The Unquiet House (35 page)

She had been in there all the time. All the time she had thought she was working on the house, building a life for herself, and she had been in this room, in a trap of her own making. She closed her eyes and remembered the woman’s words:

She remembered being trapped in this room, the way that Charlie had come back and saved her, or she
thought
he had. She could still remember stepping out of it, into freedom, the light
that, for a moment, had dazzled her eyes. All of it was false; none of it was real. No: it
had
been real – the only thing that hadn’t been real was
her
. And Charlie, of course: he had been in the thrall of the woman’s ghost. She remembered what he’d said, his confusion when she’d asked him why he’d returned to Mire House:
I’m not sure what made me come back
. The woman wouldn’t have permitted him to see the truth.

She looked back at the corpse in the narrow room. She closed her eyes, opened them again and looked down at her own hands. They appeared to be solid, but she couldn’t feel them any longer.

After a time, she allowed the tears to fall. They were cold against her cold cheeks.

There is nothing more amusing than someone who does not know they belong to me already
.

Emma couldn’t get those words out of her mind as she walked through the house, seeing the mouldering carpets, the grey walls, the paper hanging off in shreds, the cracked paint, the wood that had split, revealing the blackness inside it. The smell of the mire was stronger than ever. The woman had wanted her to walk into it and now it was here, swallowing the house, subsuming her. She was lost in the house and she knew now that it wasn’t hers, had never been hers. She had allowed it to charm her, had listened to its call – no, the
woman’s
call. And she didn’t even know her name.

Now the house was empty and there was no voice to speak, not even her own.

She went through a door and entered a room and stopped. She hadn’t consciously chosen this place but she realised she had come back to where, for her, it had ended: she was standing in front of the narrow door that led to the narrow room in which she had died. She did not want to look into it again; she had seen it already. Instead she covered her face with her hands. She
didn’t move for a long time; she didn’t know if she slept or if she dreamed.

We all go into silence in the end
, she thought, and she did not know why.

The shadows lay dark in Mire House, making corners soft and vision uncertain. Dampness spread across the ceiling, its fingers reaching from the earth outside, the mire beyond. The humidity in the air constantly formed new shadows, new shapes. The house had been built to be a home, for
life
, but life had no part in it, Emma knew that now. It had always been empty and always would be. The corridors were still, and any small sound – the rustle of leaves against glass, the lonely cry of a curlew – resonated long and empty.

When her body had been removed, she had thought that she would leave somehow, melt away from this place or find a new door set into some corridor; it would open for her and she would walk through it. Maybe – she dared to hope – someone she loved would come to her and take her by the hand. Or perhaps she would see another bright light.

Her discomfort grew at the thought of it. She had thought the woman was trying to trick her into stepping into that whiteness, lure her into drowning in the mire, but now another fear had taken root. When she had been faced by that brilliant light, had that been her chance after all? The ghostly woman might have tricked her, not by having her step into the marsh but by its
opposite. What if the light had been real – a doorway opening into the world, leading somewhere else – somewhere better? Perhaps the woman had known that Emma would turn away. Perhaps that had been her true revenge.

There must be somewhere she was supposed to be – but if there was, she didn’t know where to find it. The men who took away her remains had closed up the house behind them, and whatever light they had let in had withdrawn. Now it felt as if the walls would never let go of her. There was only silence left. Sometimes she thought she heard the strains of some long-forgotten music coming from another room, but as soon as she entered there would be nothing and no one there.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the day came that she wandered into the hall and found the front door standing open.

She could sense the fresh air beyond it. Without looking, she knew that it was the brightest part of a clear day, and she walked towards the door, dazzled after so long in the dark. When she reached the threshold she simply stood there, breathing it in. Then she stepped outside, half expecting herself to disappear as she crossed the boundary, and then she was outside and she turned and saw the one who was waiting for her.

She was beautiful: she could see that now, the straight-backed woman with the dark hair and the black dress. Her complexion was clear, her cheeks softly rounded, her lips full. Her veil had been thrown back and her expression was soft; it took a moment for Emma to realise that her eyes remained cold.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the woman stopped her with a look. Then she smiled. Emma didn’t trust that smile.

‘I thought it would end,’ the woman said. ‘Perhaps it has, now. There is no one else left.’

Emma did not answer.

‘You are the last.’ The woman looked her up and down. ‘I hated you all for so long. Now …’ She did not finish the sentence.

Emma frowned.

‘It is time for me to go.’ She gave that smile again. ‘But you will stay, will you not? You will stay here, in my house.’

Emma shook her head. ‘But you said – at the river – you said it was my time, my chance to leave—’

The woman tilted back her head and sent a trill of laughter into the clear air. ‘Indulge the ways of an old woman, dear. I lost all hope before I left the world behind me. I had lost my husband, my child – my family that should have been. But I rather enjoyed the taste of
your
hope. When you actually thought that you would simply be able to leave – that you would
live
…’ She smiled, and it was a real smile this time. Her eyes shone. ‘It tasted so sweet,’ she said.

‘And now you’re going to leave me here? In the house – for what?’

There was no answer. The woman took in a deep breath, as if she was savouring the air, and then she turned to Emma. ‘Enjoy her, my dear,’ she said.

Enjoy her
. Those had been the words in the letter, hadn’t they? Clarence Mitchell’s letter. Emma had a sudden image of the woman whispering in the old man’s ear, him hearing nothing but nodding anyway, clutching his bed sheets tighter as the life faded from him and he formed his plans. She blinked the image away.

The woman drew herself up. ‘The house was built for love,’ she said, ‘but love never came to fill it. Now you must do your best.’

She stepped out of the door and the sunlight gleamed on the black silk of her dress. She pulled the veil down over her face as she walked away. Her footsteps made no sound and she did not look back. Emma watched as she reached the lane and turned not towards the mire but towards the church, where the yew trees stood, ancient and dark. There was no sound, none at all.

Emma watched until the woman passed out of sight and then she turned and went back into the house that was waiting for her.

As time passed, the woman’s last words drifted around Emma’s mind again and again:
Love never came to fill it … you must do your best
. She wasn’t sure what she had meant, not really, but she did know that she had been wrong: Mire House was not empty.

At first it was only the echoes of things she had seen before: the strains of music coming from the drawing room, a child’s high giggle, the gruffer tones of an older man, but later, they came to her. The children were first, one with shaved hair that made his skull appear too big for his body, his eyes mistrustful, the other a quiet boy who edged around a doorway with his thumb in his mouth. She felt dread gathering inside her at the sight of them, revulsion at these
things
, and then she saw the fear in their eyes and she forced herself to swallow it down. Instead she gave a wavering smile and held out her hands. They came to her and she held them, and she thought:
It doesn’t have to be the way
she
wanted it
.

The house didn’t have to remain as it had been created, full of fear and emptiness and loss. There didn’t have to be silence. There could be laughter and joy and
love
, because she could bring them here, those things which had mattered to her in life;
she could hold on to them. She could make sure that they were the things which would last.

Do your best
, she thought. Yes, she would; and she gathered the children in close and she told them stories. And as she did they smiled up at her and she thought she understood: there was no happy ending, not really. Things just went on. In stories, princesses got married and heroes prevailed over their enemies, but what next? They would grow old and die. Their strength would fail. The longer they lived the nearer they would come to losing everything, because that was where loss belonged, wasn’t it? In
life
, because in the end time would carry everything away, the good and the bad alike. Happy endings were only ever a beginning. Real endings had loss, death, sorrow. But for her, it hadn’t been the end. Now she had Mossy and she had Tom. Not all stories had to end in loss; some of them only began that way.

She heard a high giggle behind her. She recognised it as Tom’s, but she knew that Mossy would be with him. They were rarely apart – and anyway, Tom wouldn’t laugh if he was alone. He didn’t like to be alone. A shadow crossed her face and she brushed the thought away. Now that she was here, he didn’t have to be alone. He didn’t have to be afraid. She smiled. She knew that things were better now because Tom’s hair was growing back; it was golden.

The pair of them would be playing a game. Soon she would find them and squeeze into whatever small space they had found in which to hide. She thought she knew where that would be, and that was all right; whatever dark things had once happened there had passed.

Another faint giggle circled the room and she smiled. Tom had been lost once; they all had. Now it was time to go and find them.

Emma stood in the small blue bedroom and looked out of the window. She could see into the lane and the pathway next to it. She had thought of simply walking away from the house as the woman had done, several times, but she had never tried. Partly this was because the door was never open, but it was also because she knew that the woman had been right; it was not her time. And the others needed her.

She heard a dull sound through the glass and she touched the pane with her fingers. She knew it must be cold but she didn’t really feel it. There was a car passing in the lane outside. A small blue car with a man driving and a young boy pressed up against the passenger window. For a moment he looked up at her before he turned away, straightening in his seat. She wasn’t sure if he had seen her. Out there, time was passing; in here, it stood still. Time didn’t steal the things she loved. In Mire House, things lingered: it had been built to last.

The old man was standing behind her, by the wall, smoking his pipe. She had begun to see him more and more often and she was no longer afraid of him.
Get out
, he had said to her once, and she had thought of it as hostility. Now she was no longer sure; perhaps he had only been trying to warn her, after all. She had
been frightened of him when she had thought of him as someone else’s ghost, unconnected with her; now he was her own.

Still, he hadn’t explained and wasn’t welcoming. Sometimes, his expression even reflected those words back at her:
Get out
. But whenever Emma considered the possibility of leaving, she reminded herself of the day she had stood in front of the mire and seen the white light in front of her, the glimpse of the death she had thought was waiting for her there, and the way she had turned away from it; the longing for more
time
. Now she had all the time she wanted. She was here: she was
alive
. Perhaps it was as good a place as any.

When she looked outside again, there was someone she knew standing in the garden. He was looking up at her and for a moment he seemed to be staring directly into her eyes, but no, he glanced around and she knew he had seen only a reflection of the sky shining back at him. He turned to the woman at his side and took her hand. He was holding something in the other – it looked like a sprig of yew.

It was Frank and his mother. Emma frowned. Why had they come? It felt like a reminder of some other time, another place, one that made a vague longing rise within her again, something a little like pain. Her frown deepened, becoming a scowl. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t
right
. They shouldn’t have come here where they didn’t belong. They shouldn’t have come here knowing they could simply walk away again.

She turned from the window and walked down the stairs, slowly and steadily, running her hand along the rail. She remembered thinking once that it would be a little like this, that she’d walk down these stairs wearing some silken gown, like a
lady
. Like a lady of the house.

She could hear Frank and his mother outside, talking to each other just as if they knew everything about the place. She could hear it in their tone, the casualness, the
presumption
. Then she heard them say her name and with a
frisson
she realised they thought they knew everything about
her
: who she was, what she would have wanted. She heard that phrase now:
What she would have wanted
, the woman saying it to her son, just as if they had ever even met – and there was a soft rustle of something being set down on the step.