The Knotted House Read online

  She watches as I take off the florist’s wrapping paper. White bunches of grapes and vines leaves decorate the transparent cellophane. We laugh suddenly and can’t stop giggling as we count the blooms. ‘Two dozen, oh my,’ gurgles Briony. The ice between us is broken and we hug. Her laughter turns to tears. ‘I miss her so,’ she sobs as I pat her shoulder. Pulling away she asks, ‘Who’s the admirer of the red roses, then?’

  ‘The new tenant.’

  ‘Oh Meena, you must find yourself a man. I never understood what happened to your marriage, but you would like children, wouldn’t you?’

  I reach for a vase. ‘Of course I want children. With the right man.’ The habitual explanation has served me well – but now it sounds feeble.

  We wander round the house looking at the furniture. The oak desk with a secret drawer is an antique. ‘I never found any treasures in it,’ Briony says.

  ‘Neither did I.’

  She looks at me in surprise. ‘Did you find out how to open it, too?’

  ‘Of course.’ I toss my hair back. ‘I wasn’t completely daft.’

  We walk on and stop by a walnut occasional table that has lost some of its veneer. Briony says it will fetch a good price.

  I can’t bear to think of everything going out of the family. ‘Wouldn’t you like to keep some pieces for yourself?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, we can’t afford such things. We have school fees to pay, and a London life style to keep up.’

  Money has never worried her before. They had chosen private schools for the children without considering any alternative, leaving me feeling obscurely responsible for the failings of the state system.

  Back in my mother’s bedroom we stand and look at her chest of drawers.

  ‘That’s another good piece.’ Briony’s tears start again. We push the things away from the edge of the bed and sit down. ‘I don’t want it all to go, it feels like the end of everything – but I do need the money.’ She blows her nose. ‘Could you buy my share of the house, Meena, and go on living here? If you moved down onto this floor, you could make another flat in the top and rent that out.’

  All my life I have tried to protect her, but this is ridiculous. ‘You know I haven’t the capital, and what would I do with these huge rooms?’ If she needs money there is nothing to stop her going back to work. She has enough qualifications, what with her Oxford degree and her accountancy training. I did not even go to university, only a provincial teacher training college. ‘Maybe we should keep one bit of furniture each,’ I suggest. ‘We can sell the rest. That will give you some ready cash if you’re short.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. What would you like?’

  I think of the grandfather clock standing at the end of the hall. It has chimed its way through the days of my childhood, wound by my mother every Sunday.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask, hoping her fancy won’t fix on the one thing I want.

  ‘Well, I love this chest. Do you know that Dad gave it to Mummy as a wedding present?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Mummy told me.’

  I wince, seeing my mother bending down to whisper in her ear, as she did so often. I used to hope such intimacy was merely an attempt to forestall my sister’s tantrums. Even now, Briony’s sharp words seem to trail remnants of those early storms.

  We go up to the top floor and she peeps into her old bedroom. There are some books on the shelves, and two dolls that her daughter Julie had spurned. ‘Do you want to keep both your old dolls?’ I ask.

  ‘Why?’ She looks suspicious.

  ‘I thought…’

  She breaks in. ‘I might want them.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just that there’s this girl at school, she’s so unhappy. I think she’s ill-treated at home. She has so little.’

  ‘Oh, take them if you want. I don’t care.’

  We walk on, passing under the trap door to the loft. Briony grasps the rod to catch the ring and pull the stairs down but I take it out of her hand. ‘Let me.’ The grooves are worn and I know how to do it without the sides slipping out of the brackets. I climb up and shoot a quick glance at the trunk that has not shut properly. As soon as she reaches the top of the steps Briony rushes to the corner where the musical box stands next to the doll’s house. Finger marks in the dust reveal evidence of my previous visit, but Briony does not notice. Lifting the top she gazes at the brass cylinder with the tiny spikes that connect with the fixed plate as it turns. The handle is still in the hole at the side. She winds it up and pushes the lever, holding her breath. The cylinder turns again and the high tinkling notes of Greensleeves fills the dusty space with echoes of our past.

  ‘It works,’ she cries, clapping her hands with delight, her bad temper evaporating as quickly as ever. She turns to the doll’s house. I stay on my knees and look up at the sloping roof, where the cobwebs soften the angles. ‘Look, here are the pipe cleaner people, the Mummy, the Daddy and the girl. But where’s the little boy?’ Briony holds up the treasures she has found.

  I rouse myself to search through the tiny furniture that our mother wrapped in newspaper parcels. One of the papers is dated June 8th 1954. Memories come flooding back. ‘Didn’t we have fun?’

  ‘I was always the little boy,’ Briony reminds me.

  ‘Yes, but I wanted to be.’

  ‘Did you? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It was sometimes difficult to say what I wanted.’ As the elder I got the blame if she started to scream.

  ‘Self-denying Meena again,’ she says, but this time she smiles. ‘Where can the little boy be?’

  We balance the 1950s furniture – chairs, tables and beds – on the bare boards around us. Then we sort the food, stuck rigidly to the little plates. A cake has a slice out of it; the ends of a whole fish overlap the rim of its dish. Apples and oranges rise in a statuesque pile, captured with their bloom everlastingly fresh. Among these realistic artefacts we recognise the older pieces. A sofa with a high back, the seat stuffed with what could have been real horsehair. A footstool, too large for the scale of the rest of the furniture, is covered in a scrap of William Morris material. The best piece is a brass table with a hinged top. The outline of a rose is chiselled on the surface. I tell Briony that it is a replica of one that was in our other grandmother’s nursery when she was little.

  ‘I wish we’d known her,’ Briony says. ‘She must have been nicer than the one we knew too well.’

  ‘Granny wasn’t so bad, just a bit fussy.’

  ‘You were always her favourite. She didn’t call me “her little precious.” I hated the way she treated Mummy.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re so blind. She never let Mummy do what she wanted, even though it was her house. And she never forgave her for deserting the Catholic Church. She nagged her all the time about everything.’

  I can’t get my mind round the idea. She had seemed a nice old lady to me, even if she was a bit “God-bothered”. ‘I liked it when she told us stories.’

  ‘I preferred the ones we made up,’ Briony said. ‘Do you remember that one where the pig came and lived with the dogs? We acted it together.’

  I smiled. ‘I was the pig.’

  ‘Yes; you took over the dog’s basket.’

  ‘How Daddy laughed when I curled up in it.’

  ‘Did he? Do you know, I can hardly remember him at all?’

  I can’t help thinking that must be easier – but I say nothing.

  Briony starts to arrange the furniture in the doll’s house. The whole front opens out to access the four rooms inside, two downstairs and two on the upper floor. Originally it had no stairs, but our mother made a crude flight from some balsa wood and carved a hole into which they never fitted properly. As I tried to walk the little figures up to bed, the stairs always fell out. Briony said I was clumsy. Despite her butterfly nature she was always daintier than I. She took after Aunt Beth in that way. She would snatch a needle away from me
and the eye would be threaded in a moment. Now, even her hands seem too big for the makeshift stairs and she breaks our unspoken rule, lifting them as if they are flying onto the upper floor. This would be a good time to tell her about the folder but I can’t find the words.

  Abruptly she tires of the game. ‘Let’s go for a walk. I need some air.’ She leaps up and I have missed the chance.

  ***

  After tea we tackle the kitchen cupboards. Briony starts to grumble again. ‘Why on earth did Mummy keep all these aluminium saucepans? Everyone has stainless steel these days.’

  I look at the growing pile of familiar objects on the draining board. The one with a lip that held just enough milk for two cups of cocoa sits in the colander. The double saucepan we used for scrambled eggs is nowhere to be seen. ‘The poacher would be useful,’ I say, taking it out of her hands.

  ‘You’d keep the lot if you could,’ she snaps. ‘What sort of place are you planning to buy, a palace?’

  I don’t deign to answer. Her London house is so big she could fit in lots of these things; only she doesn’t seem interested. She bends to remove yet more cooking pots from the cupboard but I need some space to prepare supper. ‘Wouldn’t you like to look through the books while I cook the chops?’

  She wipes her hands. ‘I suppose so. I want the children to have plenty of books so they can discover things for themselves when they’re older.’

  On my own I can breathe more easily. I use one of the saucepans for the ratatouille I made yesterday and stack the others in a pile. The bottle of Rioja I bought in the supermarket yesterday, in memory of my father, stands open by the cooker. Briony won’t appreciate it. As far as I know, she never ventured down to the wine store.

  The cellars were a special place for me. The bottles lay in wooden racks in the first room. I would run my fingers along them leaving straight lines in the dust. The other rooms open out of each other. One has a window that lets light in from the sunken area at the side of the house. I chose to make my den there, using a piece of old blanket that nobody missed. Sometimes I took bunches of flowers and sweets down with me. My secret diary used to live in a hole where one of the stones is loose.

  My father’s wine was finished years ago and my supermarket bottle makes a poor substitute. I pour out two glasses and stand the rest on the kitchen table between the candles with the roses at the end.

  By the time we reach the apple crumble our tongues are loosened, and the kitchen feels almost cosy. ‘I want to tell you what I found in the loft.’ Instinctively I try to prepare the ground.

  ‘Something interesting?’

  ‘A folder, a memoir written by my great grandfather. He describes a murder that took place when he was a little boy.’ There, I have shared one secret.

  ‘What do you mean, your great grandfather? He was mine too.’ Briony’s eyes narrow in the candlelight. ‘What memoir?’

  ‘In that trunk with the papers. Duncan, you know the one in a hunting jacket. He wrote an account of his life. The groom was murdered.’

  ‘I want to see it.’

  I get up. ‘It’s in my bedroom.’

  ‘Oh, sit down. Not now, I’ll read it sometime.’ Another uncomfortable silence develops. Then she bursts out, ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? You always keep Daddy’s family as if they are your private property. He was my father too, you know.’ She leaps up to pile our plates with a clatter and take them to the sink.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would be interested. Mummy never was.’

  ‘Well I’m not Mummy, I’m me. Why wouldn’t I be interested? You can’t keep him all to yourself.’

  She is being unreasonable. It isn’t my fault I’m older and had more time with him before he died.

  She won’t let it go. Bending over the sink she speaks to the plug. ‘How dare you think I don’t care? You want to cut me out. Just because you stayed at home like the goody-goody you always were.’

  I get up and put my arms round her to try and make up, though I don’t feel like making up. ‘It isn’t like that. You were always Mummy’s favourite.’

  Brushing the back of her hand across her eyes she shrugs me off. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She turns on the taps so hard that water splashes her front. ‘Now see what you’ve made me do.’

  I snatch a drying-up cloth to rub her down but she ignores me.

  ‘What did you do with the saucepans? Now I’ll have to sort them out all over again.’ She seizes the one I used for the potatoes and bangs it down in the sink. We finish the washing up in silence. I am tired of trying to coax her round. She stalks upstairs to her old bedroom; only to reappear almost immediately. ‘My bed’s damp. You might have put a hot water bottle in it.’

  ‘I forgot.’ Grudgingly I fill the kettle and go on tidying the kitchen while she hovers by the door. I will not be the one to grovel this time. When the bottles are full she takes them from me with a gruff thank you and walks away. Her footsteps echo on the stairs and I start to follow her, but have got no further than the first floor when her door bangs so hard that the windows rattle.

  ***

  ‘Time for a coffee?’ Briony rises from the floor with yet another pile of books for the car. She looks better, having slept well despite the damp. ‘I’ll make it when I’ve dumped these.’ My sister never offers to makes the coffee. She is really trying to be friendly and seems cheerful enough, the spat of last night forgotten. Her refusal to carry a grudge is one of her good qualities. I am the one left battered after our disagreements. Sometimes I feel my role has always been to soak up the family furies like a sedentary sponge.

  From the window I see Quentin oiling the latch on the back gate. The clouds of the day before have lifted. A bright autumnal sun challenges the sombre house. I throw open the French windows and go out onto the balcony.

  ‘Hi. Thanks for the roses. They’re lovely.’

  He turns and waves. ‘I thought they would brighten up the place for your sister.’ He bends to oil the bolt at the bottom of the door.

  You shouldn’t be doing that. That’s my job.’

  ‘Makes me feel useful.’ He works the bolts and goes back to the latch, flicking it up and down. As he swings the gate the familiar squeak disappears. ‘We’re stopping for coffee. Will you come and meet Briony?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll wash up.’

  As I turn, I see Susan in her garden. I wave, and hasten off to tell Briony to make it three cups. I should ask my neighbour to join us but I don’t. She means so well, but she stands too close when she talks, backing you up against the wall.

  We move three chairs to the open windows and sit looking at the view. This is my legacy, the boundary of my existence and the walls of my prison. Some leaves lie scattered on the lawn where the grass is too long. My gaze reaches up the valley.

  Briony’s eyes follow mine. ‘I’d forgotten we could see the church tower from here.’

  A wave of guilt sweeps over me. ‘I haven’t been inside for ages. The graves must be in an awful state.’

  ‘Well, it’s not your job to tidy them up.’ She turns to Quentin. ‘Meena has this overdeveloped sense of duty. She thinks she’s responsible for every Smedley who ever lived.’

  Quentin looks at me with a kind expression. ‘Did you bury your mother’s ashes there, after she was cremated?’

  I shake my head. ‘We should put some sort of memorial, I suppose.’

  Briony frowns. ‘That would be just one more thing to worry about. Her name in the Book of Remembrance at the crematorium is quite enough.’ She speaks in her most superior voice.

  ‘The ancestor who wrote the memoir is up there,’ I tell Quentin.

  He shoots a look at Briony. ‘Does she…?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told her about the murder.’

  ‘That thing,’ Briony says. ‘I don’t know why you worry your head about it. People get murdered all the time and it was ages ago. Nothing to do with us.’ She changes the subject, and begins to ask the usual questions about Qu
entin’s job and his family. She goes further than I would have dared. ‘Will your wife be joining you soon?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She’s settled in Southampton, and it would mean the children changing schools.’

  ‘Children adapt,’ she says airily.

  Quentin shoots me a look.

  ‘Tell me about the gym,’ I ask quickly. ‘Which one do you go to?’

  He gives me a grateful smile, and launches into a long description of the different sorts of apparatus, the chest expander, the treadmills and the graded abdominal workouts that he uses with the help of his coach. I feel tired just listening to him. Briony chips in to say she is thinking of joining a health club in London. ‘Yes, there’s a new one opened here,’ he says, the difficult moment safely behind us.

  As we wash up the cups, after he has left, Briony is thoughtful. ‘He’s very good looking,’ she says at last. ‘You could do worse.’

  ‘He’s married.’

  ‘I wonder. Not for much longer by the sound of it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, I‘ve never been any good with men.’

  I don’t know it, but that moment by the sink is the nearest I will ever come to confiding in my sister. All too soon she will be engulfed in her own problems, while I am to become entangled in an ever-tightening web of past and present.

  Chapter 5

  The staff meeting goes on and on as usual. It is nearly six o’clock before Jim gets to the subject I am waiting for. ‘There’s just one other thing. Meena is really worried about Jane Coombs.’

  Louise consults her watch. The others look enquiring. ‘I must admit her work has gone downhill,’ Mrs Hendry says.

  ‘Meena?’ Jim waits for me to speak.

  I take a deep breath. ‘I wonder if she is being sexually abused at home.’

  Louise gives an embarrassed giggle before Tracy breaks the silence. ‘We have to be certain.’ She looks haggard; perhaps her children got her up in the night. ‘Remember Cleveland. They’ve set up an enquiry, you know. The doctors got it all wrong.’