The Room Beyond Read online

  ‘Tea?’ asked Gladys.

  ‘Yes please.’

  I’d given up trying to make it myself.

  ‘Do you know where that old fortress is?’ Beth asked between mouthfuls.

  Gladys cocked her head to one side, the teapot in mid-air. ‘In the chest in the drawing room I think.’

  ‘Great! Let’s build it!’

  ‘After you’ve finished,’ I said.

  She gobbled her meal up so fast that it gave her hiccups. ‘... you’ll love it... hup... it’s got gates... hup... and two armies and canons... hup.’

  The drawing room was full of evening light when we came in search of the fortress.

  ‘It was Seb’s you know. He played with it when he was a little boy and they were going to throw it away but he gave it to me instead.’

  I tried to cast a subtle eye across the sofas, empty this time.

  ‘Here it is!’ she squealed. ‘Be careful though, it’s heavy.’

  It was. I heaved the old toy castle across the floor, my hair hanging hotly over my face until I came to a sudden bump against something behind me.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’

  I spun round to find Seb standing there looking highly amused. His shirt was crumpled, his skin blonde in the warm light.

  ‘Have you settled in alright?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. We’ve been going to the park a lot. I haven’t... seen you...’

  ‘And now we’re going to play with the fortress!’ interjected Beth, glowering up at us with her hands on her hips.

  Seb’s mouth twitched and suddenly he was on the floor beside her, limbs everywhere, clutching a fistful of soldiers. I drank in his long lithe body, his mop of dishevelled hair that my fingers ached to touch.

  ‘You are still coming tomorrow, to Raphael’s party, aren’t you?’ he asked with a sideways flicker of his eyes.

  ‘Yes, of course. What time?’

  ‘I don’t know, eightish? Now men! Tear down those battlements!’

  He launched his figurines at the fort, Beth fighting back by hitting each one over the head with a canon. One of his soldiers came hurtling towards me and I retaliated by neatly dropping the castle drawbridge on his hand.

  ‘Ahh! Girls don’t play fair!’

  Seb rolled over on his back in defeat and Beth jumped on top of him in a frenzy of giggles. As I laughed at the two of them my eyes landed on a figure watching us from the doorway. It was Arabella. She was holding a glass of wine and looked as if she’d paused there on her way to somewhere else. I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen her, but I could feel her gaze like prickles and I watched her leave from the corner of my eye, stiff and straight-backed.

  ‘Come on, let’s clear up,’ I muttered. ‘Five minutes till bedtime Beth.’

  Are you sending me away?

  The words crossed through me like a shadow, although no one had spoken them out loud. Beth was gathering bits of the fortress up into her skirt and Seb was trying to mend a wounded soldier. I felt beads of sweat on my forehead; it was too hot in the room, the light had become as dense as amber.

  Seb tossed the fixed soldier back into the fortress. ‘I’ll leave you to it then ladies, before I get even more battered. Oh... and I’ll come and knock for you tomorrow night when the party kicks off if you like,’ he added.

  ‘Thank you.’

  A little hand tugged at my sleeve and Beth’s face smiled up at me, as pointed as an imp’s.

  ‘We won the battle!’ she cooed.

  ‘We’ve got some nice leftover beef tonight. I cooked it ’specially for Raphael.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know he’d already arrived.’

  Gladys hurriedly laid out the plates. ‘He got in a couple of hours ago.’

  I felt my stomach gurgle. The air had finally cooled down enough for me to want to eat again.

  ‘What is it that Raphael does exactly? Beth said he was an artist...’

  Gladys screwed her nose up.

  ‘That boy turned down a place at Cambridge to paint those horrible dark pictures.’

  ‘What pictures?’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed them around the house? You’ll find them soon enough.’

  ‘Really?’

  Gladys’s disapproval was so intriguing that I was tempted to jump up and search for Raphael’s paintings then and there. But my gurgling stomach had to come first, particularly when Gladys’s sumptuous food was involved.

  We chewed contentedly, the kitchen so quiet that it was impossible to guess who else was in the house. Its big old table and flagstone floor were beginning to hold a familiar comfort for me and after nearly a week I felt as if I was falling into step with Gladys’s quiet company. But there was one tricky issue that I really did need to raise.

  ‘Um, do you know how I could get a little time to chat to Arabella, on her own?’

  Gladys’s eyes briefly crossed my face but her expression gave nothing away.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No, not at all. I just wanted to speak to her a bit about Beth and her headaches. And school...’

  Gladys stuck a large forkful of food in her mouth and chewed it rather vehemently.

  ‘I’ll find out when it’s convenient for Mrs Hartreve to see you,’ she said finally, putting her knife and fork precisely together as if to mark not only the end of our meal but also the end of the subject.

  ‘Thank you... Can I help with the washing up?’

  After being shooed out of the kitchen I made my way as quietly as I could towards the front of the house. A mirror caught my reflection as I moved by, as sudden and fleeting as a passing ghost. The door to the drawing room was firmly closed now and I heard muffled voices behind it.

  The library door across the hallway was wide open and I felt myself lured towards the soft glow of the room. Inside it was just light enough to get a reasonable impression of what hung on its walls, but almost every inch of space was crammed with paintings, photographs, framed certificates and all manner of artefacts. I picked a random spot and began to move round.

  ‘Dark pictures... horrible dark pictures,’ I murmured under my breath.

  There was a sharp knock on the front door and I found myself freezing, as if scared of being caught in the act of doing something wrong. The drawing room door swept open and the tap of smooth leather soles moved across the hallway tiles to the front of the house.

  ‘Evening,’ came a voice from the street. ‘Now I’ve got lovely dusters here, shoe polish, rubber gloves...’

  ‘No thank you. Move on please.’

  Edward’s voice.

  ‘I’m just trying to set myself up sir. If you look at these cloths.’

  ‘I asked you to move on young man. Didn’t you understand me?’

  ‘I’m only doing my job!’

  ‘Well perhaps you should go and find yourself a proper job.’

  A second of incredulous silence.

  ‘Fuck off you posh git.’

  The door closed and the leather soles started to tap back again. But as I let out a long breath they paused, almost as if Edward had heard me. I felt butterflies; surely it was alright to be in there? Wasn’t it? The shoes seemed to scuff indecisively for a moment or two and then, quite suddenly, turned their pace directly towards the library. I stepped forward in readiness but before I even had the chance to say something a long arm plunged into the room, grasped the doorknob and slammed the door shut leaving me inside.

  As the shoes moved away again I cupped my hands over my mouth and laughed into them, although my heart was still beating fast. And then something that I hadn’t seen before caught my eye: an imposing gilt framed painting of something very dark, so close to the door frame that the door must have masked it entirely when it had been open. I drew closer to it, waiting for the image on the canvas to emerge, but no, even up close the painting seemed to be entirely black. In the bottom right-hand corner two letters entwined themselves together in pale grey paint: RH. So this was one of Raphael’s creat
ions.

  My eyes buzzed with peering at the thing. There had to be something more to it than black paint; like one of those optical illusions that demanded lots of intense staring to work them out. It wasn’t a good light but yes, very slowly, some details in shades of lighter black and grey hues, rose up spirit-like from the canvas. They formed a silhouette in the centre of the painting, a human form it seemed but with limbs so elongated and frayed at the extremities that it looked grotesque. Up where the face should have been there was a blurred shape that looked like a giant yawn, or grimace. It made me shudder. I took a sudden step back, grabbed at the door and pushed it back up against the picture.

  Back in the hallway the soft tones of a woman’s laughter emanated from the drawing room. I retreated up to the first floor and wandered along the corridor past Arabella’s office. At the end, behind a large fern on a pedestal, were a series of three paintings. They were just like the first: almost entirely black with the same haunting shape in various swooping poses in the centre. I brushed my hands up my arms. What sort of imagination would want to create these figures? Clearly whoever had hung them behind doors and plants had asked the same question.

  Turning back out of the corridor another painting caught the edge of my eye. I hadn’t noticed it before, probably because it was rather small and mounted in a dull rickety looking frame. But the painting itself was quite exquisite. Fine pencil strokes were covered in bright blotches of watercolour; playful and serious all at once. And the subject of the painting was the strangest looking man I’d ever seen. So strange that it left me with the uncanny feeling that I must have seen him somewhere before. He had a spindly body with a peanut sized head and was dressed in long wizard-like garments with a string of what seemed to be bottles and charms around his neck.

  ‘So you found the painting of Walter then.’

  I gasped at the voice. A young man in black was standing at the top of the stairs, watching me.

  ‘Oh I’m sorry, did I scare you?’

  ‘No, it’s just that people always seem to be springing up on me in this house.’

  ‘It’s because of my mother’s various ailments. We all learnt to move very quietly from an early age. I’m Raphael by the way.’

  He came forward and I recognized him instantly from the photograph I’d seen in Arabella’s office. His face was long and considered, his eyebrows arched at the centre, conveying that same sense of surprise and sudden interest. It was a timeless, poetic face and now I could see why black and white had suited it so well.

  ‘I know who you are, I’ve seen your photograph,’ I said, taking his outstretched hand. ‘I’m Serena, the new nanny.’

  ‘Yes, everyone’s been filling me in.’

  ‘Have they?’

  His eyes rested heavily on my face, so heavily that I had to look away.

  ‘I... I actually came here to look for your paintings,’ I stammered. ‘Gladys told me they were all over the house.’

  He brushed a lock of dark hair away from his forehead. ‘Oh you’ll hate them, everyone does.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t say I...’

  ‘No need to pretend. But this here is far more interesting. What do you think of it?’

  ‘I don’t know really. I think the man’s intriguing – you called him Walter?’

  ‘Yes. His name was Walter Balanchine. He was a nineteenth century mystic who worked for an ancestor of mine, the great Lord Hartreve.’

  ‘Was he serious?’

  ‘Oh yes, very. He was quite well-known in those days, especially in the East End where he lived.’

  ‘But why would someone like your relative be interested in him?’

  Raphael shrugged his shoulders, drawing his bottom lip in thoughtfully. ‘We’re not entirely sure. Lord Hartreve became a bit of a recluse in his old age. His wife died young, his son disappeared to Africa on a mission and his daughter Lucinda, well...’

  ‘Well what?’

  He looked at me again and this time I could see something flit within those dark heavy eyes: a tension, like a string suddenly being pulled tight.

  ‘Lord Hartreve bought Lucinda this house,’ he said slowly. ‘She married a man he didn’t approve of and then...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh it’s a strange story,’ he answered. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed and he glanced down at his watch. ‘I’ll tell you about it another time but unfortunately I’ve got to head out now. You’re coming to the party tomorrow I hear.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad about that.’

  He hesitated and then squeezed my arm briefly with his right hand. I could feel the warmth of his skin through my top and my cheeks coloured up in response. He smiled back, calculating my reaction, his eyebrows more quizzical than ever.

  I turned my face hurriedly back to the painting of Walter again. An image of him wading through the Victorian East End in his billowing garments floated through my mind. How peculiar that he’d been linked to this family and what could the strange story about Lord Hartreve’s daughter Lucinda have been about? But when I turned to speak to Raphael again I found myself standing there alone. He’d left as silently as he’d arrived and through the shadows I just caught a glimpse of his dark hair sinking from view down the stairs.

  I felt a sudden urge to call him back: ask about Lucinda, his paintings, maybe even the missing house next door... And yet something about Walter Balanchine’s stern little face made me stop.

  ‘They’re all watching me you know,’ I whispered to him. ‘Eva, Arabella, Raphael. Did you see the way he was staring at me just then? Now why do you think that is Walter Balanchine?’

  I held my breath childishly for a response, for a little flicker of his watery eyes perhaps, but he stared on from his canvas at a point somewhere just beyond my left ear. What a shame, he seemed like the sort of man who would have had the answer to anything.

  I ran my fingertips softly along the walls, up and up and over the bumps of door frames, conjuring the image of Lucinda Hartreve in my mind. Which of these rooms had she slept in all those decades ago? At Beth’s room I paused to pop my head around her door. She was sleeping deeply, her breath as faint as moth’s wings. Lucinda wouldn’t have slept in here, no, not grand enough. And she certainly wouldn’t have slept in my room, high above the tree tops.

  Out on my balcony chair, with my sketchbook propped up on my knees, I tasted the sticky night air and watched Seb’s face emerge once again from the end of my pencil. I closed my eyes and, drifting off, I could almost feel his lips touching mine. When I opened them again I was left with the hollow sensation of having been somewhere without realizing it. It was nearly midnight. Drunk with tiredness I stumbled to my bed.

  I bought a new dress for the party.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ said Beth when I tried it on for her. She was lying on my bed flicking through a magazine I’d bought. ‘I like the floaty bits. Did you know there’s a picture of Eva in here, in the society bit?’

  ‘Oh really, I hadn’t noticed. Are you sure the floaty bits don’t make me look like a bride’s mother?’

  ‘No, more like a bride’s fairy godmother.’

  ‘Oh shit. Sorry, you didn’t hear me say that word OK?’

  The house buzzed all day with party preparations. Eva appeared intermittently and a man in a Stetson flounced about the house barking out instructions to men in overalls – ‘I want that sideboard out of here by ten. DO YOU HEAR ME!’ The dining room furniture disappeared and a lorry load of new stuff wrapped in plastic was brought in.

  ‘Why has he got so many earrings up one of his ears?’ Beth whispered loudly to me, pointing at the Stetson man.

  ‘Just to look a bit different I suppose. But you shouldn’t point at people.’

  ‘Must be awfully heavy!’

  And she danced about the room with her head hanging to one side as if to empathize with his plight.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and help Gladys.’

&nb
sp; All the lavish preparations were beginning to make me feel rather nervous about the party, and particularly about my dress. By the evening my hands were actually quivering. The dress now looked even worse than it had in the morning. I put it on and then took it off again, standing in the middle of my room in my underwear.

  The floaty bits were just wrong. I scrambled through my drawer for my nail scissors, the sudden thrill of destruction urging me on. In barely a minute the floaty bits were no more and when I put the dress on again it was vastly improved.

  I went to work on my face, the mascara brush dancing a jig in my hand. Just as I was surveying the end result in the mirror, a hammering came at my door.

  Seb was wearing a skintight vintage looking purple suit, something half way between the Mad Hatter and a rock star.

  ‘Like the dress.’

  ‘Like the suit.’

  ‘Do you? I found it in an old box. It’s a relic I think.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  He raised his eyebrows into the sort of smile which made me want to pull him into the room and slam the door behind us.

  Downstairs the dining room had been transformed into a murky lounge bar with deep velvet sofas and black chandeliers. People were milling about everywhere, drinking cocktails and champagne and adorned in the sort of clothes that made Seb’s suit look conventional. I squeezed to one side to make way for a woman in silver-sequinned hot pants and she swayed past us with the measured assurance of a supermodel.

  ‘Great isn’t it!’ Seb enthused. ‘Eva’s friend Fabian did it all; he’s a set designer. Look, he’s over there if you want to talk to him,’ and he pointed in the direction of the Stetson man who had now complimented his hat with a tight jumpsuit.

  ‘No it’s alright. He looks busy. Shall we find somewhere to sit?’

  Through the thick smoky air I spotted Eva. She was sitting in the corner of one of the sofas wearing a flapper style beaded dress. There was a glazed look in her eyes and she’d chosen a shade of deep maroon for her lipstick that made her mouth look like a bloody tear in her pale skin.