House of Echoes

She had her back to him, watching the robin. He frowned. There was a strange tone to her voice – a forced jocularity.

‘I very much doubt if he does.’ She turned and he met her eye. ‘What is frightening you, Joss?’

She shrugged, fussing with Tom’s harness. The little boy had started to whine. ‘I don’t know. I’m usually quite sane. And I adore the house. It’s just that somehow, something is not right here.’

‘But not the devil.’ It was his most schoolmasterly tone, stern with just a hint of mocking reproach.

‘No. No, of course not.’ Comforting the child, she sounded far from sure.

‘Joss. If the devil chose anywhere to live on Earth, I doubt that, even as his country residence, he would choose Belheddon.’ He smiled, the corners of his eyes creasing deeply. ‘For one thing it’s far too cold.’

She laughed. ‘And I’m keeping you hanging around. Let’s go into the church.’

The iron latch was icy, even through her gloves. Turning the ring handle with an effort she humped the buggy through the doors and down into the shadowy aisle.

‘It’s a lovely old church.’ David stared round him.

She nodded. ‘I’ve even been to one or two services. I’ve always loved evensong.’ She led the way towards the far wall. ‘Look, there are several memorials and brass plaques to people from the Hall. None with the same names, though. It’s as if a dozen families have lived here. It’s so frustrating. I don’t know who, if any, are my relations.’ She stood staring up at a worn stone memorial by the pulpit. ‘Look. Sarah, beloved wife of William Percival, late of Belheddon Hall, died the 4th day of December, 1884. Then, much later, there was Lydia Manners, my grandmother, then my parents’ name was Duncan. All different families.’

‘Have you found the family Bible?’ He had wandered up into the chancel. ‘Ah, here are some De Veres. 1456 and 1453, both of Belheddon Hall. Perhaps they were your ancestors too.’

Joss pushed the buggy after him. ‘I hadn’t thought to look for a Bible. What a good idea!’

‘Well if there is one and it is sufficiently huge you ought to be able to find it quite easily. I’ll help you look when we get back to the house. But Joss –’ he put his arm round her gravely, ‘I very much doubt if you are descended from the devil!’

‘It would be an interesting thought, wouldn’t it.’ She stood in front of the altar rail and stared up at the stained-glass window. ‘I suspect if I was there would have been a smell of scorching by now, if not whirling winds and screaming demons flocking round my head.’

Katherine

The sound in the echoing chancel arch above her was no more than a whisper of the wind. Neither of them heard it.

David sat down in one of the pews. ‘Joss, about the writing. I gave your short story Son of the Sword, to my friend Robert Cassie at Hibberds. It intrigued me so much when I read it. That mystery thriller angle set in the past: I thought it worked really well and I was always sad it was a short story. I thought it would make a good novel then, and I still do.’ He glanced up at her under his eyelashes. ‘Bob agreed with me. I don’t know if that particular idea appeals, but if you thought you could expand it into a full-length novel, he would be interested to hear your ideas on how to do it; perhaps write some character sketches, a few chapters, that sort of thing.’

She stood stock still, looking down at him. ‘Was he serious?’

David nodded. ‘I told you you could do it, Joss. He liked the characters; he loved the mystery – and of course, in the story, it’s never solved.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you know what happened at the end yourself?’

Joss laughed. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Well then. All you have to do is tell the story.’

They found the family Bible that evening. The huge, leather-covered tome was stored sideways in the bottom of the bookshelf behind her mother’s chair in the study. ‘Bookworm.’ David fingered the crumbling edges to the pages. ‘And probably mice. And there you are. Dozens of entries written on the end papers. Fascinating! Let’s take it through to the kitchen and we can put it on the table under the bright light.’

Luke was scrubbing oil off his hands at the sink when they carried in their find in triumph and laid it reverently down. ‘Now what have you found.’ He grinned at them tolerantly. ‘You are like a couple of school kids, you two. Such excitement!’

David opened the book with careful fingers. ‘Here we are. The first entry is dated 1694.’

‘And the last?’ Joss craned over his shoulder.

He turned the heavy handmade page. ‘Samuel John Duncan, born 10th September 1946.’

‘Sammy.’ Joss swallowed hard. Neither Georgie nor she, the rejected member of the Duncan family, were there.

David stood back from the table, half diffident, half reluctant to relinquish his treasure. ‘Go on, have a look.’

Joss sat down, leaning forward, her finger on the page. ‘There she is,’ she said, ‘the Sarah in the church. Sarah Rushbrook married William Percival 1st May 1861. Then Julia Mary born 10th April 1862, died 17th June 1862 – she only lived two months.’

‘It was a cruel time. Infant mortality was appalling, Joss. Remember your statistics,’ David put in sternly. He was suddenly strangely uncomfortable with this close encounter with the past.

Joss went on. ‘“Mary Sarah, born 2nd July 1864. Married John Bennet spring 1893. Our firstborn, Henry John was born the 12th October 1900” – she must have written that. “Our daughter Lydia” – I suppose that’s my grandmother – “was born in 1902” and then, oh no –’ she stopped for a moment. ‘Little Henry John died in 1903. He was only three years old. That entry is in a different handwriting. The next entry is dated 24th June, 1919. “In the year 1903, three months after the death of our son Henry, my husband John Bennet disappeared. I no longer expect his return. This day my daughter, Lydia Sarah, married Samuel Manners who has come to Belheddon in his turn.”’

‘That sounds a bit cryptic.’ Luke was sitting opposite her, his attention suddenly caught. ‘What’s next?’

‘“Our son, Samuel, was born on 30th November, 1920. Three days later my mother, Mary Sarah Bennet, died of the influenza.”’

‘Incredible.’ David shook his head. ‘It’s a social history in miniature. I wonder if she caught the tail end of the great flu epidemic which spread round the world after the First World War. Poor woman. So she probably never saw her grandson.’

‘I wonder what happened to poor old John Bennet?’ Thoughtfully Luke sat back in his chair.

‘There is a letter in the study,’ Joss said slowly, reverting to a previous thought. ‘A note from Lydia to her cousin John Duncan telling him about her son’s birth. She must have written it straight away, before she realised her mother was dying.’ She glanced back at the page. ‘She had three more children, John, Robert and Laura, my mother, each born two years apart and then –’ she paused. ‘Look, she herself died the year after Laura’s birth. She was only twenty-three years old!’

‘How sad.’ Luke reached out and touched her hand. ‘It was all a long time ago, Joss. You mustn’t get depressed about it, you know.’

She smiled. ‘I’m not really. It’s just so strange. Reading her letter, holding it in my hand. It brings her so close.’

‘I expect the house is full of letters and documents about the family,’ David put in. ‘The fact that your mother obviously left everything just as it was is wonderful from the historian’s point of view. Just wonderful. There must be pictures of these people. Portraits, photos, daguerreotypes.’ He rocked back on his chair, balancing against the table with his finger tips. ‘You must draw up a family tree.’

Joss smiled. ‘It would be interesting. Especially for Tom Tom when he’s big.’ She shook her head slowly, turning back to the endpapers where the scrawled Italic inscriptions, faded to brown, raced across the page. The first four generations, she realised, had been filled in by the same hand – a catching up job in the front of the new Bible perhaps. After that, year after year, generation after generation, each new branch of the family was recorded by a different pen, a different name. ‘If I copy these out, I can take the list over to the church and find out how many of them were buried there,’ she said. ‘I wonder what did happen to John Bennet. There is no further mention of him. It would be interesting to see if he was buried here. Do you think he had an accident?’

‘Perhaps he was murdered.’ Luke chuckled. ‘Not every name in this book can have died a gentle natural death …’

‘Luke –’ Joss’s protest was interrupted by a sudden indignant wail from the baby alarm.

‘I’ll go.’ Luke was already on his feet. ‘You two put away that Bible and start to think about supper.’

Joss stood up and closed the heavy book, frowning at the echoing crescendo of sobs. ‘I should go –’

‘Luke can deal with it.’ David put his hand on her arm. He left it there just a moment too long and moved it hastily. ‘Joss. Don’t push Luke out with all this, will you. The family. The history. The house. It’s a lot for him to take on board.’

‘It’s a lot for me to take on board!’ She thumped the heavy book down on the dresser as over the intercom they heard the sound of a door opening, and then Luke’s voice, sharp with fear. ‘Tom! What have you done?’

Joss glanced at David, then she turned and ran for the door. When she arrived in the nursery, with David close on her heels, Tom was in Luke’s arms. The cot was over by the window.

‘It’s OK. He’s all right.’ He surrendered the screaming child. ‘He must have rocked the cot across the floor. It is a bit sloping up here. Then he woke up in a different place and had a bit of a fright, didn’t you old son?’

He ruffled the little boy’s hair.

Joss clutched Tom close, feeling the small body trembling violently against her own. ‘Silly sausage. What happened? Did you rock the cot so much it moved?’