CHAPTER 10

Strange Noises In The Drains

 

 

It took Cass three trips from the fish-quay, which was the closest to the cottage that she could bring her car, up the little twisting path to Maidensbower Cottage to unload all the shopping. Cass had, admittedly, spent more than she had originally intended, but now there would be plenty of food for both of them. Anna might be able to live on whole-wheat pasta and tinned tomatoes, which was all Cass had found in the cupboards, but Cass needed a bit more variety, a bit more wine and a bit more chocolate.

After unpacking it she had taken her car back to the church car park and then walked back down the hill in the growing dusk of the afternoon. The little shop windows shone out, the sea was peaceful and reflected the pink clouds of the sunset sky, which was serenely beautiful tonight. Cass found the desire to burst into song welling up inside her, as it frequently did at the most inappropriate of moments – she wondered what the last of the day trippers, straggling back up the hill in the dusk towards the car park, their Christmas purchases in neat little brown-paper shopping bags favoured by the upmarket gift shops of Rawscar, would make of a vicar singing The Messiah in the middle of Quay Street. She hummed quietly to herself instead, feeling happier than she had done for days. She was getting somewhere with Anna, she was helping Hal by doing so and she was not messing up June’s house every time she breathed. She was independent again.

Cass wasn’t usually one for making snap purchases, she prided herself on being too sensible to be sucked in by the excesses of commercialism, but when she saw the beautiful red and golden globe hanging in the window of “Stargazers” gift shop she knew how perfect it would look in the cottage window. After all, she should make an effort to join in with the lighting of the Christmas lights on Advent Sunday, as vicar she had a responsibility to the community. She also wanted to make the old cottage feel less like a summer holiday home and more like a real home, warm and welcoming, even if it was only temporary for both of them. Maybe that would help Anna to feel less nervous there and less likely to imagine ghostly faces at the window.

Anna was busy in the studio that she had set up in the spare room; the only indication of her presence was the occasional sound of boxes being moved upstairs. It gave Cass the opportunity to hang up the red and gold globe – handily the curtain rail was positioned just right to allow it to hang centrally in the window. Cass had bought a couple of battery operated candles, and with one of them glowing within the ball it looked suitably festive. Cass left it lit and went to find a blanket from her room to cover up the white sofa. There was a red and brown woven one which had been on her bed in the vicarage, in which Hal or Graham had carried some of her books. She stroked it gently into place on the sofa. It had been pulled out of shape by the weight of the books but it warmed the room up no end, and once it was laid over the sofa it was difficult to tell how misshapen it was. She was surveying the effect and wondering if she had anything else to bring more colour into the room, when there was a knock at the door.

For a moment she hoped that Hal might have come to see how they were getting on – he had promised to keep an eye on them, after all – but then she remembered that Graham had offered to come over later in the afternoon to bring a folding table to serve as a desk for her to work on her sermons which was about the only job she could do away from the Wi-Fi in the Church Office. He had also mentioned that he would have a look at the drains in the upstairs shower room (which did, Cass had to admit, make a very prolonged gurgling noise after she had used it and emitted some rather unpleasant smells). What with that and the seagulls on the roof at dawn it was hardly surprising that Anna heard strange noises at the cottage.

Graham took the table straight up to her room and then carried up his tool bag. He prided himself that he knew the location of the fuse box and stopcock for every cottage in Rawscar, and he could tell you no end of interesting facts about their plumbing. In order not to have to listen to some of these interesting facts while he worked, Cass went to make a pot of tea. She took a mug up for Anna, who was absorbed in stringing a complex twisted necklace and barely looked up in acknowledgement, and then went to see how Graham was getting on. He was kneeling on the floor of her shower room, a bottle of chemicals in one hand, a look of intense concentration on his face, and his ear over the plughole of the shower tray listening to the noise it made. He straightened up as Cass came in.

‘I’ve just put some of this stuff down. Don’t think it’s any more than a bit of hair and soap scum blocking the pipe, but I’ll give it half an hour and then run some water through, see if that fixes it. There’s other things to try if it doesn’t work.’

‘There’s a pot of tea on the go when you’re ready and I’ll make some cinnamon toast if you like. My mother always used to make it at this time of year; she refused to have a mince pie until Christmas Eve!’

‘Eh, well that sounds delicious. I won’t say no! Better wash my hands first, though.’

She had got the cinnamon toast in the Rayburn by the time he came back downstairs, the scent of the spice filling the room as she opened the door to check it – she had never made toast in a Rayburn before and wasn’t even sure if it was going to work. She had offered Anna some as well, but Anna didn’t want to combine food and jewellery-making and preferred to stay up in her workshop.

‘Well, hopefully that’ll fettle it,’ Graham said, as he came into the kitchen, wiping his hands on his work trousers. ‘Have you got everything else you need here, Vicar?’

‘Yes. It all seems fine.’

Cass poured him a mug of tea and he took a seat at the kitchen table. ‘And I’m sure some of the things that have frightened Anna were nothing more sinister than the blocked drain and the seagulls on the roof.’

‘So, you don’t believe in the Maiden’s Ghost?’ Graham said, putting a spoon of sugar into his tea.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts at all. But I do believe that unhappiness and shock can play strange tricks on the mind – and Anna was obviously shocked by the cliff fall.’

‘Ay, looks like the whole of Widows’ Row is going to have to come down,’ Graham told her, adding another spoon of sugar to his tea and stirring it. ‘That’s what the surveyors said. If the weather doesn’t get the houses first.’

‘Such a shame.’

‘And you, are you bearing up, Vicar?’

‘Oh yes. I’m fine, you don’t need to worry about me!’ He looked narrowly at her, as he added a third spoonful of sugar to his tea. She didn’t really want to talk about herself right now.

‘Tell me, Graham, what is the story of the Maiden’s Ghost? Who is she?’

Graham’s eyes lit up. ‘Well, it’s really Jack Thorburn as should tell you the tale. He’s a master at storytelling, mind.’

‘I’d rather you told me.’

Graham took a mouthful of his tea, thought for a moment and added yet another spoonful of sugar. After another sip, finally he seemed satisfied.

‘I suppose I could.’ He was trying to sound reluctant, but his eyes had lit up at the prospect. ‘Well, now, it goes back to that great storm of 1886 – the memorial up at the church? A storm blew up suddenly when the fishing fleet were out at sea; most of the able-bodied men were out there. Most of the older skippers knew it was best to ride out the storm out at sea, but a few tried to get back into the harbour. Off Cliff Point, just past the church there, a boat hit the rocks. It was too far out to see which boat it was, but it was a Rawscar fishing smack, trying to get back into port. There was nobody to man the lifeboat, save the women and the old men, so they launched the lifeboat between them, the old men telling them what to do, the women doing the work, not knowing who it was they were going to save.’

‘Like Grace Darling!’ She got up and took the cinnamon toast out of the Rayburn. It had curled up too much at the edges, but it hadn’t burnt. It smelt spicy and sweet and dripped butter as she put it onto plates.

‘Ay, like Grace Darling. But her name got into the history books, and our women never did.’

Cass put a plate down in front of him.

‘What happened?’ Cass took a bite of her cinnamon toast. It tasted of the warm firesides and cosy evenings of her childhood, at home in the vicarage, before her father had died.

‘Well,’ Graham continued, ‘the women rowed out to the fishing boat, and they reached it, but they were too late to save all the crew. Two sailors were already lost, but they say that one of the women in the lifeboat had a sweetheart on the fishing boat. They tried to get to him, but before her very eyes as he was trying to get into the lifeboat, a wave swept him away. They couldn’t find him in the water, he drowned like the other two,’ Graham paused to eat some of his cinnamon toast.

‘So he’s the ghost? I thought it was meant to be a woman?’

‘No,’ Graham said through a mouthful of crumbs, ‘no, not him. They say that when she had rowed the boat back to shore, for days the young woman could still hear her lover calling to her from beneath the waves. In the end, she wouldn’t listen to her friends or family, she said that if she tried she could still get to him; she could find him in the sea. He was calling to her, she had to go.’

‘So she rowed out again?’

‘No.’ Graham let his voice drop. ‘She walked into the sea, and was never seen again. Except, on dark, stormy nights, if you listen carefully, you can hear a voice calling from under the sea, and sometimes a shadowy grey figure is seen walking down the alley from this cottage, down onto the beach and into the sea. They call her the Maiden’s Ghost.’

Cass didn’t believe in ghosts. Definitely, she didn’t believe in ghosts, never had done and never would do, but still she shivered despite the heat of the Rayburn and the cinnamon toast. She hoped that Anna was well out of earshot – but she must know the story herself, otherwise why would her imaginings so closely match what Graham had told her? The calling voices, the dreams of losing herself in the waves.

‘And this was her cottage?’

‘So they do say. And some say that the Maiden lives here still.’ He spoke with a theatrical tremor in his voice, then shrugged it away, and finished his cinnamon toast in a single bite.

‘Hence the name, Maidensbower.’

‘Ay, I suppose. But you and I don’t believe in suchlike.’

‘No, of course not!’ Cass spoke brightly. ‘And I’m sure that most of Anna’s problems are nothing to do with a ghost and everything to do with the cliff fall – she’s suffering some kind of shock.’

‘Poor little thing. She’s not had it easy, that Anna Dawnay. One setback after another.’ He glanced upwards as if looking through the ceiling to where Anna was working upstairs.

‘What kind of setbacks?’ Cass asked hopefully, but Graham didn’t seem to hear her, draining the last of his tea.

‘I’d better be getting back. June’ll be wondering where I’ve got to. Run some hot water through that shower of yours in another ten minutes, enough to give it a good flush through, and if that doesn’t sort it, let me know tomorrow – I’ll be at the ten o’clock service tomorrow morning.’ He was putting his coat back on and when he opened the front door a blast of cold air swept into the cottage. He turned on the threshold, ‘And Vicar?’

‘Yes?’

‘Sleep well!’