’s being said those scoundrelly old solicitors lost the deeds for the best part of forty years. Grimley and Shrike they were called. They had offices on the edge of the High Street. It’s a health food shop now, but I remember it being Grimley and Shrike when I was a boy. Like something out of Dickens they were.’

‘I did hear something about the deeds being mislaid,’ said Michael.

‘That’s putting it politely,’ said the builder cheerfully. ‘If you ask me, it’s surprising old man Shrike didn’t mislay himself along with the deeds. I never knew him, of course, but my father did a job at the offices – thirty years ago it must be. He said old Shrike used to wear one of those old-fashioned high wing collars, and you could hardly see his desk for all the files. Deed boxes stacked halfway up to the ceiling, cobwebs in every corner, and cigarette ash over everything. He died at his desk one day, just fell down while he was drafting somebody’s will and stayed there until the office boy found him. Great old character, by all accounts. Rotten solicitor though, so they say. Ah well. Come and see what we’re doing upstairs.’