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She signed ‘thanks’ and ‘goodnight’.
‘You really OK? Don’t want someone to give you a cuddle? I’m volunteering in case you’re wondering.’ He put his hand up.
She shook her head vigorously. Maybe on another occasion she’d be unnerved by his suggestion, but right now she was only conscious of her own embarrassment.
He grinned with boyish charm. ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying. Goodnight.’
He closed the door as he left.
Jenny thumped her forehead. How embarrassing had that been? She thought she’d managed quite well on her introduction to her new home but she’d spoiled it all by sending Jonah totally mixed signals. He’d either think she was cracked or that she made a habit of pouncing on men in corridors dressed only in night shorts and a Tee. She looked down. She didn’t even have a bra on so she’d have been bouncing all over the place.
Kicking off her mules, she got back into bed. The house was silent now, pipes settled, footsteps ceased. Bloody brilliant. Her phone told her it was eleven-thirty. She switched it to night mode and pulled the duvet up to her chin.
At two in the morning, the steps started again. One-two-three. One-two-three.
This time she didn’t go and look.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_a85222a8-4a51-5475-8583-159c852fc333)
Yawning, Jenny entered the kitchen carrying her small box of food supplies. Daylight made the ghostly waltz less frightening. In fact, she’d rationalised it away completely. That was what she’d learned to do with her fears – tidy them away, paper them over. She was prepared to accept Jonah’s explanation that there were birds up there. Perhaps they’d been doing something perfectly normal, mating or fighting over territory maybe, and her brain had turned it into a pattern?
‘Good morning, Jenny. I see you’re an early riser?’ Bridget was sitting at the oak table, papers spread around her, pen in hand.
Not by choice. Jenny tapped her watch, indicating she had a shift starting at nine.
‘Sleep well?’
How to reply to that? She nodded.
‘Good. I never slept well the first night in a strange house. You must be built of sterner stuff than me.’
Jenny pulled a packet of muesli out of her box.
‘I should’ve told you last night: you’re welcome to keep your groceries in the pantry. I’ll clear a shelf for you. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you did as I don’t like food elsewhere. Old houses attract mice. So many voids under floorboards and wainscots for them to explore.’
Jenny didn’t think she’d heard anyone actually use the word ‘wainscot’ before. It was rather lovely. She gave Bridget an ‘OK’ sign.
Taking her bowl to the place opposite Bridget, Jenny gestured to the papers.
‘What are these? Ah, this is my history of the house. I can be a terrible bore on the subject as my friends will tell you.’
Jenny pressed a hand to her chest and shook her head.
‘You won’t be bored?’ Bridget laughed. ‘You say that now but give it a few weeks. I swear Jonah dives into the shrubbery when he sees me coming at him with a new chapter. I suppose it isn’t really his thing.’ Her eyes lit up as they rested on Jenny. ‘Maybe you’d appreciate my book?’
Jenny put out a hand. No harm in pleasing Bridget and she did have a genuine interest in the house, not least the fact Jonah had dropped into their late-night conversation about Admiral Jack being a rascal.
‘I’ll give you a sample then, see how you get on.’ Bridget rifled through the papers. ‘Might as well start at the beginning.’ She handed Jenny the opening chapters.
Jenny glanced at the first lines and looked up at Bridget.
‘I know: unconventional, isn’t it? I’ve tried to approach it like a novelist rather than historian. I’ve styled it an autobiography of the house. I’ve given so much of my own life to it that I felt I knew the old girl so well. She seems to speak to me like this.’
Jenny re-read the opening. Actually, it was a good idea, and felt very fresh, once you got past the oddness. She wouldn’t be surprised if Bridget did get it published one day. She could imagine a whole load of spin-offs as historians told their story from the point of view of the objects rather than the people. What would it have been like to be Beethoven’s piano, for example? Or Nelson’s flagship? Hitler’s bunker?
‘You can keep that. I have it all on computer.’
Jenny raised her brows.
‘I’m not totally technology adverse, dear. I just restrict myself to purchasing the very minimum I need to be part of modern life.’
Jenny held up her phone.
‘I have one but it’s not one of those smart ones everyone seems to have these days. Mine makes telephone calls.’
Jenny typed: can we text?
‘I suppose that would be useful. I’ll give you the number. I can’t swear I’ll remember to check it. If you need me urgently, get someone to telephone for you. When you’re in the house and can’t find me, leave a note on the hall table.’
Jenny gave her a thumbs up.
Bridget gave a pained smile. ‘I can’t say I like that gesture – so reminiscent of the Colosseum and a verdict of life or death. Odd how it’s become ubiquitous, used on everything from cat videos to world changing announcements. But don’t listen to me: I’m stuck in the past.’
Making a show of tucking her hand behind her back, Jenny smiled her agreement. She wasn’t a fan either of the thumbs up, or any of the grading systems that had proliferated online. Everyone now was a critic and could destroy, mock and troll a person without even knowing them, as she found out to her cost as a few years ago when she’d first started playing for the orchestra. A mute black female violinist attracted the crazies. It was enough to make you give up on humanity. She gathered up the papers and slipped them in her bag with her music. Getting up, she tapped her watch.
‘You have to run? I’ll see you later maybe. Actually, dear, it would make life easier if you put your comings and goings on my calendar so I don’t have to keep asking.’
Jenny noted down her shifts for the next two days in last few slots left to April and the upcoming Glyndebourne season, when she expected to be away. Jenny then washed her bowl, drank a quick glass of water, did the same for the tumbler, then dried both. She put them in the cupboard.
‘I like a tidy person,’ said Bridget, settling reading glasses on her nose.
That reminded Jenny. When do the cleaners come?’
Bridget frowned over the top of her spectacles. ‘I do have a company in to clean the windows and polish the floors once a month but I’m afraid we keep it tidy ourselves, dear. I hope that won’t be a problem?’
Jenny shook her head. Bridget sounded a little offended. Didn’t expect it, she added on the iPad.
Hurrying to the station, aware she was running behind for her shift, Jenny tried to make sense this new piece of household information. It had to be Jonah leaving the flowers then. Or maybe Bridget was getting forgetful? From the impression Jenny had got of both, Bridget was far more likely to be the one bringing cut flowers into the house.
Anyway, it was only flowers.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_61fdb185-3b36-5e51-9fdb-44fc4a3e7cdb)
The House that Jack Built – Chapter 3 – Birth
‘You’ve dug deep enough,’ Captain Jack told his men. ‘Now you can start to build her.’
And they obeyed, birthing me from course of brick and seam of mortar, eyelets of windows, ear flaps of doors. Seasons changed as my skeleton rose from the heath. The next spring, my head they tiled with slate brought from Wales on the slow-running arteries of canals once the ice had broken. Finally, the churned earth was turfed and gardens planted and I stood proud: a gentleman’s residence.
Gallant House.
But I know those earlier people are with me still, the cave dwellers, Vikings, failed rebels and heedless maids. They lie in the soil with my foundations, whispering their secrets to the black heath.
Chapter 12 (#ulink_aebafdb7-6807-5d99-945c-461104e43ecb)
An oddly disturbing tale – not at all what she expected. Jenny put the manuscript away as her train drew in to Waterloo East. She wasn’t sure what to make of Bridget’s origin story for the house. Her landlady gave it the voice of a needy mistress rather than a family home. After all these years living there, unable to keep up repairs to expensive features like the balcony, did Bridget feel the house absorbed attention in that way? Was she even a little resentful of it even while she was loved it?
Jenny joined the commuters funnelling through the ticket barriers, her violin buying her a little extra room in the crowd like a pregnant woman’s bump or old man’s stick. That was welcome as she hated people breathing down her neck.
The history of the heath sounded fascinating, she thought, even if told obliquely. But did it have to be told in macabre images of burials and unearthing? It wasn’t a reassuring thought for the already problematic night-time to dwell of the numerous sad ends that had been met on the spot. Bridget had made the foundations sound like catacombs. All old houses had seen deaths – of course they had – but Jenny thought that it was better sometimes not to know.
Louis waited for her in the café, eager to hear how her introduction to Gallant House had gone. Jenny was pleased to see that he was joined by Kris, who had chosen his favourite seat overlooking the river. A big man with sandy hair, jug handle ears and a flushed face, Kris appeared the least likely person to have the soul of a poet. That just went to show prejudging was a waste of time and energy; people were rarely what they seemed on the surface. She gave both a wave and dived into the staff room to stow her violin in her locker and put on her uniform.
When she returned, her manager beckoned her over. ‘I’ve got you tea. We’re quiet at the moment so, come on, tell us all about it.’
With a smile, she sat next to Kris. He kissed her cheek. ‘What do you think of the inimitable Bridget?’ His voice was a deep bass rumble, the kettledrum in the Festival Hall orchestra of visitors. ‘Has she got you curtseying yet?’
Not quite yet. Maybe that’s day two?
‘And have you met my guy, Jonah?’
What was it about the man that everyone wanted to adopt him as theirs? She nodded.
‘And?’
Jenny debated withholding the information about dragging Jonah into her bedroom but decided that an embarrassment shared was an embarrassment halved.
‘You didn’t?’ Louis chuckled, after reading her confession. ‘You don’t let the grass grow, girl!’
‘I bet poor Jonah felt all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once.’ Kris patted her hand in consolation. ‘A classy lady like you enticing him into her boudoir. Want me to have a word with him?’
She’d prefer just to forget it. If he mentions how a nymphomaniac has moved in then yes. So what about the house?
‘The isle is full of noises,’ said Kris. ‘Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and not hurts.’
TheTempest? She’d seen that at the Barbican.
‘Correct.’
So I should just ignore the waltzing?
‘Put it like this, I lived there three years and heard odd things all the time. I considered for a while that there was a mad woman in the attic …’
‘How very Jane Eyre,’ murmured Louis.
‘… But when I looked I just found bird nests and a broken window.’
Jenny felt a surge of relief. Her imagination had begun to people the mysterious attics with all kinds of horrors. It was just an attic floor.
‘I decided after that not to worry. It never progressed – no ghostly apparitions, no clanking chains, just noises. Old houses have quirks.’
It was reassuring that she wasn’t the only one to hear things. Did you read Bridget’s history?
Kris rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t say she’s trapped you into reading that already? Damn, that’s fast work. She’s been beavering away on that for a decade. I think it’s become something of an obsession. I told her to get out more, volunteer as a reader at the local primary school, or join a gardening club, but she is attached to that place like a limpet to a rock. She says the best day in her life was the day she was able to do her shopping online.’
She never leaves?
‘Not that I recall. Maybe she did at the beginning but by the time I left, I can’t remember her going as far as the corner shop. She even gets Norman to make home visits when she needs a doctor. You’ve met Norman? He’s always there on Tuesdays.’
She nodded.
‘Don’t sign on with him. I started out on his list but quickly caught on that he’s no longer what he once was. They’ve shuffled him into a figurehead role and his retirement is imminent.’
Recommendations?
‘Dr Chakrabarti if she’s got space.’
How are you now?
‘Aw, sweetie, thanks for asking. I’m much better, due to the tender loving care I’ve been receiving. If you’d met me a month ago, I wouldn’t’ve been able to come out like this. I was getting as housebound as Bridget.’
‘So she’s an agoraphobic?’ asked Louis. ‘You never said, Kris.’
‘I wouldn’t describe her like that exactly as she loves her garden. Is there a word for someone who doesn’t want to venture into the outside world?’
Scared, thought Jenny, feeling kinship with her landlady. That had been her for a year between fourteen and fifteen. The violin was the thing that had dragged her out of seclusion as it was the only way she could get to play with others. Her mother had always said it was a blessing she hadn’t taken up with a solo instrument like the piano or she would never have emerged.
‘I’m not sure I’d even call her a recluse as she loves having people round. I’d say she was an original. So, Jenny, what’s on your agenda today?’
She told them about the performance of Petrushka that afternoon for invited schools. Thank goodness she wasn’t involved in the children’s workshop beforehand. No one escaped those raucous sessions without a headache.
Kris laughed. ‘No, I’ve never thought of you as a particularly child-friendly person.’
Jenny was oddly hurt by this, it was like being told that animals didn’t like you, suggesting some inherent flaw. I like little ones. The ones that did not require her to speak.
‘I stand corrected. What’s the story of that piece? Forgive my ignorance but the only ballets I have any idea about are The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. I saw those as a kid.’
‘You went to see Humanhood with Hazel at Saddler’s Wells last week,’ said Louis.
‘Doesn’t mean I had the first idea what their performance was all about. I just went to admire the dancers.’
‘See what I have to contend with?’ said Louis in a stage whisper. ‘He ogles Rudí Cole and then comes back home to me.’
Cole?
‘The most gorgeous dancer God made.’
‘But he probably doesn’t give as good back rubs as you,’ said Kris consolingly.
