House of Echoes. Barbara Erskine

table and pushed her into the armchair at the end of it. ‘Now. Tell me.’

      ‘The rose. You put a rose on my desk …’ her voice trailed away. ‘You did, didn’t you.’

      Luke frowned, puzzled. With a quick glance at her he sat down next to her. ‘I’ve been out working on the car, Joss. It seemed a good idea before it got too dark. The lights in the coach house are not good and it’s freezing out there. Lyn is still out with Tom. They went to collect some fir cones but they’ll be back at any moment, unless they came past me without my noticing. Now what’s this about a rose?’

      ‘It appeared on my desk.’

      ‘And that frightened you? You cuckoo, David must have left it.’

      ‘I suppose so.’ She sniffed sheepishly. ‘I thought I heard –’ she broke off. She had been about to say, ‘Someone calling Georgie,’ but she stopped herself in time. If she had she was going mad. It was her imagination, working overtime in a shadowy too-silent house.

      ‘Where is this rose? Let’s fetch it in.’ Luke suddenly stood up. ‘Come on, then I’ll help you put the supper on for the infant prodigy. He’s going to refuse to go to bed until he’s had his money’s worth of the Christmas tree this evening.’

      The fire in the study had died to ashes. Stooping Luke threw on a couple more logs as Joss walked over to the desk. Her pen lay on the page, a long dash of ink witness to the haste with which she had thrown it down. Next to it lay a dried rose bud, the petals curled and brown, thin and crackly as paper. She picked it up and stared at it. ‘It was fresh – cold.’ She touched it with the tip of her finger. The petals felt like tissue; a crisped curled margin of the leaf crumbling to nothing as she touched it.

      Luke glanced at her. ‘Imagination, old thing. I expect it fell out of one of those pigeon holes. You said they were full of your mother’s rubbish.’ Gently he took the rose out of her hand. Walking over to the fire he tossed it into the flames and in a fraction of a second it had blazed up and disappeared.

       12

      Lydia’s notebook fell open at the marker, a large dried leaf which smelled faintly and softly of peppermint.

      16th March, 1925. He has returned. My fear grows hourly. I have sent Polly to the Rectory for Simms and I have despatched the children with nanny to Pilgrim Hall with a note to Lady Sarah beseeching her to keep them all overnight. Apart from the servants I am alone.

      Joss looked up, her eyes drawn to the dusty attic window. The sun was slanting directly into the room, lighting the beige daisies which were all that was still visible on a wall paper faded by the years. In spite of the warmth of the sun behind the glass she found she was shivering, conscious of the echoing rooms of the empty house below her.

      The rest of the page was empty. She turned it and then the next and the next after that. All were blank. The next entry was dated April 12th, nearly a month after the first.

      And now it is Easter. The garden is full of daffodils and I have gathered baskets of them to decorate every room. The slime from their stems stained my gown – a reprimand perhaps for my attempts to climb from the pit of despair. The best of the flowers I have saved for my little one’s grave.

       April 14th. Samuel has taken the children to his mama. Without Nanny I cannot look after them.

       April 15th. Polly has left. She was the last. Now I am truly alone. Except for it.

       April 16th. Simms came again. He begged me to leave the house empty. He brought more Holy Water to sprinkle, but I suspect like all the perfumes of Arabia, even jugs full of the miraculous liquid cannot wipe away the blood. I cannot go to the Rectory. In the end I sent him away …

      ‘Joss!’

      Luke’s voice at the foot of the attic stairs was loud and sudden. ‘Tom’s crying.’

      ‘I’m coming.’ She put the diary back in the drawer of the old dressing table and turned the key. There were only two more entries in the book and suddenly she was afraid to read them. She could hear Tom’s voice now, quite clearly. How could she not have heard it before?

      Which of Lydia’s children had died? Who amongst her lively, much-loved brood occupied the grave in the churchyard which she had decorated with Easter daffodils?

      Two at a time she fled down the steep stairs and along the corridor to the nursery. At every step the fretful wails grew louder.

      He was standing up in his cot, his face screwed up, wet with anger and misery. As he saw her he stretched out his little arms.

      ‘Tom!’ She scooped him up and cuddled him close. ‘What is it, darling?’ Her face was in his soft hair. It smelled of raspberries from his jelly at lunch.

      How could Lydia have borne to lose a child: one of her beloved brood?

      She hugged Tom closer, aware that his bottom was damp. Already the sobs were turning to snuffles as he snuggled against her.

      ‘Is he OK?’ Luke put his head round the door.

      Joss nodded. For a moment she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat. ‘I’ll change him and bring him down. It’s almost time for his tea. Where’s Lyn?’

      Luke shrugged. Striding into the room he threw the little boy a pretend punch. ‘You OK soldier?’ He glanced at Joss. ‘You too?’ He raised a finger to her cheek. ‘Still feeling bad?’

      Joss forced a smile. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

      Tom changed and smart in a new pair of dungarees and a striped sweater his grandmother had knitted him, Joss carried him into the study. Putting him down on the floor she gave him the pot of pencils to play with, then she sat down at the desk and reached for her notebook. On the table nearby sat Luke’s Amstrad. The file headed Son of the Sword already contained several pages of character studies and the beginning of her synopsis. She looked at her notebook, staring down sightlessly at the pages, then back at the blank screen of the computer. She wanted to get on with her story, but her eye had been caught by the family Bible, lying on its shelf in the corner. With a sigh of resignation she closed the notebook. She knew she could not concentrate on it until she had spent just a bit longer on the story unfolding on the flyleaves of that huge old tome. Heaving it up off its shelf she laid it on the desk and opened it.

      Lydia Sarah Bennet married Samuel Manners in 1919. They had four children. Baby Samuel who died three months after his birth in 1920, John, who was born the following year and died aged four in 1925, Robert, born in 1922 who died at the age of fourteen, and Laura, her mother who was born in 1924 and died in 1989, aged sixty-five. Lydia herself had died in 1925. Joss bit her lip. The diary entries must have been written only a few months before she herself was dead.

      She swallowed, looking down at the page in front of her. The faded ink was blurred and in places the pen which had made the entries had blotted the page with a smattering of little stains. Slowly she closed the book.

      ‘Mummy. Tom’s tea.’ The anxious voice from the carpet caught her attention. He was sitting on the hearth rug looking up at her. His face was covered in purple ink.

      ‘Oh, Tom!’ Exasperated she bent to pick him up. ‘You dreadful child. Where did you find the pen?’

      ‘Tom’s colours,’ he said firmly. ‘Me draw pictures.’ His fist was clamped around a narrow fountain pen which Joss could see at once was very old. It couldn’t have still had ink in it so the lubrication for the nib had appeared when the little boy had sucked it. Shaking her head, she slung him onto her hip.… Except for it … the phrase was running round and round in her head. Except for it …… My fear makes him stronger … Words written by two women in their diaries more than