Ten Minute Tales Candlemass by Erica Laine

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CANDLEMASS
by Erica Lainé

Lino, old sinks, tatty bits of curtain and carpet, the skip was nearly full. 12 Ormistone Grove was being converted, refurbished, done up, gentrified, whatever you wanted to call it, the house was being stripped of years of cheap wallpaper and hurriedly slapped on paint. Disgusting heaps of rubbish were being carted away in black sacks and no one was scavenging at the skip in search of something to recycle or upcycle. Nothing was salvageable.

The builders had already started on the roof, relaying the slates and repointing around the chimneys. Joe and Anna watched, the house was theirs, bought at auction, in itself a tense and difficult time but the hammer fell to them on their final bid, and now to clear out the place and turn it into the family dream home. Anna squeezed Joe’s arm and he nudged her in return.

‘Let’s go and look at the ground floor again, I want to imagine the kitchen.’

They picked their way up to the front door and stood in the hall. Depressingly dirty and dingy, not even a bulb in the socket that dangled at the end of some dodgy looking flex. Joe made another note to himself to bring some light bulbs next time. Anna was in the kitchen at the back, peering out of the window at the overgrown shrubs.

‘It’s difficult to know what was planted and meant and what’s just put itself there.’

‘The buddleia and sycamore, surely self-sown, must get those out.’

‘Have to wait, the ground’s so frozen, too hard to dig now, and anyway the garden is last on the list, we’ll do it all when the builders have gone.’

They began pacing the rooms, measuring for curtains, debating about colours, stamping on floorboards and knocking on walls.

She watched from the ceiling, her thumb in her mouth, the other hand twiddling with her hair, something she always did when anxious. All the furniture had gone including her favourite sofa that smelt of dogs. Two used to live in the house and were friendly beasts that had never bothered her, not like that cat, which waited to pounce on her and scratch her if it could. She had been glad when it had disappeared under a speeding delivery van.

The house had been so noisy once, she’d lost count of the people who lived here, one family had people everywhere, maids in the attics, a boot boy in the cellar and endless guests, it had been a difficult time when she was trying to find her way in this world. Then after that there had been children upstairs who let her play with their toys. It was one of them who had given her her name, she’s a little Angel, he’d said, and the others agreed, that was just what she was. Not that she answered to it, she never came when they called, that was her rule. But those children had grown up and gone away. She had not really missed them, but the next family were horrible, always shouting and crying and there were no toys at all. Just one big black book that they had to read every day. The words they read out hurt her ears, so she had flitted down into the cellar and stayed there with the mice. It seemed a good place to stay because planes were bombing all the houses and no one was upstairs, they’d left for the country. One bomb fell nearby and cracked a side wall, so when all that confusion stopped, the house was sold off. Underpinning seemed to be the word everyone used when viewing the house, for some reason this word made her giggle, she liked the sound of it and the feel in her mouth when she said it, underpin, pin under… that is what happened to some of the people in the street, they’d been pinned under that brick wall. And the house had been sold to a man in a camel coat who talked about bed sitting rooms and short term tenants.

Angel thought about the problems that came to the house after that, so many people trying to live in the carved up rooms, and very few of them were sympathetic. She had taken a small sweet revenge on them all, missing jewellery, torn clothes, broken furniture, and mouldy food. Then there had been silence and emptiness for a few years, not too bad really but now everything she knew was gone. It was Candlemass tomorrow, in the old days they used to put ashes on the roof to guard against spirits but there was so much work going on up there she doubted if that would happen, just as well. But only the cornice up here and in the other rooms seemed safe, she would stay out of the way for now and see what was going to happen to her house.

The summer solstice came, a balmy breezy June when Joe and Anna and the baby moved in. The house so clean and gleaming, every wall fresh, every floor sanded and polished, every window washed and bright. A careful mix of furniture placed in rooms that smelt of lavender and beeswax, vintage chairs and a dresser given to them by a great aunt, now in the kitchen full of Anna’s collection of Poole pottery. The house belonged to them and they had made it theirs.

Betsy had a room at the back of the house, all soft colours and a painted frieze of rabbits. There was a musical box that played Für Elise, which soothed her to sleep. Angel curled up under her cot; she knew about cots, lots of babies in this house had slept in cots.

‘The musical box,’ said Anna, ‘I hear it playing at all sorts of odd times, do you think it has a fault, or some sort of repeat function we don’t know about?’

‘Hardly, have you still got the receipt? We could take it back and get another one if it bothers you. I don’t suppose Betsy’s playing with it?’

They both laughed. Fond indulgent parents they might be but nine month old babies can’t wind up music boxes.

‘And her teddy bear, have you noticed? It’s always under her cot in the morning in exactly the same place; I know Betsy throws her toys out but for it to be in exactly the same place every morning is very odd.’

12 Ormistone Grove was a highly desirable house now, not that wreck which had been bomb damaged, trashed and battered. House prices were soaring in the capital, too many people chasing too few properties.

‘We could sell you know, realise the gain, make some money and get something bigger, especially if we have more children, it might be something to look at.’

’But we’ve hardly settled in, let’s enjoy a few years here first. I want Betsy to go to the local nursery when my maternity leave is up, everyone tells me how good it is and you know how I am about leaving her.’

That night Betsy wailed and was inconsolable, her cheeks flushed and red.

‘Teething again, she’s always snotty when she teethes.’

Angel sat under the cot and tried to soothe Betsy with little whispers of ‘there there’ and wondered why they didn’t give her a spoon of laudanum, always the best thing for teething.

A long weekend had been earmarked for the garden and coming home early on a Thursday, Joe found Anna in the living room with a ladder and a long handled feather duster, working at the cornice.

‘I thought I saw something up here, it must have been a trick of the light. Whatever it was has disappeared now.’

‘Come on. Let's have a glass of wine and think about the weekend, we need to work out a plan of action for the garden.’

They dug and cleared the borders, pulling out weeds and suckers of plum and sycamore while Betsy rolled about on the checked wool rug, watching Angel bounce along the branches of the cherry tree.

‘She loves it in the garden, and aren’t we lucky with the weather, after that miserable winter this is the best summer ever.’

At the end of the garden, near the boundary fence Joe wanted to build a shed so he dug out an area to be the place for the concrete slab. He came into the kitchen where Anna was feeding Betsy in her highchair.

 ‘Look at this,’ and he unfolded a square of cloth to show a wooden box about the size of a large shoe box.

 ‘Buried treasure?’

 ‘Maybe, shall we open it?’

 He was already lifting off the lid and there they were, a huddle of bones, some scraps of linen and lace and a penny dated 1889.

 Angel peered over his shoulder, so that was where her bones had got to, and that was the nightgown that her mother had made. The penny was for her birth year. Well, a birth and a death year.

 Joe and Anna re-buried the box near the cherry tree, Anna was insistent that it did not go back under the concrete slab; too much like a criminal gang killing she shuddered. They had decided not to tell anyone about the box and its contents but just to make sure it had a good peaceful resting place. Secretly Joe was glad not to tell anyone, it might affect the property value which was soaring.

 Angel sat on the roof as they dug the hole for the box; she had been in the kitchen sampling Anna's cupcakes, only a few crumbs to be licked off her fingers. She didn't mind where the box ended up, she had never needed or wanted those bones. The only thing she had ever cared about was her house.

© Erica Lainé 

website: https://ericalainewriter.com/

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