2008 - Recipes for Cherubs (5 page)

He turned and looked up at the portrait of Alice Grieve and smiled, ran his hands lovingly round the ornate frame. Damn, she was a beautiful woman if ever there was one. If he’d known he was going to lose her to another man he’d have bought a bigger cage and locked her up in it for her own safety.

He turned away from the photograph, looked out through the shop window – and his mouth fell open, his spectacles dropping down to the end of his nose. Who in the name of God would be looking in through the shop window at this time of night? He shoved his spectacles back into place and looked again. There was definitely someone there, someone wearing a straw boater. Jesus! Were there ghosts abroad tonight? He looked again and with relief saw that it was not a man but a child. That was ridiculous, though. There were never any children wandering around the village in the pitch dark – there were barely any children here at all, these days. He’d taken a drop too much whisky again, and he was starting to imagine things.

He turned away from the window, laughed a little nervously, and chided himself for his foolishness. He mopped the gathering sweat from his forehead with a dirty handkerchief and steadied himself against the counter. If he turned round slowly and kept calm, urged his brain not to play tricks on him, he would see that he was mistaken, that there was no one there.

He turned his head.

Jesus and all the Saints! It couldn’t be! Yet those eyes couldn’t lie.

Pull yourself together, Meredith
. Dead people didn’t stand staring in through the dusty windows of photographers’ shops. Dead people couldn’t walk.

He backed away through the shop, knocking his shins on a camera stand and cursing loudly. He reached for the whisky bottle and took a hefty slug, the amber liquid trickling down his unshaven chin. Hurriedly he turned out the light and, still clutching the whisky bottle, climbed the narrow stairs to his bedroom, where he pulled back the curtains and stared down into Cockle Lane. There was no one there. He looked towards the beach, and beyond the beach he saw the stark outlines of the tall chimneys at Shrimp’s Hotel – and he shuddered.

E
lla Grieve woke up with a start. She sat up, rubbed her eyes and looked round the room. Who on earth would be knocking on the front door at this hour? All the guests had a night key in case they stayed out late. Maybe old Igor Evanski had been down to the Old Boot, taken a little too much liquor and mislaid his keys again.

Pull yourself together, Ella
. That was ridiculous. Igor Evanski, the piano tuner, had been dead for years. She and Alice had been to his funeral in Hampstead and Alice got squiffy on gin and lemon. It was all in the past. Done and dusted.

Ella got up from her chair, found the matches, lit a candle stub and made her way out through the kitchen.

She glanced down at the pile of unopened post that lay on the doormat. She really must get to grips with it one day soon.

The frenzied banging on the door began again.

She put her head on one side and listened. Someone was sobbing.

“Who is this?” she called irritably.

The banging stopped.

“Aunt Alice, let me in, please.”

“Aunt Alice? I’ll give you bloody Aunt Alice!”

“Please, please, just let me in.”

“Whoever you are, go away. Alice isn’t here.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“Is Aunt Ella there, then? Please fetch Aunt Ella.”

Who could this be, calling her Aunt? No one had called her Aunt in years.

Ella stiffened. It couldn’t be Kizzy Grieve; she wouldn’t dare come back here after what she’d done.

The sobbing got louder, the banging weaker.

Ella bit her lip, held the candleholder more tightly to stop it shaking.

“Is that you, Kizzy Grieve? I told you years back I never wanted to clap eyes on you ever again.”

“It’s not Kizzy, it’s Catrin.”

“I don’t know any Catrin. Now get away from here.”

“I’m Catrin, Catrin Grieve. My mother is Kizzy, she wrote to you, she’s your niece.”

“I have no niece.”

“But she is your niece. She’s called Kizzy for short – really she’s Katherine Isobel.”

Ella stood looking at the door, clenching and unclenching her fist. “What do you mean, she wrote to me?”

“She wrote and asked if I could stay here with you for the summer.”

The voice beyond the door was edged with panic.

Ella could barely move for shock. She looked down at the pile of letters at her feet. No wonder she’d thought she recognised the handwriting on one of them, but they had been lying there unopened for weeks.

The bare-faced cheek of the woman. How dare she presume to send her stupid child here for the summer?

“Are you still there?” Catrin whimpered.

“Of course I’m still here. I’m not a bloody ghost. I didn’t open her letter, and if I had I wouldn’t have replied. And just supposing I had replied, I’d have told your blasted mother to go to hell.”

“But I’ve nowhere to go, and…” Catrin’s voice trailed off and she began to sob.

Ella turned her back on the door and shuffled back towards the kitchen muttering to herself. Then she paused and called, “The bolts are too stiff to draw back on the front door. You’d best come round the side to the kitchen door.”

Catrin stumbled round to the side of the hotel and found the door. She heard the rasping of a rusty key being turned, and the kitchen door opened with a rheumaticky creak. She looked uneasily at the old woman who stood in the doorway holding a candle aloft.

Her face was streaked with grime, her bright eyes narrowed with irritation, her tangled hair hanging down almost to her waist. She was dressed in a filthy brown overall tied round the waist with a piece of greasy string. On her feet she wore ancient Wellingtons, one green and one black.

This couldn’t possibly be one of her aunts. Her mother had always said that she came from a very respectable family. This must be a tramp broken into the house and pretending to be one of the aunts.

Ella looked the girl up and down and her mouth dropped open in astonishment.

Dear God! There was something about this girl that reminded her of Alice when she was a child, Alice who had metamorphosed from the ugly duckling to the swan, physically if not mentally.

So this was Kizzy’s daughter.

She was a skinny girl with a head of curls and a pale, tear-stained face. She had eyes as big as an owl’s and a chin which wobbled like junket. She stood there, her bony knees knocking together in fright, clasping a boater hat between white knuckles.

She didn’t look anything like Kizzy or her father, thank Christ.

Ella couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. “Don’t just stand there gawping. You’d better come in.”

Catrin followed Ella into the kitchen and looked around, her eyes wide with trepidation.

“I can’t understand what you think you’re doing coming out here and waking folk up at this hour.”

“I’m sorry. I told you, I was supposed to be staying here and I don’t understand why my mother sent me all the way here when she hadn’t even heard from you to say it was all right.”

“Why did Kizzy Grieve ever do anything in her life? Because it suited her purposes, I daresay.”

Ella rubbed her forehead with dirty fingers and chewed her lips in consternation.

“Why…why wouldn’t you want me here?” Catrin stammered.

“Why wouldn’t I want you here? I don’t want anybody here.”

Catrin looked around her fearfully, searched her blazer pockets for a handkerchief to stem her tears.

“I like being on my own,” Ella went on. “I’ve got used to it since Alice went and died on me.”

Catrin bit her lip and when she spoke her words were muffled. “My mother never said anything about Aunt Alice dying.”

Ella laughed, a cracked, harsh laugh, and Catrin flinched, took a step backwards.

“Your mother! Your mother never cared about anyone except herself. Alice thought the world of your bloody mother, and look where it got her. Your mother hasn’t been back here in years; she wasn’t welcome after what she did. She broke Alice’s heart – oh, Alice might have forgiven her, given time, but time was one thing she hadn’t got.”

“What did my mother do that was so awful?”

Ella watched the girl closely, saw the fear rising in her eyes, the way her bottom lip quivered uncontrollably.

“Never mind what she did, save to say she shouldn’t have done it. What she did is between her and me now. But you can’t stay here.”

“I don’t want to stay here. My mother said Shrimp’s was a lovely place but it’s not, it’s awful.” There was an edge to her voice, a little defiance breaking through the fear.

“Our guests like it well enough. They keep on coming back.”

“There are guests staying here?” Catrin said with incredulity. “In this pig sty?”

Ella glared at Catrin, her dirt-streaked face distorted with anger. “Shrimp’s has the best of reputations, I’ll have you know. Our guests come back here year after year,” she snapped, running her hand distractedly through her matted hair.

“It must have been a long time since anyone came here. No one in their right mind would want to stay here now.”

Ella blinked, shook her head, looked around her as if surprised by what she saw. Then she looked back at the girl steadfastly.

“I’m sorry. I get confused these days and I think there are still guests staying here. Sometimes I think the door will open and Alice will come back. I spend a lot of my time living in the past. I find it’s so much better than the present.”

The silence was alleviated only by the squeak of a mouse and the monotonous dripping of a tap into an empty sink.

“Now, I think that you’d better just go back to wherever it is you’ve come from.”

“But I can’t go home, not tonight.” Catrin was fighting back tears again.

Ella looked away quickly. She couldn’t stand tears; there had been so many tears when Alice had died.

“Well, I don’t know at all. I suppose you’ll have to stay here the night – just the one night, mind, and then you must sort something out in the morning.”

Catrin breathed deeply, tried to stem the feeling of sickness that was sweeping through her.

“You wait here while I go and make you up a bed.”

And with that Ella Grieve shuffled out of the kitchen into the darkness beyond.

Catrin heard a match strike and the flame of a candle lit up the dark hallway. Momentarily she saw her own reflection staring back at her from an enormous mottled mirror. She looked like a lost child, something from a Dickens novel. She listened as Ella Grieve climbed the creaking stairs, heard a door opening somewhere above her head, and then silence.

Catrin squeezed her hands into fists, willing herself not to scream.

If she could get hold of her mother right now, she’d wring her scraggy neck. She looked warily around the wreck of a kitchen. Cobwebs hung in gloomy veils from the high ceiling and clung to every sticky surface. Filthy tea towels festooned the backs of chairs. The floor was covered in a layer of sticky dust, and there were dead mice and shrivelled-up spiders all over the place. The air was thick with an overpowering smell of mildew and candlewax.

The grisly carcass of a chicken mouldered on a lopsided shelf, and there were rusty tins scattered across the kitchen table. She held her breath for as long as she could, then took a clean handkerchief from her blazer pocket and covered her nose to keep out the stench.

“You’ll simply adore Shrimp’s, darling,” her mother had said on the telephone. “Everything about it is truly glorious.”

It wasn’t glorious at all. It was terrible, the most awful place she’d ever seen. She couldn’t stay in this ghastly place. She wouldn’t. Her mother would just have to come back from Italy and fetch her. The trouble was, she didn’t know where her mother was staying. She’d have to ring Sister Matilde at school; maybe she’d drive down and rescue her.

On the kitchen table in front of her lay a book and on the front in faded letters were the words
Guest Book
. What sort of people would ever have wanted to stay here in this filthy, stinking hole?

She opened the book gingerly and turned the greasy pages, glancing at the comments that people had written.

Mr and Mrs Barnaby, Wonderful stay. Marvellous food and great fun. Thank you, dear Alice and Ella
.

Caroline and James Eadie, Our best ever holiday. Glorious food and such a wild time. See you next year
.

The last entry read:
Mr and Mrs Aldernley. As glorious as ever at Shrimp’s, truly splendid. Sorry we weren’t able to stay for the wedding party
.

The comments had all been written years ago, before she was born, even. Obviously no one had stayed here since then. Surely her stupid mother must have known that the place had closed down; it looked as if it was about to
fall
down.

Catrin gripped the edge of the table tightly to steady herself.

Something small scuttled over her sandal and made her cry out in alarm.

After an age Ella Grieve reappeared, holding a candelabrum aloft, beckoning Catrin to follow her. She shuffled out of the kitchen and through a shadowy hallway which stank of sodden newspapers and mouse droppings.

A wide staircase led up into the total darkness above. Catrin held on tightly to her suitcase, tried to stifle her erratic breathing. The candle stubs in the candelabrum guttered, hissed, grew dim and then thankfully bright again. She stayed close on Ella’s heels, feeling cautiously for the steps with her feet. On the wall beside them their two shadows climbed higher and higher. A bent-backed old woman with wild hair and a small girl climbing upwards into the darkness.

C
atrin lay quite still, her eyes closed, waiting for the rising bell to shatter the peace of St Agnes’s dormitory. Her stomach growled and she smiled sleepily. Itmust be almost a whole day since she’d last eaten. She loved the feeling of emptiness, the way her skin pulled taut across her hipbones. She was lucky and could ignore her body’s hunger pangs because she wasn’t weak like the other girls, who were always rushing off and stuffing their faces at the first rumble of hunger. She could go for ages without eating. She could probably fast longer than the nuns could, maybe longer even than the holy saints.