Wild Wood (25 page)

Must be a way to trade through this
.

Get advice
.

The pros run out.

Cons:

Money
.

Alicia stares at that one word. And underlines it.

Staring at what she’s written, she doodles something else.
RORY.
They’re big, bold letters, and she underlines his name as well. Then, like a schoolgirl, she draws a trailing border of little hearts.

Abruptly, she rips the sheet off the pad and hurries to throw it into the firebox of the stove.

Something’s tapping on the window above her head.

Alicia looks up. “No!”

Rain streaks the windows.

Alicia grabs a flashlight and takes the back stairs at a run; five floors and she’s panting. At the very top is a last extension, a wide ladder that’s propped against a landing high above her head. As Alicia climbs the final rungs, she hears the sound she dreads.

Pushing the attic door wide, Alicia juggles the flashlight. The sound is enormous as water, glittering, falls through that silver beam.

“Please, God, please, God . . .”

Sliding down the ladder, praying, cursing, Alicia’s chest contracts like a drum skin, but she makes it to the buttery. Loading buckets, she starts back up. The rain is thicker now; there’s a drowned layer to the window glass.

Sweating, she counts the steps, but when she gets to the attic, she’s splashing through water.

Catch the leaks!
That’s what she has to do. That’s all there is.

As Rory drives Jesse back to Hundredfield, the world shimmers. The rain has passed away to the west, the trailing edge of the storm flaring in a dark sky as fingers of light walk fields of vivid green.

“How beautiful this is.” Jesse’s making conversation. The drive’s been tense.

“You don’t remember from when you were little?” Rory knows, as Jesse does, that they’re skirting around what happened at the pub. He shifts down, slows the Saab to walking pace.

Ahead, the road is filled with black-faced sheep. The leaders balk in front of the car, and the rest of the flock banks up behind, bleating.

“I was very young when we went to Australia. Less than one.” Jesse leans forward as the car stops, staring through the windscreen. “I couldn’t have memories. Could I?”

The sheep, ewes and well-grown lambs, are pushed forward by two border collies and the shouts of the farmer walking behind. A nervous mass, they stream past on both sides of the car calling to each other—the mothers hoarse and anxious, the lambs lighter, sweeter, in reply.

“Do you think they’re talking about us?” Jesse winds her window down and half hangs out. “Hello, there.” A gust of lanolin and sheep shit hits. Jesse wrinkles her nose and slides back inside. “It’s the smell that seems familiar. Is that possible?”

The farmer waves them on.

Rory puts the car in gear. “It might be. Smell’s very powerful. It’s the last sense to go as you die.”

“What about when you’re born? Does it arrive first?” Jesse looks back as the Saab speeds up. The dogs have gathered the flock into a milling huddle, and when a gate opens, they flow through, a river of cream and black.

“Interesting thought.” Rory accelerates, drops back into a higher gear.

After some minutes, Jesse says, “You told Helen that we’d be at Hundredfield for a couple of weeks, and you said that to Alicia as well. We should talk.”

“I’m grateful for any time you’ll give me, Jesse.” Rory catches her glance in the mirror. “I want you to get well. You’ve been under a great deal of stress and you’ve handled that bravely, but you’re not bulletproof. Let me take care of you. It’s what I’m here for.”

Jesse’d been prepared to argue, and if Rory had been anything but kind, she would have. But something’s shifted.
A good cry, just what the doctor ordered.
Her mum used to say that. “So, you have a plan?”

Rory nods. “Alicia’s said we can use the library. That’ll be a good place to work.” He flips the sun visor down and points the car toward the ominous west. Directly ahead, the hills are clothed in a haze of gold, and Hundredfield’s keep is a stone finger on the brow of its distant, fortified hill. A sign? A warning?

Jesse doesn’t know, but if Rory has a plan now, so does she. She closes her eyes against the glare.
Mack’s a nice man. I’ll take him up on meeting the rector. And then, the phone books will be at the library a bit later in the week. And Helen. Maybe I should try to speak to her more formally.
Jesse frowns.

“Anything wrong?”

She opens her eyes. He’s watching her. “No. I’m good.”

But she’s not. Not really. Helen worries her. It’s not often someone dislikes you on sight.

“Licia?” Rory pushes the front door open. Hundredfield has that feel:
empty.

“I’ll go up to my room, if it’s okay. I got a couple of books from the library. About the borders.” That’s an economical lie; they’re both about Jedburgh. The girl at the front desk had been right. There’d been shelves of information about the town where she was born.

“I’m cooking tonight. Take your time.” Rory waggles the paper-wrapped parcel from the butcher. “Better get organized if we’re going to eat before midnight.”

Jesse stares around uncertainly. “Did Alicia say there was another way upstairs?”

Rory strides to the far end of the hall and throws back a pair of doors. “Here you go.”

Ahead, a monumentally carved staircase rises to a landing before it splits into two flights. Jesse whistles. “Just shouts ‘look at me.’ ”

“That was the twelfth earl for you. Always more money than sense, until both departed around the same time.”

Jesse stares.
Earl?

“These are some of the Gothic ‘improvements’ Alicia talked about. So, up to that first landing and take the right flight where the stairs split. Next landing up from there you’ll find a door straight ahead; that’s your corridor.”

“You know this place well, don’t you?”

“I do indeed.” A polite smile. Back to the cool young doctor.

Behind her, the doors echo closed as Jesse begins to climb. Rain-dimmed light slants across the stairs, catching gilded picture frames, picking up painted eyes that stare as Jesse passes. Elizabethan grandees in silks and ruffs hang beside dark-eyed girls in the lace of Stuart times, and generals and admirals in uniforms of red and blue and gold keep company with Victorian beauties in jewel-bright satin. Some look like Alicia, eyes and nose and jaw—a few prettier, some not—but too many seem to sneer as Jesse climbs to the landing.

What am I, a peasant? What would you know?
Resolutely turning her back, she comes to a wide door. Here it is. Her corridor. She’s quite glad to leave the company of all those dead, grand people.

Jesse turns the handle, steps through. And stops.

Someone’s crying. Softly.

Perhaps the hairs on her neck and arms will sit down if she waits for a moment.

No.

The sobs are louder. Utter misery.

Jesse looks at her bag. The door to her room is thick—she can go inside and just read.

But it’s impossible not to be curious.

She’s in someone else’s very, very old house, and what she’s hearing could be—what, a ghost?

Once, Jesse would have thought that absurd, but things are different now.
Someone
drew the sketches of this place. And if not her, then . . . automatic art, like automatic writing?

Jesse Marley scowls. Ridiculous!

So, it can’t be a ghost.

What, then?

The sobbing stops.

Jesse listens so hard, pain blooms between her eyes.

Not there now. Definitely.

She closes her eyes. Really, really concentrates, doesn’t even breathe.

Her ears sing like crickets.

Silence.

It’s almost a relief as she tamps down that small flicker of regret, of curiosity. And opens the door to her room.

There!

She doesn’t close the door. She leaves it open and follows the sound, those wrenching sobs, all the way to the end of the corridor. Another door. Alicia’s door.

This is all too personal.

Jesse turns back.

“Who’s there?”

Floorboards creak.

It’s hard not to sound snoopy, but she says, “Hi, Alicia. Just thought I’d let you know we’re back.” A lie, but kind.

The door is wrenched open and Jesse tries not to gasp. Alicia’s face is ravaged and her nose is red; she’s been crying for a long time.

“Here.” Jesse fumbles to extract Rory’s tissues from her pocket. “It’s the day for it.”

“What?”

“Tears.”

As she blots her face, Alicia mutters, “Apologies.” And blows her nose fiercely.

“Look, I know how you feel.” Jesse hovers in the doorway. It does not occur to her that she should not speak the truth.

“You don’t. You really, really do not.”

Uncertain what to do, what to say, Jesse toughs it out. “All right, I’ll match you, and raise you. Trust me, I can.” It was meant as a bit of a joke.

Alicia’s eyes flare open. There’s fury there.

Jesse takes a step back. She mumbles, “Oops. Thought it might
help to laugh.” She says humbly, “I keep feeling I should apologize for even being here, but I don’t know what to say and I don’t know how to say it. I’d like to make things better if I can.” That ends with a wobble.

Alicia softens. She hesitates but says, “Come in.”

Now Jesse’s having trouble holding herself together as she ducks her head and walks into Alicia’s bedroom. It’s lived-in, and shabby, but the grace of furniture passed down through generations and a mantelpiece crammed with photographs is charming.

“It’s untidy. Sorry.” Alicia drops into a window seat, folds her arms around her torso. “I haven’t been here for six months.”

“Rory said that.”

“Did he?” Alicia’s back to cool.

There’s a pause neither knows how to break.

Jesse clears her throat. “This is similar to the room I’m in. But it’s bigger. They’re both lovely.”

“It was my parents’ room.” Alicia points at the largest photograph on the mantelpiece.

The black-and-white image of a young couple dancing together is in a silver frame. She in a filmy dress—all tulle skirt and lace bodice—he so classically handsome in white tie and tails. The girl in the picture is a version of Alicia, though her face is beautiful as she laughs with delight.

“That was the night of their engagement. The last real ball Hundredfield ever had. They were so happy then.” Alicia’s eyes fill with tears.

Jesse thinks about taking the other girl’s hand. And doesn’t. But she sits down beside her. And murmurs, “Don’t talk if you don’t want to.”

“It’s been so long since I’ve even said their names.” Alicia stares out through the window. “It wasn’t a very good marriage, in the end, though I didn’t know that for a long time. No one said anything. I never even heard them raise their voices.” Perhaps she’s talking to herself.

Jesse would like to say she knows about the silence of marriage.

“Pa liked a certain way of life, you see—all the good things.” Alicia waves a hand around the room. “He’d been born to it. Land was more important than money then, and you never run out of land, do you—place like this. And they’re not making any more.” A sharp laugh.

Jesse’s not sure what Alicia is saying.

Alicia sighs. “The thing is, no one ever taught them how to
manage
; other people had always done that. Estate people, stewards, housekeepers. It was vulgar to talk finance, I suppose. And after the war, when Pa came back and things where so different, I guess he couldn’t face it. Just went on spending because that’s what you did. He sulked if he didn’t get his way. Tricky.” Her voice fades.

Silence rests on the air.

“Are they, that is . . .” Jesse doesn’t know how to ask if Alicia’s parents are still alive.

The other girl gets up, goes to the photograph, picks it up. It’s as if Jesse isn’t there. “In the end, Ma must have seen it coming, I’m certain of that.” Alicia swings around. And hesitates. “Did I say they were together when it happened?”

Jesse shakes her head.

“Maybe that was something good.” Alicia puts the photograph back carefully. “But I don’t know why she even got in the car. It was a storm, you see, and they were coming back after a party last winter, just after Christmas. Daddy had insisted they leave, though they could have stayed the night. And of course, it was dark.” Alicia trembles a breath. “Pa crashed through the rails on the bridge and into the river.” She gestures
down there.
“The car wasn’t found until the next day, so no one knows if they could have been saved. I wasn’t even here.”