The Chandelier Ballroom (29 page)

Wadely had begun to notice activity at Crossways Lodge, builders’ trucks turning into the driveway and lorries loaded with scaffolding and building materials, the place suddenly coming to life. There was no need to fear walking past it any more, not even after dark, with lights on inside and a couple of night watchmen keeping an eye on all the building equipment.

‘Perhaps it’s going to be sold at last,’ remarked someone while lining up in the village store to be served. ‘I wonder who actually owns it.’

‘I heard it’s someone living in Canada,’ supplied Mrs Evans herself from behind the counter. ‘I don’t know how true that is. It seems to me a long way off to own a house here in a little village like this.’

‘Maybe whoever it is intends to come back to live in it,’ said the woman about to be served.

‘Well, whoever it is, I can’t wait to see the place occupied again,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘I can see it every night from my bedroom window, all dark and gloomy, and I’m sure I’ve seen something moving about between the trees sometimes. The place gives me the creeps.’

More likely a blessed fox, thought the woman, but kept the thought to herself. She didn’t, nor ever would, believe in ghosts. ‘I only need my bacon ration for now,’ she said aloud, passing her ration books over. ‘Streaky, please, it goes further. I’ll be so glad when the whole business is done with.’

‘You mean the house occupied again?’ murmured Mrs Evans as she crossed off the appropriate spaces in the two somewhat scuffed brown ration books, handing them back before slicing off the eight rashers.

‘No, I mean this blessed rationing business. Three years since the war ended and we’ve still got rationing as bad as ever, worse in fact.’

‘And going to get a lot worse, I think, the way the country’s going,’ replied Mrs Evans, rewarded by several nodded heads from the small queue of customers. ‘That’s a shilling and eight pence. You’ve still got your tinned meat ration left,’ she reminded as she took the money to ring it up.

‘I’ll save that for Monday,’ said the woman. ‘Make it go further.’

As the work on Crossways Lodge continued, two people, perhaps in their early forties, were seen driving in through the gates on several occasions.

From her bedroom window Mrs Evans glimpsed them getting out of the car, the man going round to open the passenger door for who she supposed was his wife. They would stand side by side in front of the house, the woman with her arm through his, as they watched the workman busy with the final touches to the place.

‘They do appear to be quite a nice, respectable couple from what I can see,’ she told those who came into her shop, which was a relief to everyone, the word going around to that effect.

Wadely was soon agog with interest, neighbours seen wandering by the place, just to make sure all was going well, though there remained one concern – would the new buyers find out about the past that house possessed and be frightened off by stories of strange goings on? Some felt it possible, while others smirked at such superstitious nonsense still being kept alive even after all these years, with nothing more ever having been seen apart from Mrs Evans’ reports of having witnessed a few mysterious movements from her bedroom window.

‘Not lately though,’ she enlightened, almost with disappointment. ‘Too much going on over there these days, I suppose.’

Most everyone else felt relief that things were looking up at last. They were sick of seeing the house standing empty at the end of their village like some spectre, and just hoped these new people would settle in for years to come.

Even so, it only would take one careless word to put the newcomers on their guard, scare them off, and it was widely thought better not to allude to the past that Crossways Lodge possessed should anyone chance to come into conversation with them, just in case it did frighten them away.

If there was anything odd still going on there, they would find out for themselves soon enough, and without being aware of the stories in the first place, hopefully they’d put anything of that sort down to imagination. If not, it could mean yet another set of occupants vacating the place, with possibly another long wait for new buyers to come along, Crossways Lodge lying empty and eerie once again.

But for now everyone was breathing sighs of relief to see the house being made ready for occupation at last.

In the spacious hall the final stages of renovation were being completed. By tomorrow or maybe the next day, any rubbish left would have been taken away, the workmen gone, along with all their tools and equipment.

Even now with all the wallpaper up, woodwork sparkling with new paint, the last of the carpet-laying almost complete, the house had taken real shape. In two days’ time the furniture would arrive and once that was in place, the house would feel like theirs at last.

Eileen Burnley squeezed her husband’s arm. ‘I can hardly believe it’s ours, David.’ She gave a deep sigh of fulfilment. ‘It’s taken so long to get it to just how we want, but now it’s all done and it’s just wonderful.’

He looked down at her, his expression one of love for her and pride for himself. Forty-five, he was still quite good-looking for his age, tall and upright, and could have had his pick of women, but he had chosen her. Eileen was forty and still pretty in a formal sort of way. She had never been married, had been a schoolteacher all her life, dedicating herself to her profession.

When he’d first met her he had thought her rather prim and proper, but at the time he’d been in dire need of companionship of some sort, someone merely to be with, to talk to, to tell his troubles to. That was all it had been and she’d proved an intelligent listener, just what he’d needed.

He’d lost his wife in January 1945 when a V2 had landed on their house in Croydon, totally destroying streets of homes, killing her and a hell of a lot of other people. He’d been told while he was in France and had been returned to England on compassionate leave.

At the time he thought he’d never get over it, constantly bitter that he in the forces had been the one in danger of being killed, not her at such a late stage in the war when Britain was winning. How could God have been so cruel? Never greatly religious, he had turned against it completely, bitterly regretting that they’d had no children, Miriam unable to have any. If she had, maybe his grief would have been less, the thought only making him grow ever more bitter.

But he slowly discovered, not so much that time can be a great healer as some had thoughtlessly told him, but that losing a loved one was a sort of two-year disease. That first year of his bereavement, his mind going over every tiny anniversary he had spent with her, even to small things like simply going out for an evening or remembering a certain time and place they’d had a lunch out together, had been almost more than he could bear. By the second year those recalled events, having already been gone over in his memory, hadn’t felt quite so poignant and heartbreaking, even though he wanted them to be. Come the third year, he found himself able to face those anniversaries with more determination to rise above them and get on with life. Even so, he would never forget Miriam and all the things she used to do. He remained a lonely man, concentrating on taking over as managing director of his father’s still thriving paper manufacturing business, allowing his father to retire

Just into his fourth year as a widower, he had been invited to a small gathering given by a close acquaintance of his, a schoolteacher, who had introduced Eileen to him. They had become friends, companions, nothing more at that time. It had been good to unburden himself of his still lingering grief. Having her patiently listen had been a Godsend, he who had kept his grief to himself those past years, and slowly he had fallen in love.

They were married last June, four months ago. It was a quiet affair in a register office with very few guests, mostly friends, she with no family to speak of and he only his elderly father and a brother in Canada. Raymond and his wife had sent their children there for safety during the war, and afterwards had gone out to be with them and settled out there. He hardly ever heard from them these days. He’d written to say he was getting married again. Raymond had sent his good wishes and a gift of table linen, but he’d not heard from him since then.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eileen had said as he began to feel annoyed and hurt. ‘We have each other and that’s all that we need.’

She was right, of course. She was always right and very certain of being so, probably the schoolteacher in her.

‘I think we’re going to settle down here very nicely,’ she said now as they waited for the furniture to arrive. A good deal of furniture had been left in the house, all good quality so there had been no need to buy much.

‘I hope we can merge in with the people here,’ she went on as the furniture van arrived and the men began to unload, both she and David conducting the operations. ‘I do hope I shall be able to join in with whatever social meetings there are.’

Within a few days she was putting feelers out. ‘I’m told there’s a social club held in the village hall once a week,’ she said to David as she came in after a wander around, taking off her warm autumn coat and gloves, a late November frost still lying in the shaded parts of the countryside. ‘They hold a whist drive there once a week and every so often occasional charity jumble sales. They also have social evenings there or in the church hall. There’s a local village pub and one a little more exclusive with a rather nice restaurant. We could go there sometimes to eat and chat to people.’

Standing there in the middle of the kitchen, David nodded a little uninterestedly, his mind more occupied with thoughts of maybe having the place redecorated to a more modern style. But warming to her subject, Eileen hardly noticed.

‘There is a regular bus service too that goes to Brentwood and to Chelmsford. Both have very good shopping and nice departmental stores.’

This information had already been given to them by an estate agent eager to sell the house, but Eileen having been in the post office today and having made the acquaintance of the post mistress, felt that any information gathered from her must be far more reliable.

‘Her name is Jennifer Wainwright. She seems a very nice person. Our sort, I suppose. She’s been telling me the history of this house. It’s really very intriguing.’ She gave a brief little laugh that seldom seemed to convey any real humour. ‘Did you know this place is rumoured to be haunted?’

His mind diverted for the minute, he turned to look at her. ‘Well, that’s piffle! I wouldn’t take much notice of that sort of talk.’

‘Oh I don’t!’ She gave another of her small, dry laughs. ‘It just struck me as being rather intriguing, that’s all.’ Putting that aside, she went on, ‘Mrs Wainwright, Jennifer, says we really ought to employ someone as a cook and maybe general housekeeper. She said it’s too large a place for one person to manage and I suppose she could be right in a way. But I said we’ll see how we get on. If it does prove too much for just one person, maybe we could take her advice.’

‘That would mean paying someone a wage,’ David warned almost tersely, his thoughts turning back to whether they should have the kitchen redecorated just yet. Maybe it should wait until the spring. It would be more sensible.

‘And we aren’t all that flush at the moment,’ he added, ‘after having paid out most of what we had on buying this place, reasonable though it was. It has left us a bit short for the time being, you know.’ Come spring he might be able to afford to have the whole house modernised.

Although his stationery firm was thriving under his directorship now his father had retired, his old-fashioned ideas having allowed it to stagnate during the war, it was taking a while to see the full benefit of his own more up-to-date methods and it all cost money. One needed to speculate in order to accumulate, as every businessman well knew.

The country now with its sights on a new world, he had installed far more efficient machinery with a team of reps who really knew their job selling stationery, so different to the couple of old chaps his father had employed, who had trundled their briefcases of samples around uninterested outlets. But it still called for ploughing the profits back into the business to return the firm to its pre-war state. Modernising a house would have to take a back seat for a while yet.

‘I suppose you
are
right,’ she conceded, dragging his mind back to his remarks regarding her new acquaintance’s advice. ‘But it would be nice to have some help here. Maybe in the spring as funds became less tight.’

Jennifer Wainwright had felt somewhat privileged to have had a chat with the wife of the new owner of Crossways Lodge. She’d been on the point of closing the post office counter for the Saturday afternoon, the CLOSED sign in her hands ready to prop against the grille even as the woman walked up to the counter.

Jennifer was a strict time-keeper in all things and certainly where her post office was concerned. Closed was closed, and no one flouted that rule. But seeing a new face making towards her counter at the rear of the small village shop, she instantly suspected that it belonged to the wife of the couple who’d only recently moved into Crossways Lodge. Being a person who possessed a natural streak of curiosity, she uncharacteristically found herself laying the sign discreetly aside to offer the woman a cautious smile.

‘You’re only just in time, you know. One minute later and you’d have found the counter closed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ was the breathless reply. ‘I desperately needed to catch the post. Otherwise my letter wouldn’t go off until Monday and that might have been too late.’

‘Well in this instance,’ Jennifer said generously, ‘I’ll stretch the rule, but remember this post office closes twelve thirty on the dot, and it is …’ she glanced up at the clock behind her, ‘… now half a minute past that.’

The woman’s expression divided itself equally between guilt and gratitude, but she didn’t give voice to it, instead introduced herself as Eileen Burnley. ‘I and my husband David have just bought that big house—’