them.
They were done and settled in by nine. The children had truly amazed her. They’d worked like little Trojans. Rose was astonished that children could work so hard. Still, the whole thing had been their idea.
Timothy, who was practical like Philip, had discovered a drum of paraffin in a lean-to, filled the oil-lamps and got them going. He used more paraffin, in a careful calculating way that brought her out in a cold sweat, to get the fire in the kitchen range going. He had also got the water-pump over the sink to work. At first it had only made disgusting wheezing sounds, but Tim had poured water down it from a butt in the garden, calling it ‘priming the pump’ very professionally. At first it had pumped evil rusty red stuff, but now it ran clear, though Rose had visions of outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and hurried dashes to the hospital in Norwich, and how would you ever get an ambulance up that path but if you boiled all the water . . . Now he was winding up all the clocks and really getting them ticking.
And Jane had sweated up the path many times with the luggage and then gone with a huge list of groceries to the sub-post office, and staggered back again, still without complaint, and even thought to buy all available hot-water bottles. And boiled huge black kettles, and shoved all the hot-water bottles into the beds, which did seem quite clean, thank God, only awfully dusty and sneeze-making. Now she used the black kettle again to make tea, and settled down to drink hers.
‘We’re a nine-days’ wonder in the village,’ she announced. ‘Everybody staring at me and yak, yak, yak behind their hands. The woman in the shop asked me how long we were staying, and when I said only a week to start with she said, “Just as well, my booty, just as well.” What on earth do you think she meant by that?’
‘Cholera,’ said Rose, in a mock-hollow voice. ‘Typhoid, dysentery. Double pneumonia from damp beds.’ She was hovering uncertainly between hilarity and hysteria.
They stared at her, amazed. Then Jane said, ‘Mummy made a joke.’
And Timothy said, ‘You’re quite good fun, really, Mum.’
And Rose could’ve wept.
She walked up to the phone-box through the dusk. Timidly cancelled their reservation at the hotel that had been expecting them since six o’clock. Feeling very guilty, though the girl on the desk couldn’t have cared less. These were hotels that Philip’s secretary had booked for them, because they belonged to a branch of Philip’s firm, and he got a good discount. They were comfortable but all the same inside, and boring, with fat salespeople filling the TV lounge after dinner, snoozing over quiz shows. Whereas she was mistress of Beach Cottage . . .
Then she rang Philip, her head whirling with excuses and defences. And got the answering-machine. When his clear commanding voice said, ‘Please speak after the tone,’ she gabbled the address of the cottage, said, ‘Explain later,’ and fled.
The mist was returning over the salt-marshes as she walked back. Not dense, but ghosting everything, as Rose put it to herself. Making slightly and delightfully menacing shapes that turned out to be only a stunted tree, or a can of farm chemicals left on a gatepost. She felt absurdly young for thirty-eight, in a way that amazed her; she felt like kicking up her heels in spite of her tiredness. The distant glow from the windows of Beach Cottage was very welcoming, and the smoke from the chimney. This is how I felt when I was eighteen, she thought in delight. And one of a goodly company. Oh, Philip, Philip, what have you been doing to me?
Her children went on amazing her, through an evening of gentle lamplight and firelight. The way Jane said with authority, ‘I’ll make the supper-drinks now.’ And later, shyly, ‘I’ve brought my new ghost-book. Will you read it to us, Mum? You read so well!’
Fancy her remembering, after all these years.
After the story, there was a good satisfied silence. Then Timothy said, airily, ‘This place is quite ghosty.’
‘How . . . what?’
Timothy laughed at having flurried her. ‘ ’S’all right, Mum. I only said quite ghosty. Just a little mystery, really.’
‘What, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Well, this was old Mr. Yaxley’s house, right? His rubbers by the door, his dirty dishes still on the table, right? And Miss Yaxley’s just inherited it, right?’
‘Right!’
‘So why is everything seven years out of date?