Mourning Doves. Helen Forrester

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       Chapter Two

      As the door swung open to reveal a tiny vestibule, decayed autumn leaves rustled across a dusty tiled floor. Facing them was an inner door, its upper panels consisting of a stained-glass window with an elaborate pattern of morning glory flowers.

      In an effort to cheer her mother up a little, Celia exclaimed, ‘Wouldn’t that be pretty if it were cleaned?’

      ‘Mother loved it,’ Louise said abruptly. Because her nose was so swollen from weeping, she sounded as if she had a heavy cold.

      Using the same key, Celia unlocked the pretty door and hesitantly opened it. She had never been in the cottage before, and did not know exactly what to expect.

      A very narrow, gloomy hall was revealed. It was poorly lit by a window at the top of a steep staircase to her right. To the left of her, two doors led off the hall. At the back was a third door. The lower half of all the walls was painted brown; the upper half looked as if it had once been cream. It was, however, very dirty; every corner was hung with cobwebs, and dust clung to them. Dust lay thickly on the wooden banister of the stairs, on the bare wooden treads, and on the ridges of the door panels. Under their feet fine sand, blown in from the dunes at the back of the house, crunched faintly on reddish tiles.

      Celia quickly flung open the two doors and they glanced in at tiny rooms which looked equally dirty and depressing, their fireplaces choked with ashes, the bare wooden floors grimy and littered with bits of yellowed newspaper. The light from the windows, filtering through gaps in the boards hammered over their exterior, did little to lift the general air of dinginess.

      Determined to be brave, Celia said to her mother, again steeped in melancholy, ‘They’ve both got fireplaces – and quite big windows.’

      Louise did not reply. She was past caring.

      She did, however, follow Celia, as the younger woman approached the door at the end of the hallway, which she presumed correctly would lead into some sort of a kitchen.

      A very rusty range had been built into one wall. With a long-handled water pump at one end, a sandstone sink was set below a filthy casement window positioned high in the house’s end wall. Through the window Celia caught a glimpse of the straggling tops of hedges which she supposed marked the edge of the property.

      Cautiously she pressed down the pump handle. It gave a fearsome squeak, but no water came out.

      Her mother stared at it, and then said heavily, ‘It has to be primed and it’s probably rusted inside.’ After a pause while she dabbed at her reddened nose, she added, ‘There’s a well at the bottom of the garden.’

      Celia was appalled. The kitchen was awful, filthy beyond anything she had ever seen before. How on earth could one ever get such a neglected house clean – without a couple of skilled charwomen? But Cousin Albert had said no servants.

      She realised with real shock that, if they did come to live in it, she herself would have to clean it. Her mother would not dream of doing an unpleasant job while she had a daughter to push it on to, and Celia had no idea even how to start.

      She swallowed, and opened another door. ‘This must be the pantry,’ she said. ‘Phew! How it smells!’

      Because there was a sudden scuffle of tiny feet in its confined space, she hastily slammed the door shut again. ‘Ugh!’

      ‘Mice!’ her mother burst out. ‘Oh, Celia!’ She hastily gathered her skirts up to her knees, as if expecting an immediate invasion of her petticoats by the tiny intruders. Tears ran down her face.

      ‘It’s all right, Mother. It’s all right! I don’t think any came out.’ Celia turned back to the hallway, and suggested heavily, ‘We’d better have a look upstairs.’

      There were three small bedrooms, and, in addition, a very tiny room at the front, over the hallway, which Louise said, with an effort, had been her elder sister’s bedroom when they were children. It was in the latter that the window had been broken. Rain had got in and damaged the plaster. Under their feet brown linoleum squelched as they trod on it, indicating that there was water under it.

      ‘Pooh!’ exclaimed Celia. ‘This room reeks of damp.’

      Her mother blew her nose, and said very wearily, ‘The floorboards have probably rotted.’

      Celia nodded. She wondered, СКАЧАТЬ