I
Dorset, August 2014
The abandoned house covered in bindweed and brambles didn’t look like anything much, when first glimpsed from the lane.
But after the two men had struggled through the tangled mass of wild flowers and creepers surrounding the house they came upon a porch. The steps up were blackened with rot; on the porch itself rested a long-abandoned cane chair, bleached silver-grey by the wind and the sea and chained to the decaying floorboards by the tendrils of a pink-and-sage Virginia creeper. Below came the shingling slap of gentle waves and when you turned towards the sound of the sea there was Worth Bay, curving away from you, cream-yellow sands, turquoise water, chalk-white rocks in the distance.
Dave Nichols, trainee agent at Mayhew & Fine, watched in irritation as Frank Mayhew paused on the sandy path, fiddling in his pocket for the key. It was a boiling hot day, the sun beating down remorselessly. A mother and a young girl in swimming costumes, carrying towels, passed by on their way to the beach, looking at them with curiosity. Dave felt stupid, standing there in his smartest suit in front of this rotten old building.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said sulkily, ‘why we have to value it when the old girl’s not going to sell.’
Frank tutted in disapproval. ‘Old girl! That’s Lady Wilde to you, Dave, and she’s not long for this world – have some respect. Listen. In a few months when she’s gone, the family’ll most likely want to sell. They don’t care about the place, that’s obvious. That’s where we come in, see?’ He turned to take in the glorious view of the bay, then glanced at his slouched, sullen trainee, the son of an old golfing buddy, and sighed very gently. ‘If we play our cards right, we’ll be the agents to handle the sale. Houses on Worth Bay don’t come up often. There’s only ten or so of ’em. The Bosky – it’s prime beach-front property, this place.’
Dave shrugged. ‘It’s a wreck,’ he said, staring at the bindweed, the algae-coated windows. ‘Look at these floorboards! Rotten through, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Most buyers don’t care. They’ll just level it and start over again.’ Frank pulled the bindweed and dead roses away, then inserted the key, pushing against the peeling door with difficulty. ‘Makes me sad, seeing it like this, if I’m honest. How it must be for Lady Wilde, stuck in that old people’s home up the road, looking out over it all day, I’ve no idea. Bugger me, this is jammed fast. Come on, you—’ He threw his rotund form against the frame. Nothing happened. Frank stepped back and to the side, looking through one of the shuttered windows. ‘Hmm . . .’ he said, bouncing on his heels, and then suddenly he gave a loud, outraged yelp.
Dave, who’d been staring at the view, turned in alarm: Frank had sunk a foot or so into the ground, the wooden boards simply melting away, as though they were made of butter.
Trying not to laugh, he lent Frank his arm as the older man pulled himself out of the hole, with some difficulty.
‘I’ll explain that to Lady Wilde myself.’ Frank smoothed down his ruffled hair. ‘Now, you give me a hand. It’ll come open with a bit of extra oomph. That’s it—’ Together they fell against the door: it gave way with an aching crack, and the two men tumbled inside.
As the warm, musty smell of the dark house tickled their noses Frank turned on his torch, shining it around the hall. He pulled the yellowing tendril of some dead plant from the ceiling.
‘Well,’ he said quietly. ‘Here we are.’
Dave sniffed the musty air. ‘Perfume. I can smell perfume.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Frank said, but he shivered. This was air that no one else had breathed for years; it felt heavy with something.
There was a cloakroom to his immediate left, and stairs in front of him, down to the bedrooms below. Off to the right was the kitchen, and to the left was the sitting room which had French windows leading back on to the porch.
‘Let’s open these,’ said Frank, going into the kitchen, flicking back the faded sand-coloured curtains, the original colour now long forgotten. In the corner of the room, a window seat padded with faded yellow-and-grey patterned fabric and dotted with a decade’s worth of dead flies and wasps faced the porch. The galley kitchen was at the back, the windows looking out over the lane.
There was nothing on the surfaces or shelves, no sign of occupation.
Frank flicked a switch a couple of times. ‘No, not a thing.’ He sniffed. ‘I can smell something too. Scent, or flowers, or something.’ He shook himself. ‘Right. Let’s open some windows. Get some fresh air and light in and we can go downstairs and measure up the bedrooms.’
But the window frames were too swollen with damp to open and after struggling for a minute they both gave up and went back into the hall.
Dave said, ‘The bedrooms are downstairs?’
‘It’s an upside-down house. All your living rooms are up here overlooking the sea. Bedrooms are for sleeping in, doesn’t matter what you’re looking at.’ Frank ran his hand along the bannister. ‘It’s a good idea. I used to dream of having a place like this when I was a lad.’
Dave stared at him, quizzically. ‘You knew them?’
‘Everyone knew them,’ Frank said. ‘They was quite something, the Wildes.’ He moved his torch up on to the wood-panelled wall and both men jumped, as a face leaped out at them. Frank recovered himself first. ‘It’s just a photo,’ he said, slightly shakily.
The picture on the wall gleamed in the darkness. A middle-aged woman with a floppy hat and large nose, smiling broadly, holding a dangling crab between her forefinger and thumb.
‘She looks like a witch,’ Dave said.
The torch juddered suddenly in Frank’s hand, lighting up a pair of faces.
‘Who are they? What – what on earth is all that?’ said Dave, eventually.
Frank moved the torch along, and slowly the walls were illuminated with more faces, staring out from frames. Faces laughing, gurning, smiling politely, groups clinking glasses together, children dancing – more faces, some in colour, most in black-and-white. There were theatre posters too, and newspaper cuttings.
‘That’s them,’ said Frank, gesturing. ‘Weren’t they quite something?’
Dave peered at the photo next to him. A beautiful Titian-haired woman sat with two girls on her knee, one blonde, the other dark. A group of adults reclined on the porch, glasses and cigarettes in hand. A grinning pair of young children danced on a beach: a boy and girl. More groups of smiling people. The man and woman were in the newspaper articles too, always elegantly dressed. In one they were holding hands and laughing, and she was turning slightly towards a knot of onlookers, waving with the other hand. Dave scanned the photos, sliding the torch along, plunging one, then another photo into white light and then darkness, searching for her. He stared at her, transfixed. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
‘“Anthony Wilde and his wife Althea arrive at the Royal Court for the First Night of Macbeth”,’ Dave read with difficulty, holding his phone up to the text. ‘“Curtain call went on for ten minutes as ecstatic crowd gave Mr Wilde a standing ovation.” OK then.’ He turned back as Frank reached into his briefcase. ‘Who the hell are they?’
‘I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Anthony Wilde,’ said Frank, pointing his laser measure at the walls. ‘Two point four metres. Greatest actor of his day. And that’s Althea Wilde, his wife. You must have heard of her. She was in Hartman Hall. Lady Isabella?’
Dave shook his head. ‘Nope.’
‘Lordy, Lordy. How can you not know Hartman Hall? Bigger than Downton, better ’n’ all.’ Frank sighed. ‘What about On the Edge? That sitcom about the older lady, talking into her mirror? That was her, too.’
‘Might ring a bell, maybe.’ Dave looked at her again, the long neck, the slightly too-large nose, the liquid green eyes flecked with hazel. She was staring at him, only him, in the gloom of the house. He turned his torch away from her. He didn’t like it, suddenly.
‘They were known as the Wildflowers, the lot of them. Spent every summer here. Oh, the people they used to have staying. The glamour of it! You’d walk past on your way back from the beach and you’d see them above you, gramophone on, drinking cocktails, women in these beautiful dresses, and their kids running up and down the steps – a boy and a girl, bit younger than I was . . .’ Frank’s eyes grew misty. ‘What a life. I’d watch them playing, on my way back home from the beach . . . Dad’d be yelling at Mum, she’d be head down trying to pretend she weren’t with him, both of them after a bottle or two too much of ale and the sun . . . And I’d think, what I wouldn’t give to be up there.’
He scratched his chin with one finger. ‘They lived in some huge house by the river in London, too, ’cause she liked being by water, that’s what I heard. He’d do anything for her. Anything. And those kids, bloody hell. Lucky isn’t the word, every summer down here, and he was the best father, Sir Tony, he really was, always fun and games . . .’ Frank shrugged, and then said pettishly, ‘Take your hands out your pockets. Come on, you. You do the bedrooms off to the left, I’ll do the rest. Show me you know how to use that laser measure.’
Reluctantly, Dave followed Frank into the downstairs gloom. He measured the bedrooms and bathroom as fast as he could, all the while listening to the wind whistling around the outside of the house. Inside, it was muffled, warm, deadeningly quiet.
‘What happened to them?’ Dave asked his boss, as they were climbing back up the stairs. ‘Why don’t they come any more?’
Frank smoothed his ruffled hair across his pate, then fiddled with his wristwatch, as though readying himself for outside again. ‘Something happened. ’Bout twenty years ago.’
‘What?’
‘I wasn’t ever sure. A family bust-up. The daughter’s a famous singer. Was, I should say. Cordelia Wilde. The son’s a big director, he did them Robot Master films.’
For the first time Dave was impressed. ‘No way! I love Robot Master.’
‘Well, that’s him. Ben Wilde. He was married . . . I don’t know what happened to her.’ Frank screwed up his eyes, and jotted down some figures into a little notebook. ‘Anyway his sister, the singer, she don’t speak to them any more. Nice kid she was, mad as a hatter but I liked her. Then Sir Anthony, he died, and after a couple of summers Lady Wilde sent someone down to clear the place out. The big house up the lane, that used to be a holiday home too, strange family as lived there. They converted it into an old people’s home and she moved in. She never came again. No one does now.’
The gloom was oppressive after a while. That, and the sense that those faces on the walls in darkness were watching you, wanting the lights on so they could come alive again, to go back to living their golden summers. Dave shivered as Frank stepped carefully over the hole in the porch by the front door. He followed him, breathing in heavily.
‘Fresh air,’ Dave said, pulling out his phone. ‘Thank God. Look, reception again.’
‘It’s just a bit musty. I’ve seen worse.’ He pulled the door shut, and there was a loud clang as an object fell from the lintel above the front door, down into the hole, and hit something.
‘Oh, dear.’ Frank bent to pick it up, reaching in between the cracked boards. He pulled out a stone angel on a rusting hook. She had vast, spreading wings, bare breasts, huge eyes, an enigmatic smile. She stared up at him. In one hand she held a pine cone, in the other a small, unblinking owl.
‘What’s that?’ said Dave.
‘Welcome angel or something,’ said Frank, gazing at the little square panel. ‘Yep, that’s it. The old girl who lived here before was an archaeologist.’
‘What old girl?’
‘The one in the floppy hat. She’s his aunt. Lived here with Sir Anthony during the war. Dad remembered her, right crackers she was. Now . . .’ He scratched his chin, holding the panel in his hand. ‘Can’t remember her name. But I remember this from when I was a lad, remember it hanging here.’
‘Shouldn’t it be in a museum?’ said Dave. He didn’t like the way the huge eyes with their uneven pupils gazed balefully at him.
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Frank looked at it doubtfully. ‘It’s not real. Course not. I’ll give it to Lady Wilde.’ He peered into the hole again. ‘There’s something down there, under the porch.’ Squatting with difficulty, he pulled out a tin. ‘What’s this, I wonder.’
It was a metal tin, so rusted away in places that it fell open easily. Inside was a square of black plastic sheeting, and inside that – Frank tugged at the strips of tape that bound it up, and then he pulled out a thick, battered book the same shape as an exercise book, with a piece of elastic over the front making it into a folder. The Children’s Book of British Wild Flowers, it said. Someone had added an e after Wild.
‘What the hell’s all that?’ said Dave.
But Frank shook his head, after staring at it for a moment, and said repressively, ‘I don’t know, my boy. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I’ll pass it all on to Lady Wilde.’ He wrapped the angel in a handkerchief, shaking his head. ‘Sad. Makes me sad,’ Dave heard him mutter.
As Frank slid the angel and the tin into his satchel, Dave exhaled.
‘Tell you what, I don’t care who they were. I got a bad feeling, being in there.’
‘Like I say,’ said Frank, casting one last look back at the wooden house as they descended the rickety steps, ‘it wasn’t like that, once.’